and mozambique about the ipcc report, the role of banks fuel the climate emergency, and cyclone freddy that has killed over 500 people in malawi and mozambique. we are one ofhe countes thout historal responbility yet suggling with thelimate crisis and other interrelated crises. amy: then as we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the u.s. invasion of iraq, we look at how the u.s. mainstream media helped amplify the bush administration's lies and silence voices of dissent. >> pay no heed to the left-wing rock stars. they have had their 15 minutes of fame. >> these people are essentially useless. they are opposed to war in position. >> we exct every american to support our military and if they can't do that, shut up. amy: we will speak to norman

solomon, author of "war made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death." his forthcoming boo made invisible." all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the united nations warns in a new report the world is on pace to blow past a critical global heating threshold by the early 2030's unless nations take immediate and dramatic steps to mitigate the climate catastrophe. the u.n.'s intergovernmental panel on climate change said monday the planet is on course to warm by an average of 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels within a decade, causing irreversible damage to human populations and ecosystems. the report warns of worsening heat waves, flooding, drought, rising sea levels, famine, mass

extinction, and the spread of infectious diseases due to warming temperatures. u.n. secretary general antonio gutteres announced the findings monday, saying a livable future for all is still possible if nations take urgent action. >> the 1.5 degrees limit is achievable, but it will take a quantum lp in climate action. this report is a call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country in every sector and on every timeframe. in short, our world needs climate action on every front all at once. amy: here in the united states, climate activists have organized a day of action today against key banks they say are fueling global heating. we'll have more on the ipcc report and today's protests after headlines. new research finds drought killed 43,000 people in somalia last year, while leaving 5 million people with acute food shortages. nearly 2 million cldren rema at risk of malnuition. humanirian aid gupand

climatscientistsarn somaa and other parts of the horn of africa face a sixth consecutive failed rainy season, and conditions this year are even worse than in 2011, when famine killed an estimated quter-milliopeople in malia. russia's defense ministry says it scrambled a fighter jet monday to intercept a pair of u.s. air force b-52 bombers flying over the baltic sea. the russian fighter reportedly returned to its base after the nuclear-capable u.s. bombers moved away from russia's border. the incident came as ukraine's defense ministry said it destroyed a train carrying cruise missiles bound for russia's black sea fleet at a station in the russian-annexed crimean peninsula. in brussels, european union ministers agreed monday to provide ukraine with one million artillery shells over the next year, while replenishing their own stockpiles of ammunition. meanwhile, the biden

administration approved a new $350 million military aid package for ukraine. the u.s. state department said monday all sides committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the recent conflict in northern ethiopia. secretary of state antony blinken announced the findings from washington, d.c., monday -- just days after his return from ethiopia's capital addis ababa, where blinken met with prime minister abiy ahmed and representatives of the tigray people's liberation front. >> the conflict was devastating. men, women, and children were killed. women and girls were subjected to horrific forms of sexual violence, thousands were forcibly displaced. entire community's were specifically targeted based on their ethnicity. many of these actions were not random, they were calculated and deliberate. amy: blinken stopped short of stating that the ethiopian government's atrocities in tigray constituted genocide.

in kenya, police tear-gassed a convoy carrying opposition leader raila odinga in the capital nairobi on monday, as he led protests against president william ruto's government and high inflation. a university student was reportedly shot dead at a demonstration in the city of kisumu. they were the largest anti-government protests in kenya since odinga narrowly lost to ruto last august. in south africa, thousands of protesters marched in cities nationwide monday demanding president cyril ramaphosa resign over widespread unemployment and rolling blackouts. south africa's national police agency said officers had arrested more than 550 protesters since sunday. about half of all young people in south africa are unemployed. meanwhile, south africa's public electric utility continues to impose rolling blackouts of up to 10 hours a day as demand for electricity exceeds supply. the french government narrowly survived a pair of no-confidence votes in parliament monday after

president emmanuel macron rammed through an unpopular law by executive fiat, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. the failure of the no-confidence votes sparked fresh protests across france, with police firing tear gas at demonstrators in lille and bordeaux, and protesters setting piles of uncollected trash on fire in central paris. this is french member of parliament mathilde panot speaking just after monday's vote. >> could have understood the hundreds of thousands of people who are gathering together the entire country since last thursday and since macron -- amy: unions and french opposition parties have called a ninth nationwide day of strikes and protests on thursday. in washington, d.c., a federal

jury has found four members of the far-right oatheepers militia group guilty of felony and misdemeanor charges, including obstructing an official proceeding, over their roles in the january 6 capitol insurrection. the four face prison terms of up to 20 years. their convictions on monday came as federal prosecutors in a separate trial rested their case against former proud boys leader enrique tarrio and four other defendants who face charges of seditious conspiracy. amazon has announced plans to lay off 9000 more workers in the coming weeks. the layoffs build on 18,000 job cuts at amazon that began in november and extended into january. u.s. high tech firms have laid off more than 300,000 workers this year. in los angeles, tens of thousands of school custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and other school support staff have begun a three-day strike demanding dignified working conditions and living wages after nearly a year of negotiations with the los angeles unified school district. their union is calling for at

least a 30% income increase as school staff only makes an average of $25,000 annually, or roughly $12 per hour. tens of thousands of l.a. teachers have joined the strike in solidarity. and here in new york, dozens of community organizers, parents, teachers, and students rallied in the bronx monday protesting a military recruitment and job fair event hosted by u.s. congressmembers alexandria ocasio-cortez and adriano espaillat. the so-called student services fair featured representatives of the u.s. army, navy, air force, and coast guard. advocates criticized ocasio-cortez for backtracking on her antiwar campaign promises and opposing predatory military recruitment tactics that predominantly target black, brown, latinx, and low-income students. in 2020, ocasio-cortez proposed a ban against military recruitment on twitter, while she later pushed for a bill amendment that would have halted federal funding for military recruitment in middle and high schools.

richie merino, an organizer with the bronx anti-war coalition, at yesterday's rally at renaissance high school, which happened on the 20th anniversary of the u.s.'s illegal invasion of iraq. >> many youth are struggling to find jobs, are not prepared to go to college. instead of bringing military recruiters, we should have a job fair. we should be having a college fair. renaissance high school is in art and theater school. where are the arts and theater programs represented here, eoc? -- aoc? amy: he was speaking with democracy now! organizers also demanded justice for vanessa guillén and ana fernanda basaldua ruiz, two latina women who were killed after they reported being sexually assaulted at the fort hood u.s. army base in texas, and 21-year-old abdul latifu, who was brutally murdered in january by another soldier at fort rucker in alabama.

latifu was from the bronx. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the united nations has issued a final warning the world is facing his last chance to prevent catastrophic global warming. the intergovernmental panel on climate change, or ipcc, said monday every additional increment of warming would amplify impacts already felt by millions worldwide and called for an end to coal, and net-zero electricity generation by 2035. u.n. secretary general antonio guterres called the report a "how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb." >> the rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2000 years. concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years. the climate timebomb is ticking.

i make of the report comes as the death toll from cyclone freddy has topped 500 and them allowing. at least another 66 people have died in mozambique, or than half a million displaced. as corporations and governments face growing pressure to address the climatcrisis, president joe biden vetoed a republican-backed bill monday to reinstate a trump-era ban on retirement plans from using a this using a sustainable investment practice known as esg that takes into accot environmental, social, and governance impacts. this comes funding for fossil fuels remains much greater than for climate adaptation and mitigation, and our next guests are focusing on the four biggest banks in the u.s. that finance fossil fuel expansion -- bank of

america, chase, citibank, and wells fargo. bill mckibben is the co-founder of 350.org and the founder of the organization "third act," which organizes people over 60 years old for progressive change and today is its first national day of action to stop dirty banks. also with us in d.c. is ben jealous, the new executive director of the sierra club and former president of the naacp and the people for the american way. they co-authored a piece for the guardian headlined "u.s. banks are sacrificing poor communities to the climate crisis." also with us, dipti bhatnagar, long-time climate justice activist based in mozambique with friends of the earth international in mozambique. we welcome you all to democracy now! bill mckibben, your group is organizing today's protests around the country. it is interesting to look at the banks you are focusing on, the largest banks in the united states at this moment when many are fleeing smaller regional banks thinking the only place

their money is secure is at the big banks. what is your message? >> amy, hello. third act is organizing 102 demonstrations in 30 states and the district of colombia today with the enormous help of the sierra club and others. the reason is, as you point out, these four big banks are now bigger than ever, in some ways because i public banks. the reason everybody is going to them is because they know the taxpayer is taking on the risks associated with running a bank and will backstop them forever. therefore we need them to act responsibly in the face of the greatest crisis our species has ever wandered into. at the moment, they're doing the opposite. these tropic eggs are also the four biggest funders to the fossil fuels, even of the

ipcc and every other set of climate scientists have long since said expansion of the fossil fuel enterprise has to cease. we are not calling for an end to banking for oil and gas -- we will have oil and gas for a few more years and they will need a bank. all we want, and it is a moderate demand, is for them to seize funding the expansion of that industry. the way hsbc come the largest bank in europe, agreed to do in december. amy: ben jealous, you were head of the naacp and the people for the american way, now with the sierra club. particularly looking right now at these protests that are talking about these big banks and their effect on communities of color, can you respond to what has to happen at this point and what the sierra club is calling for? >> we are very clear the banks need to stop funding new

projects to extract oil and gas. the biggest threat we have to all of the work that is going into trying to stop climate change. what we saw with hsbc can be done here. the banks simply need to say to their clients, we will continue to finance what you're currently doing, we are not going to finance you at all if you keep expanding. because what you're doing is putting the people of this planet and a great risk. amy: what about the fact -- the piece you write with bill mckibben under the guardian, said the collapse of silicon valley banks, one of the most obvious consequences is the biggest banks, the ones you're protesting today, will probably get even bigger.

>> that is precisely right. what we have seen -- look, there are probably a dozen banks in the u.s. that will not fund oil and gas expansion. at least a dozen. lots of them smaller banks, lots of the regional banks. what we have seen is people decide this is a priority for them. the big banks see those trains, too, yet they feel beholden to an industry that is literally driving us toward extinction. what we are asking these banks to do is to have the moral clarity to say to their clients, we are not going to stop financing you if you just do what you're currently doing but if you keep expanding into the arctic and golf and keep drilling in africa and throughout the globe, we are going to have to stop financing you because what you're doing is putting everything else at risk. amy: and bill mckibben, you

wrote this piece right before president biden signed off on the will of arctic drilling project -- willow arctic drilling project. your response to what has happened with his green lighting of that project? >> this is a perfect example of what we're talking about. conocophillips, which is developing that ill begotten project in the arctic, tens of billions of dollars of loans from the banks that we are talking about. they keep funneling them money so they can do these kind of projects. that what is absolutely emblematic of the insanity. they are going to have to really literally re-freeze the ground, the ground that melted, before they are able to drill again to get more oil. but it is not just in the

arctic. look at what is happening in africa. cyclone freddy blows across malawi, leaving huge devastation while hotel, the fridge energy giant, and others, are trying to build an oil pipeline across the heart of africa. sei pcc said yesterday, this is really the battle for the future planet earth. if we cannot slow these guys down -- there is only two levers bigger enough to pull that matter. one of those is government -- and we've been tugging as hard as we can. we got the ira and the climate the last year. the other lever is marked money, finance. that is what we are pulling today all across the country. these four banks -- well, they are the capital in capitalism, so they will not be an easy target, but now that they are in this dominant role on our

planet, we have to be able to make sure that they pay attention. today, people will at least be paying attention. in d.c., the banks will be blockaded with people in rocking chairs. older people are sitting down today but they are also standing up in a way they have not before. amy: we're going to bring in dipti bhatnagar after the break into this conversation. as you mentioned allow it madagascar, talking about massive cyclone and damage, deaths, lives lost. bill mckibben is staying with his of 350.org and third act. organized today's day of action to stop dirty banks. ben jealous, executive director of the sierra club. coming up, dipti bhatnagar joined them. she is with friends of the earth international in mozambique. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. writer and activist -- as we continue to look at the climate emergency, we turn to southeast africa or tropical cyclone freddy has killed over 500 people in malawi and at least 66 people in mozambique, over half a million people have been displaced. cyclone freddy is one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere and the longest lasting tropical cyclone on record. it first made landfall in madagascar on february 19. we are joined by dipti bhatnagar , longtime, justice activist based in mozambique. she is with friends of the earth

mozambique. she is visiting the bay area. we are staying with bill mckibben of third act and 350.org and ben jealous who is now head of the sierra club. dipti bhatnagar, talk about what is happened in your country, in your region, and how it relates to climate change. >> hi, everyone. thank you for having me on. as you have already spoken about cyclone freddy is yes another reminder that climate impacts arnot in the future but very much happening to our communities right now. almost a million people have been affected in mozambique and 1.6 million across the region. this has come on top of what was already a cholera epidemic, what was already flooding happening in mozambique, including affecting my own house. an early february, the climate

impacts were already happening so when cyclone freddy hit for the first time around february 24 and went back out into the mozambique channel and then came back and again, this is hitting land that is completely saturated. it is hitting people that are completely saturated without any kind of reserve. so the climate impacts are happening right now to people. it is not just one stop it is happening over and over again. climate change is supercharging the cyclones. they are able to survive longer on land. there going out to the ocean and come back in, which is what we saw previously with destructive cyclone in 2019. now we see this again. this cyclone is one of the most supercharged cyclones, lasted the longest, and it has hit mozambique already twice. it is affecting people who are already living on the edge, amy,

who have nothing more to give. they are struggling to survive. this is why. what the ipcc report says about the urgency of the situation is critical. we are seeing community's, people that have no historical responsibility for creating this crisis and they are the ones that are being affected while the rich countries continue to undermine historical responsibility and equity while the climate negotiations and the ipcc negotiations are going not and it is heartbreaking to see what is happening on the ground. amy: if you can talk about this report that has just come out today, the ipcc report, and the significance of what they're saying has to happen right now. >> the ipcc science is very clear in talking about this rapidly losing window of

opportunity. that is something we need to take heed. bill was talking about expansion of fossil fuels. absolutely shocking. it also in mozambique, one of the country's most affected by the climate crisis is also where one of the largest gas fields that is been found anywhere in the world in the last 10 years has been found. totale and others are going ahead and the mozambique government is also complic. we need to be stopping dirty energy everywhere in the world. my group has been fighting against oil and gas is 2007, working in the province of mozambique were fossil fuels are not only causing climate change, but they are displacing

community, causing human rights violations, triggering conflict and militarization and insurgencies all across the continent, including in mozambique. this is what we need to be fighting against. the ipcc definitely talks about the need for emissions reductions, but one of the things that is really scary, amy, is this whole notion of carbon dioxide removal is playing such a key role now in the ipcc report -- this is really problematic because this is opening the door to false climate solutions, false solutions. this is not the way to go. what this is going to do is they're talking about -- the word "overshoot" appears 23 times and the summary for policymakers in the ipcc report released today. they're trying to say, don't wear a, we could cross 1.5 degrees celsius average global temperature, but we will bring about down.

we might have in overshoot that we will bring it back down with carbon dioxide removal. this is dangerous because how are they going to do the removal? why are they doing the removal? because they don't want to stop fossil fuels. they want to continue business as usual. the elite want to continue to gain. what they are already doing is grab land and forest from communities and the global south, including mozambique, to be able to offset these emissions. it is going to create another crisis on top of the fossil fuel crisis we are seeing in africa and the climate affects we are already seeing. we need to be wary and push against these carbon docs have removal and these full solutions, and we say stop emissions, cap consumption emissions, deal with historical responsibility, finance poor community's. this is how we will be able to deal with the climate crisis and

stop people suffering. amy: i which i bring bill mckibben in on the united nations issuing its final warning about the last chance to prevent catastrophic global warming. ipcc said monday every increment of what he those felt by millions worldwide. talk about what stood out most for you in today's report. >> what stood out most for me was the fact in some ways there's nothing new. look, amy, i wrote the first book about this back in 1989 and there really isn't anything that we know now of great importance that we did not know then. that means if you're reading that report and feeling desperate about it, really the only thing that makes a difference at this point is to get up and say something, to act.

that is why people will be out in the streets. some of it will be fun. we have orcas getting credit cards and in alaska they're cutting out credit cards with chainsaws and people on rocking chairs here in d.c. that is the kind of response we need from people all over the world because, look, otherwise it is just words on paper. everybody has heard it at this point. everybody understands we are in a desperate fix. the good news, and this really is the good news, that fix is no longer necessary in any way. live now in planet for the cheapest way all of the sudden to generate power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. the only reason we are not making change fast is because, as our colleague from mozambique points out so beautifully, it is in the interest of the fossil fuel industry to keep digging

stuff up and setting it on fire. we don't need to. the good lord hung a large olive gas 93 million miles in the sky and we know how to make full use of it and we could. that is what we are pushing for today, the dramatic change in investment away from coal and gas and oil and toward the sun and wind and the batteries to store them when the sun goes down and the wind drops. that is our future if we choose to seize it. if we don't and every gram light on those graphs in the u.n. report will come to life and haunt our kids for their entire lives. amy: ben jealous, i'm wondering if you can take us through the ipcc warning today back to when you began as a journalist in mississippi covering cancer alley toward east palestine where we see this massive dump

of the chemicals from the fossil fuel industry and this train derailment contaminating the entire community, how this all links to climate change. >> the biggest subsidies and history of our country of industry has been our government's willingness to declare most places and most people -- people of color, frankly most white people, too, because most white people are working class or poor -- as disposable. you see it in places like mississippi. you see it in places like the gulf coast of alabama. when i was a young reporter, i was covering the destruction of a community and in colombia, mississippi. a group down there called jesus people against pollution that had been formed because of factory that was producing agent orange have blown up back in the

air of the vietnam war, and when they cleaned up the chemicals, they put them to 55 gallon steel drums and buried them in the water table. here we were 30 years, 25 years after and kids had tumors, cancerous tumors. you would go far from there to a pulp mill and you would see the forest being clear-cut. when you got to the mill, what was coming out so oxidized the cars if you rubbed your hands, you look like a jackson pollock painting. the paint was peeling off the cars because of what was coming out of that mill. the same thing was going into these kids respiratory systems. little kids, their noses ran all day. what this all speaks to is what bill is talking about, our country's addiction to using, frankly, dangerous petrochemicals in ways we don't need to be using them,

transporting them in ways that are extremely unsafe as you see in east palestine. it also speaks for our country's addiction to burning stuff in order to power our country, which is ridiculous. it is a better deal for the people of this country if we power our country through renewables on multiple levels. it is healthier for the climate, it creates more jobs here, it's more money in people's pocket. this inflation reduction act is giving it a massive amount of capital to build the economy of the future. we are within sight of building an economy where we are creating more jobs, sustaining the planet and destroying its people then destroying the planet itself. what we need the banks to do is to let they do when they are at their best, which is to bet on a better future for all of us. right now they're betting

against all of us continuing to finance our expanding addiction to oil and gas right that it should be shrinking. amy: will, you write, "it took decades to force things to abandon redlining. we don't have decades to avert climate." we recently came from the u.n., summit in sharm el-sheikh. there you're not allowed to protest inside the cop without permission. now you're protesting outside the banks, cutting up your credit cards. your new group is called the third act. old and bold. what is the third act that you will be taking on around climate change? >> third act is recognizing young people have been providing the climate leadership. young people and people from front-line communities, indigenous communities. what they lack sometimes is the structural power to force change

at the pace we need. older people have structural power coming out our ears. 70 million americans over the age of 60. that is a sleeping giant. multiply it by some factor because we all vote. there is no known way to stop all people from voting. not only that, and up with a lot of resources, boomers and the silent generation have something like 70% of the country's financial assets. if you want to push around washington or wall street, it is probably good to have people with hairlines like mine. in the last year since we arted third act, people have been showing everywhere. now they're building coalitions with the sierra club, with stop the money pipeline, with all of our other partners. there are 50 groups including youth from all over the country, the sunrise vivid and fridays

for the future. i just heard from greta thunberg overnight saying, good luck and go for it. everybody is pitching in to make today the beginning of a big campaign to hold capital really accountable. this is an overwhelming force in the life of the world as we have watched these bank escapades. we need them acknowledging risk of all kinds, financial risk and also the overwhelming risk to our planet, our species, our civilization that comes in the form of climate change. we need them to remember that the economy is a subset of the earth and not the other way around. if we can get that message through, if we can remind people today of the connection between cash and carbon, literally, somebody who has 125 thousand

dollars in those banks is producing more money because it is being lent out for pipelines and frack wells and all the cooking flying, heating, driving, calling that an average american does inear. $5,000 in the bank produces more carbon than flying back-and-forth across the country. we need these banks to start acting responsibly. the ipp -- the ipcc said we are in a last act of this drama unless we stand up and move fast. that is one of the things the third act is really about. amy: finally, dipti bhatnagar, i would ask if that another major story out of mozambique, the recent death of the popular rapper, cultural icon azagaia, just 38 years old, inspired so many with his music singing about injustice, mistreatment of people by authorities, poverty,

social injustice, climate change, his debt sparking protests in mozambique which authorities have finally suppressed. your piece just came out headlined a booklet the death of mozambique and rapper and revolutionary." as we go out of this discussion, tell us about azagaia. >> thank you for playing his music. i was at what turned out to be azagaia'sast public concert in december 2022. we were talking about cyclone freddy and a climate impacts that are already happening. of course there are multiple interrelated crises that people in mozambique are facing. 60% of the people do not have access to electricity. the human development index is so low, in a context like this, someone like azagaia, a rapper uses his love for hip hop to bring these messages of injustice but also hope to the youth.

bill was so beautifully talking about mobilizing older people. azagaia has managed to ignite the youth, not just in mozambique, but under the portuguese-speaking world. -- but in the portuguese-speaking world. it is so beautiful the way he ignited young minds. he passed away less than two weeks ago. but what has happened in mozambique since then has been an absolute travesty. because what we have seen is the youth being ignited and coming into the streets in a place where it isn't easy to protest. i'm so glad these protests are happening all over in the u.s.. in mozambique, we do not have the right to come onto the streets. like in egypt, amy, that you spoke about. when we were in egypt at cop 27 la year, we said no climate justice without human rights.

and that rings true in mozambique today because there was an authorized march on saturday where the youth wanted to come on the streets and publiclymourn the loss of their cultural icon, the revolutionary. any police responded with brutality and teargas and assault and arrests. my own partner got hit in the back with the teargas cartridge. why it is important, as the crises deepen, people are going to get more and more incensed. the youth are going to get more and more incensed. we need cultural icons like azagaia. we need constructive ways for people to get involved, to be able to organize to oppose the injustices happening. and that powerful know that. the elite no power is what is going to change things, which is

why we came out with his brutality and fight back and hit people and their teargas on people. they went on the streets saturday and mourned their cultural icon partially is debt and showed people power, even in a place like moment the, is going to be -- mozambique, is going to be strong. the crises are coming in the crises are deepening so in a place like mozambique, we need to be prepared not how do we stop the crisis but how are we going to do with it and how are we going to ignite people and use people power to push back all of these elites and this brutality. amy: we want to thank you, dipti bhatnagar offense of the earth, bill mckibben of third act, and

ben jealous now executive director of sierra club. we are going out now with azagaia. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "a marcha" by azagaia. he died march 9 in his home country mozambique. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the u.s. invasion of iraq, we turnow to look at how the mainstream u.s. media helped pave the way for war by uncritically amplifying lies and from the bush administration while silencing ices of dissent. in 2003, the media watchdog group fair, fairness and accuracy in reporting, published a report titled "in iraq crisis, networks are megaphones for official views." the report found that in the weeks leading up to the invasion, the nation's four top nightly news programs interviewed 267 current or former government or military

officials -- just one of them expressed skepticism or opposition to the war. in a moment, we will be joined by the longtime media critic norman solomon. but first, let's turn to an excerpt of the documentary "war made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death" produced by the media education foundation. it is based on solomon's book of the same name. >> we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come and at the form of a mushroom cloud. >> as americans, would like to think we are not subjected to propaganda of our own government. certainly that we are not subjected to propaganda into war. pres. bush: saddam hussein received significant quantities of uranium from africa. >> there's no doubt saddam hussein a has weapons of mass destruction. >> weapons of mass destruction.

>> nerve agents. >> reckon al qaeda. >> cyberattack. >> biological weapons. >> chemical and biological weapons. >> president bush has had iraq has weapons of mass destruction. donald rumsfeld, the united nations, experts have said they do. iraq says they don't. you could choose whoo believe. >> it blends into the terrain. >> the white house has a can prove saddam hussein does have weapons of mass destruction, claiming it has solid evidence. >> the white house insisted it does have some evidence it is necessary to provide the drumbeat, the echo effect. >> they might fight dirty using chemical, biological.

>> dirty bombs. >> iraq, al qaeda connection. >> they both want to see americans dead. >> struck by the acceptance of the tone of most of the b coverage, as the invasion of iraq gradually went from possible to probable to almost certain. >> the president given saddam 48 hours to get out of dodge, war seems inevitable. >> war is inevitable. it is approaching. >> is war with iraq never bow? >> i think it is that is and if i percent. -- i thing it is 95%. >> i don't think there is a viable option. we're too far out front.

>> sent us over there. let's get it over with. >> showdown iraq. if america goes to work, turn to msnbc and the experts. >> equal partners with the official in washington. setting the agenda for war. >> we will take you there. >> although it is called liberal media, one has a great difficulty finding examples of major media outlets in their reporting, challenging the way in which the agenda setting for war is well underway. >> we have generals, and if you asked him about the prospects for war with iraq, they think it is on a certain. >> pay no heed to the left-wing rock stars, they have had their 15 minutes of fame. >> they are useless. you can't take them seriously. >> we expect every american to support our military and if they can't do that, just shut up. >> when that reporting is so

much a hostage of official sources, that is when you have a problem. >> pentagon officials tell us -- >> u.s. intelligence -- clubs were encouraged to believe officials are the ones who make news. >> u.s. officials -- . >> officials talus -- >> i just pulled these two things out. i have launder them so he can't really tell what i'm talking about because i don't what the iraqis to know. >> the officials blow smoke and cloud reality rather than clarify. >> the notion it will take several hundred thousand u.s. troops are wildly off the mark. >> the money will come from iraq i will revenue. they think it is something like $2 billion this year and might be something like $15 billion next year?

pres. bush: we strive for peace. amy: those words of george w. bush, weeks before the u.s. invasion of iraq 20 years ago from "war made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death" produced by media education and based on a book of the same name by our next guest, norman solomon, the executive director of the institute for public accuracy and a cofounder of rootsaction.org. his forthcoming book is titled "war made invisible: how america hides the human toll of its military machine." your thoughts on this 20th anniversary? so many of the voices and faces we see in this documentary, so many of the commentators on television and the hosts are the same today. >> very much. in the mass media, being pro-war is pretrade as objective. being antiwar is portrayed as being biased. a very much so the same media

outlets and often the same people who lied, teamed up with distortion two decades ago, these are the same media outlets that are the last few days telling us what it all means. it reminds us i think of something that george orwell said, he said those who control the past control the future. those who control the present control the past. he was alluding to the fight over history that is so important because when it is rendered in a distorted way, whether in real-time -- journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history. and u.s. media, it is distorted. or night rest respect, it is figurative. -- or in retrospect, it is figured a. right after 9/11, president george w. bush that either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

that was amplified, excepted, embraced by the u.s. mass media. now in the last year, we are hearing from the current president, you're either with us or with the russians. what happened with 9/11 was horrible. it was a crime against humanity. the terrorists it'd terrible, horrible thing. just as the russian invading ukraine have been doing a terrible thing. at the same time, i think we have to acknowledge this is not really a manichaean world. we can't just simply divide the world into good or bad. here is an example. our own president, president joe biden, tells us that the world is divided between those who believe in human rights and those who don't. this is the guy who fist bumped the leader of saudi arabia as that country continued to slaughter people with u.s. government help.

these are fictitious narratives 20 years ago, now, that support u.s. militarism. amy: i want to go back to 2003. legendary tv host phil donahue was fired from his prime-time msnbc talk show during the run-up to the u.s. invasion of iraq. the problem was not his ratings, rather his views. an internal msnbc memo warned donahue was a "difficult public face for nbc in a time of war," providing "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." in 2013, democracy now! spoke to phil donahue about his firing. >> i think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, i think, is the -- how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. this was a decision -- my decision -- the decision to release me came from far above.

this was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from msnbc. they were terrified of the antiwar voice. and that is not an overstatement. antiwar voices were not popular. and if you're general electric, you certainly don't want an antiwar voice a cable cnnel that you own. donald rumsfeld is your biggest customer. so, by the way, i had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. i could have richard perle on alone, but i couldn't have dennis kucinich on alone. i was considered two liberals. it really is funny almost, when we look back on how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. we were skulls. we weren't patriotic.

american people disagreed with us. and we weren't good for business. amy: that was phil donahue talking about what happened to him 20 years ago. norman solomon, if you can take it from there and also talk about the double standard and how grief is covered and also your last book was "war made easy" and your new book is called "war made invisible: how america hides the human toll of its military machine." >> so much of this is about corporate power. the huge amounts of money that continued to be made by supplying the pentagon with the tools of the murders trade of ongoing war. anyone who thinks the lies and profiteering from slaughter is just 20 years ago is mistaken.

what we are seeing now is a more invisibility of war, just as profitable of not more so. massive arm sales to arm ukraine, to build nuclear weapons in a new generation as it's called, and the air war that has largely supplanted the ground troops. remember 10, 15 years ago, so many u.s. troops on the ground. there are now more than ever in many respect to tears of grief from u.s. mass media and those on capitol hill and the white house. grief that matters and grief that doesn't. the grief that matters are those of americans who suffer the designated allies such as ukraine, welcome of course we should empathize and portray the suffering of everyone who endures war. war is a crime against humanity. what are not getting is that other tear ofrief being conveyed. as a matter of fact, 20 years ago today, the victims of u.s.

war financed by or bombs dropped on these people, they are virtually not people and it u.s. mass media. you can scour for thousands of pages of congressional record and not find any empathy, any connection in human terms. i think when we get down to what is underneath so much of this is the tacit nationalism or explicit nationalism and racism and arrogance that says some human beings really, really matter and other human beings really don't matter, especially if they are being slaughtered by u.s. weaponry that is so profitable. amy: norman solomon, the coverage of the antiwar movement. they're bringing out the voices of those who are opposed to war looking for a just peace? >> this is part of the mythology of mass media that we live in this land of the free and home of the brave and yet when push

comes to shove, we only get from the corporate media glorification or even substantial coverage of antiwar protesters when they are in moscow. and we should support the antiwar protesters in moscow, we should also support and publicize and really convey to the american people the messaging of antiwar protesters and a deep reservoir of antiwar police in this country. amy: norman solomon, thank you for being with us executive , director of the institute for public accuracy, a cofounder of rootsaction.org. author of "war made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death." the film of the same title "war made easy" is produced by the media education foundation. his forthcoming book is titled "war made invisible: how america hides the human toll of its military machine." belated happy birthday to tami ! democracy now! is currently

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