This month Consortium News launched Consortium News Radio. Today we begin a second radio show in collaboration with Pacifica Radio’s Flashpoints, a biweekly interview program with Consortium News writers.
In collaboration with Dennis Bernstein, host of Pacifica Radio’s syndicated show Flashpoints, Consortium News is today launching its second radio program, Consortium News on Flashpoints. Recorded and produced in the Berkeley, California studios of KPFA radio, Bernstein will interview three Consortium News writers about their recent articles published on this site. Each program will open with Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria discussing with Bernstein his picks of the three CN articles to be featured. The show will air twice a month on every other Friday. (We are about to launch a podcast of all our radio programming).
On the first show, Bernstein interviews Sam Husseini on his piece The Limits of Elizabeth Warren; Patrick Lawrence about his article, ‘Too Big to Fail’: Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack; and Joe Lauria, on his retrospective of Kofi Annan, who died last Saturday.
Now the first episode of Consortium News on Flashpoints.
Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at dennisjbernstein@gmail.com .
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
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KPFA pulled Guns & Butter and wiped it from their archives (not sure whether or not comments here take basic html tags):
http://gunsandbutter.org/blog/2018/08/16/guns-and-butter-banned-and-removed-from-kpfa-radio
This comment was meant for the article on John McCain.
Will re-post there.
SO interesting that this comment with link will NOT POST to McCain article !
Hello guys. Great show, thank you. How to download this please? When I try to pause, it’s two are to keep the place.
Thank you!
Too hard, rather. Sorry.. :)
On 23 August, 2018, National Security Adviser to the President of the United States of America J. R. Bolton, using his auspices as the representative of the President of the United States of America, officially declared war on Russia.
J. R. Bolton had an official meeting with Patrushev, N. P., Secretary of the Russian Security Council, in Geneva. There was no after meeting joint statement, and this in and of itself says the meeting went nowhere. According to Tass News Russia:
http://thesaker.is/what-bolton-needs-to-understand-about-russia-and-history/
With regard to Russiagate, I wonder if it is really to big to fail, and too big for the truth to ever be told or acknowledged. As more and more evidence emerges surrounding Guccifer 2.0 and the origins of the investigation, none of this is acknowledged by the mainstream press. In fact, the story becomes more solidly “fact” and grows bigger everyday with completely unfounded claims about Russia and the 2018 elections, Russia hacking Bill Nelson, Russia hacking the DNC (oops, false alarm). The impact of Russiagate is now making its presence known on the internet through various political censorship schemes often involving the usual suspects at the Atlantic Council. At this point, can you expect the mainstream media, the intelligence community, FBI, and the majority of Congress to admit they lied constantly and concertedly to the American public for two years? I’m a bit of a cynic, but it seems like if the story collapsed entirely the odds of the mainstream press informing the public are on par with a Creationist group extolling the latest discovery in human evolution.
Elizabeth Vos has written a really insightful article about the functional nature of the seemingly unkillable Russiagate narrative:
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/07/opinion-the-eulogy-of-an-immortal-russiagate-scandal/
What worries me is that the necessity to protect Russiagate and the interests behind, has grown so massive that the public discourse may have permanently crossed into an alternate counterfactual branch-universe that puts us on an increasingly dangerous path. Some could say that the Kennedy Assassination might have involved a similar permanent bending of societal consciousness away from the truth.
Ian Brown – that was a good article. The author sees Russiagate as being just a distraction away from the DNC leaking, Hillary screwing Bernie, Hillary’s loss to Trump.
“From top to bottom, beginning to end, this entire scandal has been an intentional fabrication – one that is not based on a shred of truth and therefore is not intended to be believed any more than a street magician’s trick.”
I agree it’s made-up lies, and when one lie is refuted, they just drag out another lie, which then has you chasing it in order to prove it’s false.
I agree it’s a distraction, but who is playing the game? We know the media are involved, along with the DNC, FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice, but I’m not so sure that they’re just trying to distract from Hillary’s loss, the war in Yemen, etc. These are knowns, and wars and coups have gone on before.
No, I see it distracting and covering up for something much bigger. If Trump is not involved in the game and IF he is sincere in the changes he envisions for the country (ending wars, ending NATO, ending globalization, rebuilding infrastructure, securing borders, draining the Swamp), then he is a real threat to these people.
Someone else referred to what’s going on as “mutually assured destruction”. Worried about Trump unwinding globalization and stopping the war machine, they went after him with Russiagate in order to shut him down. A few Republicans, angry at this, have started to unravel the lies of Russiagate, potentially implicating a lot of elites in crimes. Not only that, but the Uranium One deal, the pay-for-play Clinton Foundation and the millions of dollars looted there, and Hillary’s phony exoneration over her emails. The Democrats and some Republicans have countered with Manafort and Cohen.
Each side is holding the goods on the other. Trump, under presidential authority, can at any moment declassify all of the documents the Department of Justice and the FBI are trying to hide, and they’ve probably got some salacious dirt on Trump.
It’s a stand-off. If they move against Trump, Hillary is going to jail.
Just an alternative viewpoint.
Tonight, I turned to WBAI and was thrilled to hear Consortium News and Flashpoints have united on the radio! I’ve been following Dennis Bernstein for decades. Congratulations!
I don’t listen to KPFA unless I have no choice. They cut Guns and Butter and they cut Gary Null
But KPFA still has Flashpoints, produced by Dennis Bernstein!
I wish I could listen to the archives but I haven’t been able to since kpfa broke its website, on blackberry anyway.
In this corporate capture media environment independent news sources must provide multiple ways to access their shows.
Gunsandbutter.org does have their shows independently archived, thank you Bonnie!
Excellent program. Very informative.
Good interviews. The more networking, the better.
Russiagate is absolute insanity. IMO, the investigators need to be investigated. Let’s take a look at the actors. Robert Mueller was Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013 and was succeeded by James Comey (2013 to 2017).
Rod Rosenstein (Deputy Attorney General), by letter to President Trump, recommended the firing of James Comey.
After James Comey was fired by Trump, on May 16, 2017 Rod Rosenstein escorted Robert Mueller to Trump’s office to interview for the FBI position (again). Trump turned Mueller down. The next day – the very next day – Rosenstein appoints Mueller as Special Counsel on the Russia collusion investigation.
James Comey worked for Lockheed Martin from 2005 to 2010. He made $6 million during 2009 alone, and by 2009 had stock options worth $30 million. He was given power of attorney at Lockheed Martin.
As FBI Director, Robert Mueller had to sign off on the government intelligence contracts awarded to Lockheed Martin during this time. Millions of dollars of contracts, some competitive and some non-competitive.
Nothing to see here apparently.
Trump stupidly pays off a hooker with his OWN money, and apparently that’s a campaign finance offence. It was his own money, not campaign money. As long as it’s your own money, it’s not against the law. Yes, he did it to shut her up and increase his chance of getting elected.
Meanwhile, the Hillary Clinton campaign/DNC hired an opposition research firm, but did not state this fact accurately on their campaign finance forms. They ran it through a law firm and called it “legal services”. The opposition research firm then hired Christopher Steele to come up with a unverified, fake Russian dossier on Trump. Yes, she did it to smear Trump in order to increase her chance of getting elected. This was paid for with actual campaign funds!
The FBI then used the phony dossier to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. The FISA Court judges did not know that this dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign/DNC. Had they known this, they likely would not have issued the warrants.
Then there’s all the people who have been fired from the FBI, and the evidence continues to “trickle out” because the FBI and Rod Rosenstein at the Department of Justice either refuse to release subpoenaed documents or redact them so heavily that they’re virtually worthless. What are they trying to hide?
The whole thing stinks. I mean, they don’t even have the DNC servers. They haven’t even interviewed Craig Murray or Julian Assange.
There is a rogue group of people running this government.
Have been a big fan of KPFA for a long time, glad to see the hookup!
Despite Sanders many flaws, he would have been so much better than either Trump or Hillary.
In my mind there is no evidence to show that Sanders would not continue the imperial slaughter. He is part of the established power.
Deep and fundamental changes are taking place, Western Liberal Democracy – a product of the Enlightenment – has become completely corrupted sand is a failure. It is not just that Democracy in this form has failed the entire Enlightenment, and the 500 years of European white empires slaughtering and plundering the world is well and truly over as the US as the leader of the Western empire festers in its putrid corruption.
The world has changed, the great land mass of Eurasia is being integrated, new ideas will emerge from the communications and trade around Eurasia and their natural trading partner Africa. The great power so isolated and protected by the two great oceans now finds itself no longer the center of power and those oceans are now a problem as they are far from the new and developing markets in a multi-polar world.
Sanders, Warren and the rest are a lost cause because the system they are part of is deeply corrupt.
Sanders would not have actively abrogated the so-called Iran deal, for what it’s worth.
I find the Elizabeth Warren / Sanders purity test unhelpful.
For the record, if I was a sitting Senator, you can bet your last dollar that I would not publicly take on the MIC and Israel, as it would certainly be the end of my career and any good that may have come of it.
I would think accepting reality is an important qualification of a leader.
Nice try.
I remember people saying that, “You could dig up Ronald Reagan’s dead body and sit him behind the desk in the oval office, and we’d be better off than we are now.” He was such an innovative “leader”, it would make more sense to keep things the way they were. I guess innovation, improvement, new ideas and the like are things “leaders” should avoid if they wish to continue engaging in “leadership”. That Middle Eastern theocratic Bronze Age theme park, Isneyland, must never be changed — unless it is expanded through Biblical irredentism. It must be preserved as a beacon to delusional zealots passionately committed to an imaginary era gone by: a deep psychosis characterized by “leaders” who claim a mandate from The Almighty. The sanctity of ongoing genocide and the most significant threat to world peace must be protected, even if nuclear Armageddon is required to achieve its holy real-estate ambitions. Speaking of which, there’s a rumor going around that “The Beebs” is vacationing in a not too distant Mediterranean destination. Obviously, he’s got something up his sleeve, because, after all, who would want to go anyplace else if they’re already in The Promised Land? But in all fairness to Ronny Raygun, even he recognized the futility nuclear Russian roulette. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie sanders…not so much. They want to keep it real, but no “rocking the boat”. They’re “leaders”, and they prefer to maintain the status quo.
Great program, by the way.
You might well be right. But I have a completely different view, which is is summarized by the following three statements:
“If you cannot stand the heat then get out of the kitchen “
“The two profession that need absolutely no help in apologizing are lawyers and politicians “.
“Politics is a profession, and not a fight for justice”.
No excuses for Obama (back then), Sanders, Warren, or whoever that politician might be.
Just finished listening to this, a wonderful idea.