DemocracyNow! pretty good liberal / left / progressive news.

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On the theme that it's good to have another source of information. Now, I do bat from the left side of the plate politically. And if you do, too, you might like it. Even if you don't, might still like it.

It's on Pacifica radio and other radio shows, usually for one hour daily Mon. - Fri.

and online
https://www.democracynow.org/

There are some things I don't agree with it. Sure, of course. But all in all, pretty good and I'm glad it's there.

Amy Goodman is pretty smart. She gathers a lot of information and presents it well.

I used to listen to her on WBAI, but my tolerance for them was severely damaged by two things. 1) they laughed when the Challenger blew up. 2) Their main commie spokesman Samori Marksman presented the most contorted nonsense I had ever heard anywhere to try and justify the soviet distribution of booby trapped children's toys in Afghanistan.

I can understand dedication to a cause, but maybe, just maybe (by which I mean definitely) you should question the validity of your party line if it requires you to defend explosive charges in teddy bears and dolls.

http://www.csmonitor.com/1987/0916/eafgh.html

Despite this, a good source of a genuinely leftist perspective and a corrective to the right wing's portrayals of centrists as rabid lefties. And you get to hear what real Marxists sound like. Scary.

WBAI also had some good shows: Weaponry with Tom Wisker. Perhaps the only regularly broadcast military technology show anywhere, gone now. Also Jim Freund's Hour of the Wolf, a science fiction show and 2600, a phone phreaking and general hacking show.

"booby trapped children's toys in Afghanistan" I assume you refer to the "PFM-1" "Butterfly Mine". A deplorable weapon (as are all AP mines) that resulted in the deaths of many children. Other claims of exploding toys (much like the "exploding pens" of WWII and stangely, Iraq 2013) have proven to be without substance.

You will hear news on Democracy Now that you won't hear anywhere else. They are also very even-handed and well sourced, not just among news sources who have a clear political philosophy, but with respect to the media in general.

No, the reports in multiple news sources were very clear, these were toys. Perhaps the brightly colored PFM-1 bomblets were the only reality behind all that and the rest was psyops by CIA plants. I used to have some confidence that the New York Times was trying to fact check, until the Judith Miller business.



Honestly, it sounds like bull. Exploding combs and pens? What kind of micro triggers were the soviets building in the 1980s?

Be that as it may, Samori Marksman was unlistenable when he went into full Bolshevik mode. Soviet invasions are great! African dictators are great! Gulags are the best! It was nauseating garbage.

But Amy is very good.

Amy, this morning: "After trying everything else, Democrats have decided to start listening to their voters."

I'll add: ...for the moment

I'd like references for that. And I realize that's somewhat unfair to ask for that because we all hear things and remember things, and we don't have references at our fingertips. I certainly don't.

I've listened to the show maybe three times a month ever since 1996, so twenty plus years, and I've never heard anything like that.

I also participated with the anti-war movement during the build-up and launch of the first Gulf War way back in 1990-91. And I can tell you that it was difficult, hard, lonely work. And believe me, I'm quite aware that it was a popular war. I saw that my fellow activists were significantly less likely than the average person to use some complicated gyration in order to justify violence.

The problem I had was that my fellow activists seemed to have their radar for weirdness turned up higher than average. So, as someone who's Spectrum, who came to activism through philosophy, and who's generally just weird , people often shied away from me except when they were trying to sell something like the SWP newspaper or meeting! [Socialist Workers' Party, basically a Trotskyite group, and yes, they did believe in and romanticize the Cuban revolution]

I'd also had this experience with boardgamers. You'd think they'd be accepting of weirdness, but no, not really. My fellow gamers tend to shy away, and yes, it hurts. It's their loss, but it's also my loss.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 03 Mar 2017, 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here's what Amy wrote about Samori Marksman on his death. It doesn't mention any affiliation with the show.
https://www.democracynow.org/1999/4/1/t ... sman_a_man

Thank you for posting this link. It looks like a straightforward obituary.

And maybe Samori can be criticized for some of his friendships with world leader. But then again, Presidents, members of Congress, and military officers left, right, and center have all kinds of relationships with world leaders. Thinking optimistically to the overall good.

I also watch Amy Goodman from time to time. That quote is hilarious yet sad. The implication being that "Ok, since it's a last resort we will try listening to the voters". What a state this world is in.

Those are memories of listening to the radio from the late 1980s. I wouldn't know how to begin to find references! My first awareness of the explosion of the Challenger on STS 51L was when the people doing the station ID on BAI mentioned it. They mocked the space program and laughed. This was nothing to do with Amy Goodman or Democracy Now, just an example of the dark side of WBAI.

My comments about Samori were also not about Democracy Now but rather WBAI. I first heard Amy Goodman on BAI, so those memories naturally surfaced.

Thanks for the clarification. I felt pretty shocked, reading that.