CitizensTruth

As 2006 ends I want to recommend an opportunity to look back at the past in a way that will entertain and make you think. I was not interested in history in the least, not one bit, until this year when at age 55 I started reading and listening to work by Michael Parenti.

A couple of my favorites are:

• “The Struggle for History - Dissident Truth and Official Deception
• “Real History” - in four half-hour segments

You can hear these for free at Maria Gilardin’s TUC Radio or buy recordings. Doing the latter helps support the TUC Radio project.

Disclaimer: I don’t think we should take anyone as an absolute authority on something, no matter how articulate, charismatic, etc. Nothing absolves us, as citizens, from the responsibility to continue asking questions, doubting authority, and relentlessly seeking out the truth.

Here is the quote from Faulkner with which Parenti ends the first of the above two sets of talks (in fact there is a complete transcript here but I recommend the audio for impact):

“The past is never dead and buried. In fact, it is never even past.” If we’re lied to with impunity, we are robbed of the first condition of a democratic citizenry: how the present can help us understand the past and the past understand the present. How we can arm ourselves against the lies and calumny that are bombarding us all the time. History need not bore us, need not imprison us, but it can liberate our understanding so that we might become not its victims but its active agents.

On Monday, Debra Sweet, the National Coordinator of World Can’t Wait / Drive out the Bush Regime, was a guest on the Meria Heller Show. With Meria’s permission, the audio from that segment of the show is posted here.

Debra talks about the coming demonstrations on October 5 that are to take place in over 150 cities across the country and talks about the latest WCW full-page ad in the New York Times [scheduled to appear Wednesday, October 4].

Prof. Steven Jones of Brigham Young University has undertaken a physicist’s approach to investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. His paper on the subject, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? is rational, cool-headed, and revealing. On February 1, 2006, Prof. Jones presented his findings at the Utah State Valley College in Orem.

I have taken the monolithic 63 MB mp3 from radio4all.net, cleaned up some format issues that kept it from playing on my system, and segmented into 10-minute tracks here.
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An eye-opening analysis of current trends - this interview was played on Pacifica Radio’s Against the Grain in early January this year. I learned quite a bit even though I thought I was already aware of the issues.

Is the US becoming, or is it already, a fascist state? In Against the New Authoritarianism, veteran educator Henry Giroux identifies the central features of fascism and examines whether they are in evidence today. Among other things, he emphasizes ongoing attacks on public space and the militarization of domestic culture.

Audio: Against the Grain

The Exception to the Rulers Audiobook is essential listening for anyone concerned with what is going on in the world today. This box set of 10 CD’s is a complete recording of Amy Goodman reading the book she authored with her brother David Goodman. But the audio version has something not in the print editions - numerous audio segments from the daily news broadcast DemocracyNOW. These segments bring the already gripping chapters to life, putting the listener on the scene as the stories unfold.

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Today on DemocracyNOW Seymour Hersh talked about Where the Iraq War is Headed Next.

… for political purposes, a pullout won’t end the war. That’s the critical thing.
It won’t bring victory to us. It will simply change the color, if you will, of the people who die there.

Robert Fisk, one of the few journalists to report unembedded from Iraq, was on Pacifica’s Flashpoints program recently, talking about his new book and discussing the breakdown in the Middle East.