Monthly Archive for June, 2007

Shenna Bellows on Disappearing Civil Liberties

Published on June 30, 2007 in Featured, Podcasts and Torture. Closed

Abuse of power post 9/11; Updates included

Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, gave a talk on October 26, 2006 at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. This program originally appeared in two parts on the WERU Community Radio Voices programs with Amy Browne. Archives are located HERE and HERE.

The podcast posted today includes an extended introduction with important updates. The continuing hot issues to which Ms. Bellows lends sharp analysis in this program are two of the most vicious assaults on civil liberties in our times: destruction of the 4th amendment to the US Constitution through warrantless government surveillance and indefinite imprisonment and torture of terror war suspects. Discussion of events on these fronts subsequent to Ms. Bellows presentation with links for key news stories appears below the fold.

 
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Nuclear primacy is not security

Published on June 30, 2007 in Featured, nuclear and Opinion/op-ed. Closed

The Bush–Putin agenda in Kennebunkport, Maine this weekend should include critical unfinished business of the post-Cold-War era: immediate steps to outlaw nuclear weapons. However, the US is pursuing a different path.

“… [The United States] [b]ehaving as a superpower that seeks perpetual dominance, … that considers itself and its allies as exempt from international law, will not make us more secure. It will only provoke proliferation, just as our invasion of Iraq has not reduced terrorism but has instead created new grievances and new bands of terrorists. By trying to reap maximum benefit from our temporary role as sole superpower, our government is acting like the terrorist we fear, and in the process is making more likely the very things we fear the most: nuclear terror and a new arms race.”

The excerpt above is from an op-ed published in the Saturday/Sunday June 30–July 1, 2007 edition of the Bangor Daily News. My friend Mike Howard and I co-wrote the piece. The full text (as submitted) of the op-ed is below the fold. The piece does not yet appear on line at the newspaper’s site. If it does, I will post an update.

Update: Posted at Bangor Daily News, HERE.
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Stuart Acuff at EMLC July 4 event

Published on June 30, 2007 in Podcasts and Video. Closed

Fiery union speech!

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Recorded at Brewer, Maine on July 4, 2006

With the annual 4th of July celebration at the Eastern Maine Labor Council rapidly approaching, it’s a good time to re-watch the video of the incredible oratory AFL-CIO organizer Stuart Acuff gave at this event in 2006. You’ll just have to listen to it to get the full effect!

“…lies like none of us have expected since Richard Nixon…
they lied to get us into an un-necessary war,
they lied about torture,
they lied about extraordinary renditions,
and they have lied to deface and defame the honor of the United States of America…

“Bush trade policy has cost us 3 million good manufacturing jobs.”

–Stuart Acuff

This 10-minute video is edited slightly to fit into YouTube. The audio-only file, accessible below, plays as delivered.

 
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Dennis Kucinich at 2004 Maine Democratic State Convention

Published on June 29, 2007 in Video. 2 Comments

 
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Recorded in Portland, Maine May 22, 2004

This post is a test of the Podpress media player plugin. Dennis had and has it righter than any other Democrat.

Friday nature blogging

Published on June 29, 2007 in Nature photography. Closed

Petit Manan Point

A new feature of peacecast.us will be Friday posts with images of peace and serenity from the natural world. Today’s image is of the rocky coast of Maine from Petit Manan Point in Steuben. We saw no other human there during our day trip on Monday.

Most often these posts will include an image from Maine taken during the previous week. Sometimes one from the archives will post. If you enjoy these, please let me know.

Building the site

Published on June 28, 2007 in Site news. Closed

This is just a short note to let visitors know that restoration of peacecast.us is continuing. One hang-up has been getting images to sit properly. But I think I have a handle on that, except I can’t get captions to work like I’d like them to. Please give this process another week or so before expecting the site to be up-to-date.

Meanwhile, it’s good to go through the archive programs and re-listen to some. Today I have played back Medea Benjamin and the Hiroshima Day event. These are terrific programs to have available. Stan Goff too, as I have that program from almost 20 months ago featured. I’d say it’s clairvoyant about what has happened in Iraq during that time, except it really did not take a genius to understand that Goff was right about everything he said.

March 18 demonstration in Bangor

Published on June 28, 2007 in Video. Closed

The March 18 peace symbol event in Bangor, Maine was a strong anti-war statement given by 500 area people. Peacecast.us recorded the event and produced a video that placed March 18 in context of anti-war activism in Bangor over the last four years:

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This video also is posted at From Every Village Green.

Now, additional media is available. The podcast presented here includes audio of the entire event. Community radio WERU broadcast a short excerpt of this file along with other audio from peace events around the state on the March 24, 2006 Weekend Voices program. Below the fold is an archive image of the extraordinary newspaper coverage the event received.

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22 min; 25 MB; 160 kbps mp3; download link here ->

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Counterpunch website of the weekend

Published on June 27, 2007 in Site news. Closed

For the weekend of March 25/26, 2006, Counterpunch chose peacecast.us as its Site of the Weekend. This is about the greatest recognition and honor I can imagine this little effort could have received. There is still traffic from that link, the latest a few hours ago from this Counterpunch page. Thank you Alex and Jeffrey for the amazing resource that is Counterpunch. And thanks to all Counterpunch readers who have given this site a try.

I hope that with this new design, what you’ll see–and hear–here is evidence that we in eastern Maine are busy day in, day out, building a community of peacemakers with analysis, arguments, influence, and power.

New peacecast.us

Published on June 27, 2007 in Site news. 1 Comment

Even though Deep Blade Journal has ended, podcast production and posting will continue here at peacecast.us. There will be a time period now when most of the archives will be off line. Not all archive posts and accompanying podcasts will be restored. But, several podcasts that have been in the can since October 2006 (some of which have already broadcast on WERU Community Radio, 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine and 102.9 FM Bangor, Maine). A full list of these programs will appear in a subsequent post.

Please email me at info at peacecast.us if you have any questions.

Comment policy

Published on June 26, 2007 in Uncategorized. Closed

  • You now can post an anonymous or pseudonymous comment without registering.
  • Your first comment briefly will be held for moderation. After that, your comments will post to the site immediately.
  • There are spam filters erected. We’ll see how they work.
  • The comment forms are now open for 45 days, or for 10 days past the last posting, whichever is later.
  • Http links are limited to two per comment.
  • I am pretty open to any opinions being posted here, even ones that I find utterly abhorent (and I’ll tell you so, but I won’t delete you).
  • I will delete spam, ugly personal attacks, and serious threats
  • I will not delete racist remarks, except for reasons given above. So be careful, what you write will live a long time here.
  • It’s been pretty rare to have contentious debates at Deep Blade, too rare. I’d like to have more. I do not encourage flame wars and have never had one on the site, even amongst people with whom I have strongly disagreed.
  • Please jump in and have fun!