Welcome to Left Out, reality-based independent radio broadcasting on WRCT 88.3FM and podcasting on the worldwide web at leftout.info. Left Out discusses the news from a perspective left out of the mainstream media. Left Out is co-hosted by Bob Harper and Danny Sleator. Today's program is produced by Matt Hornyak. Listeners are invited to call the program at (412) 268-WRCT (9728), or to send email to bob@leftout.info.
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I'll play this excerpt from the September 9th Ring of Fire radio program. (This is an excellent weekly show, on Air America radio is available for download or podcast at www.ringoffireradio.com.) Here Robert F. Kennedy is interviewing Ron Suskind, about his new book One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. Important points that come out in this excerpt:
Bush's decision not to allocate more special forces prevented the capture of bin Laden in Tora Borra in the winter of 2001-2002.
Bin Laden's "October surprise" right before 2004 election was specifically designed to help Bush win. And it did help Bush win. Bush and bin Laden are a "doppelganger pair". They help eachother in their own constituencies.
Right after the Sep 11 attacks, everything is on the US side. The world -- even the Arab world -- was on the US side. This is the time to isolate bin Laden. He would have had almost no cooperation from any government, and no cooperation even from most arabs. It would have been impossible for him to do anything, and this was the time to wipe out his organization. This was all lost because of the US's blustry and violent policies. Now the trail to bin Laden is totally cold, because anybody who knows where he is want to help him and hurt the US because of the US's hated policies, on Iraq, torture, and everything else.
I'll play this excerpt from Rachel Maddow's Air America radio show from Friday September 8th. Here she discusses Bush's speech of September 6th when he admitted that the CIA had secret torture prisions, and defended their usefulnesses. Bush told a number of lies in that speech.
Claimed that the Justice Department had authorized these torture techniques. But there's no release of such documents.
Stated that key congressional leaders were briefed. However Jay Rockefeller was not fully briefed.
Bush lists a number of examples of useful information supposedly obtained from captors in these prisions. All the examples turn out to be irrelevant --- because the information had already been obtained from other sources.
These and others were also laid bare in this September 8th NY Times article by Matt Mazetti.
Mike Parker joints us in the studio. He's the Policy & Outreach Coordinator of the Group Against Smog and Polution (GASP). Their web site is www.gasp-pgh.org.
We'll talk about a number of issues.
What is GASP? What does it do? (briefly)
Photo-Voltaic (PV) systems. There's a company called Solar Pittsburgh (www.solar-pittsburgh.org) that installs solar panels and integrates them into the electrical system of your house. According to their web site you can get a 2.5KW system for about $23K. (tax incentives can make it much cheaper). In Pittsburgh this will generate about 10KWHours per day. (Pittsburgh integrates to 4.2 hours of full sun per day.)
Diesel emissions from school busses.
Steel City Bio Fuels (www.steelcitybiofuels.org).
Pennsylvania Alternative Energy Alternative Portfolios Act.
Global warming, Peak Oil
Issues in coal:
Waste Coal, or Gob See www.truthaboutgob.org. This is the "coal" that comes out of coal mines that is impure. And until now it was not used. There are immense piles of it in western PA. Now they're proposing to build new plants that can burn it. There are many reasons this is bad. We'll discuss them, as well as the politics of this issue.
IGCC plants (integrated gasification combined cycle plants) coal ---> liquid ---> gas. Then it can be sequestered.
Nuclear power:
Conservation. Legislation and citizen action.
Truth Out
Common Dreams
Information Clearinghouse
Cursor
Tom Paine
The Independent
The Guardian
Consortium News