Alternative Radio

limited hang outs

In January 2008, about two years after the point of global Peak Oil (for conventional oil sources), and after several years of criticism for their silence on this issue, Alternative Radio finally aired a program about Peak Oil featuring Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute. Shortly afterward (?), Alternative Radio aired an introduction to Peak Oil featuring a January 2006 speech from Richard Heinberg. It's nice that AR ran two episodes about Peak Oil after the peak of conventional oil, but they seem less interested in explaining how Peak Oil is the primary reason behind the attack on Iraq and flatly refuse to look at why 9/11 was allowed to happen.


Three topics that the "left alternative" media avoid:

1. Peak Oil. They do focus on climate change, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and oil companies who make grotesque amounts of money, but few of them mention permaculture strategies, community responses to Peak Oil and the geological limitations for energy.
The "Apollo Alliance" is about as close to Peak Oil as most of these media get -- and they are a front for neoconservatives pushing the idea that technological shifts will largely suffice and we don't need to make substantial changes to the way we live.
www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html
www.oilempire.us/apollo.html
www.permaculture.com/dictionary.html

2. The Missing Trillions. On September 10, 2001 - the day before 9/11 - US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that $2.3 trillion (not billion) was "missing" from DOD. That news was reported by some mainstream media (and is on CBS's website) but the liberal alternative media ignore it, probably because it would raise the suggestion that Rumsfeld knew how to hide this big, bad news (admit it just before the "new Pearl Harbor" redirected everyone's attention).
For two point three trillion, we could probably eliminate world hunger and extreme poverty, or solarize nearly every home in the US or do a lot of other things.
www.whereisthemoney.org - former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (for Bush the First) Catherine Austin Fitts website on the missing money
www.oilempire.us/trillions.html

3. Cheney's 9/11 war games. On September 11, 2001, there were several war games that confused the air defenses. While the information about these exercises run at the same time as the actual events has been disclosed by such conspiracy publications as Associated Press, Toronto Star, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle and other mainstream media publications, none of the liberal alternative media have dared mention this. A few liberal alternative publications have run propaganda ridiculing the suggestion that 9/11 was allowed to happen to create the pretext for war in the oil fields, but without documentation of their beliefs -- or they focus on the hoaxes that distract from looking at real evidence such as the war games.
www.oilempire.us/wargames.html

 

If there's a chance of getting a "Powerdown" strategy, enacting the Global Oil Depletion Protocol eloquently described by Richard Heinberg and others, it would require redirecting the military budget for the planet's survival. The liberal alternative media do good work on the politically correct issues (sexism, racism), and correctly point out that war is terrible and wrong - but rarely do they mention WHY the war is going on.

Alternative Radio refuses to touch these issues. AR says they don't get foundation grants, but many of their peers do -- and they are vulnerable to peer pressure to avoid the deeper issues of Peak Oil, missing trillions and 9/11 war games.

 


On Tuesday, May 11, 2004, Alternative Radio (on KLCC-FM) aired an interview with Nafeez Ahmed, the author of "Behind the War on Terror" (about the US invasion of Iraq) and "The War on Freedom" (about what happened on 9/11).

Nafeez Ahmed was interviewed by AR's host, David Barsamian, the day after Ahmed was in San Francisco for the International Inquiry into 9/11, but the show did not mention this, even though Barsamian knows the Inquiry's main organizer, Carol Brouillet. Ahmed lives in England, but the on-air interview did not mention why he had traveled to the US (to attend the Inquiry).

The interview was very good, but carefully excised any reference to Ahmed's first book "The War on Freedom," which pointed out that 9/11 was "not an intelligence failure" and that the Bush administration was complicit in allowing the attacks to occur. While some authors (such as Noam Chomsky) have published a large number of books and therefore a complete list of their publications is not realistic, Mr. Ahmed is in his mid-20s and at the time of the interview had only two books in print. [Since then, Ahmed published "The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism," one of the very best books about 9/11.]

Self censorship is the worst kind of censorship.

Barsamian was at the Bioneers conference in Marin County, CA in October 2003. I asked him when the "left" media would start to cover the 9/11 scandal, but he declined to reply. He was then asked why he passed out Deception Dollars on his travels, if he disagreed with their message that 9/11 was an inside job. He replied that he thought they were "funny." It's strange to see a political activist pass out materials that they disagree with. [note: since that date, the Deception Dollar campaign shifted to a position mostly promoting the 9/11 hoax highlighting websites and removed most of the best websites about the 9/11 scandal, including From the Wilderness, OilEmpire.us and others that point out that some claims for complicity are false]

In the spring of 2002, Barsamian spoke in Eugene, Oregon on a previous tour. He discussed how the Bush regime gave $43 million to the Taliban in May 2001 (supposedly as a reward for destroying many billions of dollars worth of poppy plants), but when someone in the audience asked about Bush's 9/11 complicity he went ballistic. It was very revealing, and very sad.

AR aired a particularly bizarre interview with professional coincidence theorist Chip Berlet around the time of the election. Berlet, predictably, spent a lot of time focusing on the alleged psychological defects of people who believe in conspiracy theories (whether true or not) and no time on hard evidence such as the Complete 9/11 Timeline.

(Noam Chomsky, who is aired on "AR" more than most other commentators, also claims that there's no evidence that Bush Knew in advance. Chomsky even pretends that the "Warren Commission" is truthful, claiming that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone gunman" in Dallas -- perhaps Professor Chomsky could inquire with the Physics Department at MIT, where he teaches, to have them explain why this is not possible. see www.oilempire.us/chomsky.html)

Someday, someone will reveal exactly why the left / alternative media has censored discussion of the American Reichstag Fire beyond mere fear and foundation funding. (AR claims to be completely funded by its broadcasts and sales of taped programs - no foundation grants for them.)