as usual I've enjoyed
sharing with you and being on the air with you
and I think one of the things that I'm hearing
is also that we can start taking care of ourselves
and other people before the crisis
before it gets to that level
I want to just end with this poem by Pablo Neruda
like the earth I belong to everyone
there is not a single drop of hatred in my breast
open wide my hands scatter grapes to the wind
Pablo Neruda
thank you all
and you know take care of yourselves very very well
love yourselves very very well
that opens the path to all else that we need
and yeah sometimes it's a struggle
the healing is a struggle and there's pain
but in the breaking open of that
we get our clear thought and our clear mind
and our clear action
you all take care of yourselves very well
I love you
I love me
and until next time
I love you
I love you
I love you
and I love you
and I love you
I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
if you're是非
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
and I love you
PIANO PLAYS
PIANO PLAYS
PIANO PLAYS
PIANO PLAYS
And it's just about five minutes after one o'clock.
You're tuned to WBAI in New York.
The program normally at this time is weaponry.
Tom Whisker is not here this week,
and nor will he be here the next two weeks after this.
My name is Emmanuel Goldstein,
and we'll be trying to follow the same vein
that Tom's show normally takes around this time.
And we won't be as specific as far as weapons
and military details and things like that,
but I certainly want to talk about
the things that are happening in the world today,
particularly things that are happening in Central America today,
and the things that so far just aren't happening here.
We'll be taking your phone calls.
We'll be doing a lot of things.
We'll run until 3.30.
Our phone number is 279-3400.
Brezhnev took Afghanistan
and Begin took Beirut.
Galtieri took the Union Jack.
And Maggie, over lunch one day,
took a cruiser with all his power
to make him give it back.
Mmm.
Mmm.
We'll be right back.
I will not agree to another debate.
The answer is no.
I am not going to have any more debates.
We don't need any more debates.
I've spelled out my position.
There will be no more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
We don't need any more debates.
I've spelled out my position.
There will be no more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
I am not going to have any more debates.
We're fired up! We're fired up! We're fired up! We're fired up! Can't take it no more!
The answer is no. I am not going to have any morgue debates.
We don't need any more debates. I've spelled out my position. There will be no more debates.
The answer is no. I am not going to have any morgue debates.
The answer is no. I am not going to have any morgue debates.
The answer is no. I am not going to have any morgue debates.
The answer is no. I am not going to have any morgue debates.
And prior to that, a piece from Pink Floyd.
Get your filthy hands off my desert.
Well, good morning to you.
My name is Emmanuel Goldstein. You're listening to WBAI.
I'm filling in for Tom Whisker this morning.
A lot of things going on in the world.
A lot of historic events, historic happenings.
1989 is going to be one of those years that you just wonder,
What was I doing? Where was I?
What do I have to show for it?
Well, folks, there are an appalling amount of nasty goings on in the world.
Not a few of which this particular land that we are in right now is responsible for.
One of which is what's happening in El Salvador.
If you were looking at yesterday's newspaper, that is Tuesday's New York Times.
You may have noticed an article about the killing of six priests in El Salvador just about two weeks ago.
And a woman described as a witness to those slayings, the slayings of six Jesuit priests,
has provided the first sworn evidence linking the killers to the Salvadoran armed forces,
and hence to the U.S. government.
The judge investigating the slayings said today that he also thought that they had been committed by members of the armed forces.
They were wearing camouflage uniforms, said the 44-year-old witness, Lucia Barrera de Schoena,
in a sworn statement shown to reporters by the judge, Ricardo A. Zamora.
Mrs. Barrera, who is now in the United States under the protection of the FBI after giving her deposition here,
added that the uniforms were identical to ones she had frequently seen on soldiers in the street.
Judge Zamora said, this was yesterday actually, that he had not received any information to contradict the widespread assumption
that the slayings were carried out by members of the military or people linked to the armed forces.
It's logical, he said in a 20-minute interview in his office.
He noted that the killers were able to travel during a dusk-to-dawn curfew that is strictly enforced by the armed forces,
and that army units surrounded the area at the time of the slayings.
It probably was members of the military.
But I can't discount any possibility, said the judge, who said he had been a close friend and student of one of the priests.
The six priests, who were among the most eloquent supporters of a negotiated settlement to the decade-old civil war,
were slain on November 16th at the University of Central America on the edge of the capital during a rebel offensive.
I don't think we really need to hear much more to get the point across.
That article in yesterday's New York Times pretty much says it all.
There is little doubt that the armed forces were behind that particular slaying.
And you know what's interesting, what gets me the most,
if you were listening to the radios, TVs, what have you, reading the newspapers only a week ago,
you may have seen the reports of those rebel terrorists who took over the hotel.
You know, they actually had the nerve, they had the gall to go in there and hold Americans hostage.
I mean, it was the Isla Tola all over again.
I mean, are Americans going to just sit still and take this kind of garbage?
Are we going to just allow these dirty foreigners to get away with these deeds, even if it's in their own home countries?
Boy, I mean, talk about riling people up.
Talk about getting everybody in a patriotic fervor.
Boy, those nasty rebels.
Now, it didn't matter that the people they were keeping an eye on, let's say, in the hotel,
were Green Berets, you know, military people in themselves, military people in their own country.
Now, you know, imagine, imagine, if you will, I mean, this is almost impossible to imagine, I realize,
but imagine, say, a bunch of, well, alright, let's say Libyans, what the hell.
Let's say a bunch of Libyans were here in New York, a bunch of Libyans with guns and things like that, right?
Like guns and M16s, whatever you carry with you when you're a military person.
They were just sitting in the Penta Hotel, okay?
Across the street here downtown Manhattan, sitting in the Penta Hotel with their, you know, machetes and guns and knives,
whatever they have, you know, talking all their military talk about how they were going to make this country safe for Libyan interests.
And then a bunch of our boys went in there and decided to run the check-in process for a little while.
You know, answer the phones and, you know, call taxis for people and just sort of run the hotel for a little while.
Well, that's kind of a similar type of a thing to what happened down in El Salvador last week.
There were no actual hostage-taking incidents.
Guns were not held to people's heads.
And, you know, it wasn't what it was played out to be.
And even if it was, even if it was, for God's sake, look at what we're dealing with here.
It's a war, you know?
These things happen in a war.
And for us to get so high and mighty about this, when we're the ones that have sent in the people in the first place that keep this war going,
we get upset when they, you know, when people say,
hey, you know, we don't like you all that much and maybe we'll hit you or something.
It's only been two weeks.
Two weeks since the Jesuit priests were murdered.
And the story was buried before their bodies were.
Now, whose fault is this?
Is it our media?
Is it our government?
Or is it maybe ourselves?
Maybe it's the fact that we just don't listen.
We don't look.
We don't learn.
We don't have links to the past.
We don't say, hey, only about 20 years ago this same garbage was going on.
Why don't we look at the parallels and see, you know, how maybe they interrelate
and maybe we can learn from our mistakes in the past and not repeat them again.
You know, be kind of nice.
Good way to start the 90s.
Well, folks, I know there's a bunch of people that are very dedicated.
I've seen them.
In fact, if I can find the little piece of paper here that I clipped from last week's paper
about the demonstrators in Times Square.
Oh, it's all the way over here.
Here it is.
200, excuse me, 250 demonstrators protesting United States involvement in El Salvador briefly
blocked the streets south of Times Square yesterday, snarling traffic during the evening rush hour,
carrying signs and chanting anti-war slogans.
They broke through a cordon of police who had tried to confine their march to the sidewalk.
About 75 police officers, many on motor scooters or in patrol cars,
formed a ring around the marchers, preventing them from moving south on Broadway.
The protesters then sat down in the street.
And after several tense minutes of negotiations with police officers,
the demonstrators returned to the sidewalk and marched peacefully
to the Chrysler building on 42nd Street where Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan has an office.
The New York Committee, in solidarity with the people of El Salvador, organized the protest.
Well, apart from the fact that these three paragraphs in the paper were the only real mention of this event,
250 people in the city of New York City, only 250 people feel strongly enough about the killing that's going on in El Salvador
to get out there and just march a little bit, let alone, you know, lie down in front of doors or participate in civil disobedience or something like that.
But, I mean, you know, we're sponsoring things.
I'm not going to say that the U.S. government went in there with the intention of killing six Jesuit priests.
But, indirectly, we're every bit as responsible as the people that pulled the triggers.
Because we're setting it up. We're setting it up in such a way that these things are just going to keep happening.
It's really sad.
Now, I understand that there's going to be some kind of a demonstration in the city on Saturday
against U.S. involvement in El Salvador.
And if you feel strongly at all, and even if you just have doubts, learn something by then, and, you know, maybe you'll be persuaded to take part in it.
I don't have the full details. I'm in the process of trying to get the full details.
And if you have some details, please call in with them, and we will spread them around.
We've got to do better than 250 people protesting a policy like this that allows a big, huge government like the United States government to go into a tiny country like El Salvador.
And it would be unfair to say that we caused the hell that's going on there, but we certainly are allowing it to continue.
Our number is 279-3400. We'll be taking your phone calls.
It's something that, you know, I've always felt something about this issue, but it wasn't until the last few weeks.
And it was a couple of things.
It was the renewed fighting, obviously, that brought El Salvador back into the headlines, you know, at all.
You know, for a while there, it wasn't even in the headlines.
You know, where did it go? Where did the country go?
It's still down there. You know, there's still people living in fear, just like, you know, in Lebanon.
But it was recently that the fighting and the killing started again, the horrors and the atrocities, so that's going to sell some newspapers so you read about it again.
Unless you listen to a station like this, then you might hear about it a little bit more.
But it wasn't just that. It was also the events taking place in Eastern Europe that got me thinking so much about what people can do when they set their minds to it.
You know, when they say, enough already. We're not going to take this garbage.
You know, we're going to go into the street, not just once, but every single day until there's a change, until something happens.
Now, I was part of the March in Washington this spring for abortion rights, and that was incredible, to say the least.
I believe we had about 500,000 people there, half a million people in Washington, D.C., the largest rally ever, from what I understand.
And it was good, it was, you know, rejuvenating to be a part of that, but folks, we all went home on Monday.
You know, we were there on Sunday, and we all went back on Monday, and that was it.
Now, imagine if 500,000 people had marched in Washington, D.C., every damn day until something was done.
I mean, they're doing that in Prague right now, at this very moment.
There's probably a march going on in Prague of a couple of hundred thousand people.
I mean, there was an incredible general strike yesterday, which was incredibly successful.
And there's a lot less people in Czechoslovakia than there are in the United States.
The thing that it boils down to is the fact that we aren't focused enough.
We're just not caring enough about this one particular issue.
And perhaps that's the problem.
Perhaps there are too many issues to think about, and we don't know where to focus our attention.
Well, folks, I think this El Salvador policy is a good starting point.
Let's wipe out that policy and take it from there because, you know, justice is something that you've got to fight for.
And you've got to argue for it.
And you've just got to keep going and keep pushing until something happens, until something changes.
It's never easy.
I mean, here we don't really have to worry about putting our lives on the line.
Maybe we'll spend a night or two in jail or something like that.
But in other countries, in Eastern Europe, in Asia, you never really know what's going to happen.
And when the victories are won over there, they mean an awful lot.
And the people have an incredible spirit.
And I think what's going to come out of all this is perhaps, regrettably, democracy will be cherished more in other countries than it is here.
Because we've grown complacent.
We don't really think that there's anything to care about or to fight for or to worry about.
We're happy.
We've got our McDonald's.
We've got our HBO.
We've got our MTV.
And the battle is won.
Well, folks, I don't think so.
I think the battle is being lost every day that we don't say something.
Every day that we just go to work and worry about our own petty concerns.
Not to say that our concerns are trivial or meaningless, but there's a bigger picture, the picture of humanity.
You know, the people you pass by in the street every day, we all have a common link.
And that common link extends all throughout the globe.
And we've got to be a part of that.
Whether it's caring for the environment, caring for what we're doing to some poor people some thousands of miles away or even hundreds of miles away, we've got to be aware of what's going on.
Our number is 279-3400.
I'd like to hear what people up at this time of night have to think.
My name's Emmanuel Goldstein.
I'm filling in for Tom Whisker tonight and for the next two weeks after that.
And let's hear what you folks have to say.
279-3400.
Good evening.
Hi.
Go ahead.
Thanks a lot for doing the program on this subject.
I agree with you.
It's really crucial.
And I also agree that the activist response to U.S. intervention in El Salvador has not at all been adequate in New York City.
Around the country there's been dozens of demonstrations, some of them ranging up to 3,000 and 4,000 people in different cities.
And so the demonstration this Saturday is called by a broad coalition of peace groups.
And I do have the information on it.
And it's a really, really important time for people to do a lot of outreach to make this the biggest thing yet to raise a loud voice about what's happening there.
It starts at 11 a.m. at the Times Square recruiting station.
And there will be a brief rally there and then it will be marching down later towards Union Square.
I don't know exactly what time it will leave, but it will be going on for several hours.
And besides the demonstration Saturday, there is also going to be a rally and a civil disobedience on Monday morning at the Federal Building downtown.
And that will start at 8 a.m.
And I believe it's Broadway and Reed Street.
I'm sorry, what day is that?
Is that the same day?
No, that's Monday.
That's Monday.
Okay.
And that's the civil disobedience.
And that will be taking place where again?
At the Federal Building, which is at Broadway and Dwayne Street at 8 a.m.
Is this the biggest rally scheduled so far?
Yes, this is the biggest one in New York City.
And it's been endorsed by dozens of groups.
And hopefully there will be more follow-up activities after that.
But this is the first step to really broadening out the protests.
Any estimate on how many people are expected?
Not really.
It's always hard to predict in advance, but we're really hoping it will be in the thousands.
More than 250?
Definitely.
No, there's no question about that.
I mean, because a lot of organizations are involved in building for this.
And I could give out a phone number for more information.
People would like that.
Okay.
Well, that could be very helpful.
Go ahead.
Okay.
It's 4-3-1-9-2-5-1.
That's 2-1-2.
Okay.
You want to give it one more time?
Sure.
4-3-1-9-2-5-1.
And that's a number for which?
That's the...
Well, that's actually the Office of CISBES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People
of El Salvador, which initiated this coalition, which is called the Emergency Coalition for
Peace in El Salvador.
And those are the folks that, of course, got investigated by the FBI.
That's right.
For their patriotism.
That's another thing I think that we should really be outraged at.
Both what happened to CISBES, how long ago was that?
A year or so?
Two years?
Revealed about a year and a half ago, because of CISBES and the Center for Constitutional Rights
pressing the issue and agitating to get their files under the Freedom of Information Act,
which took a lawsuit for them to get that.
But, of course, the surveillance had been going on, at least according to the documents,
since the establishment of CISBES in 1980.
And although the FBI is now claiming that this is a thing of the past,
and they've cleaned up their act,
it's quite clear that the whole Central America Solidarity Movement
still continues to fall under surveillance and disruption.
Well, and let's not also forget, you know, if this is claimed to be something in the past,
then how come the exact same thing just happened to the librarians that raised a fuss
over the FBI's proposal for librarians to work with them
to try to find people that are reading things that they shouldn't be reading,
or perhaps people with foreign-sounding last names that are reading things
that could be harmful to this country.
Some librarians objected to that, and a case was opened on each and every one of them.
It's not something that's in the past.
Right. Absolutely.
It's an ongoing thing.
All right, thank you, sir, for calling.
Thanks for passing on that information,
and let's hope that there's something maybe reported in Prague
that hundreds of thousands of people massed in the streets of New York
to protest something that's unfair.
Thanks for calling.
279-3400.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Hello.
Go ahead. You're on.
Good.
I would like to say that I concur with you entirely, or almost entirely.
I want to just go and say to you that I was at rallies.
I've been to the Mandela rally a year ago, and the recent one,
to the Martin Luther King birthday rally,
to the homelessness and housing rallies where we met at the Coliseum,
and we went across 57th Street.
That's three times, you know, in three years.
To the AIDS rally.
To the one for the tree that was cut down where they had this giant redwood tree at the UN.
To the Namibian rally.
To the Abbie Hoffman rally at Bleecker Street Cinema when he had just died.
Okay, so apart from saying that there are a lot of rallies.
About the tuition.
Okay.
At the Rainbow rally, again, I want to just say that there are people who go to these rallies.
I did miss the Salvadorian one.
I must admit that.
You know what I mean?
For the record.
I did miss that one.
I wanted to get there.
We all missed it.
If we blinked, we missed it.
That's the problem.
What?
If you blinked, you could have missed it.
That's the whole problem.
But the point is that at all these rallies, how shall I say, except the housing one,
the housing one had at the last one where we went across 57th Street around 7,000 or 10,000 people.
But when you stop to think of the millions of people in New York City, you know, you say to yourself,
well, it would be nice if there were a million people there.
WBAI, which if it had a million subscribers, could amass $3 million.
You see what I mean?
If each person contributed just $3.
Now, if 3 million New Yorkers gave a dollar, they could achieve, you know, $3 million monies to work with, you know what I mean?
Bob Bass made this point at one time.
Okay.
But, I mean, you obviously know the importance of WBAI.
I know the importance of WBAI.
But what we're talking here with the policy in El Salvador, we're talking about life and death.
We're talking about something that's grossly unfair and is very likely to reach the stage of the Vietnam War if it continues unchecked.
Well, let me say this.
This is low-intensity warfare, but it is another Vietnam.
The whole world is another Vietnam.
How the United States of America could have a person, if they had a choice between Mr. Bush and myself, they should have chosen me.
If New York City had a choice between Mr. Dinkins or Mr. Koch or me, they should have chosen me.
But the world, in a sense, it's like Murphy's Law, where the good is rejected, but the less good is highly acceptable.
Do you see my point?
This is one of the tragedies of the human condition.
Hello?
Yeah, I see your point.
I would like to just continue.
You may have heard Carletta's show.
But I want you to know something, that my crying out against the restraint of a person, if he so or she so desired as an author, to mention the price of a book, what has happened to me on this station amongst supposedly civilized and sensitive audience?
Um, now, okay, that's...
This happening in Salvador is no different than, I have actually been personally told by Bob Fass that he would break my jaw and that he would eliminate me.
Okay, I think we're strained just a slight bit from the subject here.
279-3400 is our telephone number.
Good evening.
279-3400 is...
Oh, that's me, but hopefully there's another person there.
Hi.
Yeah, go ahead.
Uh, it's delay.
It's the wonderful world of delay, yes.
Hi, good evening, Mr. Golsan.
I've heard your show once before.
I really admired it.
And I just want to know also, are you on the air ever, aside from Mr. West's show?
Uh, well, I'll be filling in, uh, two more times after this, at this time slot.
And, uh, after that, uh, only, uh, only God knows what I'll be doing.
But I'll be doing something.
I just wanted to say, you know, um, I'm against the United States getting involved in El Salvador.
But I just wanted to correct you on one thing when you just compared it to Libya.
It's totally different.
Uh, one is the government of El Salvador, whether we like it or not, I don't like it,
was elected.
And two, they invited us to help there as military advisors.
I personally do not think we ought to get involved militarily in El Salvador, especially since
the, um, Iron Curtain has gone down.
If there was an Iron Curtain there and they were being helped clandestinely through the
Russians, I would be the number one for defending, you know, the Monroe Daction.
But I don't think communism at this point or leftists is a big threat in El Salvador to
us, even if they got elected.
And I'm very nervous that we're going to get involved there.
And I mean, that we're going to get much heavier involved.
And I personally think that now's the chance we can cut down our military budget and get
back to the days prior to before we were the world's policemen.
And, you know, if we have a CIA, they can be a listening device, not an active CIA going
into different countries and doing things just to listen to see, to protect us in case
something happens.
Something happens.
So we should have ears.
Yeah.
You know, I, I sense a kind of a, a, a dismay among many, uh, many people with all this
glass nost and, uh, democratization in Eastern Europe.
It's, it's, wait, wait a minute.
Where are you guys going?
Come back here.
We still got some fighting to do.
And I, I saw a cartoon in, um, in the, I think it was the New York Times last Sunday,
uh, saying we have to stay in El Salvador.
It's one of the few places left where we can fight communism.
Well, human nature does not like change.
And, you know, most humans do not like change.
You have some people, and it's good to have some of these people, like, for instance,
Dan Quell.
He is very pessimistic.
I mean, it's not, and it's good to have someone like him in the, in the administration
to keep things moderate, you know, because now Bush was big with glasses.
I think that's good.
I think it's good.
But you need the other side of the point of view, like, uh, Madison, James Madison
always said you need both sides of the equation for an even-handed policy.
But another thing is, I'm, I'm, I'm, the reason why I haven't marched with El Salvador,
I'm, I'm basically, um, uh, libertarian conservative.
And, um, I, with these protesters, some of these protesters, um, I feel very uncomfortable
with.
For instance, we were at a cocktail party.
Um, this has, this had to do with AIDS.
Um, I have delivered meals at one time every day to AIDS patients.
But, um, the, we had these protesters supposed to act up.
I don't know if you ever heard of him.
Oh, yes, certainly.
And we were at a fundraiser for George Bush.
And they came in, and they just started raising hell and screaming.
But, uh, you know, I mean, I respect it.
But, sir, sir, that, that's democracy.
Oh, yeah.
That's what happens.
It gets messy.
The thing is, it actually gave everyone at the party a laugh.
But when you looked at these people, I wouldn't want to sit there.
And many of these people might be at the El Salvador rally, too.
You know, they had, like, bleach blonde hair, and they were, like, spooky-looking people.
They actually hurt their cause.
Yeah, but, but, sir, I mean, look at, look at New York City.
Do you live in New York?
Okay.
Look at all the people in New York.
There's some people that you probably don't want to hang out with.
Yeah, that doesn't keep you from coming into the city.
This is bigger than, than the personalities that are, that you may see there.
Yeah, you're not going to agree with everybody, and every movement has, has idiots.
People that, that follow for, for no reason other than to be popular, that don't know what
they're talking about.
No movement is, uh, is, is immune from that.
So, that's, that's no reason not to be a part of it.
If you believe in something, be there, and, and forget everybody else.
Be there for yourself.
But I find a lot of these movements, I mean, I love America, for instance.
Um, if I were to protest, I'd be protesting not out of a hate for America and things like
that, I mean.
Of course not.
I mean, I'd be doing out of love, almost like a, a parent, not hitting a child, but almost
like, um, I mean, it's my patriotic duty.
And, and our founding fathers would be dumbfounded that we're getting involved in so many, uh.
Of course they would.
And, and, and what's, what's annoying is the fact that, uh, uh, that the people who support
this policy say that it's the patriotic thing to do, and they've got, you know, the flag
behind them.
And, um, you know, in Prague over the last couple of days, the one thing that you saw
on the streets, uh, almost as much as you saw the people was the Czechoslovakian flag.
And, uh, that, that is so right.
I mean, that, that makes so much sense.
It's the people, uh, saying something.
They are the flag.
If anything is a symbol, it's that.
And any mass movement, any movement where, where people are, are calling for something
in this country deserves the flag behind it.
Well, you gotta remember something.
In this country, the reason why we're so complacent is because we've had democracy.
We've adjusted to it.
And a lot of these countries, they go too fast.
For instance, France, the 1700s went very fast.
And John Adams was like, yo, wait a minute, slow down.
This is not such a great thing for them over there.
Because the way they handle it, they went too quickly into it.
We always went into it very slowly.
And the thing is, um, uh, you know, I'm very scared of big government in any way.
I mean, I think that when, I mean, I disagree with George Bush on his El Salvador policy.
But I think he means, well, I disagree with George Bush on his drug policy.
I mean, I basically believe in a phased in legalization of drugs.
And George Bush doesn't.
I mean, he believes in a very harsh policy.
But I think deep down in his heart, he thinks he's doing the right thing.
A lot of people, especially at these rallies, think they're purposely doing it like clandestine.
They're doing it like clandestinely and for evil motives.
I don't think that.
I just think that they, they're looking at it from a totally different angle.
Well, you know, another thing that everybody seems to assume, uh, first of all, that, uh, that these people are completely, uh, apart from the rest of the world.
That they're superstars.
And that there's no way that, that the average person can ever, uh, be in contact with these people or anything like that.
That's, you know, that's, that's a sickness.
But the other thing that, um, that folks seem to think is that the, the politicians and the leaders of governments are, you know, vastly intelligent people that know exactly what, uh, what to do in a, in a crisis.
You know, to a degree that may be true, but, uh, they're really, they're not smarter than a lot of us.
Uh, they just know what it is they want to accomplish and they have the means to do it.
And that's, uh, you know, that's what sets them apart.
And unfortunately it's us that sets them apart more than they are.
No, every president except for Gerald Ford since Herbert Hoover.
I'm sorry, say that again?
Every president except Gerald Ford, um, except since Herbert Hoover's time has been very distant from the people.
I mean, cause, and the reason why security reasons for, uh, the, uh, secret service, keep them away.
Prior to Herbert Hoover, people were able to go over to the president and, you know, he was, he was with every day the common man.
The reason why Ford was such a good president because he was in Congress, he was elevated to the presidency so quickly.
Right. But I've seen, I've seen things over the last few weeks with, with Gorbachev, with Egon Krenz, where people are shouting at them and he's responding.
Uh, recently in Chicago, somebody shouted a question about the El Salvador policy to George Bush and they were ushered out of the room.
That's what I'm trying to say is that you can, there's difference in shouting and sitting down and chatting with Lincoln.
Except you can't sit down and chat. They won't let you do that. You see?
That's what I'm saying. That's very bad. This is what's the destruction of the president.
And this is what killed Lyndon Johnson. And this is what killed a lot of presidents and Nixon, especially.
But even is that it's become so imperial, even people who like, let's say, I happen to like Bush, but I mean, I could not go over to George Bush.
There'd be a secret service. I mean, even to talk with him, chat with him on a friendly type basis, not even on a hostile basis.
I think it's very damaging to him himself because he doesn't get the feel of the common man.
And that's what I was trying to say is that. Yeah, that that president since Herbert Hoover, I mean, the sides of Ford, they've never had interaction really with the common man.
They're always with their advisers or planned scheduled group of people. I think that's very dangerous.
That certainly is, especially. I mean, it's it's it happens to to any celebrity.
I mean, I know celebrities that have complained vigorously of of not being able to walk down the street.
And it's really a sad thing. But when you have somebody in a position of power, it becomes dangerous because that person thinks they know what we want.
And perhaps they don't. Well, George Washington was a celebrity in his day, believe me.
And people still would. I mean, that was a problem. People used to walk into his house and just sit there and start talking to him.
And people still he would walk down the street and people would be able to approach him.
I mean, this is I mean, and these people were not, you know, peasant farmers. These were aristocratic people, but they still touch and they spoke with the common man.
I mean, that is very. And, you know, you don't know what to do because for security reasons, you have to keep people away from the president.
So you don't know. It's like a catch 22.
But why why in God's name can't we have a real debate when it's when it's election time?
We have to have this this structured garbage that where the two candidates don't even talk to each other.
You know, at least give us that.
I have to agree with you. I mean, like the this would want to do more local with the Giuliani and Dick's debate.
I mean, Giuliani, I was very upset with Giuliani.
I mean, Julia, true, Dinkins had a lot of negative stuff.
But Giuliani, I felt, should have concentrated on his positive instead of concentrating so much on the negative.
And you bring up the negative, fine, but also bring up the positive with the Bush campaign.
I mean, I mean, I supported Bush. I mean, I still support Bush.
But I think that a lot of things lacking in Bush and anyone, whether it was Bush or Dukakis,
is because they're so far removed from the people.
You know, human being, if I were to come over and shout at you something like those people in El Salvador,
even if you're correct, just the approach of it is very alarming.
That's human nature. So I can understand the president's reaction to it, even though I disagree with his ideas.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
Yeah, I do. But still, I sense more suppression of ideas here than in other places,
in other countries where things are happening now, where there is change.
If somebody were to shout out a question, they might be told to be quiet.
But the question would be answered here.
The person is ushered out. The president makes some kind of a joke.
And that's it. It's all over. And everybody laughs and applause and feels patriotic.
Well, that's for a momentary purpose, those countries in Eastern Europe.
I mean, I don't know in the long term what's going to happen with them.
I mean, you know, because they might move so rapid that they might move back again.
Right. But you see, they're at the crest of something exciting, which we were once at.
And it's at times like that that the government is closest to the people,
whether it's the people throwing them out or the people ushering them in.
There's contact there. And you have to somehow preserve that contact.
Oh, I agree. And I think that this country, I mean, we might lose it, might ebbed down, but it'll come back.
I mean, if you look at the from the 40s and then in the 60s, it was a movement.
I mean, necessarily, I don't know. I was too young until I'm 26.
I don't know if I would have agreed at the time what these people in the 60s did.
Now, in hindsight, of course, I think many of what these so-called radical hippies,
many of them had ideas that were, believe it or not, very similar to our founding fathers,
which might surprise a lot of people if there were some ideas that were.
But, you know, that movement was, you know, that movement came up that was a homespun idea.
It was a, you know, a grassroots movement in the 60s.
So here you had a very complacent 1950s society.
You even had McCarthyism, which almost destroyed our democracy and our whole form of government.
And then on top, then the 60s came.
So I think Americans do fight it off. Do you know what I'm saying?
I think so. Well, you're saying that eventually things will work themselves out.
Right.
But I think it's not quite that simple if we don't take an active role.
In other words, we don't do things like demonstrate against something that we think is unfair.
And, you know, know why that we're demonstrating.
Not just go because it's the thing to do, but think about it.
Sit down, think about it a little bit, and say, you know, this is not right.
Look at the papers. Read the papers.
I mean, I can't tell you how many people I know that take pride in saying, you know, it's been two weeks since I've read a newspaper.
I don't even know what's going on in the world.
It's like, how can you be proud of something like that?
Only in America do I see things like this, especially in a country that has such an effect on the rest of the world.
The rest of the world looks to us for...
These men who took the time, and you have that in every society, especially in democratic society.
I mean, the Greeks forced their people to participate, and that's one of the reasons they downfall was just too much.
Well, apathy will do it to you every time.
Well, apathy, but there's still enough people, I think, to arouse.
And I think that when things were like with the whole Milai incident, that aroused people's anger.
I mean, I know this from history, not from being there at the time.
And, you know, Nixon did pardon the man, but, I mean, that aroused anger.
As well it should.
It was a very isolated incident to what happened in Nazi Germany, and we did not allow it.
See, what I sense here today is we must avoid talking about things that will get us into arguments.
And I say, why? Why avoid these things?
Why not plunge right into an argument and know what it is we're arguing for and discuss things?
You know, we don't discuss things enough here.
And there are so many things happening, and we really have to take a stand on some of these things.
That's the problem when you have a large government.
I mean, I'm not just talking about this National Endowment for the Arts.
Take that for an example.
Sure.
Now, I don't like when it was first being proposed, most people, most moderate to conservative people said,
We don't want it.
And the reason why we don't want this is because then the government is going to tell people how to do art.
Then there's only going to be moderate art.
And believe it or not, it so happens that it's the conservative Republicans.
I wouldn't even say conservative.
I would say fascistic Republicans, because Jesse Helms is not your typical Republican who's put these sanctions on the National Endowment.
And when you take things from the government like that, they, in a sense, have a right to tell you what to do.
Maybe that's why I'm against all these government programs.
Governments have grown too big.
In emergencies, you do need government to get big.
But right now, we don't need such a large government.
That's why they have such control over the media and things like that.
The media is not as investigated enough also.
Well, that's certainly true.
And I think they certainly should be.
Listen, sir, I'm going to try to get on to some more calls.
Have a good night and keep up the good work.
I hope you get your own programs.
Okay, thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
Our number is 279-3400.
And, you know, I was thinking the other day of all the things that we've been accusing the Eastern European governments of doing.
And I'm not, you know, I'm not America bashing here.
This is just objective thinking.
And, you know, if your reaction is to say that somebody who comes up with these thoughts is anti-American,
and I think you should think about just what is America, and why it is that we can't question the values and what's being done.
And perhaps if you automatically assume that someone who criticizes is anti-American, perhaps that's the most subtle form of anti-Americanism in itself.
In any event, what I was thinking was sort of a collection of all the different things that we used to accuse the Soviets of doing.
Things like shutting people up all the time, not allowing debates.
Well, we've heard it from the President.
There will be no more debates.
And things like sending up secretive space missions.
Well, now we do that too.
You know, we send up these space shuttles.
We don't tell anybody when they're going up.
We have no media coverage.
At least, not very good media coverage.
And all these other things.
Controlling of the art, like the gentleman on the phone just mentioned.
Actually cutting off funds to an art exhibit because it was, quote, too political.
As if politics has no place in the art world.
Little things like that.
Little steps.
You know, little symptoms of a society that looks ever more, with ever increasing hostility towards any form of dissent.
And here we see sort of a flip-flop, you know.
We see change.
We see dialogue over there.
And here, silence.
It's kind of scary.
279-3400.
Good morning.
Hello?
Yeah.
Did I wake you up?
Is this WBA?
Yes, it is.
You're on.
Okay.
Are you there?
Yeah, go ahead.
Okay.
The thing that I wanted to talk about is how incredibly interesting the coverage on Eastern Europe has been in the major media.
It used to be when, say, during the Brezhnevere, when it seemed like there was no hope for positive change in authoritarian socialist countries.
The standard line is these countries are totalitarian.
They're incapable of winning positive change short of a violent revolution.
The Gene Kirkpatrick line.
Mm-hmm.
And now that the countries are going through positive change, the established media in this country only says, this means that communism doesn't work.
But they don't, it seems like they purposely are trying to avoid what the leaders of those opposition movements believe in what they're about.
For instance, in East Germany, there were some very interesting articles in the Village Voice about the oppositionists, such as, you know, the New Foreign Party.
Well, not the New Foreign Movement, rather than the New Foreign Party.
It's not a political party.
And it appears that the major thrust of the oppositionists in East Germany is really towards a democratic, humane form of socialism.
It's not towards a capitalistic economy.
As a matter of fact, the leaders of the opposition in East Germany wrote some sort of manifesto.
And in the manifesto, they actually criticized Hungarian steps towards a market economy, saying that it's really promoted in egalitarianism, and it was not fair to the poorer people in Hungary.
And it's just kind of interesting how the media is handling it.
Well, you know, you might find this interesting, the fact that there has been a lot of coverage of things like the scaling of the Berlin Wall and the events in Prague.
But I read someplace where the actual ratings for that particular news coverage were the lowest ever, as if the people in this country couldn't care less about what was going on over there.
And I found that kind of dismaying, too, you know?
I don't know why it should be so dismaying.
I mean, in regards to oppression going on in the world, the oppression of people in Eastern Europe compares nothing to the oppression of people living in capitalist countries in the Third World.
Yeah, well, I mean...
It's just absolutely no comparison.
You see, I think that phrase would probably turn off people that are pro-capitalist, but I don't see why it should, because it's to everyone's advantage who lives in a capitalist society to see that it works somehow.
You know?
If you're a capitalist, and there's oppression going on because of capitalism someplace, that should affect you, and you should want to change that.
And that's what I think is happening in all kinds of places all over the world.
Yeah, but, you know, it's very questionable whether capitalism in the undeveloped countries really can do much for the average citizen in improving their lives.
I mean, there's some examples that are used, such as South Korea.
I don't really know much about the standard of living in South Korea, but, you know, some of the examples that the establishment has previously used in this country as kind of models for development of Third World countries such as Brazil,
it ends up, even though Brazil had very high economic growth, there's an incredible amount of poverty and malnutrition in the country.
Cuba, on the other hand, for all its flaws, and I'm certainly not a defender of the authoritarian brand of socialism there,
I think in many ways it may have been imposed by the unnecessarily hostility on the part of the most powerful military country in the world, the United States.
It seems to have the highest standard of living in Latin America, if you're judging standard of living.
Right.
Well, they have a higher standard of living at the expense of some things, which some people would say is intolerable, some people would say is a necessary trade-off.
Now, I think, you know, we're making a big mistake here if we just watch all these changes taking place in Eastern Europe and say,
hey, you know, they're taking on Western ways, they're embracing democratic reforms, without us taking a good hard look at our own system and saying,
well, maybe there's something we can learn from what they tried to do or what they are trying to do now.
And, you know, the people there have no objection to taking on ways that are alien to their society, you know, taking on capitalist type of means of doing things or democratic reforms, that kind of thing.
But if you say to anybody here, let's try, you know, a socialist way of dealing with this particular problem to see how that works.
It's, oh, my God, no, no, no, no, socialism, communism, oh, it's horrible.
You know, we're the most powerful country in the world.
Why are we so scared of trying out something in a slightly different way, you know?
And that's what we have to get across is that fear, that horrible fear of change, fear of anything different,
which is the basis of any kind of hatred and nationalism, all that nasty stuff, you know?
The thing about democracy is it's a very nebulous and vague term.
However, democracy, whatever that means exactly, there doesn't seem to be any real conflict or contradiction between socialism and democracy.
Just as capitalism can exist in many different forms, there could be authoritarian capitalism, as certainly practiced many places in the world,
such as El Salvador, and it was practiced in Nazi Germany, even though some people think that was a socialist economy,
but it was essentially a capitalistic economy.
Nazis really did, in essence, save German capitalism.
And, you know, capitalism before these, you know, what Marxists would call the bourgeois revolution, such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, certainly had dictatorial governments.
So, you know, just as capitalism can exist, you know, with varying governmental forms, so can socialism.
It's just, I think socialism is a very young system, and it's met with a lot of external resistance from without powerful capitalist countries.
Well, you know, I would even hasten to say that many of the enemies of socialism came from within socialism itself.
You could say, you know, you could say, you know, you could say, you know, the United States has been an enemy of socialism, but I would also say that the oppressors, the Nikolai Ciescescu's, the Leonard Brezhnev's, perhaps, maybe even the Mao Zedong's are actual enemies of socialism,
because they would introduce oppression, totalitarianism type of things that give socialism a bad name and make the people want something else and maybe lose track of what it is that they fought for in the first place.
Anyway, sir, I want to thank you for calling.
We are taking more phone calls at 279-3400.
You're listening to WBAI in New York.
And we're looking at an article here by Robert E. White.
Remember Robert E. White?
I do.
He was the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador from 1977 to 1980.
But what was particularly interesting about him was the fact that he would say all these things about how the United States is really messing things up over there by their policy,
even while he was part of the policy, even while he was part of the United States government representing us in El Salvador.
It was incredible.
I had never seen such a thing, and it was quite a surprise.
But it was no surprise when he got sacked, and he was ambassador from 1977 to 1980.
Right now he's president of the International Center for Development Policy, and perhaps in the coming weeks we'll have him as a guest.
I certainly would hope so.
This is a piece that he had in the Times about a week ago on the opinion page, and I think it bears listening to, because this is somebody that's been there.
This is somebody that obviously knows something about the policy, the country, the people, and where it's all leading.
The history of El Salvador bears consistent witness to the greed and brutality of men who look on compromise as weakness,
and who regard torture and murder as routine, and acceptable methods of coping with dissent.
The failure of U.S. policymakers to press for a negotiated end to the war in El Salvador has placed our country in league with a click of assassins masquerading as an army.
The war in El Salvador entered a new phase last week, actually two weeks ago,
when the left-wing Farabunda Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN,
angered by government rejection of their peace proposals, launched its heaviest offensive of the war.
If revolutionary leaders thought this impressive show of strength would lead quickly to negotiations, they miscalculated.
To the Salvadoran military, the rebel attacks came as a gift,
an opportunity to wipe out not only insurgents, but also priests, labor union organizers, peasant leaders,
and thousands of poor citizens who support change.
On November 16, 1989, armed, uniformed men dragged six Jesuit priests and two servants from their beds.
They tortured the priests for close to an hour, then executed all their captives.
The Catholic university where these priests lived and worked is under 24-hour surveillance by the security forces
and is located in a zone far away from the fighting.
To their credit, both President Alfredo Cristiani and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson
have acknowledged that right-wing forces probably bear responsibility for these barbaric murders.
They never would have made such statements without evidence.
Through its intelligence assets inside the Salvadoran military,
the U.S. Embassy can find out which officers carried out these crimes.
Unless the U.S. reacts strongly,
the lives of all priests, nuns,
and Protestant missionaries who work with the poor of Central America are in jeopardy.
The highly professional U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, William Walker,
misspoke when he stated that whoever killed the Jesuits did the work of the FMLN.
Whoever killed those priests and did the work,
excuse me, whoever killed those priests did the work of the military death squads.
It's the same people who assassinated Archbishop Oscar Arnaufo Romero,
the same who violated and murdered four American churchwomen
and massacred hundreds of priests, nuns, and lay workers.
There is little tolerance inside the ruling Arena Party
and the hard-line military for Mr. Cristiani's commitment to a negotiated solution to the war.
In the sick minds of men, like the former death squad leader Roberto Dabusson,
Mr. Cristiani is only a figurehead.
Arena's 1988 campaign chant tells the story,
Cristiani to the presidency, Dabusson to power.
Day after day, the world watches with horror
as modern engines of war supplied by the U.S.
strafe, bomb, and burn the shanty towns of San Salvador,
maiming and killing thousands of innocent civilians.
They do little damage to the pockets of mobile guerrillas
armed only with handheld weapons.
The government has denied Red Cross' request for a ceasefire to evacuate the wounded.
No civilized people can support such a war
without inflicting substantial moral harm on its own body politic.
The leaders of our nation have never made any plausible case
that U.S. security benefits in any way from this continuing slaughter.
President Bush described the Salvadoran revolutionaries as terrorists
and the Salvadoran government as a democracy.
Wrong on both counts.
The revolutionaries took up arms only after the military and economic elites of El Salvador
had rejected all avenues of peaceful change for more than half a century.
No competent observer doubts that the Salvadoran revolution is homegrown,
authentic, and enjoys wide popular support.
The revolutionaries have made serious proposals for a negotiated end to the conflict.
In response to their well-thought-out peace plan,
the reply was,
the government of El Salvador will not give an inch.
Their demand that the military purge itself of its most notorious abusers of human rights
was derided as absurd, ridiculous, and impossible.
The composition of the armed forces was not negotiable.
A week ago, the House, at the request of Mr. Bush,
rejected efforts to restrict military aid to El Salvador.
The outdated security doctrine that guides Bush administration thinking
demands the subordination of El Salvador's need for social and economic justice
to our supposed national security requirements.
This has meant the establishment of a veneer of democracy in El Salvador
where the armed forces with U.S. acquiescence decide with deadly force
who can and cannot participate in political life.
In El Salvador, the fundamental duty of a democratic government to protect its citizens
has been stood on its head.
People are tortured, disappear, and are killed at the whim of security forces
that enjoy absolute immunity from legal action.
The guerrillas are not trying to shoot their way into power.
They are trying to shoot their way into serious negotiations.
The Salvadoran government would not survive for one month without U.S. support.
If the Bush administration had used this leverage to ensure good-faith discussions,
the tragedies of these last few weeks might never have occurred.
That piece from Robert E. White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.
It's worth thinking about.
Again, there is a rally in New York this Saturday beginning at 11 o'clock
if you think the U.S. policy in El Salvador needs a bit of fixing.
Our phone number is 279-3400.
We'll be right back.
A bullet from the back of a bush
Took Medgar Ever's blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hit out in the dark
He hands set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game
New South politician
Preaches to the poor white man
You got more than the blacks don't complain
You're better than them
You've been born with white skin
They explain
And the Negro's name
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's game
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
The deputy sheriffs
The soldiers
The governors
Get paid
And the marshals
And cops
Get the same
But the poor white man
Is used in the hands
Of them all
Like a tool
He's taught
In his school
From the start
By the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
About the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
From the poverty shacks
He looks from the cracks
To the tracks
And the hoof beats
Pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide beneath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn
In their game
Today Medgar Evers was buried
From the bullet he caught
They're luring him down
As a king
But when the shadowy sun
Sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Piled next to his name
His epitaph plain
Only a pawn
Only a pawn
In their game
Stamped to be the rocky hip
Sting bandit has a turn
Shoot out helicopter crash
Another six-man bond
One in nine million
Lost to play football
Hijacked helicopter
Helped him scale the wall
Took the hill from rivals
Who preyed upon the poor
He don't sell bananas
Wealthy visitors want to score
Reign supreme
The cops say he grew good
Selling drugs to feed the poor
To oxy's Robin Hood
Tourists have an appetite
For gander and cocaine
He escaped just in time
Supply they need to gain
Televised love
Traditional ride
The sound of music
Ricochets the green all night
Hats in the sun
Farming stars scrape on me
Billion dollar penthouse
Some people on the street
Packed in the sun
Shaped by foreign debt
And he's here in the sand
The drunken bandits
Gonna swim
Rebell hear us back
A band of bats is found
At the foot of the hill
The police stand the ground
Spirits those drums pound
Slummers got scraping me
Riverhead songs raked
And there's bodies in the street
And there's bodies in the street
Packed in the sun
Slummers got scraping me
Gold dollar penthouse
And people on the street
Packed in the sun
Shaped by foreign debt
Packed in the sun
Shaped by foreign debt
And he's here in the sand
The drunken bandits
And he's here in the sand
The drunken bandits
Gonna swear
Free monster freedom
A huge thief on the law
Got to take him alive
She ain't murder no more
Bless the little children
Who night long for both shows
Blinded cops warning
Their king is never called
Soaks alive by compassion
Yet crimes are patient
King bandits for president
Or the sound of the nation
King bandits for president
Or the sound of the nation
King bandits for president
Or the sound of the nation
King bandits for president
Or the sound of the nation
Ráveres de rapazes aparentando
De catorze a quinze anos de idade
As vítimas apresentam
Várias percurações de bala
Por todo o corpo
Ou corpo
Desapertando
Sou ex-celest運
Corregedor
Morando o saco de alegave
ель
Oque é que você se pensa
DUNCOR K pong
De catorze a quinze anos de idade
Sou ex-celest運
Corregedor
Morando o saco мелographical
Nascões
Áveres de rapazes aparentando
De quatorze a quinze anos de idade
As vítimas apresentam
Várias percurações de guer véi
I will not agree to another today.
I will not agree to another.
I will not agree to another.
For the world is trouble, and living ain't easy.
The world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
The world is trouble, and living ain't easy.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
Cast away all evil spells, don't they are here when you're letting down in hell.
You've got your troubles and eyes of mine.
Let's work together to make things fun.
You've got to be sure of all things we do, preserve our lives, be pure and true.
The things we feel and see were meant to be.
It's not fulfillment or prophecy.
I said the world is trouble, and living ain't easy.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
The world is trouble, and living ain't easy.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
And after all these things shall come to pass, the end shall not be near.
And after all these things shall come to pass, the end shall not be near.
They've got to be hijacking, kidnapping all over the earth.
Oh yeah.
Hijacking, kidnapping all over the earth.
Oh yeah.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
The world is trouble, and living ain't easy.
I said the world is trouble, you've got to believe it.
Oh yeah.
The whole wide world is trouble.
The whole wide world...
It's all troubled, all messed up, this whole wide world of ours.
That's Dennis Brown here on WBAI in New York.
And we heard from Big Audio Dynamite with the story of the drug bandit of Brazil,
which doesn't really tie into El Salvador blatantly, but I think you can see a few parallels there if you look a little bit.
And that song incidentally was called Samba Drum, and we heard from Bob Dylan up on top.
From the times they are a-changing, and the times are always a-changing.
That's the marvelous thing about it.
And what's even more marvelous is that the time is in our hands.
I mean, it sounds like a, you know, a sickening kind of saying that gets said all the time,
but it's really true, you know.
It's something that we have the ultimate control over.
And right now, you can be a part of things, you can be a part of things at this very moment in time
by simply calling us, 279-3400, and spouting your various rhetoric on the air,
but there'll be no retributions, and that's a promise.
And in the bigger sense, be a part of things on Saturday,
when there'll be a demonstration in New York.
You don't have to be a communist to go.
You don't have to be a socialist to go.
You don't have to be anything to go, except a human being that thinks enough is enough.
Or even a human being that just wants to learn,
and perhaps decide later after talking to a lot of people.
You know, it's an educational experience.
That's what life is supposed to be about.
That's at least what I read in the instructions.
Good evening.
Good evening and good morning.
If you don't address the situation at WBAI, where a station manager is paid a salary to do a job,
and then is not at the station because she's in Asia, Southern Asia, doing a thesis,
hello, if you don't address this as a fundamental issue of American democracy at home,
or your worthwhile conversation about distant things, which aren't so distant,
are not valid, are not worthwhile,
because the thing is, you're allowing an insidious disease to rage and desecrate this very wonderful institution.
Now, Rosemary Reed has paid a salary.
One, she doesn't listen.
She doesn't get tapes of what's going on.
The situations that have occurred to me as a result of my concern for freedom of speech,
where the price, which was a fact, was asked to be denied to the public.
Even Samori Marksman, a wonderful person, I like him very much,
says, oh, we're not going to mention the price of this thing,
and then we're also not going to tape record any material from this discussion of Germany
because it's that way.
And it's simply that way, he said.
And I'm supposed to buy this?
I love radio.
We can just fade people away.
I wish life was like that.
Well, uh, anyway.
Oh, thank you.
He closed the door on the way out, too.
I don't know what's going on out there, folks.
But please, try to stick to the subject.
You know, we're talking about El Salvador.
We're talking about world events.
I don't want to hear about BAI events, you know?
I mean, okay, it's a radio station.
We have all kinds of things going on here.
But I don't know about that right now.
And I don't want to get involved in that right now.
I want to talk about the issue at hand.
And let's stop bickering about these minor little things.
Prices of books, for God's sake.
279-3400.
I guess I should have said it before.
Call up if you have something to say.
Good evening.
Good morning, rather.
How are you?
Okay.
You know, I've been a communist for a long time.
I was about 15.
I'm like 28 now.
And to me, the events in Eastern Europe are consistent with Marxist thesis of the coming
dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering of the state.
You know, so I'm not surprised when I watch those things.
I get rather bored after a while because I just see the historical program working itself
out, which the American media is apparently oblivious to.
What is that historical program?
The historical program of Marxist thesis of the coming dictatorship of the proletariat
after a period of socialism.
Okay.
I mean, I know that, but can you translate that into, you know, common talk here so that
what does that specifically mean in the 20th century?
Specifically, it means that the events that we see from Poland to Czechoslovakia are the
actual facts of Marxist predictions, which he wrote in the Communist Manifestos and various
other texts, which if people care to read, they will more or less get world events of
the future written at some point in the late 19th century and thereabouts.
And also, I guess I wanted to say that I wanted to project further into the United States.
And I wanted to ask your feeling about the idea of, in the coming decade, you know, a mass
consensus in the United States to overthrow the government, taking into account historical
trends, and, you know, do you feel that, you know, given that kind of event, there would
be a consequent backlash to a super-authoritarianism, which is only hinted at now by extreme conservatism.
And the reason why I say these things is because when I started listening to you, two phrases
occurred to me.
One was the old line that history repeats itself, and the second was the Marxist line that those
who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.
So if we learn our history, we don't have to repeat it, but we would then be in a position
to know what was coming.
Well, you know, I think there's a key there.
I think that if we don't take an active interest in the past, and if we don't somehow link with
the past, either through reading, which is something that certainly has gone down the
tubes over the last couple of decades in this country, or by studying history, by seeing
the parallels, by seeing how going into one particular episode in history is very similar
to what we're doing in the present, and how, you know, things could repeat themselves.
If we don't do that, then, in fact, we are doomed to go through the same thing over and
over again.
And I'll say this, it's fascinating to watch the unfolding events overseas, but at the
same time, it's disturbing, because we're sort of backing away from the precipice of World
War III, of nuclear annihilation and everything like that.
That's depressing?
No, that's not depressing at all.
But what's depressing is, or, you know, worthy of some concern, is the fact that we're also
backing away from what brought us there in the first place.
And I'm just wondering, maybe in 20 years, when we've forgotten the danger, the fear of
living in the nuclear age, some minor thing could spark it all over again, and we'll just
jump into it perhaps even more quickly without realizing what it was that we learned.
If we don't keep up with the past, in other words, if the future generations are as disinterested
in us as we are in the past generations, what will they learn from this?
Absolutely nothing.
And we won't have accomplished anything.
So that's why we can't break that link with the past, you see.
Well, what strikes me as very interesting is that not very long ago, I was rummaging through
an older friend's filing cabinet, and I came across a political manifesto of the weather
underground.
And I pulled it out and immediately became engrossed, and it was like an alien entity from
outer space.
To my friends, to people that I brought the subject up to, they were like, what are you
talking about?
They thought I was talking about something on cable or anything.
They had no conception of the weather underground.
The weather channel, right?
But if I gorge myself on that kind of information, and people activate their memory of not only
of the 60s, but of history, European history or world history, to whatever distorted sources
they can get it through, there will be a community of souls, as I like to call it.
And that may, you know, the soulless ones are the ones that I would fear, because they're
the ones who would be in power, but they're also the ones who would become disempowered.
I think their fear would paralyze them, but I'm not sure if it would paralyze them to forgive,
or whether it would paralyze them to react.
But if, say, an old man in the White House is weak, and a young man is strong, that old
man will push his red button, because that is the only strength that he has against the
moral weight of the young man.
And if the old man is impotent, perhaps that would also, you know, there's all kinds of
things there.
I could push the red button, too, but he'd have to be a madman.
But it's not inconceivable, you see.
But also, I don't know if one person has that much power, the way things are now.
But certainly, you know, it's dangerous to give that much power to even, you know, 12
people, however many.
Well, if the person, the power of the media, you can give an individual an enormous degree
of power.
Sure.
Yeah, through the media, you can give somebody more power than they ever would have ordinarily,
definitely.
The media can more or less serve as a shield in itself, a suit of armor against public opinion,
or a way to sway public opinion.
Yeah, I mean, the media itself is untouchable.
I mean, you know, people cannot walk up to, I'm not going to pick on anybody in particular,
but, you know, a TV anchorman and tell him what they think.
And, you know, they can't go up to a radio station, except for maybe WBAI, and, you know,
say what's on their minds.
It's untouchable.
You know, you can't reach it.
It's just, it speaks down to you for the most part.
And that's sad.
You know, the average person, and, you know, I'll tell you, to be honest, I don't know
very many average people.
Most of the people that I know are heavily into this kind of thing.
But I'm just, you know, I imagine a mob of millions of people out there that have no
access to any of this stuff.
And they, you know, they just read the paper, they read what's being said to them, but they
don't talk back.
They don't say anything back.
And that's so sad.
That's so scary, because there's nothing more harmful than a public that doesn't react,
that just sort of, the silent majority, I guess, is that old phrase.
Well, there is some harm in a public that merely reacts as well, you know, on the other
hand.
What way?
Like, what they call, yeah, the silent majority, you have to, or just holding it in, not saying
anything, just keeping your eyes closed and hoping that it all goes away.
After a while, you have nothing left but your reaction.
Or not even hoping that it'll go away, just ignoring it altogether and not even knowing
it's there, you know?
Then I guess you just sort of step in it as you go along.
Well, gee.
Well, your show is, I must be honest with you, though.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.


that show puts me to sleep well ever but when i listen to you it's stimulating i hear you have
an open mind and you're talking about the world and you're willing to let other people
who are thinking along completely different tracks just come in and you know you go into
where they're at that's very beautiful that's free speech well what you're doing there's a
there's a time and a place for dangerous ideas the time is until 3 30 and the place is wbai
after you will come some more free thought yeah certainly i mean you know 24 hours a day we try
to present uh present things here and again it's not for everyone i'm sure i'm putting some people
to sleep and uh you know i'm sure i'm making some people bang their heads against the wall and other
people just you know shout out in all kinds of strange tongues uh but that's what it's all about
folks that's that's not just wbai that's that's life that's democracy that's uh what it's like to
be a human being and you know we don't we don't do it enough you're right that's the point i'm
trying to make right okay yeah thanks very much for calling no problem have a good day you too
our number is 279-3400 this is emmanuel goldstein i'm filling in for tom whisker i'll be here for
another hour or so and i'll be back again next week and the week after that too um our number 279-3400
we're talking about uh u.s policy in el salvador and i'd like to know more about the demonstration
on saturday if uh folks are planning to go to that if uh they have any further information on it
or uh other phone numbers you know whatever whatever you can pass along to uh to help out
because i'd love you know it would be so great to see a hundred thousand people march in the streets
of new york and like you know like i said before why stop there you know we march on saturday and we
wake up on sunday and say has anything changed no okay back onto the streets and we do it again
and then we do it on monday okay we miss work who cares we miss or we miss an hour of work
you know is being fired the worst thing in the world to happen or is the knowledge that uh
that your inaction is responsible for things like what happened two weeks ago with with with six
priests murdered i mean you know like i said the u.s government did not go in there and murder six
priests i'm not going to say that but it was the actions we set it up we set it up so that it could
happen had this policy not been in effect that would not have happened something else might have
happened certainly we don't know but i'm saying what is wrong with simply allowing events in a foreign
country to take place in other words if the if the rebels want to take over the country and the rebels
are able to take over the country let them take over the country and if the people are unhappy with
what's going on then they'll march in the streets and they'll get that government out like they did in
eastern europe it's the only way you can possibly do something like that you cannot go into a country
and uh and simply instill what you think the people there want because invariably it's not what they
want they want to be able to decide things for themselves and right now uh i think the majority of
people in el salvador just want to be left alone for the moment and uh to work out their own problems
i don't know i may be wrong but uh that's that's the way i feel and i think uh we need to talk about
it some more 279-3400 good morning hello yes go ahead yes uh the situation in el salvador
is simply irrational there are no rational grounds for what is going on there um the same position
that we take towards cuba that they're the worst enemy that we have makes exactly the same no kind
of sense when you consider that the capitalists us are doing big business with all the so-called
communists around the world so what on earth is the logic for considering that this tiny little
nicaragua uh which has what is it one escalator in the whole country and cuba which is terribly
impoverished what is the reason for considering them mortal enemies when we're doing business with
huge communist neighbors in in in europe in asia well it's it's the age-old thing u.s interests you
know and i say to hell with u.s interests our national interests belong here in the nation where we need
them you know what are the u.s interests what what would hurt us by doing by making friends
with cuba and nicaragua because what would we lose we would gain an enormous trading partner again
cuba cuba was a very big trading partner of the united states first medicines cloth food i mean you
name it uh which are now embargoed as you know uh if we would gain enormously what's there to lose
from this i mean it makes me think that it's just some terrible mind warp there's some you know in
foggy bottom in the state department there's some terrible ancient grudge going on that has to be
settled by this kind of vendetta because practically it makes no sense at all it's you know i don't
want to oversimplify this but it's you can you can draw parallels to the way human beings react among
themselves and uh you know you have somebody just you know stop talking to you for no particular
reason they they think you're a bad person and they won't communicate with you and you know you
may very well be a bad person but the fact that that you stop communicating and and spread all these
vicious rumors and lies and things like that certainly doesn't help the situation at all and to a degree
that's what the u.s government is doing the u.s government is like this uh uh this disgruntled
aunt-in-law that uh didn't get the right seat at a wedding two years ago and that's kind of a a happy
way of looking at it in truth of thousands of innocent civilians are being killed as a result
of this enmity i mean if it was just a matter of well we've got this rotten attitude towards them we
don't like the way they they have a mole on their cheek or we don't like the way they look that would
be one thing but we are dangerous to have as an enemy of course the united states is an enemy of
someone i mean they literally poison the land and the people forever agent orange in vietnam uh
if you'd like all the people that are dying in el salvador in nicaragua thousands of children uh you
know even though with the we they've talked in the united nations about the environmental uh ruin
of el salvador uh because of uh what we're doing with the uh with the militia that we have that we're
giving to the army sorry with with the uh ammunition we're giving we're poisoning the water and the
land uh cutting down the forest that the guerrillas can't hide i mean you know it isn't just a nice
case of uh uh the mccoy what is it the mccoy's and the hatfields or the old enemies right this
dangerous stuff it's so well when nations play this game yes a lot of people die and it's um it's it's
sick it really is but we're we're we're part of the sickness you see that the press wasn't so in
the in the government's pocket that they would ask more honest questions that they wouldn't accept
government handouts as news right we you see it's it's it's yeah we can blame the press we can blame
the government but in the end it's us we have to make the change and you know we can affect the press
it's not easy we've got to change their whole the whole way of looking at things and what is uh
you know what is an important news story and all that but uh you know we we can do it by being out
there every day and making sure they don't forget about this absolutely i don't know if you heard
the the program before but a young woman came on carletta joy walker's program and said that she was so
she lives in the country i think upstate new york and she was so depressed by what was happening
in el salvador she just was like a weight on her she couldn't get rid of it and but she didn't know
what to do she's not the type that goes to demonstrations she said or marches and then something
came to her she said she was working in a barn and she decided to put a sign boards on herself
saying i cannot stand what the u.s government is doing in in el salvador as an american i resent this
i hate it and i i oppose it in every possible way she signed her name and she came down to the village
and marched around there and then got some more courage and walked around new york and she said it
was just wonderful she did that i think for a few days so she said everyone can find their own way
to make a constant statement you know if something that's great can't stand it i thought that was
wonderful that's that's amazing and if you can find that thing whether it's writing a letter or
marching down the street or just calling up some calling up your friend and saying you know isn't
this awful what can we do about it you just get get the dialogue going box out yes because we're
we're better than this you know we we're not the kind of people that just sit back and say you know
you know let everything happen we don't care about other people we do we're we're a warm society you
know it's uh we just we don't investigate as much as we should we're not encouraged to no we're not
no we're not we've got blankets thrown over us right because you know an educated public is a dangerous
thing right keep them on drugs and keep them quiet and keep them out of the voting voting boots and you
know i have two more things to suggest well i like your program very much um i think that we
should stop propagating this myth this old cliche that america is the richest country in the world
first of all statistically it's not true even in terms of just infant mortality we're 17th cuba's
ahead of us in having a lower infant mortality um but you know as far as homelessness goes and
infrastructure crumbling illiteracy growing all these things we're really not the richest country
in the world by any means i think many people who've lived in europe and certainly the scandinavian
countries would say that they have a much finer standard of living and certainly a much better
quality of life if we consider uh richness just to be our our way our extravagance and wasting things
that way perhaps we're richest but not in any of the ways that really count and so i think as media
people you really should be very careful in in you know trying to tone this down we're not the richest
country in the world and the the other thing i wanted to ask you is what's always confused me is
why on a pacifica station the very name pacifica to is there a program called uh weaponry with tom whiskers
well it's it's it's part of our ongoing philosophy here that uh education is important and whether
it's education about the military or education about uh you know about foreign cultures it's some it's
real weaponry is something that is there and uh where else do you learn about it you have to know what
what is really happening now you know it's uh it's not it's not a uh a program where we talk about how
great the u.s you know defense department is and how uh how we can you know turn lebanon into an
ashtray and all that kind of thing um you don't think that it sort of encourages the the love of
of military lore and by having a program like this well i don't think not having a program like this would
discourage it let's put it that way and i think having a program like that wakes some people up you
know it it it tells people wow you know i i had no idea you know it gives you specifics that you
never get anywhere else and uh i think it's very important to have that available if you want it
okay if you could address one other thing that i mentioned about america being the richest country
in the world um maybe in the 50s we were but uh do you really think that's the case now well you know
we have more tv channels uh we don't have more newspapers which is an interesting thing um we've
got a lot of space uh space meaning you know wide open space that kind of thing uh
well let's see how are we rich we got lots of fast food joints um you know you also have the
highest cancer rates in the world highest cancer right that's bad though something like i believe
the statistic is now 88 of our water is polluted there is no safe you can't go to a nice crystal
stream and drink water from it anymore right so that's that's progress then so we we're the most
advanced nation as far as as technology goes you've just proven that what you mean by that well by
having an 88 uh pollution rate in the water that proves how advanced we are uh it's you know rich is a
very relative term and you know you can even come up with something and and and say this proves that
we're rich and and somebody else would say my god that proves we're poor you know that's that's the
worst thing you can't you can't judge it monetarily you can't judge it idealistically you can't judge
it uh you know by the landscape or anything for example that the u.n judges a country's wealth by uh how
many uh how many live births per per hundred thousand or per thousand how much how much what's the
literacy rate uh how many people share a certain amount of space um there are certain statistics to
go by but i think apart from all of that you have to judge quality of life and i don't know have you
lived in europe or in scandinavian countries well i i wandered around europe for about six weeks uh this
summer and uh you know we we have advantages in some ways they have advantages in other ways
but i think they are they're more they're closer to reality you know they you can you can talk about
things you can criticize without without offending yes you know and that's that's that's the first step
i think yeah no we're not a people given to um uh good political debates no i can't understand why
you know if we're the bastion of democracy as we keep saying we are why is that so it just isn't and i've
seen people in in seemingly uh intelligent uh arguments suddenly get hey you're a little pink
there fella you know and i mean they start calling names if someone's presenting a rational argument
for why are there poor people and can't we do something about it right that old anti-communist
reflex comes back i think if you if you you know explain it in this way when when that kind of uh
uh of talk starts that means that the person has run out of uh out of arguments and and can't
figure out any any kind of comeback so they have to resort to uh you know to to name calling and
accusing the person of being a communist or something like that which tells you something
about the the state of these problems anyway thanks very much for calling and for bringing
those things up those are very uh pertinent points our number is two seven nine three four hundred
and um interesting i would like to play one song and go right back to the phones but uh this one
song is is is fascinating for for for this particular reason what this last caller just brought up uh are we
the richest country in the world do we have the highest standard of living you know is america what america
says it's supposed to be now when you look at the news when you look at what's happening in in the rest
of the world and what's not happening here what we're doing in other parts of of of you know the the
globe uh when you look at things like librarians being investigated for for defending free speech
uh when you look at all the contradictions you know it's it starts hitting you and you start
saying well maybe this isn't the place that i thought it was maybe it's changing maybe you know
there's a whole other way of looking at this country and it's it's kind of disturbing especially
if you think that uh there's there's nothing we can do about it if you think that uh you know it's
a lost cause but also it makes you uh it makes you think you know just think about where you stand
in relation to it all if you're a hypocrite you know if if you're completely powerless if you've been
spouting all this uh all this rhetoric all this uh you know these last few years
it's uh it's something to think about and the reason i'm going to play this song here it's a song
by the beatles and guaranteed it was not written with this in mind but i'd like you to listen to this
song and think about america in a different sense
i'm looking through you where did you go i thought i knew you what did i know
you don't look different but you have changed i'm looking through you
you're not the same
your lips are moving
i cannot hear
why did you tell me why did you do not treat me right
love has a nasty habit of disappearing
you're hearing low light
you're thinking of me
you're thinking of me
the same old way
you were above me
you were above me
but not today
the only difference
is you're down
love
i'm looking through you
and i know
i'm looking through you
i'm looking through you
where did you go
i thought i knew you
what did i know
you look different
but you have changed
i'm looking through you
you're not the same
yeah
oh baby you're changing
i'm looking through you
ah
sounds terrible
hell's wrong with that turntable
i don't know for the last couple of days we've been getting
horrible sound out of that turntable i don't know why i think uh
there's something wrong with the stylus or something but uh sorry about that folks if you can
understand the words through that uh you may have you may have gotten a different
type of meaning out of that song i'm sure
paul mccartney's on the phone now saying how dare you say i was i was you know
questioning america when i wrote that song well
i'm not saying i'm just saying it's an interesting way of looking at it you know it's
kind of uh kind of neat but um i think we have to constantly be be
questioning constantly be looking at things in alternative ways whether it's america whether
it's music whether it's ourselves it's extremely important to be constantly re-evaluating and uh
i guess second guessing to a degree otherwise uh we we never we never really learn we never
really make that step you know our number is 279-3400 i'd like to hear what you think
and that's me good evening good morning um how you doing you know i'm sorry to start about this
german thing okay because uh well i mean it's it's really a fairly simple matter it's not a simple
matter i mean george bush has got to uh convince the uh the west germans that the reason that uh
german reunification is impossible is because the soviet union doesn't want it and i'm absolutely
convinced of that uh having heard uh remarks of a uh central committeeman who said and i'll quote
um that the he says that the united states doesn't want that even more than the soviet union doesn't
want it which to me even has ominous overtones and that uh it is my understanding of the united states
has achieved now global hegemony and uh well i think it wouldn't it be a shame that if uh since we
don't have sdi uh implemented yet but we got nuked uh having achieved our worldwide domination for the
first time in the history of mankind so why should we screw it up over germany so george george bush does
uh germany is fairly significant and um i i think the president has to somehow uh soothe the germans over
the fact that we really can't push the russians on this because the reunification of germany is putting
a knife to the soviet union's throat and i don't think they'll stand for that and what bothers me
more is uh i'm hearing a lot of stuff uh attributing that to uh jewish sentiment and i don't i don't
think jewish sentiment has anything to do with it i think certain people are trying to frighten jewish
people into saying they don't want uh german reunification i i wouldn't blame them for not for
feeling that way but i don't believe uh jewish sentiment has anything to do with uh uh international
superpower politics well you know excuse me uh it's interesting that you bring this up because i've
been thinking about this over the last few weeks and um you know it's it's it's kind of a it's kind
of a weird point but if you say to yourself or anybody else that uh germany cannot be reunited because
it would be a danger to the rest of the world isn't that isn't that a racist type of a thing to
say because well you know it's an evil thing to say but it is we're talking about people's feelings
well i mean i are are the germans is there something inherent in in germans i'll agree with you on that
there is okay but i'm not talking a matter of truth i'm talking a matter of propaganda right right now
but but keep this in mind sir the the the germans today are not by any i mean you know physically
they're not the same people but but mentally it's completely different it's completely different
they have learned from their history they're they're aware of their history you know yeah
to me the germans never were evil that was never the issue uh the the the issue has always been
that uh germany's potential power right germany uh is the uh germany is a tragic case germany is a
superpower that uh didn't come into existence or existed uh existed but briefly but uh was smashed
in world war one actually because of the stupid policies of the kaiser and um
the thing is that there is a certain amount of complexity here and i'm hearing i i i i know the
american liberals don't want that right and i i think they're incompetent in their assessment
but they tend to be protective of the soviet union and uh i i think that's what's motivating them
but the thing is um like if if a certain person has a liberal politics then he'll come out and he
won't say i as a liberal don't want german reunification because i'm sympathetic to
a leftist point of view he'll say it all right he'll speak as a jew
right and and the problem here is that then then the antipathy that that's going to bring down from the
germans and from the american uh conservatives it's going to fall on the jews and not on the liberals
and the jews are really innocent innocent victims in that they are not political
see and they don't deserve this and i i i i also feel that uh the jews were very badly manipulated in the
the last presidential election that the jewish vote went for the democrats
when the democrats actually uh were anti-semitic in their overtones whereas the republicans
were rather supportive of israel wait how wait wait wait hold on a second you just you just brought
up something that's always been uh been a problem with me if you're anti-israel you're anti-semitic
that's right i don't see that at all because i know lots of lots of people that are anti not not
not anti the existence of israel maybe we're getting off on the wrong foot here i'm talking about
anti-israeli policies yeah that's the same thing because israel is looking out for its interests
well it's the same thing and those those who uh who really are anti-semitic uh come down they say
well israel's doing evil things and all that it's masking anti-semitism i'm not i'm not i'm not denying
so i'm not denying that they're anti-semites that that say these things but if you're going to say
that every person that that says israel's policies uh should be changed they are anti-semitic that's
that's an injustice but outside is really uh it's kind of crummy i mean if they're palestinians i can
understand it right because they have it they have an interest right but all these other people
especially american liberals the way they've been coming down on israel you know i think that the
that if i think that liberals are really the source of uh like black anti-semitism they rip it up
i don't i don't think black people left to themselves would do that and they wouldn't get
away they wouldn't be allowed to get away with it and it's because they have political support from
liberals who from some misguided policy or or greedy political incompetence are trying to grab power
and they're willing to sacrifice the jews i think they did it in the roosevelt administration in
attacking hitler well sir i'm not going to say that uh that you're mistaken saying that uh that these
liberal people are behind this but i i think it's wrong to uh to categorize in any way to say that
the liberals are behind it or the conservatives are behind it to a degree there's all kinds of
different groups here i'm sorry continue i don't think the conservatives are behind
i think the liberals are behind it well always been behind it
okay and uh and they're doing it again on this german issue the liberals don't want to reunificate
they're afraid of it right their fears are totally misbegotten because it ain't going to happen
it can't happen the russians won't allow it and the united states doesn't want it anyhow
because who the hell needs another superpower in this world to rival the united states right but
the liberals have this uh uh i don't know uh what makes their minds work but they their minds don't
work very well and the thing is they're coming out and they're bringing up they're bringing up the
holocaust again they are and they're talking to the jews and i know it's a liberal talking
because they talk to orthodox jews and they understand and even when shamir talks
shamir says he doesn't think it's going to happen anyhow right so it's it's coming from left-wing
people and i just think that what ought to happen is uh jewish people should recognize the danger of
this and that that that there's a there's a possibility i don't say george bush would do it
but he's going to have to talk to a very powerful country called west germany and he's going to have
to explain why he isn't pushing harder on german reunification because they're already talking
about in the german parliament about reunification well and it's still uh they're not negotiating in
eastern right i mean uh and uh and after all the walls come down they're talking about uh some sort
of uh economic agreements uh so it's you know it's a specter rising and already the conservatives
in the united states are balking because there's trouble in the republican party as you know between
conservatives and the uh moderates like george bush and uh the conservatives are willing to make an
issue out of this and they'll come down on the jews and i've heard it already
so so what will happen is that the upshot of this is if it's attributed to the jews
they'll be west germany will not be cooperative and pro-israel as it used to be
and the conservatives are going to start in on the jews and already the jews are getting it from the
blacks and i think enough already that if the liberals don't want reunification of germany they
should say i as a liberal and frightened of germany or for whatever rationale they want to give
and take the illness of it
i see it's hard for me to uh to uh to start on this um but you believe that the the liberals are
behind all of this behind i think the liberals are the ones that are instigating uh against the
reunification of jer are being the ones who are being vocal about it right but they're not talking
as liberals so i haven't really a political faction i haven't really seen any any anything vocal
against reunification in this country plenty of it i've i've seen the the government of israel
went and said uh said they uh said they were uncomfortable with that which surprised me very
much he must be under a lot of pressure from the uh labor party which is run by liberals uh
uh-huh uh interesting well you know another thing just to get away from this for a moment um
why is it necessary for there be there to be unification reunification between i mean
it's not necessary but the germans want it but east germany could exist as a separate
state soviet union their chronic grandstand on the issue
mm-hmm he don't want to be president well okay now we're getting into territory that yeah but
all these things interrelate uh-huh
all wants to be president because the republicans and conservatives are irritated and they've got an
issue they want if they like to take an aggressive stand toward soviet union
issue and they're saying we don't want german reunification because germany is evil look at
the holocaust right well like i said before that's you know that's that that is racist to a degree and
i'll say something else that i find uh to be racist i'm gonna move on to another call uh you take a look
at uh at old hitler speeches right uh you know you see the guy yammering away there on on tv
or the documentary film or something like that and you know the guy is is is talking fast furious german
but you never see underneath what it is he's saying now when i was in germany uh this past summer
i was hanging out with some some young germans and occasionally something would happen that would
cause them to get excited you know like life does that to you occasionally and they'd start yammering
away in this fast talking german and right away i just i got all startled i said whoa that's hitler
talk that sounds like hitler the way they're talking they're they're talking fast german and excited and
oh my god what's what's going on here it's a very subtle form of racism to be presented with that
picture of hitler speaking in excited german phrases and to say that's nazism that's not nazism
what he was doing what he was saying the words he was saying that was nazism but we don't know what
the words were they never translate that and that that really bothers me you know the more i think of
it uh i mean god knows uh there are a lot of a lot of guilty people for what happened during the
holocaust during world war ii a lot of people that got away with it and for all intents and purposes
they did get away with it you know there were thousands of jews in in east germany maybe even
hundreds of thousands i'm not certain before the war now hundreds so uh you could say hitler succeeded
to a degree it's uh it's scary but uh at the same time let's not uh let's not blame people who weren't
even born and the west germans the east germans today are well aware of their history they're well
aware of what happened and they're determined not to repeat it and i don't think they will because
they have that link they have that sense of what came before and when you have that that link with
the past you know that's that's the key that's what's so important because you're educated you know
something you know what what has happened you know what mistakes have been made and hopefully you
are determined not to make them again our number is 279-3400 i'd like to move back to the central
america issues uh you know only because it's a big world and uh you know we could go on all day with
this good morning good morning uh i'm glad you use the uh word subtle okay because that is what we're
issue it's not the price issue that that young man brought up it's what it stood for don't you
understand my good man you see uh you remember the story about the dutch boy and how he put his finger
into the dike one little finger in the dike of uh you know this country will save the country from a
flood and that young man was a hero now uh he is being disparaged by uh everyone on the station almost uh
he is allowed to speak for a moment to sort of uh you know we can say freedom of speech exists
do you see what i mean but uh this is not freedom of speech when he is reviled and he is hung up on
and so on who are you talking about i am talking about the problem that exists wbai uh we listeners
are given short shrift we are looked upon as the uh money people for this station we are being uh you know
treated in a kind of servile uh economic way well wait wait wait are you being treated in a servile
way on on this program now well uh yes i was hung up on when i tried to come on to the real issue the
one right in our midst the fact that this station is not doing what it should be doing where it bans
a mike fader who's had a program on for a long time when he said he didn't like some of the other
broadcasters attitude now what should have been done would be
well folks i'm sorry he had a different accent that time didn't he but uh you know i don't know
i don't know so start a mass movement maybe i'll listen then good morning good morning
is there something you want to say i certainly will okay go ahead uh the uh
oh my goodness what's been going on the last couple of callers has got me off my yeah i i
realize that's possible but uh uh uh the uh bombing of the uh of the of the of the of the uh
uh where the poor people lived in el salvador uh-huh was done by the
el salvadorian army or air force is that correct the are you referring to the killing of the priests
or oh wait no in fact that's the point i'm going to make okay go ahead no i'm talking about the air
force of the el salvadorian government bombing the the villages of the of the people who were poor
okay yes thousands of people died there over over the last uh yes how how long a period of time is
it now since that since the uh let's just think about the priest then then we've got the idea
about that time okay uh the uh the number of people that were died when the nuns got raped
were extraordinary children like the lady called and mentioned children that we seem to
and our morality professed to care so much about not just in el salvador but all the children in
nicaragua that uh you know if they haven't if they haven't been right if they haven't been killed
they're they're being brought up in a in a war and that's that screws you up for life extreme poverty
and extreme poverty too of course extreme poverty and that is really accounted in those numbers
and the impoverishment but they didn't seem to hesitate in bombing
as poor as they are and as extremely poor as they are they didn't seem to the government didn't
seem to hesitate in bombing those villages now the point i'd like to make is that they said that
there are something called death squads well perhaps the death squad is the el salvadorian government
have we ever thought about that i think we have and i think uh to a degree our government too
oh i don't know because you see we seem to be
parlaying it playing it off on certain kind of individuals who are outside of the government
who are doing these things i see a point right of course uh i mean there is a very definite link
in the article i read before uh the the people that put the uh the current president in power
uh are are linked to these uh to these to these groups well the people that are fighting the current
government in power did not were not part of that election process were they i'm sorry say that again
people of el salvador didn't have the opportunity to vote for the people who are fighting against
the el salvadorian government the people that are called the gorillas well i mean that's you know
that's but they say it was a legitimate government that's open legitimately elected right that's open
to debate depending on how you look upon uh what is fair and what is not fair but i i think you know
we should look at this simplistically and and just say what are we doing there you know what is a
big country like this doing there in the first place and if you listen to think simplicity you
might miss the point you can't get people going out by you're saying they should go out right you
certainly can't get them going out by you're saying that they should read newspapers because
that's the things that are turning them off i don't know i think we have to talk about what
what's really going on you see people do not have a say in their government so that there's more
than that there's more than the mainstream press you know what i'm saying is there's more than the
mainstream press there's all kinds of papers and magazines access to that you yourself said that
there were no the papers have we have not that many newspapers anymore i'm referring to daily
newspapers yes but there's things like the voice there's things like uh you know all kinds of
publications like people don't listen to the ai you know i'd like to make a point the opportunity is
there for about an hour trying to get through okay and you've talked for a long time i'd like to talk
go ahead okay um this government in its finest days in the 50s and the 30s and the 20s and back
before then and all the good people like um uh what's the name said on the bob dylan said of being
pawns you white folks are real pawns but we're your victims man you're you're you're and that's the
problem you got to deal with you have to deal with how you sat and did nothing and still sit and do
nothing and what happens if you sit too long you start to go crazy you know so that uh when the man
says communist for instance you form at the mouth like paul lost dog i think we have a problem when
you talk about cuba having a a good birth mortality rate and all of that but then you say hey but they
don't have other things what are the other things you're talking about are the other things you're
talking about jodash jeans or chrysler 88 models cuba has been under an embargo since it's been in
existence people have stopped goods and services from coming into cuba has anybody set foot on this in
this country in terms of a war footing like they did the soviet union has any has this country been
destroyed and built again perhaps it would have been better if it had maybe and uh like europe has
or any other place has like every other place on this on this planet has what excuse have we got
for people reaching into garbage cans and eating out of them and what shame do we walk around with
you know before hitler was able to take power and you're jewish right well i don't talk about that
kind of stuff on the oh before hitler was able to take power he had to build scapegoats didn't he
and he built the scapegoats on those who were the most disenfranchised or the least politically
powerful right he did it on the gypsies he did it on homosexuals didn't he and the people went for
it why did they go for it when there were lynch mobs in the south you think people just went up and
say we're going to lynch this nigger now no this nigger that they're going to lynch is the guy that
raped some woman or yelled at some woman or something before any kind of excuse and in the white
people's impoverishment they went out and lynched someone who was more victimized than they
you listen to bob dylan can i ask you how old you are well again that's another thing i don't
talk about on here well you see life experience is very important if you're not book trained and
book trained doesn't do any good without life experience right right and you can't talk around
these things without getting to the real meat of it this way you'll get people respond on saturday
and on monday like i'll be there i'll never vote for george bush because george bush doesn't represent
a conversation and george bush is by no means a moderate a cia cutthroat george bush is a is a
reactionary and we've had reactionaries ever since the so-called civil rights movements and that was
the thing that began to set america free as a consequence we're eating dirt now who supported
hitler before he became hitler was it really stalin or was it john henry ford real anti-semites
we got to know what we're talking about so we can talk truth to people because otherwise
like the fellow came on before and talked about african americans he's calling them blacks i don't
know who they are african americans uh they're being used by so-called liberals and i don't know what
that is about anti-semitism in regards to israel who's breaking children's arms and it was the american
public that stopped that wasn't it because of their criticism of israel wasn't it there are people in
israel who have views that are extremely excuse the expression i don't know what it is but they
call it progressive they want to sit down and talk with other people rather than break children's hands
and they're considered anti-semites i suppose if you mention jesse jackson's name you're an anti-semite
but he holds views that a lot of folks hold and we got to deal with that because if we don't you know
who's going to rule the roost what was going to rule the roost is who's ruling it now
you understand yes and and it's very painful because the quality of life is extremely dear to all of us
if we do not celebrate the quality of life that we are capable of celebrating that something diabolical
is going to happen to our psychic and we'll be goose stepping into the next century you and gentile alike
that's all i have to say okay well thank you very much for calling and uh we'll see you on saturday
all right 279-3400 that is our telephone number
and it's just about 17 minutes after three o'clock we're here until 3 30 it's emmanuel goldstein
filling in for tom whisker on the weaponry program we'll be back uh for the next two weeks as well
um and we will be uh taking some more phone calls right after this public service announcement
don't take it too seriously
it's a loudspeaker spoke up and said
the loudspeaker spoke up and said
the loudspeaker spoke up and said
The loudspeaker spoke up and said, Christianity is stupid, Christianity is stupid, Christianity
is stupid, Christianity is stupid, Christianity is stupid.
Communism is good, communism is good, communism is good, did you hear that?
Give up, give up, give up, give up, Christianity is stupid, Christianity is stupid, Christianity
is stupid, Christianity is stupid, Christianity is stupid, give up, give up, communism is
good, communism is good, Christianity is stupid, communist is stupid, communism is
good, communism is good, communism is good, communism is bad, communism is good, is
Communism is good, Communism is good, give up, give up, from 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9,
from 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9,
from 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9,
Communism is good, Communism is stupid, Communism is good, Communism is good,
from 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9,
Communism is good, Communism is good,
Christianity is stupid, Communism is good,
Give up, give up, give up,
he writes, that it would be an official meeting and that no agreement would be signed. However,
it is not ruled out that Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush will approve some directives and will
give instructions to their foreign ministers or other representatives, especially in preparation
for a summit due to take place in Washington next spring or summer. This seems to be very important.
Such an approach makes it possible, given reciprocity, to advance in any field of
cooperation and put any understanding into action. Moscow does not share the fears expressed by some
American commentators and politicians prior to the meeting. They allege that a meeting in Malta will
be like the meeting in Reykjavik. They have assured us that if anything like that takes place, it would
be a disaster. The creation of this Reykjavik image is surprising. Wasn't it a real breakthrough in
Reykjavik in 1986 when the two leaders coordinated nuclear disarmament objectives, adherence to which
is now being reaffirmed by both sides in their work on an agreement on a 50% reduction in strategic
offensive arms? Didn't the Reykjavik meeting contribute to the signing of the INF Treaty in 1987,
a treaty called a historic accord in East and West alike? The impression is that some American
politicians seem to be afraid of radical agreements. Shortly before the Mediterranean meeting, they
wondered, with something of timidity, whether President Mikhail Gorbachev would come up with
some new proposals. In the meantime, with all the importance of Soviet initiatives, the situation in
the world, in particular in Europe, compels the West to adopt new, bold approaches for the benefit of
cooperation. The destroyer in the USSR and renewal in Eastern Europe have given rise to rapid development.
The essence of changes is to promote democracy, the freedom of nations, and freedom of choice.
In these conditions, global understanding, in particular between the USSR and the United States,
is of special significance. When President Bush spoke with Soviet parliamentarians in the White House
on the threshold of the meeting in Malta, he asked what the United States could do to help the Soviet
Union. The Soviet guest said that Americans could help by agreeing to reduce arms and expand economic
ties with the Soviet Union. President Bush welcomed this and said that such an approach would be
advantageous to both sides. Moscow believes the Mediterranean meeting could melt the ice of the Cold War
completely and open the door wider for cooperation between the Soviet Union and United States for the
benefit of their nations and also for the rest of the world. Commentary by Vladislav Kazikov was prepared at the
studios of radio Moscow. And it was re-aired here at the studios WBAI in New York where we thought you'd like
to know what's being said. And we'd like to know what you have to say. And our telephone number is 279-3400. We don't have
very much time left, only about four minutes or so, but we're going to make a valiant effort here to plow through
these. Good morning.
Good morning.
Okay, well, perhaps I should say part of the game plan is you have to be there. You have to be on the other side of the
phone. So let's see if we can both get on the phone at the same time. Good morning.
Good morning. I just have a quick question. It concerns the show you did a few weeks ago when you were talking about the phone
company. Uh-huh. There was a gentleman who had all sorts of information and he left a P.O. box number. I'm just
wondering if you happen to get that, if you have it. I know you probably don't have it right now.
I'll tell you what, write to me at the station. I don't have it here. If you write to me, I'll pass that
information. I've written to you. Okay, well, I'll probably pass that information along to you at some
point. You do have it, though? I'm sure I can get it because I do have the show on tape someplace and
I'll dig it out. Okay, thanks. Okay. Bye. I'm going to a lot of trouble. I'll let you know
that. Again, if you want to write to us or write to me, I'm Emanuel Goldstein and the address here is
WBAI 505 8th Avenue, New York, New York 10018. That's right. Okay, let's take some more calls.
Good morning. Is anyone there? Maybe there's something wrong with our phone. Hello? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I have an interesting little piece of tape here. Piece of tape, huh? Yeah. You should
be able to hear it okay. Let me preface it. Tom Whisker sometimes plays these tapes of Arthur
Godfrey giving you a radio, an earful tour of the Strategic Air Command, these vintage tapes
from the 50s and whatnot. Okay, speak up a bit so we can hear it. Okay, okay. This one
is something a little more recent and more with your topic of El Salvador and Central America. Hang on a
second. My God. Hey there. What have you done? Don't go away. Don't go away. What were all those
noises? If anyone out there could translate those tones, I want to know what they are.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay.
I appreciate it.
We should be there, like I said, in about 40 minutes or so. I need you to do me a favor.
If you could give 21st Air Force a call, let them know of our intention. And if we could request
They send to Cupid Hill, three computer flight plans, one from McTill to Howard Air Force Base, and one from McTill to Roosevelt, Rhodes, El Cuba, and then from Rochester, excuse me, from Cuba, Puerto Rico, from McTill, Puerto Rico, Roosevelt, Rhodes, and then down to Howard from there as well.
All right, Roger, sir, I understand your basic request. Please bring me three flight plans again, slower.
We went to the computer flight plan from Cupid Hill to Howard Air Force Base, Panama, another computer flight plan.
What you were listening to there is a shipment of probably more guns headed down to Panama.
Fascinating. Do you have that on actual tape? I mean, obviously you do. You just played it. I was wondering if you might be able to send us the tape.
Send you the tape?
Yeah, because it was breaking up a bit over the telephone.
Oh, sorry.
But it would be a nice thing to, like, throw on a record or something.
I probably could, and the other side has something even a little more interesting in it. I happened to catch George while he was in the air the other day.
Did you? Did he make a phone call or something?
And, uh, but it, it wasn't, I didn't, I didn't quite get George, but they kept on referring to the boss being on the same plane.
And they were talking all about the, uh, Secretary of Defense, and...
Well, was the plane referred to as Air Force One?
Um, no, actually they didn't quite refer to it. Um, actually I just, no, I didn't, I didn't actually pick up an identifier.
Um, but the, the, the traffic, they were talking to guys in, in Belgium and, um, and setting up all this stuff.
And, and it was like two personal secretaries talking about his schedule for next week and all this stuff.
I see.
Lining up press conferences. It was funny. They were talking about the guy from the New York Times.
Well, well, no, no, we'll give him a, you know, hey, the New York Times is okay. We, we can give him an interview.
Yeah, they've, they've heard of that.
Yeah, right.
Listen, sir, we gotta go.
Okay.
Thanks very much for calling, though. And, uh, thanks to all the other folks out there that, uh, have called.
And, uh, my apologies to those folks that did not get through. I mean, it's, it happens occasionally.
But I'll be back again next week between the hours of 1 and 3.30, uh, talking about something.
I mean, who knows what's going to happen between now and then.
And, of course, uh, the Malta summit, as it were, will be taking place.
And, uh, we might have some, you know, amazing, amazing thing out of that.
We might have nothing at all.
But I do want to see people at the, uh, at the El Salvador rally on, uh, on Saturday.
It starts at 11 o'clock in the city.
And, uh, just keep listening to the B.A.I.
You'll hear more specific details on that, I'm sure.
And, uh, you know, look around other places, too.
I'm sure there'll be, uh, a lot of talk of it.
Let's hope we get thousands of people on the street because this is something, uh, very important to us, to our future, to the people of many other countries, as well as one country in particular.
Anyway, it's, uh, been my pleasure to be here with you.
Emmanuel Goldstein filling in for Tom Whisker.
Thanks again to everybody that called in, and, uh, we'll see you again soon.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Everyone's feeling pretty
It's hot certain in life
Thank you.
No.
Carry him.
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