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A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, Sputnik Radio, and NHK Japan.

An original radio theatre show each week, with most sounds culled from the previous week, about a fictional, theatrical presidency. Contradictions tell the story, with songs, skits, and clips from political news shows and late-night comedy routines. The definition of "radio theatre" is stretched here, with an updated Dickie Goodman and/or Richard Foreman-meets-mashup style sometimes, and a more straightforward take other weeks. Currently airing on 30 or 40 stations around the world, the network has ordered another 15 episodes, but there are threats of cancellation. Anyone who would like to work on a production, or have their work air in this timeslot, should contact info@wgxc.org.

When there was a tide of hatred demanding death for the wrongfully accused "Central Park Five," Ishmael Reed and not a lot of others fought back, demanding evidence and a fair trial. Now the truth is out, and many years later there have been few apologies. Reed names some of those who need to come clean. Further, with the Broadway show "Hamilton," once again the myth-machine is in high gear. Hamilton is falsely portrayed as an "abolitionist" and a poor boy who made good. Fact is, he married money and dealt in slaves. Reed has a play out that exposes one of the worst of the "founding fathers."

A whole show dedicated to a master of the novelty record for over 5 decades-Ray Stevens!

An eclectic hour of modern Jazz.

Grant Smith elaborates on his May 20th post on www.irpep.org, “”Lesson from FBI’s ‘Niger Uranium Forgeries’ File: There will be no consequences for twisting intelligence to attack Iran,” based on his obtaining, through FOIA, and analyzing the 640 pages of FBI records In which he describes as then FBI director, Robert Mueller, who, as a special counsel, oversaw the Russiagate investigation of Trump associates, stifled efforts to investigate possible Washington (obviously neocon) links to the forgery of documents ostensibly from Niger purporting to have offered to sell and ship 500 tons of yellow cake uranium that could only have been used in the production of nuclear weapons. The documents had not been scheduled for release until 2018. Despite the determination by the International Atomic Energy Agency that, without question, the documents were forgeries, Pres. Bush had gone on the air with his State of the Union Address telling the public that the purchase of the Niger yellow cake was a fact and that it validated the White House Claim that Iraq was engaged in the building of weapons of mass destruction and this demanded a US military response. On March 14, 2003, six days before the invasion, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV, Vice-Chair of the Senate Com. on Foreign Relations, and chair of the Senate Select Com. on Intelligence, sent a letter to Mueller, NEVER BEFORE RELEASED (which can be viewed at www.irmep.org), noting that the IAEA had determined that the Niger documents were forgeries, calling on the FBI director to investigate, “at a minimum to help allay concerns that the US Intelligence Community, or other elements of the US government, were involved in the creation of these documents in order to build support for the Administration’s policies.” The released documents reveal that the Washington Field Office of the FBI did not receive the senator’s letter until Sept. 13 of 2004, 551 days later, as Mueller had elected to ignore Rockefeller’s request and focus attention on Italy where the magazine, Panorama, had received the forged documents, quite likely with the assistance of veteran neocon Michael Ledeen who has publicly advocated changing US traditional policy in the Middle East into one of “chaos.” Whatever role the White House neocons, Wolfowitz, Feith or Libby may have played in this was never examined. (Elisabetta Burba, a Panorama reporter, went to the US embassy in Rome to authenticate the documents, but Panorama never reproduced them as authentic in an article as was apparently desired by Rocco Martino, the go-between who wanted money for them. Panorama later debunked them as forgeries and wrote about them as a "hoax") Smith also compared the lack of media coverage of the neocon role in the Iraq war with the absence of any mention in today’s media of the role the major Jewish organizations such as AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, the American Jewish Committee, and the ADL, have played in pushing the crisis in Iran to its current point. In the latter part of the interview, Smith speaks about the first US free trade agreement between Israel and the US in 1985 when an agent of the Israeli government stole a file containing critical documents of the major US industries and organizations that had opposed the agreement. Smith explains how the agreement has been an economic disaster for the US but that after Trump looked at the results and seemed ready to do something about it, he apparently changed his mind.

On today’s program I begin with contrasting the response to Iran’s shooting down the US drone with that following the shooting down by the USS Vincennes of Iran Flight 655, a passenger plane in 1988, killing all of its 290 passengers for which the US paid reparations but never apologized, but awarded its captain with the Legion of Merit. In between, I refer to today’s guest, Grant Smith, who will be interviewed about liberal Democrat hero stifling investigation of neocon involvement in Niger yellowcake uranium fraud used to justify Iraq war. I then argue that the US has been waging war on the people of Iran since the CIA engineered coup in 1953 when Mohammad Mosadeggh nationalized its oil, setting in motion a financial embargo and regime change plan similar to Trump’s today, culminating in Reagan arranging to keep US embassy hostages in Tehran until after he is sworn into office. After mentioning the US media blackout on reports of Israel and Israel Lobby’s involvement in regime change agenda, I cite interview of Joe Lieberman on Israeli Army Radio in which he criticizes Trump for not bombing Iran while advocating other targets. I conclude with report on Joe Biden having been the champion of the banks and credit card companies when he was a senator from Delaware that has more chartered corporations than people and point out that he clearly appears to be the DNC choice for president.

In this month’s June 2019 podcast we look at the new Corporate Tax Haven Index released by the Tax Justice Network. What does it tell us about the global economy and the international tax system? And how can we fix it? We also look at how India is pushing the G20 into action on global tax rules – if they don’t act it will implement its own rules.

Finishing up the chapter Culture of Hatred

In 2017, 8 members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club blocked the 101 Freeway twice with a 50ft banner which read Trump/Pence Regime Must Go. 5 are on trial now at the Metro Court. We'll hear voices from a rally demanding Free the Freeway 9! We'll also hear part of an interview with Satsuki Ina, who was born in a maximum security concentration camp for Japanese Americans during WWII. She recently spoke at a protest of a child detention center at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

An interview with John Hawke, an Indigenous man from the Beausoleil First Nation and long time activist, who on June 21st, 2019 - a day the Canadian state has proclaimed to be National Indigenous Peoples day - set up a blockade outside the entrance to Awenda provincial park north of Midland in Ontario.

Zafar Bangash describes the circumstances surrounding the shooting down of a U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk drone that was violating international law.

Richard Grossman said: “.. corporations don’t have rights. Rights are for people. Corporations only have privileges, and only those that we the people bestow on them.” In a nutshell that was the essence of his research and teaching. Grossman said that we need to remember that the American revolution was fought less against the King but against the crown corporations, the Hudsons Bay and East India Corporations. In his work with POCLAD, the Project on Corporations, Law and Democracy and CELDF, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund he drove home the point that corporations are chartered by sovereign people. He said that based on that sovereignty people have the right to take that charter away and revoke corporate person-hood. His lasting legacy are the Democracy Schools that continue to be taught across the country, and a pamphlet: Taking Care of Business, that describes the process of de-chartering corporations. http://www.ratical.org/corporations/TCoB.html Two important projects that Richard Grossman initiated in the last months of his life do not receive enough notice. He presented, at the August 2011 Green Fest in New York City, the draft of a law to not just regulate or limit the practice of Fracking but to formally criminalize the procedure in an amendment to the penal code. And he formalized as draft, just 4 weeks before he died in 2011, an Act To Criminalize Chartered, Incorporated Business Entities as a class. If he were alive today to witness the ever magnified acts of corporations in drug overdose deaths, food, soil and water poisoning, mining, preventing action on climate change and control of all phases of the democratic process he would have finalized that draft. As the folk singer Utah Phillip said: “The earth is not dying, she is being killed. And those who are killing her have addresses and names.” Richard Grossman was recorded by Maria Gilardin in Washington DC on May 11 at the 1996 Teach-In organized by the International Forum on Globalization.

Richard Grossman said: “.. corporations don’t have rights. Rights are for people. Corporations only have privileges, and only those that we the people bestow on them.” In a nutshell that was the essence of his research and teaching. Grossman said that we need to remember that the American revolution was fought less against the King but against the crown corporations, the Hudsons Bay and East India Corporations. In his work with POCLAD, the Project on Corporations, Law and Democracy and CELDF, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund he drove home the point that corporations are chartered by sovereign people. He said that based on that sovereignty people have the right to take that charter away and revoke corporate person-hood. His lasting legacy are the Democracy Schools that continue to be taught across the country, and a pamphlet: Taking Care of Business, that describes the process of de-chartering corporations. http://www.ratical.org/corporations/TCoB.html Two important projects that Richard Grossman initiated in the last months of his life do not receive enough notice. He presented, at the August 2011 Green Fest in New York City, the draft of a law to not just regulate or limit the practice of Fracking but to formally criminalize the procedure in an amendment to the penal code. And he formalized as draft, just 4 weeks before he died in 2011, an Act To Criminalize Chartered, Incorporated Business Entities as a class. If he were alive today to witness the ever magnified acts of corporations in drug overdose deaths, food, soil and water poisoning, mining, preventing action on climate change and control of all phases of the democratic process he would have finalized that draft. As the folk singer Utah Phillip said: “The earth is not dying, she is being killed. And those who are killing her have addresses and names.” Richard Grossman was recorded by Maria Gilardin in Washington DC on May 11 at the 1996 Teach-In organized by the International Forum on Globalization.

Until the mid-1990s, the Redwood Industry dominated much of North Coast economy. In the mid-1990s, due to a number of circumstances particularly involving Pacific Lumber Company and Charles Hurwitz, industry advocates collided with environmentalists in a final hurrah. Few figures among the environmentalists carry as much name-recognition and power as did Judi Bari. In this program, recorded in March of 1995 at the height of the conflict, Judi Bari and I discussed the position of Earth First! Judi Bari recommends “J. Edgar Hoover,” by Kurt Gentry. Originally Broadcast: March 27, 1995

African, Latin & Caribbean music

African, Latin & Caribbean music