Hillary a Humanitarian? In BizarroWorld, Perhaps (Soapbox Podcast 10/30/21)

 

October 30, 2021

 

 

CLICK IMAGE TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Guests: Vivek Jain (Child Psychiatrist)

Mark Wood (Professor of Religious Studies)

 

Topic: Why Hillary Clinton should NOT receive

a prestigious humanitarian award.

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Two Ghouls for your Halloween Scare!
 

Letter to the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP)

Dear AACAP Leadership:

We write to express serious concern about the selection of former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton to receive this year's Catchers in the Rye Humanitarian Award. 

The award was established to "honor an individual who has made sustained and significant contributions to the field of children's mental health." 

We believe that an honest assessment of Clinton's domestic and foreign policy record demonstrates a profoundly troubling disregard for the wellbeing of children and especially for the wellbeing of poor children of color.

With regard to domestic policy, Clinton opposes universal state subsidized health insurance. The lack of universal health coverage leaves millions of children and their families without access to health care resources. She has been a solid ally of the for-profit health insurance and health care conglomerates, prioritizing private financial interests over public health and the public good. She served on the board of Walmart, a company whose record of aggressive anti-unionism and paying wages so low that many workers qualify for state aid is well-known. She has been a stalwart supporter of Wall Street firms and neoliberal policies that have resulted in record levels of socioeconomic inequality. As a result of these policies, millions of working families, and disproportionately families of color, struggle to meet the basic needs of their children, let alone possess the means to provide their children the resources needed to flourish. 

Though Clinton served on the board of directors for the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), she lent considerable support as First Lady for her husband's restructuring of welfare. About this legislation, founder and former president of the CDF Marian Wright Edelman wrote that "'President Clinton's 'signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.'" Mrs. Edelman's husband, Peter Edelman, who served in the Clinton administration, resigned in protest, calling the legislation the worst thing president Clinton has done. Hillary Clinton regarded the welfare reform legislation to be a great success. She also supported her husband's criminal justice reform efforts, which many scholars contend was racist and classist as it led to a massive increase in the incarceration of persons of color and the poor. The US now has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. 

Hillary Clinton has been among the most hawkish of political figures in a nation that leads the world in military spending and militarism. She has consistently supported increased military spending and energetically advocated for every US military intervention. Clinton supported the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. She played an instrumental role in persuading the Obama administration to undertake a massive bombing campaign against Libya, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and making Libya a haven for terrorist organizations and slave markets.  As thoroughly documented by Brown University's Cost of War site, US military interventions supported by Clinton have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, the majority of whom were children, and the destruction of life-supporting infrastructure. War is the ultimate crime against children and, as Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs wrote, Clinton's "foreign policy ‘experience’ has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.” 

As secretary of state she supported the overthrow of the elected president of Honduras and the installation of the current regime that has engaged in savage repression and murder of poor and indigenous populations and which has fueled a massive migration of families, including tens of thousands of children, fleeing terror and seeking refuge in the United States. Last but not least, Hillary Clinton has been a strong supporter of some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world, all of which run roughshod over the health and wellbeing of children. 

One could go on to enumerate many other examples of policies that Hillary Clinton has supported which have caused and are still causing immeasurable suffering to children and their families. Though she and the Clinton Foundation have supported efforts to improve the lives of children, Hillary Clinton's record as First Lady, senator and secretary of state is overwhelmingly not favorable with regard to support for the health and wellbeing of children and especially for the wellbeing of poor children and children of color in the US and in other nations. 

For these reasons, we implore you to reconsider your nomination of Hillary Clinton for this award.

There are so many others who truly deserve this important recognition.

Sincerely,

Helen Caldicott MBBS, FRACP, MD, 

Member of American  Board of Pediatrics, 

Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility – 1985 Nobel Peace Prize

Margaret Flowers, MD

Director, Popular Resistance

Cindy Sheehan

Host/Executive Producer of the Soapbox

Founder of the Women's March on the Pentagon

David Swanson

Executive Director, World Beyond War

Mark D. Wood

Professor, Religious Studies

Director, School of World Studies 2013-2021

Virginia Commonwealth University

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Click HERE to add your name to the petition asking AACAP to rescind the award to the cold-blooded killer Clinton! 

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A History of Atrocities. Cindy Sheehan Discusses The War Criminal Whitewash

Of course, what this meme should say, is "In this bottle is what's left of my soul" as Colin Powell already had a long history of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

 

Please listen to Cindy's interview with Abe Abelhardi of 

The Bitter Truth

If the US doesn't stop worshiping instead of prosecuting war criminals, the war crimes will never stop.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmHRgJ2tPt4

Friend of the show, longtime activist and host of Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, Cindy Sheehan (http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot....) joins us to talk about the latest whitewashing of yet another war criminal and how this is more than a trend. America loves war and there seems to be no two ways about it. Ms. Sheehan has been on the front lines of regime change wars since lost her son in 2004 in Iraq. She also ran as an independent against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Support the show through https://thebittertruth.info/merch to get fun stuff or visit https://www.patreon.com/thebittertruth

 

 

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SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE W/DAN YASEEN (OCTOBER EDITION)

 

https://soundcloud.com/speaking-truth-to-empire/211020-speaking-truth-to-empire-joan-roelofs

Speaking Truth to Empireon KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated in Fresno since 1975, Dan Yaseen interviews Joan Roelofs. She is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College, New Hampshire. She is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism and Greening Cities. A community education short course on the military industrial complex is on her website, and may be used for similar purposes. The topic of discussion is the Military Industrial Complex. Her website is www.joanroelofs.wordpress.com

 

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Last Chance: Order a Signed Book recounting an Historic Protest

 

 The courageous and principled publisher of the Lone Star Iconoclast (Crawford, Tx) Leon Smith recently passed away. He wrote editorials condemning and criticizing George W. Bush prior to the invasion of Iraq, who was an extremely popular person in that part of the country. 

The Iconoclast covered Camp Casey in the summer of 2005 and published a book about Cindy Sheehan's protest, called: The Vigil: 26 Days in Crawford Texas. The Smith family has donated some books to Cindy Sheehan to use as a fundraiser for Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox,

For a minimum donation of $15.00, Cindy Sheehan will inscribe a book to you (shipping/handling included). The Vigil is a day by day recount of the Camp Casey protest in Crawford Texas which garnered international attention after George Bush refused to answer Sheehan's simple question: What Noble Cause?---it is also filled with photos from that month in August of 2005. With the wars after 9/11/01 still causing destruction and grief, this book is still relevant. 

From the back cover:

In August of 2005, a grieving mother and her supporters laid siege to Crawford, Texas. Cindy Sheehan set up camp outside of President Bush's ranch determined to find some answers. For 26 days, all eyes were on Camp Casey.

At the center of it all was Crawford's own Lone Star Iconoclast in the heart of the reddest of red states. The Iconoclast found itself caught between the public's (deeply conservative) expectations, and the paper's publisher W. Leon Smith's sense of journalistic duty to report objectively. The Vigil is an invaluable record of the Icononclast's coverage with Sheehan herself providing a scene-setting foreword.

The result is a high stakes, blow by blow account of the events as they unfolded. You experience this vigil right along with the writers and participants in the heat, the fire ants, the gunplay, the celebrity appearances, and the intense emotional roller coaster that has yet to end. Smith and his crew demonstrated a level of professional virtue that--to quote Sheehan herself--"shines a like a long spark of integrity in a prairie of darkness." 

Foreword by Cindy Sheehan

Link to order online:  

CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE ORDER

OR SEND CHECK/MONEY ORDER TO:

THE VIGIL 

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX

PO BOX 6264 

VACAVILLE CA 95696 

(MAKE CHECK PAYABLE TO:

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX, LLC)

DUE TO A LIMITED SUPPLY, PLEASE ONLY ONE PER ORDER.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE MORE THAN ONE COPY, PLEASE EMAIL 

CINDYSHEEHANSSOAPBOX@GMAIL.COM to check and see how many copies are still in stock.

 

W. Leon Smith

Cui Bono? Not workers! With John Steppling (SOAPBOX PODCAST 10/02/21)

 

October 2, 2021

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO LISTEN

TOPIC: Can the USG ever be trusted?

GUEST: John Steppling

Cindy and John chat about the current global situation and how being skeptical of USG/global elite propaganda is a very necessary and healthy way to live. Who are the shadowy forces behind the war/pharma profiteer attacks on the working-class?

 

Bio:

John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwrighting. Plays produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow. Taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. Plays include The Shaper, Dream Coast, Standard of the Breed, The Thrill, Wheel of Fortune, Dogmouth, and Phantom Luck, which won the 2010 LA Award for best play. Film credits include 52 Pick-up (directed by John Frankenheimer, 1985) and Animal Factory (directed by Steve Buscemi, 1999). A collection of his plays was published in 1999 by Sun & Moon Press as Sea of Cortez and Other Plays. He lives with wife Gunnhild Skrodal Steppling; they divide their time between Norway and the high desert of southern California. He is artistic director of the theatre collective Gunfighter Nation.

 

AESTHETIC RESISTANCE AND
DIS-INTEREST. THAT WHICH WILL NOT ALLOW ITSELF TO BE SAID
Author: John Steppling

BUY NOW →

 

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Speaking Truth to Empire with Dan Yaseen (September 2021 Edition)

 

https://soundcloud.com/speaking-truth-to-empire/210915-speaking-truth-to-empire-medea-benjamin 

On “Speaking Truth to Empire” on KFCF 88.1 independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange. Medea is a human rights advocate, an author and a peace & justice activist. She has worked for social justice and human rights in Asia, the Americas, and Africa for over 30 years.

Topics of discussion include humiliating U. S. military defeat in Afghanistan; 20 years of Global War on Terrorism resulting in deaths and displacement of millions and destruction of infrastructures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

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SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE W/DAN YASEEN (AUGUST 2021 EDITION)

 

SPEAKING TRUTH TO EMPIRE

WITH DAN YASEEN

AUGUST 2021

 

 https://soundcloud.com/speaking-truth-to-empire/210818-speaking-truth-to-empire-john-laforge

“Speaking Truth to Empire” on KFCF 88.1 independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its Quarterly newsletter. They will discuss his recent article, “Rejection of US Hiroshima Myths Long Overdue”, and the effect of those myths on U.S. nuclear policy, the current expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and rejection of the United Nations' Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

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Imperialist Lies and Propaganda, Ad Nauseam (Soapbox Podcast 8/1/2021)

 

September 1, 2021

 

CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR PODCAST

 

 

TOPIC: U.S. LIES AND PROPAGANDA IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE U.S.A. 

GUEST: JANICE KORTKAMP

Janice Kortkamp is a North American peace activist who has traveled to Syria and Lebanon seven times each and she is a witness to the crimes of the U.S. empire in both places.

Cindy and Janice chat about the reality of life in the Middle East, the complicity of both imperialist parties (Dem/GOP) and the propaganda machine that churns out the lies and vomits copious amounts of blood/guts/destruction.

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Afghanistan: Jimmy and Zbig's War (SOAPBOX PODCAST AUGUST 23, 2021)

 

August 23, 2021

 

    CLICK IMAGE TO LISTEN TO PODCAST

 

TOPIC: The debacle of Afghanistan was no "mistake," it was carefully plotted by Carter and Brezezinski years before 9/11/2001

This show is a deep dive into the mess the U.S. has made in the
"Graveyard of Empires."

GUESTS: Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould.

 

 

New Book ("The Valediction") Exposes US Perfidy in Afghanistan

9/1/2021 - “The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond” by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould is their novelized memoir of how the United States lured the Soviet Union into Afghanistan in 1979, demonized it as a threat to world peace, and paid Muslim extremists to destabilize Afghanistan in order to squash détente, scuttle the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and justify a massive arms build-up that neglects infrastructure investment in America to this day.

 

“Afghanistan changed everything,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a recent interview. “It killed the peace movement that ended the Vietnam War and was trying to end the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Overnight, the left fell silent and let pro-war voices dictate foreign policy. Ms. Gould said, “President Carter called the so-called invasion the greatest threat to peace since World War II. Yet America had been secretly destabilizing the Muslim countries of the Soviet Union for years by that time.”

 

According to Fitzgerald and Gould, President Reagan’s crusade against the Evil Empire set the stage for endless war by privatizing covert action and spawning an independent financial network that put the planet up for grabs to the highest bidder – and Afghanistan’s mythic dimension as the graveyard of empires is undoing not only the American empire but also the concept of empire itself.

 

 

Book Release Date: September 22, 2021                

For more information visit valediction.net 

To Purchase visit Trine Day or Amazon

 

 

 

Liz and Paul
 

About the guests–

 

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's television show, Watchworks. Called, The Arms Race and the Economy, A Delicate Balance, they found themselves in the midst of a swirling controversy that was to boil over a few months later with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Their acquisition of the first visas to enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew in 1981 brought them into the middle of the most heated Cold War controversy since Vietnam. But the pictures and the people inside Soviet occupied Afghanistan told a very different story from the one being broadcast to Americans.

 

Following their exclusive news story for the CBS Evening News, they produced a documentary (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) for PBS and in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline with Harvard Negotiation Project director, Roger Fisher. They were told that the Soviets wanted to go home and negotiate their way out. Peace in Afghanistan was more than a possibility, it was a desired option. But the story that President Carter called, "the greatest threat to peace since the second World War" had already been written by America's policy makers and America's pundits were not about to change the script. 

 

As the first American journalists to get deeply inside the story they not only got a view of an unseen Afghan life, but a revelatory look at how the U.S. defined itself against the rest of the world  under the veil of superpower confrontation Once the Soviets had crossed the border into Afghanistan, the fate of both nations was sealed. But as Paul and Liz pursued the reasons behind the wall of propaganda that shielded the truth, they found themselves drawn into a story that was growing into mythic dimensions. Big things were brewing in Afghanistan. Old empires were being undone and new ones, hatched. America had launched a Crusade and the ten year war against the Soviet Union was only the first chapter.  

 

It was at the time of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 when Paul and Liz were working on the film version of their experience under contract to Oliver Stone, that they began to piece together the mythic implications of the story. During the research for the screenplay many of the documents preceding the Afghan crisis were declassified. Over the next decade they trailed a labyrinth of clues only to find a profound likeness in Washington's official policy towards Afghanistan - in the ancient Zoroastrian war of the light against the dark - whose origins began in the region now known as Afghanistan. It is a likeness that has grown visible as America's entanglement in Afghanistan threatens to backfire once again.

 

Afghanistan's civil war followed America's Cold War while Washington walked away. A new strain of religious holy warrior called the Taliban arose but at the time few in America cared to look. As the horrors of the Taliban regime began to grab headlines in 1998 Paul and Liz started collaborating with Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali. Along with Wali, they contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future book project published by Palgrave Macmillan (2002). In 2002 they filmed Wali's first return to Kabul since her exile in 1978. The film they produced about Wali's journey home, The Woman in Exile Returns, gives audiences the chance to discover the message of one of Afghanistan's most articulate voices and her hopes for her people.

 

In the years since, much has happened to bring Paul and Liz's story into sharp focus. Their efforts at combining personal diplomacy with activist journalism are a model for restoring a necessary dialogue to American democracy. Their book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), lays bare why it was inevitable that the Soviet Union and the U.S. should end up in Afghanistan and what that means to the future of the American empire. Their book, Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011), lays out the paralyzing contradictions of America’s AfPak strategy. It clarifies the complex web of interests and individuals surrounding the war and focuses on the little understood importance of the line of demarcation between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand line. Their novel The Voice , first published in 2000, is the esoteric side of their Afghan experience.

 

Gould and Fitzgerald’s articles and blogs have been published in numerous online and print journals and newspapers such as The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, Huffington Post, The New York Times, GlobalPost World News, Middle East Institute’s Viewpoints, CounterPunch, Sputnik News and OpedNews. They have been interviewed by major media outlets such as MSNBC, RealNews TV, Democracy Now and numerous commercial and PBS radio stations from Boston to LA They have also made presentations that have aired across the country on C-Span Book TV and the Cambridge Forum (WGBH Forum Network). Their presentation-Afghanistan and Mystical Imperialism: An expose of the esoteric underpinnings of American foreign policy- is viewable here  A review of the presentation titled Afghanistan bedeviled by 'Mystical Imperialism' is available here. For more information visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.  

  

Liz and Paul's  novelized memoir, The Valediction-Three Nights of Desmond, will be published this September. A major focus is on the most Russo phobic operative of all time, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski! It’s been amazing looking back and remembering how we figured out that Brzezinski was using the February 14, 1979 assassination  of the U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan to undo détente and draw the Soviet’s into their own Vietnam quagmire. For Brzezinski Afghanistan was an American crusade to win the war against the “Evil Empire.” This telling reveals Brzezinski’s active role in planting the poison seeds of Russo Phobia deep inside the White House that are still flowering today. As America attempts to extricate itself from its own Afghan quagmire, it is clear why Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of Empires. Their memoir delivers a revelatory look at how that happened through encounters we had with many fascinating people along the way. 

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