Stephen A. Schwarzman Is Specifically Cited By New York Magazine’s Frank Rich As He Asks: What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies?- And Then Rich Compares Schwarzman To The American Industrialists Who Collaborated With Hitler

In New York Magazine NYPL trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman is rounded up as part of a rogues gallery of "toadies" compared to the wealthy American's who supported Hitler's fascism in Germany.

New York Magazine doesn’t like Trump.  Like a lot of other blue media these days it runs a lot of articles telling us how bad Trump is.  We don’t think there is huge value to the proliferation of articles nearly everywhere that focus on, describe or intimate that Donald J. Trump is the cause of all our national problems rather than a mere symptom.  We venture to say that incessant focus on Trump personally is a distraction from discussion of issues and problems that are institutionalized and embedded deeply in the political and power infrastructure of our country.

Nevertheless, some of these polemics against Trump also, on occasion, describe those problems that exist institutionally in this country and point out things that are wrong with the political and power infrastructure of our country.  Frank Rich has a new “Intellgencier” article in New York Magazine this week that we think falls into that category:   What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Look to Nixon’s defenders, and the Vichy collaborators, for clues, January 7, 2020.

The article is also of particular interest to us as library defenders because the article chooses several times to cite NYPL trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman as a particular and prime example of the people in power that Mr. Rich sees as facilitating the rise of fascism in the United States, in much the same way that American businessmen supported Hitler’s fascism in Germany.

And while Schwarzman, much like Trump, may be viewed as a symptom of problems with our country extending to the way that our New York City libraries are run, Schwarzman is also a very visible symbol of those problems.  Just the way that Trump has made himself extra conspicuous by putting his name ubiquitously on so many buildings and projects (even when he had scant involvement in bringing them about), so too has Schwarzman made himself extra conspicuous when it comes to libraries by insisting that his name be plastered with repetitive excessiveness on the NYPL’s 24nd Street Central reference library. . . . Something the NYPL trustees did for Schwarzman because Schwarzman transfered a paltry $100 million to the NYPL on the understanding that the NYPL would initiate the Central Library Plan (and probably Donnell) real estate deal sell-offs of libraries.

People are now, with embarrassment, busy ripping the name of Trump off various edifices.  Maybe, due to similar embarrassment, we'll also soon see the Schwarzman name ripped off the 42nd Street Central Reference Library.

Schwarzman has a knack for being on the wrong side of things.  As Rich argues, that may be because he is amoral and will do anything for money.  So relatively recently, we wrote about Schwarzman again in connection with his hob nobbing praise for Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (you know . . .  the dismemberment killing of Jamal Khashoggi).  We wrote when the NYPL was going to turn over space to the Crown Prince to teach young people how to enhance their reputations.  See: Stopped!! NYPL's Plan To Turn Over Its 42nd Street Central Reference Library Grand Celeste Bartos Ballroom For Event Honoring The Infamous Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Good Friend of Stephen Schwarzman?)

Schwarzman with Ghislaine Maxwell

That article also talked about Schwarzman’s connection with burning down the Amazon and Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice in his pedophiliac sexual and political blackmail operation.

Soon after, we came back with much more bad news about Schwarzman when he was featured (and on the cover) in a new book about the maneuvers that transferred an extraordinarily vast amount of middle and lower income American wealth, what people had invested in their homes, to people like Schwarzman.  See: New Book “Home Wreckers” Identifies NYPL Trustee (And 42nd Street Library Namesake) Stephen A. Schwarzman As Key Culprit (Along With His Friends and Neighbors) In The Huge Theft That’s Responsible For Depleting Wealth of Other Americans.  

Schwarzman is the man who thinks that taxes on the poor should be raised while the loopholes that cause him, the highest paid CEO, over $1 billion in a single year, to pay far lower taxes than anyone else.

We agree with Matt Taibbi that the American media is far too focused on engendering counterproductive and artificial hatreds.  We agree with Taibbi also cheap that ramping up to histrionic Hitler and Nazi comparisons is rarely constructive and tends to tamp down rational thinking, but Schwarzman himself has indulged in this kind of thing.  It was Schwarzman who, perceiving himself to be involved in a class war, said that, when it come to protecting the preferential tax breaks he receives, the rest of us are like Hitler.

In using Stephen Schwarzman as a key cited example, Frank Rich’s article makes the case that the greedy self interest of such wealthy people as Schwarzman makes them amoral, as if they don’t care whether fascism will triumph.  There is another interpretation others have offered that Rich doesn’t put forth.  That is the argument that, for many of the wealthy looking to preserve their wealth in the run up and time of to World War II, those individuals actually preferred fascism to the possibly alternatives, particularly communism or socialism or any forms of wealth redistributions.

Here is some of what Rich wrote about Schwarzman and Schwarzman’s comrades whom he describes as “Trump toadies.”  Note that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner also gets mentioned and that Schwarzman and Kushner were both involved in the NYPL’s sell-off the beloved Donnell Library, the first major NYC library sale real estate deal.  (Emphasis supplied below)

You don’t have to be a card-carrying fascist to collaborate with fascists and help them seize power; you just have to be morally bankrupt and self-serving. As the authoritative American historian of Vichy France, Robert O. Paxton, has pointed out, it was only “a rather small minority” of France’s wartime collaborators who were motivated by an actual “ideological sympathy with Nazism and Fascism” to go along with the Nazi puppet regime fronted by Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy. A more widespread incentive was “personal gain.” Others rationalized their complicity by persuading themselves they were acting in the “national interest.” It would be no surprise if that distribution of motivations persists among Trump collaborators today. Such backers as the financier Stephen Schwarzman and New York real-estate titans like Stephen Ross of Hudson Yards no doubt congratulate themselves on acting in the “national interest” while pocketing personal gains measured in either political influence or on a profit-and-loss statement.

In France, such ostensible moral distinctions among collaborators were rendered moot in the long-delayed and gruesome postwar reckoning.

    * * *

The antecedents for Trumpist enablers from the tycoon sector both within and outside the White House — Cohn, Schwarzman, Steven Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, et al. — can be found in those now-vilified captains of 1930s American industry who were prime movers in various back-channel schemes to appease Hitler. The America First Committee’s members included Henry Ford, an unabashed anti-Semite who was name-checked admiringly in Mein Kampf, and Avery Brundage, an Illinois construction magnate and president of the U.S. Olympic Committee who bent to Hitler’s will by yanking the only two Jewish competitors on an American team in the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. . . .

These businessmen’s machinations did not bring about peace in their time but did bring financial quid pro quos that fattened their bottom lines.

 . . . Alfred P. Sloan, the longtime GM chairman, explained his philosophy: “An international business operating throughout the world should conduct its operations in strictly business terms, without regard to the political beliefs of its management, or the political beliefs of the countries in which it is operating.” Surely Jared Kushner, Mnuchin, and Schwarzman couldn’t have put it any better as they cavorted with Mohammed bin Salman at his investment conference in Riyadh in October, a year after the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi. As with Ford, Brundage, Mooney, and the rest, any loot they accrued in exchange for their pact with the Devil will be unearthed in good time.

Mr. Rich ends, or nearly ends with the observation about all of the Trump “enablers and collaborators” he has singled out for the opprobrium of his article that: “It is too late for them to save their reputations.”

What Rich doesn’t ever bring into the conversation is that the powerful working with Nazi’s didn’t end with World War II, even that war’s conclusion.  After World War II, many Nazi’s were brought into this country, and it wasn’t just the rocket expert Wernher von Braun.  Many escaped anything like a prosecution at Nuremberg.  The name of one major U.S. government classified program to bring Nazis to the United States was “Operation Paperclip.”  With luck, its something you can read about in the libraries if. . .

An Open Letter To Reverend Ana Levy-Lyons of The First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Brooklyn Requesting A Sermon About Peace

There is now a many year tradition at Noticing New York (about real estate development in New York and associated politics), written by Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White.  Each year on Christmas Eve, Noticing New York publishes a seasonal reflection.  (More about the Noticing New York tradition here.)  There is something a little bit different up at Noticing New York as a seasonal reflection this Christmas Eve.  It's a letter Michael White wrote to Reverend Ana Levy-Lyons, minister at his First Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Brooklyn, requesting that she deliver a sermon about peace.   There is a more about his decision at Noticing New York.

Because the censorship and information control subjects of this letter are so important, we are also publishing it here at Citizens Defending libraries.  It is also being published at National Notice, also written by Mr. White.

December 19, 2019

Re:  An Open Letter Requesting A Sermon About Peace

Dear Reverend Ana,

Last spring my wife Carolyn and I invested heavily in our congregation’s fund raising lottery trying to win the prize of choosing a topic for a sermon you would give.  We didn’t win.  Had we won, we would have challenged you with what you might not have found an easy subject, speaking about Julian Assange, American war crimes, and the U.S. pursuit of empire.  Our choice of subject would not have been be to vex you with its difficulty, but to ask you to speak to what could be such a simple concept: Peace.  If, these days, conversations about peace are avoided as difficult, what better than address that difficulty in a sermon?

Giving it some consideration, I think that making a worthy case for a sermon topic is a good a way to gain the prize of having you speak on a topic we care about, as good a way as investing in fund raising lottery tickets.  Therefore I will try.

Is peace a spiritual thing?  Is talk about our common humanity, our common bonds, and about surmounting the blindness that fractures our relationships a proper thing to address in religious terms?  I acknowledge I’m being obvious here.  What I just referred to is supposed to be basic and elemental to the great faiths.

I grew up in the Vietnam War era and I remember churches and church people taking the lead in saying that the wars we waged in Indochina were wrong.  These days we, as country, are more military extended than ever.  My oldest daughter is now about to be twenty-nine years old.  We had already started bombing Iraq when she was born in January.  The war in Iraq is just one of the perpetual wars that has continued essentially for the entirety of her life.  All of our wars are long now.  As formally measured by some, the War in Afghanistan, with its later beginning, has surpassed the Vietnam War as our country’s longest war.

These days the United States has been bombing nine countries, ten if you include, as we should, all of the U.S. participation in the bombing of Yemen, the other nine countries being: Mali, Niger, Somalia, Libya, and then, in the Middle East, it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. We have 800 military bases in other countries.  With practically no comment or attention from us, President Obama opened new military bases across Africa.

A peace symbol hangs prominently in our Unitarian Universalist congregation’s sanctuary where our sermons are given.  We begin every Sunday service singing the words: “let peace, good will on earth be sung through every land, by every tongue.”  Christmas comes every year, and every year we evoke and extol, as is customary in the Christian tradition, the image of Jesus as the “Prince of Peace.”  In our congregation’s Weaving Social Justice Committee we have discussed the prospect of rededicating the side chapel within the sanctuary that is known as the “Peace Chapel” to that cause.  In our list of candidate films for the social justice film series we are working on we have films about the injustice of war. . .

 . . . But, by and large, we hardly ever actually say anything about peace or the need to end the  perpetual wars for which our country is now responsible.  Has there been any sermon in our sanctuary on the subject of peace?  I can’t recall one.

I was not at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in June this summer, but I talked with people who went, and I looked over the multi-day program.  I was told and I saw that there were no sessions on the subject of peace.  Nor was anything said about the antithesis thereof, war, although we are deeply embroiled in wars to the point that they are inescapably always in the background our daily American lives.
 
Our congregation through its leaders including members of the social justice committee is now reaching out to other congregations in our city and to their social justice actors to coordinate collective activism on the issues important to all of us.  The importance of peace activism has not been mentioned in those discussions no matter that it is integrally related to virtually every other issue that is being discussed of common interest.  Has the subject of peace somehow been tagged as off-limits?  Is peace now too controversial to be discussed by and among religious communities?

Other social issues have attracted the attention of organizing Unitarians and have been the subject of multiple sermons. I understand and support that and among them are issues like the climate change chaos catastrophe emergency.  The climate emergency is an existential threat to all of humanity.  When the Democratic National Committee ordered that there be no debate focused on the single issue of climate change– the DNC actually forbade Democrats from participating in any such debate organized by anyone else– the case was made that the existential issue of climate is so fundamental that it is intertwines with and underlies virtually every other issue that’s important.  There are other issues like that; issues that are inextricably related to society’s other major issues.       

Our American wars together with the rest of our military interventions that stoke conflict in other countries are far too often wars which are very much about the extraction of oil and fossil fuels.  Moreover, overall our wars help keep in place the systems that continue to vandalize our planet, exterminating its ecosystems.  Further, the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, “the single-largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world,” and that the Pentagon is responsible for between “77% and 80% of all US government energy consumption” since 2001.  The US military is consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries, polluting more than 140 countries. Obscuring the reporting on this, the United States, which exempts its military from environmental laws, insisted on exemptions from reporting of the military emissions of all countries from climate agreements. The U.S., has itself escaped such reporting by exiting the Paris Climate Accord.

It is not clear, but these staggering figures about fossil fuel use probably don’t include the fossil fuel consumption related to the initial manufacture of weapons.  Consider also that replacement, or nonreplacement, of what is bombed, burned and incinerated also must entail substantial additional environmental costs.
                                     
It is not just greenhouse gas emission pollution that the military produces: In 2010, a major story that went largely unreported was that the U.S. Department of Defense, as the largest polluter in the world, was producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined, and that just some of the pollutants with which it was contaminating the environment were depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation. Following our bombings, birth defects reported in Iraq are soaring. A World Health Organization survey tells us that in Fallujah half of all babies were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010 with 45 per cent of all pregnancies ending in miscarriage in the two years after 2004.

Another thing we face that has been deadening to the human spirit has been the increasing “othering” of people who we are made to think are different from us.  Frequently now that’s immigrants from other countries who are black or brown.  Often that “othering,” as with Muslims, is stoked in ways that may cause us to support or tolerate wars in which those others suffer most and towards whom hostilities are often officially directed.  We may also forget how our wars and military activity push the flow of populations forcing people to migrate across boarders, as, for instance, with those leaving Honduras after our country helped bring about the military coup that replaced the government there.

Also basic and underlying so many of our problems are racial, income and wealth inequality with concomitant inequality in power and influence. These are things that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who practiced ministry through activism and activism through ministry, labored to eliminate.  Not long before he was assassinated, King also began to speak out against the Vietnam war saying the great challenge facing mankind is to get rid of war.  Before he did so, he carefully weighed cautions urged on him that as a civil rights leader he shouldn’t do so, that it would undermine support for his civil rights work, split his coalition, and that these issues should not be joined together.  But King concluded that the issues were tied together and decided that he would address them on that basis.

When King expressed his opposition to the war in his very famous “Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence,” delivered in this city’s Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his assassination, he said he was “increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”  He spoke of the disproportionate toll that waging war exacted on the poor and spoke of the poisoning of America’s soul. . . So it is today.

War is profitable business.  It busies packs of lobbyists who know a great deal more about often secret budgets than we, as the public, will ever learn.  But that profit drains the resources of our society enfeebling our ability to accomplish so much else.  The Pentagon and military budget is about 57% of the nation’s discretionary budget.  If all of the unknowable black box spending that goes into the Military-Industrial-Surveillance Complex were included, that percentage could well bump up higher.  We spend more on military spending than the next ten countries combined (or seven, depending on the year and who calculates), and we spend much more than all the rest of the countries in the world left over after that.  Of course, much of that spending by other countries is on arms we supply making the world dangerous.

We may not fully know about or have a complete accounting of all the dollars we spend in these areas, but, in May of 2011 after the U.S. announced that it had killed Osama Bin Laden, the National Priorities Project calculated that, as of that time, “in all, the U.S. government has spent more than $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security since the 9/11 attacks.”  Point of reference: a “trillion” is one million millions.

Just the increase in the military spending in the last two years since Trump came in is as much as Russia spends on its entire military budget ($66 billion).  Similarly just that increase is greater than the entire military budgets of Britain ($55 billion) or France ($51 billion). 

Our fixated disposition to keep spending more is entrenched: Even Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts who promotes herself as a left wing progressive, voted in 2017 to increase the defense budget by $80 billion, surpassing the $54 billion increase requested by President Trump.  60% Of House Democrats voted for a defense budget far bigger than Trump requested.

Perhaps most disquieting and insidiously corrupting to our morality and our souls are the pretexts we adopt to justify going to war and to abide its horrors, particularly when we leave those pretexts dishonestly unexamined.  The public flailed and many among us continue in their confusion, unable to sort out that Iraq did not attack the United States or have weapons of mass destruction before the second war that we unilaterally and "preemptively" launched to invade that country.  Before our first Gulf War attack on that country there were no slaughtered `incubator babies’: That was just a brazen, cynically staged public relations scam.  Similarly, how few of us know and recognize that Afghanistan did not attack the United States on 9/11– We precipitously invaded that country because the government there was at that time asking that procedures be followed and proof furnished before it would assist in finding and turning Osama Bin Laden over to the United States.

The foreign country that was most involved in 9/11, and from where almost all of the men identified as the alleged 9/11 hijackers came, is Saudi Arabia.  Saudi Arabia is the country to which we are selling massive amounts of weapons (making it that world’s third biggest military spender) and it is the country with which we are deeply involved perpetrating war crimes against Yemen.

In the Vietnam War, our second longest war, it was the Gulf of Tonkin incident that, not being what it seemed nor reported to be, was the pretext for war.

Perhaps hardest and most challenging to our susceptibilities as caring people striving to be spiritual and attentive to justice are the pretextual manipulations to which we are subject in regard to what Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman spotlighted as the selective distinguishing between “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims.  “Worthy” victims are those who, whatever their number, deserve our outrage and are a basis for calls for the international community to mobilize toward war.  “Unworthy victims” are those who can die en mass without attention or recognition like the tens of thousands of Yemeni children who have died for lack of food, water and medicine because of Saudi Arabia’s blockade assisted by the U.S..  Often, as with Palestinians removed from their homelands, these victims are blamed for their own victimhood.

Additional layers of pretext pile up when we encounter journalists and whistleblowers willing to be the messengers of war crimes.  We punish those messengers while, concurrently, there is no consequence for those who perpetrate the war crimes.  Often the perpetrators are promoted to higher office. That includes those who illegally torture others to coerce useless, undependable, and likely false “confessions.”  Thus we punish and torture Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning for exemplifying what Daniel Ellsberg called “civil courage.” Thus we vindictively send CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou to prison for disclosing his agency’s torture program.

Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s organization has published much that is embarrassing to the United States and those in power, much of it is particularly embarrassing to the U.S. military.  Wikileaks has never published anything that was untrue, but the truth of what it has published is disruptive to the official narratives of the war establishment. That establishment has been seeking vengeance against and to neutralize Assange since events in 2010 when in April Wikileaks published documenting gunsight video footage, under the title of “Collateral Murder,” of a US drone strike on civilians in Bagdad provided by Chelsea Manning.  The New York Times and Washington Post did not respond to Manning’s attempts to publish that same footage through them or other evidence of U.S. war crime in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anyone who wants proof of the pretextual nature of the United States’ persecution of Julian Assange and of the ghastly and sometimes illegal, abuse of inordinate power against Assange should watch or listen to Chris Hedges June 8, 1019 “On Contact” interview with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer (“On Contact: Julian Assange w/UN Special Rapporteur on Torture”- Chris Hedges is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church).  The attacks against Assange began with a highly orchestrated campaign of character assassination.  They have progressed to things far worse.  Both Assange and Manning (who was pardoned from a 35-year sentence after seven years of confinement that included the torture of Manning) are now being held in prison, no end in sight, for no crimes of which they have been convicted.  I think we have to agree with the criticism of this as psychological torture.  The continued torture of Manning is an effort to get at Assange even if that were to involve forcing Manning to lie.

The United States wants Assange extradited to the Unites States to be tried for the crime of practicing journalism that was unflattering to the United States government. Somehow we have the highhandedness to conceptualize this journalism to be treason although Assange is a foreign national. Assange faces no other charges. Under the laws pursuant to which the U.S. would try him, Assange, like the exiled Edward Snowden, would not be permitted to introduce any evidence or argument that disclosing illegal U.S. activity or war crimes benefits the public.  It’s said that the United States wants nothing more than a show trial and I think that must be considered obvious.

When Assange sensed in 2012 that trumped up charges in Sweden would be used as a subterfuge to transfer him to United States custody for such a show trial he obtained political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. For this, a British judge sentenced Assange and had him serve 50 weeks in a high security prison for “bail jumping”; that’s just fourteen days short of the maximum possible sentence, although the obviously trumped up charges for which Assange had posted bail were withdrawn, negating the original bail terms as a result.  A normal, typical sentence for bail jumping would have entailed only a fine, in a grave case, a much shorter prison sentence.

Britain was able to send police officers into enter the Ecuadoran Embassy to arrest Assange for “bail jumping” and then later hold him, without other charge for pending extradition to the United States, because of a change in the Ecuadoran government that was evidently CIA assisted, and as the United States was dangling financial aid for that country.  Assange’s eviction from the embassy, along with his being simultaneously stripped of Ecuadoran citizenship, was done without due process.
 
The persecution of Assange casts a long shadow to intimidate other journalists, whistleblowers and activists as they themselves are being intimidated about disrupting the preferred narrative concerning America’s militarily asserted empire.  Other providers of news simply lay low not reporting things.  As neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported it, you may not have heard about the recent scary SWAT style arrest of journalist Max Blumenthal by Washington D. C. police hours after he reported about the United States government funding of the Venezuela Juan Guaidó coup team.  Blumenthal was shackled and held incommunicado for an extended period. Not long after that the D.C. police went out to similarly arrest activist and journalist Medea Benjamin when she publicized the U.S. backing of coups in Venezuela and Bolivia.

With silenced journalists, will we, based on unchallenged pretexts, send our military into to change the government of Venezuela as there is talk of doing?  In Bolivia the coup we sponsored has been successful without that.  Meanwhile, there is talk of pretexts for military actions against Iran, Russia, North Korea.

Journalists who still show courage, are subject to exile, sometimes self exile, from their journalistic homes, to alternative media outlets, where, like Assange, they are likely to be less heard and will be more vulnerable. Journalist Tareq Haddad just announced that he resigned from Newsweek because that publication has been suppressing a story of his.  His story was about the whistleblower revelations of buried evidence that the supposed 2018 Duoma chemical attacks by Syrian president Assad on his own people was fairly obviously a concocted fabrication when it was used as a justification for the U.S. to bomb Syria.  Remember our bombings of Syria?  The was another in 2017. It was for such bombings of Syria the press declared that Trump was finally `presidential,' and, as the cruise Tomahawk missiles launched, MSNBC’s Brian Williams spoke of being “guided by the beauty of our weapons” using the word “beautiful” three times in 30 seconds.

The strenuous suppression of these voices like Assange's that would disrupt official narratives shows how the conduct of war has a tight moral link to the choices we make to speak out against war and against the suppression of the voices that oppose war.  In his sermon against war at Riverside Church that day one year to the day before he was killed, Reverend Martin Luther Kings Jr. said that, “men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.”

King also said that, when assuming the task of such opposition, it was difficult to break free of the “conformist thought” of the surrounding world.  Indeed, with the complicity of a much more conglomerately owned corporate media than in King’s time, it seems as if there is a secularly consecrated catechism of what we know we as Americans are not supposed to say, what we must veer away from and avoid.  We subscribe with almost religious ferocity to the belief that American exceptionalism justifies all our actions in the world.  It feels, as if in our bones, that we know that to violate this proposition and say something else would create a rumbling disturbance in the force (you know, “Star Wars”).  Or is our silence, merely something less profound than that, just the equivalent of what we think would be an exceptionally super-rude topic to bring up at a family Thanksgiving or holiday diner?
                               
Dr. King correctly foresaw that there would be significant prices he would have to pay for speaking out against our country’s war.  He concluded that he had to do so, that he had to `break the silence,’ despite the prices he knew he would have to pay. He felt that doing so was the only thing he could do and remain true to himself and his causes.

Ana, I have no doubt that there would be prices you would have to pay if you spoke out for peace; if you spoke out against war.  I also acknowledge that there are prices our congregation could face.  Relatively recently the FBI has raided the homes of public nonviolent peace activists who have long, distinguished careers in public service.  (And the FBI has also been investigating nonviolent climate activists and Black Lives Matters activists.)  But I urge you to deliver a sermon about peace because it would be the right thing to do.  Perhaps it could go along with a rededication of our sanctuary’s Peace Chapel. And, perhaps,  if you would give a sermon like Dr. King gave against our wars, it might do more than just be a good thing in its own right: It might serve as a model for the ministers of other congregations who would follow suit.

Maybe, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s day, there can again be a time when people see the call for peace as a spiritual issue and our church’s, temples and congregations again take a lead role in calling for peace and an end to our wars.

Have I made the subject of peace sound as if it is complicated?  If so, I am sorry.  That can be a problem in itself.  At bottom, shouldn’t this all be so simple?  Peace, supporting peace, speaking out for peace. .  Something very simple.
 
            Last night I had the strangest dream
            I never dreamed before.
            I dreamed the world had all agreed
            To put an end to war.*

* From “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” by Ed McCurdy- 1950,
 a precursor of sorts to “Imagine” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono- 1971

 Sincerely,

Michael D. D. White

The Resignation of Tareq Haddad From Newsweek Adds One More Journalist To Our List Of Those Fired or Self-exiled From Mainstream Media Outlets Because They Expressed or Wanted to Express Views (Like Being Critical of U.S. Wars) Unacceptable to the Outlets They Were Working For- Newsweek Was Burying A Scandal

Former Newsweek reporter Tareq Haddad who resigned

We have a list and its growing.  It’s our:

List of Journalists Fired or Self-exiled From Mainstream Media Outlets Because They Expressed or Wanted to Express Views (Like Being Critical of U.S. Wars) Unacceptable to the Outlets They Were Working For

The story of is Tareq Haddad’s resignation from Newsweek is a spectacular one.  He left because Newsweek was burying a scandal.  The scandal was about the covering up of evidence, now with an every greater number of whistleblowers coming forward, that a supposed chemical attack in Duoma, Syria, supposedly by the Assad regime, was faked to provoke the United States to escalate military actions in the country.  The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which had plenty of evidence, apparently a preponderance of evidence, that the attack was faked, but whistleblowers from the organization have come forward to say that, due to improper pressure, when the OPCW officially reported about what happened that evidence was withheld so that a report with what appeared to be an opposite conclusion could be published.

This was the story that senior people at Newsweek worked extra hard to suppress when Haddad sought to report it.  It is all quite spectacular.  The details of what happened to Haddad, the way he was treated at Newsweek, when he pressed to make the rational case that this was an important story that needed to be reported are harrowing.  They are harrowing, and extremely telling about how suppression of information works.

Haddad has now said of his choice:

    . .  On one hand, I could continue to be employed by the company, stay in their chic London offices and earn a steady salary—only if I adhered to what could or could not be reported and suppressed vital facts. Alternatively, I could leave the company and tell the truth.

    In the end, that decision was rather simple, all be it I understand the cost to me will be undesirable. I will be unemployed, struggle to finance myself and will likely not find another position in the industry I care about so passionately. If I am a little lucky, I will be smeared as a conspiracy theorist, maybe an Assad apologist or even a Russian asset—the latest farcical slur of the day.

Caitlin Johnstone was one of the first reporting the story.  See- Journalist: Newsweek Suppressed OPCW Scandal And Threatened Me With Legal Action, by Caitlin Johnstone, December 8, 2019

You can find a later report here: Inside Journalist Tareq Haddad’s Spectacular Departure from Newsweek- Tareq Haddad’s exposé of the corruption and collusion at the heart of modern journalism is something long-discussed by academics, but rarely does such a clear example present itself.  By Alan Macleod, December 20, 2019.

That later report emphasizes something else that Haddad stressed about suppression of information by mainstream corporate media quoting Haddad thus: 

    The U.S. government, in an ugly alliance with those the profit the most from war, has its tentacles in every part of the media — imposters, with ties to the U.S. State Department, sit in newsrooms all over the world. Editors, with no apparent connections to the member’s club, have done nothing to resist. Together, they filter out what can or cannot be reported. Inconvenient stories are completely blocked.

That report links through to Tareq Haddad’s own very detailed account, complete with screen shots of emails from his senior editors, of how his story was suppressed and how Newsweek mobilized with not so subtle efforts to communicate without saying so that he was out of line to think these kinds of stories should get published.  See: Lies, Newsweek and Control of the Media Narrative: First-Hand Account, by Tareq Haddad, December 14, 2019.

https://tareqhaddad.com/2019/12/14/lies-newsweek-and-control-of-the-media-narrative-first-hand-account/

Read Haddad's own report to learn about his documentation on the "imposters" in the media who sit in Newsrooms "with ties to the U.S. State Department."

If you want to absorb something more recent that shows just how reasonable, and sensibly grounded Haddad is, there is Aaron Maté’s interview of Haddad.  Haddad does not come across as a grandstander, not in the least.  See:  Newsweek reporter quits after editors block coverage of OPCW Syria scandal-  Journalist Tareq Haddad explains his decision to resign from Newsweek over its refusal to cover the OPCW’s unfolding Syria scandal, by Aaron Maté, December 19, 2019

For the video of Aaron Maté’s interview of Haddad see: Newsweek reporter quits after editors block coverage of OPCW Syria scandal, December 19, 2019.

After Scary SWAT Team arrest of Journalist Max Blumenthal By D.C. Police, A Similar Incident As Officers Go Out To Arrest Medea Benjamin: In Each Case It Was Apparently In Response To Their Publication Of U.S. Involvement In Coups, Venezuela and Bolivia

Here is more that is truly frightening about the threat to journalistic freedoms.
                   
We posted previously about how in October Journalist Max Blumenthal published a Grayzone article about United States funding of lobbying by the Juan Guaidó team with which the U.S. tried to replace the Venezuelan government via a coup. . .  And then, shortly thereafter, literally hours later, Blumenthal was arrested in a SWAT team style raid by Washington D.C. police (apparently coordinating with feds?), shackled and held incommunicado.  See:

Scary SWAT Team arrest of Journalist Max Blumenthal After He Reports United States Government Funding of Venezuela Juan Guaidó Coup Team

Hard of the heels of that incident, the Washington D.C. police similarly went out to arrest activist and journalist, CodePink Founder Medea Benjamin.  And its alarming how similar their reason was, like messages are being very intentionally sent: Medea Benjamin was publicizing the U.S. backing of coups in Venezuela and Bolivia.  Again, the ostensible reason for the police to go out and arrest Ms. Benjamin was a supposed “assault” that didn’t happen.  In the end, Benjamin was not arrested.  More about it from Democracy Now with an interview of Ms. Benjamin here:

CodePink Founder Medea Benjamin Threatened with Arrest After Protesting U.S. Foreign Interventions, November 14, 2019

In each case, if you delve into it, you’ll find that the real thugs, are on the other side. That is not a reference to the Washington D.C. police, although their conduct and involvement in these matters is problematic.  It’s a reference to the people supporting these coups seeking to trump up charges that were used to send those police out.

An Insightful Warning: Alex Steinberg’s Prescient Pre-WBAI Shut Down Report As A Pacifica National Director To The WBAI Local Station Board On September 11, 2019

On September 11th Alex Steinberg delivered an insightful report to WBAI's Local Station Board. .

WBAI Radio, New York City’s only truly listener supported public radio station is now back up and running, but October 7th it was abruptly shut down for a month by a stealth attack, from which it is still working to completely recover.  We urge support of the station, and particularly that those who can become “WBAI Buddies” to make recurring automatic monthly donations (which can be in small amounts) that will also ensure your membership in the station and ability to participate in its elections.

Almost a month before WBAI was shut down the WBAI Local Station Board received a report from Alex Steinberg, a director on the Pacifica National Board for the five station network of which WBAI is a part that was both a prescient warning about the likelihood of an attack on WBAI and the Pacifica network it is a part of and important documentation providing perspective as to why such an attack would be unjustified.

We provide you with that report below:

September 11, 2019

Director's Report to the WBAI LSB

The future of Pacifica and 'Plan B'

I wish to bring to the attention of the WBAI LSB and the public that a series of events has transpired in the past two weeks that should raise the alarm bells about the continued existence of WBAI as an independent radio station beaming a powerful signal in the largest media market in the country. I believe WBAI is in grave danger. Some of these events  cannot discuss explicitly because they took place in a closed session of the Pacifica National Board while other events involve confidential personnel issues.  What I can tell you,  based on discussions with a number of individuals that are not covered by confidentiality rules, the proceedings of open sessions of the PNB and its committees, as well as a paper trail of documents and emails and past actions by certain individuals with a history within Pacifica, is that a group of Directors on the PNB is intent on usurping the role of the WBAI LSB in evaluating management. They are intent on removing WBAI's management team by executive fiat. Furthermore the goal of these behind the scene machinations is not the revival of WBAI but its dismantling. The group of Directors behind these actions are led by Bill Crosier from KPFT, who is currently the Secretary of the PNB. Crosier has the strong backing of Director Adrienne LaViollette from KPFT, Mansour Sabbagh from KPFK, Donald Goldmacher from KPFA, Chris Cory from KPFA and Sabrina Jacobs, the Vice-Chair of the PNB, also from KPFA a network of individuals from the Bay Area long associated with KPFA. The general outlines of their plan for WBAI and Pacifica are no mystery. A recent document by long-time KPFA insider Peter Franck, called 'Plan B' makes clear exactly what they want to do. 

Franck's 'Plan B' (see the appendix to this document)  calls for the dismantling of Pacifica as a network and the devolution of each of the radio stations into its own legal entity.  This will be accomplished by essentially scrapping the current bylaws either through a lawsuit or through the intervention of the California Attorney General.  Democratically elected Local Station Boards will be gone. They will be replaced by purely advisory bodies appointed by management. The Pacifica National Board will be left to preside over a ghost of what the Pacifica Foundation has been, being left with a modest  programming service. The new PNB will be smaller and weaker, ceding much more authority to the Executive Director. It will also have at least some members who are appointed rather than elected. Franck's document makes the case that starting the new legal entities and energizing the stations will take a lot of start-up cash. How is this cash going to be raised?  He says the solution is simple, we can easily raise between $10 to $15 million by "swapping or selling one of our signals."  Guess which signal he has in mind to finance his reorganization plan? Hint, it's not KPFA.

A little bit of recent history

It is public knowledge that Director Crosier, when he was interim Executive Director in 2017, was a strong advocate of the sale or swap, first of the WPFW license, and then of the WBAI license. Crosier was also a strong advocate, along with then CFO Sam Agarwal, of Pacifica going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Crosier and Agarwal opposed all efforts to find an alternative to bankruptcy in dealing with the ESRT lawsuit.

Crosier and Agarwal strongly opposed the loan that made possible the settlement of the ESRT lawsuit and the move to 4 Times Square.  The people most involved in negotiating that loan, Directors Nancy Sorden, Jan Goodman and Grace Aaron, did their work in spite of the hostile reception from Pacifica's iED at the time, Bill Crosier, and CFO Sam Agarwal. Let us remind this audience that the settlement with ESRT saved us $1.9 million that would have been due if we had not gotten out of the remainder of our lease. It also reduced our monthly tower rent costs from something between $60-$70K per month to approximately $18K per month.   Not only did we see a 400% saving on our Tower Rent in moving to 4 Times Square but we kept 100% of our listener coverage area and actually have a better signal than we had at Empire State thanks to a brand-new transmitter that was part of the deal with 4 Times Square.

So Crosier, who was proved dead wrong in 2017 when he said there was no good alternative to bankruptcy, is back at it again in 2019. He has once more bought into the idea, originating from some quarters in KPFA,  indeed it appears he never really abandoned it, that all the problems of Pacifica could be solved by sacrificing WBAI. 

The game plan

How do the group of Directors on board with Peter Franck's  'Plan B',  intend to force the liquidation, one way or another, of WBAI? We already know their game plan by once more looking at some recent history.  Back in the summer of 2017, Pacifica was without question in a genuine crisis. We were facing a lawsuit from Empire State for Tower rent that had not been paid in over a year and considerable penalties. WBAI, along with some other stations, also had a very poor fund drive. iED Crosier decided that the way to deal with this crisis was to send a "rescue team" to WBAI. The ostensible purpose of this "rescue team" was to help management fix WBAI.  But the real purpose, it soon became clear, was to replace the WBAI General Manager and interim Program Director with a hand-picked team from KPFA. Director Sabrina Jacobs, who had absolutely no management experience, was supposed to lead this "rescue team".  When we found out about this plan it struck some of the Directors at the time, notably Directors Steinberg and Aaron, as a completely irrational and panic-driven approach to a real problem. How in the world would a team from California, who knew nothing about WBAI and its culture and who had no management experience, be able to fix a problem that had been festering for years. And while it is certainly legitimate to critique the management of WBAI, it should be kept in mind that the bulk of the problems at WBAI  were due to outside events about which WBAI management had no control, namely the impossible Empire State lease approved by a past PNB 15 years previously and the stripping down of three quarters of WBAI's staff by a previous PNB shortly after hurricane Sandy, leaving WBAI with less than a skeleton crew. It seemed to some of us that this plan, if it were carried out, could only destabilize WBAI and deepen its crisis further. It made absolutely no sense and we managed to shut down this idea literally at the last minute before it was launched. 

Is WBAI a "failed station"?

Now move forward two years to the late summer of 2019. The Pacifica Foundation in 2019 and WBAI are in much better shape now than they were in 2017 prior to the settlement with ESRT, when things looked so bleak. We completed our 2017 audit and are close to completing our 2018 audit. Once that is done, we will be current with our audits and work can begin on the 2019 audit as soon as we close out the 2019 fiscal year at the end of September. We have pretty much paid all obligations that we owed on our pension plans, debts that had triggered off a Department of Labor investigation in 2017. Democracy Now, to whom we owed several million, forgave us that debt, thereby immediately improving Pacifica's financial profile. We have an accounting and financial infrastructure in place now that was sadly lacking in 2017 as a result of hiring NETA to do our books and provide us with other services that were once handled by the National Office. When the 2018 audit is completed and we are current with our audits, will be in a position to try to regain our CPB funding, the lack of which for the past 5 years has cost us $4-$5 million. We will also be in a position to approach foundations and major donor who all require up to date audits before considering grants.  That's the situation at the national level.

What the membership figures show

At the local level some interesting things are revealed when we compare the number of listener members as determined by the 2018 and 2019 LSB elections from the Pacifica Election Final Report for 2018, Table 1 on page 18 and the Pacifica Election Report 09-05-19:

2018- KPFA  15,585    KPFK  14,366   KPFT   4,294   WBAI   6,806   WPFW unknown
2019- KPFA  14,311    KPFK  13,210   KPFT   3,549   WBAI   8,186   WPFW 6,289
          KPFA -8%          KPFK  -8%       KPFT -17%     WBAI  +20%


The number of members at WBAI rose by 1,400 over last year. That's a gain of roughly 20%. On the other hand, all the other Pacifica stations for which we have statistics show a significant drop in membership.  KPFT's membership dropped by 17%. KPFA's membership dropped by 8%. KPFK's membership also dropped by 8%. True, membership is only one metric and comparisons from one year to the next gives only a partial story. Nevertheless one would think these figures would cause those who claim that WBAI is a "failed station" to pause and take notice.

Not only is our membership up, but listenership is also up as confirmed by Nielsen ratings.  This is largely due to a series of programming changes aimed at improving their quality, especially of drive time programs. And for the first time in a long time, an influx of producers has joined the WBAI staff who are under 60. In fact many of them are in their 20's and 30's. Overall this is good news for WBAI. 

WBAI is improving

As for the purely financial picture at WBAI, it is considerably better than it was in 2017.  Yet, WBAI is still not where we would like it to be. The improvements in members and listeners have not yet translated into significantly increased contributions from our listeners. WBAI is today still running a deficit, though one that is dramatically reduced compared to the nightmare scenario of 2017. Our general manager estimates that the total deficit for 2019 will be approximately $160K.  A significant figure to be sure, but not an intractable one. To put that number into perspective, if we had our CPB funding restored to the levels we used to receive, that deficit would turn into a surplus of approximately $160K.  Our monthly deficit is less than our Tower Rental expenses which are approximately $18K monthly.  That is an expense that none of the California stations have. Their Tower rent is close to zero. In addition we have an expense of approximately $6,500 in studio rent. That is also an expense that the California and Houston stations do not have since they own their buildings.  In addition, WBAI has recently been the recipient of significant bequests. The bulk of those bequests were given to Pacifica to use as they wish while the remainder went to paying off some past debts at WBAI. Yet despite these signs of improvement at WBAI when you consider its health in the context of other Pacifica stations, we still hear a narrative emanating from Berkeley that WBAI is "underperforming", that it is a "failed station" and that only a drastic solution can turn WBAI around.  They simply ignore the incremental changes that have taken place.

To be sure WBAI is underperforming in the sense that it is performing well below its potential. But if you consider WBAI in relation to the other Pacifica stations, then you can hardly say it is "underperforming". All measurable criteria that we have indicates that WBAI is actually improving.  It is performing better than KPFT, a station whose membership and listeners have shrunk dramatically. It is performing better than KPFK, a station that was once the power-house of Pacifica when it came to fund drives but is now facing huge shortfalls.  In any case, the purpose of an assessment of the health of WBAI is not to compare it to other Pacifica stations, but to see how it can be improved further to realize its great potential.

Back to the Future

In spite of all these signs of significant improvement in the overall health of Pacifica and of WBAI, we are faced with a very real cash flow crisis that reached a critical point in September of 2019.  In addition, an incident involving one WBAI producer who, according to the opinion of Pacifica's counsel, stepped over the line  in terms of certain regulations, has been used to drum up an atmosphere of panic. We are hearing things like "WBAI is out of control".  While these problems - the cash flow crisis, and possible violations of regulations are real enough - they are being used as a wedge in order to convince a number of Directors that the aborted Crosier plan from 2017 should be replayed in 2019.  Thus we are once more hearing about why a team from California should be sent immediately to take over and manage WBAI.  The goal, we believe, based on our observations not only of the words, but also of the actions of the principal players in this drama, is to turn WBAI into either a repeater station, without any local programming or staff, or to sell or swap the signal, thereby fulfilling an important part of Peter Franck's 'Plan B'.  They are using the atmosphere of crisis in order to convince a number of other Directors to go along with their scheme, Directors who otherwise would be more prudent. 

The shock doctrine

The mechanism of achieving consensus based on exploiting a crisis has been well documented in Naomi Klein's best-selling book from 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein's brilliant insight was to examine how crises and disasters can be used by businesses and governments to their advantage.  Under conditions of crisis, whether real or manufactured, many people are prone to let their natural defenses down and convince themselves that they must listen to "experts" who can help lead them out of the crisis by agreeing to accept harsh measures that under normal conditions they would never agree to. That is how unions are convinced to scrap decades old pension plans and benefits in order to "save jobs". That is how international financial institutions convince governments to sign onto decades of austerity. The same methods can be used on a much smaller scale, to convince a Board of Directors to take actions that are destructive of the organization in order to overcome a crisis.  Indeed Klein showed that often it is advantageous to those exploiting the atmosphere of crisis to deliberately stoke the crisis and make it worse.  Can this be happening at WBAI?

What about that loan?

A final footnote to this report.   There has been a lot of discussion about the loan and what plans the PNB and Pacifica management have for repaying the loan.  At the National level much of these discussions have been occurring on the Strategic Planning Committee, of which Director Steinberg is the Chair. Most of these discussions have been in open session and the recordings are available to anyone who wishes to listen.  A plan introduced by Steinberg had been discussed for several weeks. The plan consisted essentially in holding a series of national fund drives, similar to the national fund drive in 2017 that raised significant funds to allow us to hire auditors.  It was also recognized that these fund drives and other initiatives were not likely to come up with the entire balance of the loan by the time it is due.  The remainder of the balance were to be handled by refinancing that portion of the loan. It is always possible to refinance a loan and is considered a standard business practice. The terms and conditions for refinancing the loan vary widely, depending on the financial condition and credit-worthiness of the borrower. We felt that since Pacifica is on the precipice of being up to date with our audits and showing other signs that our financial situation has improved, that we may be able to get some relatively good terms for a refinanced loan.  We were surprised however at the reaction of our new iED,  John Vernile, to this plan. He stated at the last Strategic Planning Committee meeting that the goal of fund drives should be for the entire balance of the loan, not just the $1 million projected by us. It's certainly a nice goal, but how realistic is it? Not only that but somehow this goal would be achieved on a greatly reduced schedule of national fund drives, perhaps only two Christmas special fund drives.  When the question was asked how this goal can be achieved Mr. Vernile answered that the fund drives can be supplemented by approaching major donors and having a more systematic approach to soliciting bequests. It seemed to some of us that was this not a realistic plan. We also wondered why Mr. Vernile appeared to take the option of refinancing a portion of the loan off the table.  It leads us to wonder where iED Vernile stands on the core issues facing Pacifica and WBAI.

What next?

This report is meant to alert the WBAI LSB and WBAI staff,  listeners and supporters to the dangers we are facing.  The ideological divide is between those who think the future of Pacifica is to circle the wagons in order to protect their own turf, even at the expense of a key player in the most important media market in the country, and those who think the future of Pacifica lies inrevitalizing all the stations we now have and work much more closely toward becoming a genuine nation-wide network while at the same time maintaining close ties to their local communities.  We believe that Pacifica and WBAI can have a real influence on the politics and culture of this country which is now plagued by a rise of neo-fascism, a newly invigorated racism and anti-Semitism, attacks on the working class, the poor and immigrants, denial of climate change and science and the rise of authoritarian, anti-democratic values.  The mainstream media is not part of the solution. Indeed they are part of the problem. As is NPR. This is where Pacifica can make a difference - if it has the courage and the vision and rejects all the tribalistic pressures to only tend to one's "own" garden.

Alex Steinberg


* * *

Appendix: Peter Franck's 'Plan B'*
*from his web site, https//culturelaw.com/special-infromation/plan-b/

PLAN B
        A "Friendly Divorce" to Save the Stations

Introduction. Six years ago, Carol Spooner circulated a letter she called "Time for an Amicable Divorce at Pacifica?" Without speaking for her, I believe she saw then, as a very close observer of the Pacifica scene, that attempting to govern and run the five Pacifica Foundation Radio stations under a single corporate umbrella, Pacifica Foundation, was not working, and indeed could be a threat to the survival of at least some of the stations. Observing recent crises, some of us have now come to the same conclusion. This paper will attempt to outline how such a "friendly divorce" could happen. Its goal is the preservation of all of the Pacifica stations in a manner which will enable them to continue carrying out the Pacifica mission.

There are a number of ways in which the "friendly divorce" plan could be initiated. They include; (a) decision by the Pacifica National Board; (b) legal action under California Corporations' Code Section 6510; (c) the exercise of certain rights which FJC has under the terms of the $3.7 million Loan Agreement of April 2, 2018; (d) a vote of the Pacifica membership. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss how such a plan may come to be initiated, but to acknowledge it as a possibility and discuss what it would look like.

Outline of a plan.

1. Legal Separation.

a. Establishment of independent 501(c)3 non-profit corporations based in each of the cities in which current Pacifica stations are located, thus establishing local station entities. In most states, any person or legal entity can establish a new non-profit organization by filing Articles of Incorporation with the respective Secretary of State. For all five stations Pacifica Foundation itself would be the Incorporator. As the Incorporator, Pacifica would establish bylaws 1 for the new non-profits and appoint their initial Board of Directors.

b. Appointment of the current members of the stations' Local Station Board and transfer of the licenses would be conditioned on the agreement of all current board members to suspend intramural fighting during the transition period. They would start with a simplified initial set of by-laws, with a provision that they could be amended by a simple majority of the board during the first 60 days. A simple set of by-laws, providing for a smaller board, with most of its members elected, and some seats with particular competencies to be filled by appointment.

c. In the event that a Local Station Board does not unanimously commit to suspending a factional fighting during the transition period Pacifica would put out a notice to all relevant non profit organizations in the signal area, inviting them to apply for that communities' license. Who would be the decider would depend on how the process was initiated (see paragraph 2 of the introduction above).

2. Transfer of licenses. License transfer must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. Pacifica would file with the FCC an application to transfer the current licenses to the new local entities. Filing a Petition for Consent to Transfer does not open the license to third parties. The only action open to the FCC, if there was any properly filed opposition, would be to either grant the transfer or deny the transfer. If granted, the licensee would become the new local non-profit. If denied Pacifica would remain the licenser. The Application to Transfer the licenses would only happen if the local Board has agreed to suspend intramural disputes (as provided in Section 1 b, above). Under FCC regulations, transfer of licenses is subject to the timely filing, by any concerned party of a Petition to Deny. There would have been prior agreement that no such Petition would be filed on or behalf of any present Board Members.

3. Funding. Pacifica will have to engage in a signal swap which could net as much as $15,000,000 (probably reducing the number of people potentially, but not currently listening to one or two of the stations by about 40%). The impact on actual listenership Pacifica will be minimal. Pacifica will use the funds to pay off all current debts and divide the balance (which could be as much as $9,000,000) among the five new non-profit corporations.

4. Reorganization and Revitalizing the New Stations. From the funds left after paying the debt Pacifica would make each newly independent station a restricted "Reorganization and Development grant" (R&D grant) so they can reorganize and modernize; the terms of the R&D grant will be to conduct a reorganization of programming and operations along the lines outlined in attachment A.

5. The Pacifica Archives will be placed with the University of Santa Barbara or such other entity as has a proven capability of completing the technical preservation work and a commitment to making the contents freely available;

6. The Pacifica Program Service. as the one cash positive entity of Pacifica will continue to operate much as it does at present, under the guidance of a reduced and streamlined Pacifica Board.

Statement of Carolyn McIntyre, WBAI Local Station Board Chair Respecting Today's Ruling By Judge Melissa Crane That WBAI Radio Station Should Be Put Back On The Air, And Resume Broadcasting Under Local Control

The following is the statement of Carolyn McIntyre, WBAI Local Station Board Chair, released today respecting today's ruling by Judge Melissa Crane that the WBAI Radio Station should be put back on the air, and resume broadcasting under local control.

Carolyn McIntyre, WBAI Local Station Board Chair
November 6, 2019 Statement
For Post Court Decision Release

November 6, 2019

First, I want to thank Arthur Schwartz, our attorney representing us and the Pacifica Board for his crucial work to get WBAI back on the air. All of us may think of making sacrifices for the communities we care about, but Arthur’s work goes way beyond what we could expect.

What the public needs to know most is that WBAI was not taken off the air by Pacifica: The Pacifica National Board acted quickly to immediately reverse the actions of the group of rogue individuals who unleashed their attack in secret shutting down WBAI. What is most frightening is that, with our station seized and taken off the air, we were unable to broadcast to our listening community facts about what actually happened. Now, resuming our normal local broadcasting, we will able to get the word out about this and other important issues.

The actions taken by the renegades have, unfortunately, been extremely destructive, not only to WBAI, New York’s Pacifica Network terrestrial radio station but also to the entire Pacifica Network. The silver lining, however, may be that with the extra attention that WBAI’s shut down garners, WBAI, whose listenership has been resurging, will be become stronger and more listened to than ever. .

. . We look to bring back all our old listeners and as well as adding new ones who look for voices that represent their concerns and communities. WBAI 99.5 FM is the only exclusively listener supported radio. That listener support will be especially important as we seek to recover from the setback of this attack.

Carolyn McIntyre
WBAI Local Station Board Chair

Contact:
Carolyn McIntyre, WBAI Local Station Board Chair
        -or-
Michael D. D. White, WBAI Local Station Board Vice-Chair

Scary SWAT Team arrest of Journalist Max Blumenthal After He Reports United States Government Funding of Venezuela Juan Guaidó Coup Team

This is scary,  Scary too that there is no reaction from groups like PEN.  Scary that there is no reporting of it in the corporate media.

Journalist Max Blumenthal published a Grayzone article about United States funding of lobbying by the Juan Guaidó team with which the U.S. tried to replace the Venezuelan government via a coup.  Shortly thereafter, literally hours later, Blumenthal was arrested in a SWAT team style raid by Washington D.C. police (apparently coordinating with feds?), shackled and held incommunicado.

Here is some coverage by the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting):

Max Blumenthal Arrest Exposes Hypocrisy of Western Media and ‘Human Rights’ NGOs, Joe Emersberger, October 30, 2019

Counterspin Radio Show coverage (4:09 minutes), November 1, 2019.

Here is the Grayzone's own report about the arrest:

‘This charge is 100% false’: Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal arrested months after reporting on Venezuelan opposition violence- The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has been arrested on false charges after reporting on Venezuelan opposition violence outside the DC embassy. He describes the manufactured case as part of a wider campaign of political persecution, by Ben Norton, October 28, 2019.

“First they came for the journalists.  After that we don’t know what they did.”
. . .  And I couldn’t find out in my library either.
     ( a la Gideon Lichfield, after Niemoller)