OK. I haven't posted anything here in over two years. I completely failed to post anything about the last KPFA LSB election, in which the "bad guys", those endorsed by 'SaveKPFA', won seven of the twelve seats that were open -- six of nine listener seats but only one of three staff seats. The staff has a lot better idea of what goes on inside the station than the listeners do, and a majority of the unpaid/volunteer staff consistently votes against the faction, presently calling itself SaveKPFA, that is basically an alliance of a majority of the paid staff with the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club. Unfortunately, that latter group is likely to find it easier (but not as easy as they would like) to move KPFA and Pacifica to the right than to move the imperialist Democratic Party, funded by super-rich Zionists and the trade union bureaucracy, to the left.

Some links to other relevant web pages.

While I haven't said much about this KPFA Local Station Board election on this blog, I've been publishing comments on it and, occasionally, other topics, at indybay.org, huffingtonpost.com and some other places. Here are some links to some of the web pages on which I have posted election-related comments:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-glantz/vote-to-save-progressive_b_721740.html

(Includes responses by me, Tracy Rosenberg, and others to a dishonest piece by Glantz.)

Entrenched staff clique collaborated with hijackers in 1990's

(My comment and others on a repost of the same Glantz article)

Where were these Save-KPFA-for-the-Democratic-Party folks BEFORE the lockout?

Save KPFA from the phony "Save KPFA"!

For those who want to get an idea of my politics in general, you can look at my comments to Huffington Post articles.

I'm back and running for the board again.

I decided to run again for the KPFA Local Station Board, as I did in 2004 and 2006, and for the same basic reasons I ran then, which is to fight against Democratic Party domination of KPFA and Pacifica, and to push them to the left as much as possible. My main target is the KPFA News Department, whose dominant personalities are conscious advocates of what they call 'objectivity', of being 'balanced' rather than being a counterbalance to the ruling-class media. It means giving the same pro-ruling-class lies and bullshit that we get from most other media the same airing on KPFA News as is given to the views of those whose only major voice is KPFA. It also means generally letting the 'mainstream', i.e., imperialist/capitalist/Zionist, media decide what issues are 'News'.

My official campaign statement and answers to the Candidate Questionnaire are at http://pacificafoundation.org/cand_page.php?id=405. As in the past, my chances of actually getting elected are small, largely because I am not included in any slate and my name will therefore not appear on any slate card that people might have at hand when they decide on who to vote for. But thanks to the voting system used, the Single Transferable Vote, your vote for me will not be 'wasted'! It will not only have symbolic value as a statement for an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, subversive KPFA, but will, if and when I am eliminated from the running during the multi-stage counting process, be transferred to the next person in your ranking.

Despite my many differences with many of these candidates, I urge my supporters to vote, in whatever order you choose, for ALL the candidates who are NOT part of the so-called 'Save KPFA' slate, including the candidates of Voices for Justice Radio, Independents for Community Radio, and the two other unaffiliated candidates. (The 'Save KPFA' slate mailer and flyers makes the first part of this advice easy to follow!)

I am particularly favorably impressed by the Candidate Statements of Hyun-Mi Kim, Gina Szeto and Monadel Herzallah of Independents for Community Radio, and of Felipe Messina of Voices for Justice Radio. I intend, barring new contradictory information, to rank them all very high on my ballot. I hope to say more later about them and about other candidates I favor.

Some online discussions on the KPFA election.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/10/18459899.php?show_comments=1
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/10/18460002.php?show_comments=1

Everything I've seen in these discussions reaffirms my support for People's Radio.

Vote for People's Radio!

When I started this blog 11 months ago, I was still very much involved, at least in spirit, with KPFA politics after my second campaign for the Local Station Board (LSB). But I drifted into other areas of activity and, after a while, couldn't remember the name of this blog or where it was!

Well, I found a link to my own blog on the Pacifica elections web site, http://www.pacificafoundation.org/elections/, in a comment by somebody with the handle a2sfan and the self-description "Aaron Fan". This is presumably the person I heard about who tells people to vote for me as a write-in candidate. After I get a good night's sleep, I'll try to find out more.

Actually, the idea of voting for me, Aaron Aarons, as a write-in on the KPFA LSB ballot isn't a bad one! Thanks to the Single Transferable Vote system, your vote isn't wasted by voting for someone who can't win, since it will just go to the next person in your ranking. And it's a way of showing support for the radical anti-imperialist politics I advocate. (I'm more likely to be struck by lightening than to actually get elected this way, and I'm not sure which of those two improbable events would be worse for my mental and physical health.)

But, whether you write me (or anyone else) in or not, I strongly urge the following order of ranking for the slates that are running:

1. People's Radio


2. Voices For Justice


3. I Team
   

I don't feel too strongly about the relative order of Voices For Justice and I Team. The important thing is to put People's Radio first and to not vote for the "Concerned about Those Meddling Lefty Radical Listeners" slate put together by management, entrenched paid staff and the Wellstone Democratic Club!

More to come! Good night, comrades, compas, and friends.

Introduction

Hello, out there! For those who come across this blog by accident, KPFA is the Berkeley, California-based FM radio station of the Pacific Foundation.

That said, the purpose of this blog is the same as that of my two campaigns for the KPFA Local Station Board, which was and is to make KPFA and Pacifica more of a service to the struggle against the imperialist United States ruling class and its allies, including Zionism. Comments are only welcome if they share that objective. Those who want to argue in favor of capitalism and imperialism, or defend the elites of the United States and Israel, can go elsewhere! The same goes for those who want to invoke some god or other (Bacchus/Dionysus, Eros, Aphrodite, et al. excepted!) in support of their politics.

One of the main practical functions of this blog will be to show how much allegedly alternative news and public affairs programming on KPFA actually serves that ruling class both by its selection of what counstitutes NEWS and by the language it uses. But that will be clarified in my upcoming posts.