War and Peace

A Bill Moyers Essay

December 11, 2009

"The Merchant of Death is Dead"

BILL MOYERS: Many people are perplexed that Barack Obama flew to Oslo this week to receive the Nobel Peace Prize so soon after escalating the war in Afghanistan. He's now doubled the number of troops that were there when George W. Bush left office. The irony was not lost on the president, and he tried to address it in his acceptance speech...Rest of Transcript

Red Cross assists landmine victims in Afghanistan

An Afghan man and a child with artificial legs are seen at the International Red Cross Orthopedic (ICRC) rehabilitation center on December 10, 2009 in Herat, Afghanistan. The aims of the ICRC rehabilitation center are to educate and rehabilitate landmine victims and others with deformities to help them return their former lives. According to the UN mine information network, 62 people on average are killed or injured by mines each month in Afghanistan. UPI/Hossein Fatemi

There are Thirteen More Photo's at the UPI site link with descriptions on the right hand side for each as you view them.

ICBL International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Landmine Survivors Network

Adopt-A-Minefield Landmine Clearance and Support

Dick Armey and "His" Tax-Supported Healthcare

If you missed this on friday, The Bill Moyers Journal you may want to at least catch his essay for this week. The rest of the show would do well to watch as well, on the Death of Conservatism, the State of Unions and a read of 'Young Workers: a Lost Decade'.

September 18, 2009
A Bill Moyers essay on the protests in Washington, D.C. and whose funding opposition to health care reform.

Bill Moyers Essay Sept 18th

Gingrich became Speaker of the House and Armey the House Majority Leader.

But they did nothing about health care except let its costs soar while their corporate backers reaped huge profits. Since then costs have more than doubled and are escalating now at twice the rate of inflation. There were around 39 million americans without health care coverage then. There are more than 46 million now.

And Dick Armey? He retired from his government job to lead an advocacy group called FreedomWorks, which aims to torpedo healthcare reform once again. Curiously, they refuse to disclose their corporate donors. They say they want to protect against "aggressive attacks on companies who people have claimed are donors but aren't even donors." Got that?

But here's the catch. Something these marchers who came to Washington at Armey's urging could hardly be expected to know. For most of his adult life, their leader has benefited from just the kind of government, tax-supported healthcare he's fighting to keep them from having, too.

When Dick Armey taught economics at the University of North Texas for 13 years his health insurance was administered by the state and supplemented by the taxpayers.

When he was elected to Congress, he was covered by the federal employees' health benefit plan. And when he retired from Congress eighteen years later, he was insured by that plan until he turned 66 and Medicare, another government program, kicked in. All the time he's been making some half a million dollars a year working for FreedomWorks and raking in lobbyist fees amounting to what he recently called "a darned handsome pile of dough."

You can't blame him for keeping his government health plan. It's great. It gave him a lot of options, dozens of private insurers to choose from, and with eight million members in it, the federal government's got the muscle to negotiate some of the best premiums and drug prices in the country. That's not all. Taxpayers subsidize these federal health insurance plans by as much as 75% of the premium cost. Beneficiaries -- including members and retired members of congress like armey -- pay their share of the premiums with pre-tax dollars.

Not bad.

Now get this: Dick Armey thought so much of that federal health plan - the cadillac of coverage --that he tried to keep it as his primary carrier, instead of that other federal program, medicare.

Mr. Armey wanted an option. A government option. How about that?

But he couldn't get out of medicare without losing his Social Security (they're hitched together -- you give up one, you give up both), so he's suing to divorce the two ... And now he says he's happy to buy his health insurance on his own - and why not? He's got that pile of dough. And there's the rub.

Dick Armey is the epitome of those people with power and privilege who are insured against the vicissitudes of life, and want no government assistance for any suffering ... Except their own.

And all those members of congress sitting there during the president's speech last week? Joe Wilson, included. They; too have Cadillac federal coverage subsidized by tax dollars.

That's no lie.

The pure hypocrisy of many, Armey, entertainers like Beck and much of FOX and others, who are rallying the citizen to oppose anything and everything should not even be brought into the public discussion, let alone on the public airways, it's not debate, it's propaganda!

TeaBags in DC and Afghanistan: McClatchy's Nancy Youssef

Yesterday, 9.12.09, in Washington, we had this: Tea Party Protesters March on Washington extending their purely political use of the tragedy of 9/11. I'll guess not one at the podium or with the megaphones, nor any in the crowd, even mentioned this: 5 U.S. troops among 50 killed in Afghan violence Sat Sep 12, nor much was said about all the soldiers who've died, or are physically and mentally injured from the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I'll guess also nothing was mentioned about the monetary, in billions and billions, cost of these still operational theaters of occupation!

A friend at facebook also asked the same I've {many have} wondered these past eight years:

is wondering where all those folks who are now expressing outrage about profligate government spending were during the eight years of the Bush Administration?

During the Bush years, the US national debt went from 5.7 trillion to 10.6 trillion. :(

I answered with this:

They were Yelling and Screaming that those who 'Protest' against their 'dear leaders' policies, policies of death and destruction done In Our Names, were not only UnPatriotic but UnAmerican as well as Enemy Sympathizers and every other label of negativity they could muster up!!! They haven't changed the rhetoric, words nor yelling, they've have now embraced {their own definitions} being UnPatriotic, UnAmerican and become the Enemies of the Nation and our Constitution!!
Starting even before their 'dear leaders, cheney/bush' left town!!

Afghanistan with McClatchy DC Pentagon correspondent Nancy Youssef.

September 11, 2009

The JOURNAL takes a hard look at the state of affairs in Afghanistan with McClatchy DC Pentagon correspondent Nancy Youssef.

BILL MOYERS: But first, we turn to another big decision bearing down on the President, what to do in Afghanistan. A conflict Americans can no longer put out of mind or out of sight.

Once again, we have been reminded that war is not a video game. The photo of an American marine dying in Afghanistan created a controversy that threw the press into conflict with the Pentagon and the young marine's family - and it threw those of us in the press into conflict with ourselves.

Snip

As THE ECONOMIST nagazine noted last month, resentment against the Karzai government, NATO forces and westerners in general is growing. "...it seems clear," the magazine reported, "that the international effort to bring stability to Afghanistan... is failing."

And yet, consider this open letter to President Obama from some of the very same armchair warriors whose claim of expertise supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. They were wrong then - wrong time and again - but their tragic errors haven't stopped them from demanding that President Obama now escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Once again, their enthusiasm for war is as great as their distance from the actual battlefield.

Their letter lands as European leaders are calling for an international conference to assess the deteriorating situation and the commander of our forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, delivers a review to the White House. It's a report many believe sets the stage for an even greater expansion of the war.

But recently, the "McClatchy" news service reported that some top pentagon officials fear that without a clear definition of our mission there, further escalation will be in vain.

As a reality check, with me now is one of the reporters on that story, recently returned from Afghanistan.

Nancy Youssef is the Chief Pentagon Correspondent for "McClatchy" news. She covered the war in Iraq for four years, including two as Baghdad Bureau Chief.

Nancy Youssef, welcome to the JOURNAL.............Rest of Transcript Here

I posted this Quagmires: 8yrs. After 9/11 a few days ago with more reports about Afghanistan and Iraq, a discussion aired on the PBS News Hour and another report/discussion from MSNBC.

Essay on Health Care Reform

September 4, 2009
A Bill Moyers essay on health care reform.



Articles from the Essay
Josh Marshall's article

Henry Giroux's article

Bill Moyers Journal

BILL MOYERS: The editors of THE ECONOMIST magazine say America's health care debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American.

Well, that's charitable.

I would say it's more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American.

Those crackpots on the right praying for Obama to die and be sent to hell — they're the warp and woof of home-grown nuttiness. So is the creature from the Second Amendment who showed up at the President's rally armed to the teeth. He's certainly one of us. Red, white, and blue kooks are as American as apple pie and conspiracy theories..............Rest Here

Watch: Money-Driven Medicine

This week, 8.28.09, on Bill Moyers Journal: Money-Driven Medicine

Produced by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) and based on Maggie Mahar's acclaimed book of the same name, MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE reveals how a profit-hungry "medical-industrial complex" has turned health care into a system where millions are squandered on unnecessary tests, unproven and sometimes unwanted procedures, and overpriced prescription drugs.

California Newsreel: Money Driven Medicine has more information and clips, like this trailer:



Watch Nightline's feature (8/11/09) on Money-Driven Medicine


Maggie Mahar's Book: Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much

Synopsis:
'

Why is medical care in the United States so expensive? For decades, Americans have taken it as a matter of faith that we spend more because we have the best health care system in the world. But as costs levitate, that argument becomes more difficult to make. Today, we spend twice as much as Japan on health care — yet few would argue that our health care system is twice as good.

Instead, startling new evidence suggests that one out of every three of our health care dollars is squandered on unnecessary or redundant tests; unproven, sometimes unwanted procedures; and overpriced drugs and devices that, too often, are no better than the less expensive products they have replaced.

How did this happen? In Money-Driven Medicine, Maggie Mahar takes the reader behind the scenes of a $2 trillion industry to witness how billions of dollars are wasted in a Hobbesian marketplace that pits the industry's players against each other. In remarkably candid interviews, doctors, hospital administrators, patients, health care economists, corporate executives, and Wall Street analysts describe a war of ''all against all'' that can turn physicians, hospitals, insurers, drugmakers, and device makers into blood rivals. Rather than collaborating, doctors and hospitals compete. Rather than sharing knowledge, drugmakers and device makers divide value. Rather than thinking about long-term collective goals, the imperatives of an impatient marketplace force health care providers to focus on short-term fiscal imperatives. And so investments in untested bleeding-edge medical technologies crowd out investments in information technology that might, in the long run, not only reduce errors but contain costs.

In theory, free market competition should tame health care inflation. In fact, Mahar demonstrates, when it comes to medicine, the traditional laws of supply and demand do not apply. Normally, when supply expands, prices fall. But in the health care in............

Rage on the Airwaves

Bill Moyers Journal, July 24 2009

BILL MOYERS: There was another voice heard on health care this week -- the voice of anti-abortion crusader Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue. At a news conference in Washington, Terry warned that violence could come if, in the end, health care reform includes coverage for abortion services...........Rest of Transcript Here

July 24, 2009

Last year the JOURNAL traveled to Knoxville, where a shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church had left the pastor asking what role hateful speech from popular right-wing media personalities may have played in the tragedy. "A lot of people are hurling insults from the safety of television studios, the safety of radio studio, the safety of cyberspace," said Rev. Chris Buice, "So that's a void in our community — the chance to be in the same room and to have these exchanges and remember the humanity of the person on the other side."

It's been a landmark year for the shock jock industry. Rush Limbaugh has been lauded as the "real" leader of the Republican Party. Great Britain banned radio host Michael Savage from entering the country for his "extremist views." And, the killings of three police officers in Pittsburgh and of Dr. Tiller in Kansas have raised new questions about the role played by virulent speech may have played in their.............Rest Here

We have a growing problem and we've been contributing to it's growth for a long time now. Only a short time ago we lost what once was considered a voice of reason, a calm voice that brought us the news of tragedies and accomplishments over the public airwaves, from it's inception through it's growth. Many who spoke after his death talked of his fame as this Nation would follow his reports as well as those who he worked with, giving us the News from all over and trying to explain in short time spans allotted. Whole families would watch, listen and learn. They also spoke how that time is gone and no one will replace that voice in a once respected profession.

That profession, and business, has gone beyond haywire, and has been growing in it's lack of professionalism and giving people The Real News. We now have our public airwaves, radio and especially television, filled not with news but opinionated yelling matches or just singular personal opinion by so called experts on singular, or multiple, what once was news issues. They yell at each, interrupt one another or if they don't like what they hear just cut the mikes, this isn't news and they aren't experts, they're instigators of propaganda, propaganda to control the masses, and they still call this debating!

All this time that this has been growing, and we've been watching or listening, so have many of our little children, children are impressionable, that's how they learn, from that and those around them. They are picking up on this way of adults communicating with one another, not learning debate, but learning how to become as impolite, arrogant, boisterous, uncaring and a whole host of negatives that adults now do to each other. So if that's how adults act it must be right, even voicing points of destruction towards those that don't believe or think as you do, bringing on Terror towards others, that becomes the norm.

They're getting mixed messages as parents still try to teach right from wrong, if religious the same goes as they're supposedly learning the teachings of tolerance and love for one another, but those lessons come in short spurts, the airwave lessons are now taught on a huge number of outlets that are on for hours each day, and this has been going on now for years. And they watch as those they look up to or don't even know, responsible adults supposedly, not only speak but act out against one another and that same tolerance and love!

How do you control whole societies, countries, this planet, you feed the propaganda over and over and over............, many adults start grasping it readily, as they don't want to think for themselves anyway, these are the adults that don't take their responsibility to heart, too much work on their part.

But if you keep it going for years you start seeing the results as generations of young grow into readily accepting this is how it really is, you change the reality and fog the teachings to be used as you say they should, they then grow into the adults you can readily control to specific area's or issues you want followed.

We've been producing our own destruction, and the destruction of others, for many years now and it's gotten worse not better. Those young that first started watching and hearing this new form of news are now adults and having those next generations being brought up in a World of new teach and speak.

This is Our Legacy we're leaving to those behind us!!

Moyers on Gun Violence 6.12.09 and.........

BILL MOYERS: Finally, you know by now that in our nation's capital on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite is alleged to have walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. 88 years old!

You will know, too, of the recent killing in church of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. It was evidence that violence works. His family has now announced that his Kansas clinic will not be reopened...........Rest Found Here

And a most recent arrest in a brutal double murder by members of a fringe radical anti-immigration group

Sheriff: Arizona home invaders wanted all dead

The Web site for the Minutemen American Defense lists Forde as the group's leader and Bush as its operations director. Forde is from Everett, Wash., but has recently been living in Arizona.......

Head of a minuteman group arrested for double homicide

Forde is known for being the head of the minutemen group M.A.D., where she is listed as the National Executive Director.

The photo is of Shawna Forde during an operation along the border, courtesy the website of Andrew Ong.

"If you look at her history closely, and you know what we know, she is at best a pyschopath," says Sheriff Dupnik referring to Forde during a press conference Friday.

Forde's organization is not directly connected to the more commonly known minutemen organization, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps or the Minutemen project run by Chris Simcox and James Gilchrist.......

And those with her as well as others who had contact with her, especially this organization she was an apparent high ranking officer of, had to know her as the police describe her!

And these groups form and act in the Name, and under the flag of, this Country, the United States of America!

The United States for which many of us have served to protect and defend the constitution of, with many now serving and dying in two long running occupations!

First Strikes: Bombing Civilians

The discussion on the Bill Moyers Journal, last night, shows the problem with War, Wars of Choice, Occupations and especially Guerilla/Insurgent Warfare, of which all conflicts are, and have been, now for many years, and will continue to be!

And why there is Criminal Terrorism and the rise of!

Bill Moyers Journal, January 30, 2009

Bill Moyers sits down with historian Marilyn Young, author of the forthcoming "Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History" and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey, who developed military planes and helped found the military reform movement.

Watch the Discussion

Sprey says:

Does it kill the person it's intended to kill? Not often. And when it does, it usually kills a bunch of other people around. And that, of course, raises the problem that the Predator and the missiles become a recruiting tool for the opposition and — beyond a shadow of a doubt — recruit more opposition than we get rid of by killing the one person at the table that we wanted to kill.

Read the Transcript, some cuts from:

BILL MOYERS: Marilyn, what did you think last weekend when four days into the Obama administration we read those reports of the strikes in Pakistan?

MARILYN YOUNG: My heart sank. It absolutely sank. It had been very high. I had been, like I think the rest of the country, feeling immensely encouraged and inspired by this new administration and by the energy and vigor with which he began. And then comes this piece of old stuff on approach to a complicated question that in comes in the form of a bomb and a bomb in the most dangerous of all places. And, yeah, my heart sank, literally.

BILL MOYERS: Our military, Pierre, says it's sure that it's striking militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And that they're not targeting civilians. Can they be sure? From your experience, can they be sure?

PIERRE SPREY: I'm sure that their purpose is to strike militants. I have no doubt of that whatsoever. But with the weapons they use and with the extremely flawed intelligence they have.

MARILYN YOUNG: Yes.

PIERRE SPREY: I'd be astonished if one in five people they kill or wound is in fact, a militant.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean "flawed intelligence"?

PIERRE SPREY: You can't tell with a camera or an infrared sensor or something whether somebody's a Taliban. In the end, you're relying on either, you know, some form of intercepted communications, which doesn't point at a person. It just, you know, points at a radio or a cell phone or something like that. Or, most likely, you're relying on some Afghani of unknown veracity and unknown motivation and who may, may very well be trying to settle a blood feud rather than give you good information.

Further On:

BILL MOYERS: I don't understand that because George W. Bush defined this as a war on terror. And I think Obama must be using the same invocation, you know?

PIERRE SPREY: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: This is all part of the war on terror. He said it in his inaugural address.

PIERRE SPREY: Yes, he said that. I was appalled. You talk about our hearts sinking.

PIERRE SPREY: 9/11 was not an act of war.

BILL MOYERS: What was it?

PIERRE SPREY: It was a criminal act. It was a simple.

MARILYN YOUNG: Right.

PIERRE SPREY: Criminal act by a bunch of lunatic fanatic violent people who needed to be tracked down and apprehended and tried exactly as you would with any other lunatic violent person, like we do with our own domestic terrorists, like the guy who bombed the Oklahoma federal building.

BILL MOYERS: Federal building. Right.

PIERRE SPREY: You know? Exactly the same thing we did to him is what we should have launched on a huge basis, of course, on a huge international police basis and not called it.

MARILYN YOUNG: And there would have been totally international support.

PIERRE SPREY: It's not a war.

MARILYN YOUNG: Right.

PIERRE SPREY: We, by calling it a war, we have glorified al Qaeda. We have glorified the cause of violent radical Islam. All that tiny minority have become heroes. And we made them heroes. We made their propaganda. We made their case for them.

Bill Moyers on Mideast Violence

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL



No need to add to what Moyers speaks of, just listen closely, and understand!

Beyond Our Differences

December 26, 2008

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL presents the film "BEYOND OUR DIFFERENCES" which explores the common threads that unify the world’s religious traditions. In BEYOND OUR DIFFERENCES, religious leaders, politicians and luminaries in their fields give voice to the positive effects of spirituality and morality, focusing on commonalities spanning all faiths. While the negative — even violent — side of religion is widely reported, director Peter Bisanz documents the hope for positive change and healing universal to so many.

In case you missed it last night!

Bill Moyers Journal - Andrew J. Bacevich

If you missed the PBS Bill Moyers Journal, this past friday night, or if not on your local PBS station, this is an Interview that should be seen, absorbed and discussed!

For Retired Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, Conservative, lays out, very clearly, the wrong direction this country has set it's course on which is leading it towards destruction or a meaningless society as others fill the void of the real World Leadership!

August 15, 2008

Is an imperial presidency destroying what America stands for? Bill Moyers sits down with history and international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich who identifies three major problems facing our democracy: the crises of economy, government and militarism, and calls for a redefinition of the American way of life.

Andrew J. Bacevich: Part I - Video

Andrew J. Bacevich: Profile

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Andrew J. Bacevich: Part II - Video

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

Moyers: 'Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes,

and We May Be Running Out of Luck'

For all of America's shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works." Now all bets are off.

The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.

You can read the rest of the excerpt Here

Body Of War

Last night, 3-21-08, on the PBS Bill Moyers Journal, Bill talked
with Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro on the true cost of war and their documentary, BODY OF WAR

The filmmakers talk about Iraq war veteran Tomas Young who was shot and paralyzed less than a week into his tour of duty. Three years in the making, BODY OF WAR tells the poignant tale of the young man’s journey from joining the service after 9/11 to fight in Afghanistan, to living with devastating wounds after being deployed to Iraq instead.

BODY OF WAR
The official site for the documentary includes behind-the-scenes photos, video and a listing of showings in the U.S.

In case you didn't know about this weeks show, or missed it or part of it, you can view part one here followed by part two here

You can also find a link to the transcript and much more.

Especially this:

Tomas Young worked with musician Eddie Vedder on an album to accompany BODY OF WAR.

Visit the Web site for the album and then head over to the blog to tell us about your favorite protest songs.

When you enter the Album Website you will listen to the Documentary Track Theme Song No More by Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper

After viewing the Journals show, and the Documentary site as well as the Album site, a Re-Visit, or first visit, to War Comes Home - Winter Soldiers - Iraq and Afganistan would be in order! As well as a Visit to The Real News Network Iraq Page to view a number of the Testimonies from 'Winter Soldier 2008' as well as newly added video's about Iraq.

4,000

GI death toll in Iraq nears 4,000
Three U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, toll nears 4,000

The three deaths, which brought the number of U.S. soldiers killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 3,996, came just days after U.S. President George W. Bush said the United States was on track to victory in Iraq.

A psychic Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski


Thomas - Three Questions for Pres. Candidates