Apparently, the Guns & Butter program will continue as a web-broadcast program and as a podcast, even after KPFA and the Pacifica Radio Network abruptly cancelled the show, thus removing it from radio circulation on a nationwide network of affiliate stations.
While that of course is good news, the removal of the show from the radio drops the curtain on one of the last remaining pieces of broadcast journalism on the public airwaves willing to explore "forbidden" topics, including the evidence that the "official" story of historical events such as the September 11, 2001 attacks and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (among many other examples) is built on a framework of lies.
KPFA and its affiliate stations have completely scrubbed the show from their websites, including all of the archived shows going back for nearly two decades. However, the archived shows on the Guns & Butter website itself are still available -- and the decision by KPFA to cancel the show and remove all mention of it should spur listeners to go back through the archived shows and revisit them. I personally went back and downloaded many of the archived shows, and am of the opinion that they offer an extraordinary valuable matrix of perspectives and "data points" which are necessary when trying to piece together the complex situation we are facing at the present juncture of history.
As the Guns & Butter theme song, a remake of the famous Buffalo Springfield anthem "For What It's Worth" (the original of which first aired in December of 1966), declares: "There's something happening here -- what it is ain't exactly clear," the pattern which runs through the events of the past seventy-plus years since the end of World War II reveals the presence of "something happening," although what it is not only is "not exactly clear" but is in fact quite mysterious and defies easy categorization or simplistic explanations.
That's why shows such as Guns & Butter are so extremely critical: by providing a wide array of different voices and perspectives from serious analysts who are examining what is "happening here," we have an opportunity to see shapes emerge which would be extremely difficult to perceive or detect based on the carefully limited perspectives allowed within the current un-free press.
Some of the "data points" or perspectives offered by the hundreds of voices who appear on Guns & Butter will be flawed, erroneous, or even deliberately misleading, as a matter of course -- but this is no reason to switch off the project altogether and dissolve the framework of perspectives that Bonnie Faulkner has spent so many years constructing through her tireless efforts to seek out and interview disparate researchers who are wrestling with the question of "what's going down."
In the course of listening to the archive shows over the past few days, since hearing the news that KPFA had dropped the program, I came across this prescient interview from September 15, 2010 (Guns & Butter show #214) with Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff of Project Censored, in which they describe the outright hostility of media outlets which call themselves "left" or "progressive" towards investigating (or even mentioning) "controversial" topics such as the obvious lies and violations of the principles of physics in the "official" explanation of the events of September 11, 2001, for example.
At about the 11: 30 mark in the interview, while discussing the outright censorship of a heavily-footnoted and well-sourced article they submitted to a supposedly "progressive" outlet (the Institute for Policy Studies) with whom they had a contract to provide journalistic articles, Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips make the following statement (Mickey Huff is speaking -- this particular quoted portion begins at about 12: 56 in the interview file):
The fact that there was a topic at the 'progressive' IPS that just could not be discussed -- and if you have a free press, there is no subject that cannot be discussed. [ . . . ] One of the claims was that it was a 'divisive' issue -- and, I mean, that's rubbish. It's a divisive issue, for sure, but it's contentious for a reason. And these are the very kinds of subjects that in a free-press structure we ought to be ferreting out and having the debates -- I mean that's the purpose of a free press. [ . . . ] And we're expecting, they're gonna want to do this, it's a power-elite story, it's a story of mass potential propaganda and deception that gets us into two illegal wars, eviscerates Constitutional liberties, bankrupts the society both economically and morally the world over: you'd think this is a huge thing to debate on the merits of science and fact. We were hard concrete scientific reports and peer-reviewed journal articles, and we're saying 'What's the deal with this? Why can't we talk about this?' and they said, 'Well, you're going to alienate readers in the Heart Land.' I'm not kidding. [ . . . ] And then when Peter submitted a piece a month later, they said: 'You're no longer writing for us.'
Listeners to this interview should think very carefully about the statement that "If you have a free press, there is no subject that cannot be discussed," and ask how many subjects absolutely "cannot be discussed" in the un-free press which we have today. Even those who completely accept the "official" story of the events of September 11, 2001 might want to ask themselves if they agree that any discussion about September 11 should be "off limits" for any discussion in any broadcast media.
And yet that is precisely the situation we have today.
And the removal of Guns & Butter from the airwaves pulls the plug on one of the last shows available on broadcast stations (as opposed to being available on the internet, which is a very different medium for reasons mentioned in my previous post) which upheld that understanding of freedom of the press to investigate and explore important subjects, under the understanding that if you have a free press, no topic should be off limits for discussion.
Those wishing to purchase the Project Censored annual volume of suppressed stories for 2011, which was being discussed in the above interview (and which has since been followed by seven more annual volumes ranging from 2012 to 2018, as well as an eighth for 2019 which will begin shipping in mid-September of this year) can go to this web-page on the Project Censored website, and specifically to this product page for the Censored 2011 volume.
Another archived Guns & Butter show from about the same timeframe is this interview with frequent guest Professor Michael Hudson dated June 16, 2010 and entitled "Europe's Class War against Labor" (Guns & Butter show #204) The interview, which is also embedded at the end of this post (just as the previously-discussed interview is embedded at the top of this post), may well be one of Professor Hudson's clearest and most systematic explanations of the forces which actively seek to reduce living standards, social services, and industrial and economic output in economies -- in order to privilege and maximize debt service instead.
Such a policy, of course, will ultimately result in Killing the Host (which is the title of a book Professor Hudson published in August of 2015, some years after this interview was recorded) -- and will also have the effect of reducing populations to a state of "neo-feudalism," as he says in this interview.
During this extremely important interview, Professor Hudson sounds a note which resonates with the cautions voiced above in the Project Censored interview, regarding the critical importance of an informed public in order to have any hope of imposing democratic governance over the financial sector, instead of the inverted situation we face today in which financial interests have taken control of and subverted democratic governance. Beginning at about the 21: 00 mark in the interview, Professor Hudson says, in response to Bonnie's question of how the European Union could have been structured in order to allow democratic governance over the central banks:
As he explains at about 48: 10 in the same interview:
Note that in the passage quoted immediately above, Professor Hudson explains that the goal of this "offensive" is to force governments (which are supposed to represent the people) to sell off land and mineral resources and other valuable parts of the public domain for privatization by a select few (the very opposite of the public). Many previous posts have laid out a systematic argument showing that the ancient wisdom of the world unequivocally ascribed the riches of the land, the sea, the ports, the forests, the soil, the minerals under the earth, and even the realms of the air and of the electro-magnetic spectrum to the domain of the gods. It should not be difficult to name the Greek gods, for example, to whom belonged the bounties of the sea, the riches under the earth, or even the electro-magnetic waves which move through the air.
Thus, the seizure of the public domain is a seizure of the domain of the gods. It is part of a centuries old conspiracy against the gods. There is no contradiction between realizing that what we call the public domain was seen by the ancients as the bounty of the divine realm: as other previous posts have endeavored to explain, the ancient myths illustrate that the gods bestow their gifts upon all men and women -- and indeed that the gods are present in and work out their will through men and women. When Athena bestowed the gift of the olive tree upon the ancient city of Athens, for example, it was a gift that was intended to benefit all of the people, and not just a privatized few. For more on this discussion, see previous posts such as this one, this one, and this one.
In light of this fact, it should be no surprise that the oppressive, exploitive and benighted economic paradigm we refer to as "feudalism" descended upon Europe like a plague following the deliberate destruction of the ancient wisdom by the proponents of literalist Christianity (collaborators against the gods) -- and that Professor Hudson describes the current scheme to sell off and privatize the mineral resources and everything else in the public domain as a "return to feudalism."
These kinds of perspectives and data points are absolutely invaluable in the quest to make sense of the great tectonic forces operating below the chatter of the controlled media, which can only be understood by examining topics which are now "off limits" to our un-free press (and, indeed, pretty much off-limits for discussion or examination in academia as well). Guns & Butter, and certain other important shows, have done humanity a tremendous service by assembling a galaxy of different voices and views which can assist us to see "what's happening here."
It should come as no surprise that certain interests would seek to restrict access to such a valuable public resource.
Let's all do what we can to support Bonnie and Guns & Butter and to tell others to tune in, especially now that her show will no longer be available on the broadcast airwaves.
I'm happy to see that a new interview featuring Professor Robert Schoch has appeared on Guns & Butter, immediately after the news of KPFA's decision to drop the show. I am of the opinion that the story of our "censored" ancient history ties directly in to the difficult question of "what's going down" in our much more recent history as well.
There's definitely something happening here.
Those wishing to purchase the Project Censored annual volume of suppressed stories for 2011, which was being discussed in the above interview (and which has since been followed by seven more annual volumes ranging from 2012 to 2018, as well as an eighth for 2019 which will begin shipping in mid-September of this year) can go to this web-page on the Project Censored website, and specifically to this product page for the Censored 2011 volume.
Another archived Guns & Butter show from about the same timeframe is this interview with frequent guest Professor Michael Hudson dated June 16, 2010 and entitled "Europe's Class War against Labor" (Guns & Butter show #204) The interview, which is also embedded at the end of this post (just as the previously-discussed interview is embedded at the top of this post), may well be one of Professor Hudson's clearest and most systematic explanations of the forces which actively seek to reduce living standards, social services, and industrial and economic output in economies -- in order to privilege and maximize debt service instead.
Such a policy, of course, will ultimately result in Killing the Host (which is the title of a book Professor Hudson published in August of 2015, some years after this interview was recorded) -- and will also have the effect of reducing populations to a state of "neo-feudalism," as he says in this interview.
During this extremely important interview, Professor Hudson sounds a note which resonates with the cautions voiced above in the Project Censored interview, regarding the critical importance of an informed public in order to have any hope of imposing democratic governance over the financial sector, instead of the inverted situation we face today in which financial interests have taken control of and subverted democratic governance. Beginning at about the 21: 00 mark in the interview, Professor Hudson says, in response to Bonnie's question of how the European Union could have been structured in order to allow democratic governance over the central banks:
It would have first of all permitted central banks to do what they do in America, England and other places -- it would have had the national Treasury able to monetize the deficit, or create the credit, by government spending. It would have made the Central Bank and the Treasury subordinate to the political arm of democratically-elected governments. But when you have democracy itself undercut, by the financial power of right-wing parties to convince populations to vote against their self-interest, then it's very hard to know how to re-structure things. Once the population doesn't understand what's happening economically, or financially, it's not able to act in its self-interest, and it's in the position of becoming a victim.According to Professor Hudson, economics and specifically finance is being employed as a weapon against populations of men and women who have deliberately been kept in the dark about financial and economic matters, to the point that many even begin to believe arguments for policies which sacrifice the best interest of the population and indeed the economy itself to the interests of financial speculators and rent-extractors.
As he explains at about 48: 10 in the same interview:
The crisis is an offensive by the vested interests, by the wealthy interests, to shift the taxes off themselves, onto labor, and to say, 'Wait a minute: now is the time to really drive the nail into the coffin of the class war. Now we're gonna mount an offensive to get rid of social security, to get rid of the welfare state. We're gonna get rid of public health, get rid of social security, get rid of medical care, get rid of public spending, and run the government so that -- ' they tax labor and industry and agriculture, basically, to bail the banks out of the bad loans that are extracting so much interest that they're shrinking the economy. So the financial interests in Europe are willing to see the economy shrink, willing to see the economy de-industrialize, to force the governments to say, 'If you pay your pensions and social security, you have to sell off your public enterprises, you have to sell off any land or mineral resources or anything else in the public domain to the bankers. You have to sell your roads, for us to buy, to turn into toll roads. You have to sell everything you have, and we'll privatize it.' And what this is, is a return to feudalism.Once again, one need not agree with every single position held by Professor Hudson to realize that the network of data points he lays out in this interview is extremely valuable to anyone who is trying to come to grips with things that are "going down" whose impact is certainly felt by everyone trying to make a living or raise a family today, even if the great leviathan-like forces beneath the surface which are causing those effects are often rather difficult to detect (especially because they are never mentioned with any sort of clarity by the current un-free press).
Note that in the passage quoted immediately above, Professor Hudson explains that the goal of this "offensive" is to force governments (which are supposed to represent the people) to sell off land and mineral resources and other valuable parts of the public domain for privatization by a select few (the very opposite of the public). Many previous posts have laid out a systematic argument showing that the ancient wisdom of the world unequivocally ascribed the riches of the land, the sea, the ports, the forests, the soil, the minerals under the earth, and even the realms of the air and of the electro-magnetic spectrum to the domain of the gods. It should not be difficult to name the Greek gods, for example, to whom belonged the bounties of the sea, the riches under the earth, or even the electro-magnetic waves which move through the air.
Thus, the seizure of the public domain is a seizure of the domain of the gods. It is part of a centuries old conspiracy against the gods. There is no contradiction between realizing that what we call the public domain was seen by the ancients as the bounty of the divine realm: as other previous posts have endeavored to explain, the ancient myths illustrate that the gods bestow their gifts upon all men and women -- and indeed that the gods are present in and work out their will through men and women. When Athena bestowed the gift of the olive tree upon the ancient city of Athens, for example, it was a gift that was intended to benefit all of the people, and not just a privatized few. For more on this discussion, see previous posts such as this one, this one, and this one.
In light of this fact, it should be no surprise that the oppressive, exploitive and benighted economic paradigm we refer to as "feudalism" descended upon Europe like a plague following the deliberate destruction of the ancient wisdom by the proponents of literalist Christianity (collaborators against the gods) -- and that Professor Hudson describes the current scheme to sell off and privatize the mineral resources and everything else in the public domain as a "return to feudalism."
These kinds of perspectives and data points are absolutely invaluable in the quest to make sense of the great tectonic forces operating below the chatter of the controlled media, which can only be understood by examining topics which are now "off limits" to our un-free press (and, indeed, pretty much off-limits for discussion or examination in academia as well). Guns & Butter, and certain other important shows, have done humanity a tremendous service by assembling a galaxy of different voices and views which can assist us to see "what's happening here."
It should come as no surprise that certain interests would seek to restrict access to such a valuable public resource.
Let's all do what we can to support Bonnie and Guns & Butter and to tell others to tune in, especially now that her show will no longer be available on the broadcast airwaves.
I'm happy to see that a new interview featuring Professor Robert Schoch has appeared on Guns & Butter, immediately after the news of KPFA's decision to drop the show. I am of the opinion that the story of our "censored" ancient history ties directly in to the difficult question of "what's going down" in our much more recent history as well.
There's definitely something happening here.
