Stephen Zunes on Iran and Israeli Lies plus: Gwen Hallsmith on Public Banking

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Tue, 03/03/2015 - 10:00am to 10:15am
Monday and Tuesday's shows: Zunes on Iran and Gwen Hallsmith on Public Banking

So far this week Air Cascadia has made its way through the thickets and the brambles, torn in all directions and scared before the blood has dried.
Here are a few quotes:
1, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in the US to argue against a possible nuclear deal with Iran.   Netanyahu says the deal would be inadequate to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb   He is due to give a speech in Congress on Tuesday which was not agreed in advance with the Obama administration, angering the White House.   The speech comes two weeks before Israeli elections, with his Likud party under pressure in domestic polls. The US and other powers - the so-called P5+1 - are negotiating with Iran on its nuclear programme. They want a framework agreement by the end of the month which addresses concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons technology, something Tehran denies.
2, A Union Pacific freight train derailed Monday morning, sending five railcars off the tracks near Oakridge.Of the five cars, only one remained upright during the incident at 4:10 a.m. in an isolated area of the Cascade Range, according to Union Pacific spokesman Francisco Castillo. Only two of the derailed cars were loaded, he said.   No one was hurt and no hazardous materials were involved.  .Seven other freight trains were delayed as a result of the accident. .The accident damaged 86 feet of rail, 10 to 20 railroad ties, a signal and a train detector, as well as clips and tie plates, said Castillo, who did not immediately have a cost estimate for the repairs.
Across the state, another train derailed Monday near Meacham in Umatilla County.
 
 
3, The City of Cleveland claims that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death by police shooting.  If it’s too hard to believe, you can read the article yourself.
This is not a tragedy. This is not tragedy that needs healing and closure. It is racialized murder coming from political leadership in suits and uniforms with straight faces. And oh let us demand of each other that we refuse to slide into some kind of purgatory of bloggy snarkiness over this. There is no witty comment that survives this. We can't drink, have sex, make money - to head-fake our way out of this.
 
4, While the U.S. government has continued a policy with Israel of neither confirming nor denying the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal since the Nixon administration, a researcher has just obtained release of U.S. government documents "detailing the U.S. government's extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb," reports Courthouse News. Courthouse News continues: "The government fought to delay release of the 386-page report in hearings before Judge Tanya Chutkan in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who expressed skepticism with the government's reasons for refusing to provide a single unclassified document.
 
5, James  Risen made it clear that he was quite prepared to go to jail before he would reveal his sources for the story. Given the importance of the information he reported to the American public, he should be considered a hero — someone who is ready to go to prison to be able to provide information that enables them to know what their government is doing in their name, with their taxpayer money.Needless to say, Mr. Risen’s position in this case also made him a hero to American journalists and their colleagues around the world. He was a champion of freedom of the press, who also made it possible for American journalists to continue to offer their sources a credible promise of confidentiality when they provided a journalist information the public ought to have.
 
 
6, This item takes us back a few weeks, but not enough to make a difference in the zeitgeist…More than five years after the single-payer system was scrapped from ObamaCare policy debates, just over 50 percent of people say they still support the idea, including one-quarter of Republicans, according to a new poll.The single-payer option – also known as Medicare for all – would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system, once backed by President Obama, became one of the biggest casualties of the divisive healthcare debates of 2009.The idea remains extremely popular among Democrats, with nearly 80 percent in support, according to the poll, which was shared first with The Hill by the Progressive Change Institute.
 
7, The Vermont Workers’ Center and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative say single payer health care could still be on the table.Building off the financing plan that Gov. Peter Shumlin used in deciding not to proceed with single payer, the study, published in February, says the state can use progressive tax structures to provide a universal program by 2017.The plan would give medical, dental and vision coverage for all Vermont residents, but would exclude those who work in Vermont but commute from other states.
 
The City of Cleveland claims that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death by police shooting.  If it’s too hard to believe, you can read the article yourself.
I urge activists who live in their isolated outposts called "issues" - including those of us who reside within issues that we think include all the others, the big ones like Peace activism and Environmental activism, to understand that state-sanctioned violent insanity of the kind we see with Tamir Rice is a death gene that is in each of our bodies now.
This is not a tragedy. This is not tragedy that needs healing and closure. It is racialized murder coming from political leadership in suits and uniforms with straight faces. And oh let us demand of each other that we refuse to slide into some kind of purgatory of bloggy snarkiness over this. There is no witty comment that survives this. We can't drink, have sex, make money - to head-fake our way out of this.
We must reclaim our last goodness for this, as ripped and shredded as it might be. We can't possibly be free of this as long as it exists, and it is a flourishing killer, expanding in our bizarro reversed-out morality. This militarized-and-marketed racism is designed to seamlessly merge with all the old verities like "freedom" and "security" and "prosperity." Certainly no American can say that this is not central to their work if they are dedicated to health, to democracy, to growing loving communities.
Racism kills people, yes. Racism kills a 12 year old with a toy gun in a playground and slams his sorrowing big sister to the ground and handcuffs her but racism just as surely kills a smartly dressed hipster a thousand miles away living on save-the-world foundation grants. Racism kills all the good causes and so it has become the only progressive cause at this time in our history. Racism is the only issue until we are killed by it or we are free of it and we are all free.

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