TUC Radio: Recent Episodes
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Here are excerpts from an extraordinary 54 minute conversation on the current and future wars coming out of the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Lawrence Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.
Its hard to imagine two better matched partners in this conversation. Chris Hedges is a former war reporter for the New York Times, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was a former war planner and chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Christopher Hedges is an American journalist, author, and Presbyterian minister. He reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Hedges currently writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report on YouTube. He is also the author of over 20 books.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is a Vietnam War veteran who attended Airborne School Ranger school and the naval war college. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and went on to serve as deputy director of the Marine Corps War college at Quantico.
His disillusionment with the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy focused on the secretive decision-making by the Bush Administration that led to the invasion of Iraq. Wilkerson has said that the speech Colin Powell made before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, which laid out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which he and Powell had never been made aware. Wilkerson said: I participated in a hoax on the American people, the International Community, and the United Nations and Security Council.
Since then Wilkerson taught at the College of William and Mary and George Washington University. Hes a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. Thats a group of former military intelligence and civilian National Security officials, who are countering Washington's establishment narrative on national security issues of the day.
Hedges and Wilkerson spoke on November 7, 2024. Find and watch the conversation for free by searching YouTube for the title: The World According to Trump with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.
Date: 11/07/2024
Here are excerpts from an extraordinary 54 minute conversation on the current and future wars coming out of the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Lawrence Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America. Its hard to imagine two better matched partners in this conversation. Chris Hedges is a former war reporter for the New York Times, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was a former war planner and chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.Christopher Hedges is an American journalist, author, and Presbyterian minister. He reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Hedges currently writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report on YouTube. He is also the author of over 20 books.Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is a Vietnam War veteran who attended Airborne School Ranger school and the naval war college. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and went on to serve as deputy director of the Marine Corps War college at Quantico.His disillusionment with the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy focused on the secretive decision-making by the Bush Administration that led to the invasion of Iraq. Wilkerson has said that the speech Colin Powell made before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, which laid out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which he and Powell had never been made aware. Wilkerson said: I participated in a hoax on the American people, the International Community, and the United Nations and Security Council.Since then Wilkerson taught at the College of William and Mary and George Washington University. Hes a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. Thats a group of former military intelligence and civilian National Security officials, who are countering Washington's establishment narrative on national security issues of the day. Hedges and Wilkerson spoke on November 7, 2024. Find and watch the conversation for free by searching YouTube for the title: The World According to Trump with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.Date: 11/07/2024
Hassan Nasrallah led Hezbollah in Lebanon for more than three decades and made it into a military and political force. Nasrallah's killing in a massive Israeli air attack in a southern suburb of Beirut raises fears of a dangerous expansion of Israels wars - even more deeply involving the U.S.Alastair Crooke was a ranking figure in both British Intelligence with MI6 and European Union diplomacy. His specialty is political Islam. He was interviewed by Judge Andrew Napolitano on his channel: Judging Freedom on Sept. 30, 2024.DATE: - Streamed live on Sep 30, 2024.
When Penguin Random House prepared the release of Annie Jacobsens most recent book: Nuclear War, A Scenario; for early 2024, they did not anticipate that it would appear at a time of heightened risk of a nuclear war.The risks include casual threats of the use of nuclear weapons over Ukraine or in the Middle East; as well as the actual attacks or threats to the nuclear plants in Ukraine and Russia.Annie Jacobsen's book is based on dozens of exclusive interviews with military and civilian experts who built the modern nuclear weapons and launch systems.Annie Jacobsen and Professor Steven Starr explain how nuclear weapons and the highly automated systems that set them off, have become so much more deadly than in the early 1990s, when we thought we had ended the Cold War. Professor Steven Starr teaches the class: Environmental, Health and Social Effects of Nuclear Weapons at the University of Missouri. His most recent book is: Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse: A Mortal Threat to the U.S. Power Grid and U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. Credit to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco for excerpts of their March 27, 2024 interview with Annie Jacobsen,; and credit to Hugo Kruger for excerpts from his interview of Steven Starr on Feb. 24, 2023.DATE: 2023 and 2024
When the biologist, Professor Tim Mousseau, concluded this talk by showing heartbreaking pictures of the birds of Chernobyl and their tumors and birth defects, the physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott stepped up to the podium to thank him.She said: I want to pay homage to Tim Mousseau, who with his colleagues is actually endangering his life by going into extremely high radioactive areas doing pioneering work, which is going to change the concept of radiation exposure to humans. What is happening to the animals, the insects and the plants is going to happen to us.Mousseau is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. He and his scientific collaborator Anders Moller from the University of Paris, Sud, have done research in the most contaminated areas of Chernobyl. When Fukushima Daiichi exploded they began field work there as well. They study birds, insects, microbes, and plants at over 1,000 sites, creating the most diligent inventories of each study area and returning year after year. They found significantly increased rates of genetic damage in direct proportion to the level of exposure to radioactive contaminants.Tim Mousseau spoke on March 11, 2013, on the second anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi explosions at a Symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine. The two day meeting was organized by Dr. Helen Caldicotts Foundation, at nuclear free planet dot org, and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.DATE: March 11, 2013
A new argument is emerging in favor of using nuclear to cover the increased power demands of Artificial Intelligence, and - almost as an afterthought - fuel the green transition to solar and wind.Legislation in Congress, such as the Advance Act, supported by the Biden administration, has already passed, with bi"partisan support, as recently as June 2024. It is written to fund all stages of the cycle - from uranium mining to accelerated building and licensing of new nuclear power plants.Strangely the mining industry has always prepared for the new market in uranium. And we all would have known had we attended their conferences. The program begins with an interview from the World's Premier Mineral Exploration & Mining Convention. They convened in March, 2024, in Toronto, Canada. Jeremy Szafron interviews Amir Adnani, President and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp.Linda Pentz Gunter comments on the passage of the Advance Act in June of 2024 with overwhelming bipartisan support and quickly signed by Joe Biden. Linda Pentz Gunter founded Beyond Nuclear in 2007. They support grassroots, national and international efforts to phase out nuclear power in favor of safer energy choices with which to address the climate crisis.Thanks to Nuclear Hotseat for the quote.Meanwhile Elon Musk - along with the most notorious billionaires - is driving the charge for nuclear power to fuel data centers for artificial intelligence. This program ends with excerpts from his podcast the ELON MUSK EVOLUTIONCome back when TUC Radio returns for the questions raised by all who warned of the dangers of uranium mining, left behind toxic waste, the toxic byproducts from making nuclear fuel, the risks from reactor accidents, the fact that so far only one permanent repository for nuclear waste is under construction in this world. Its in Finland and needs to last 100,000 years. Thats how long the waste will remain toxic to life.DATE: June 2024
This is the conclusion of a conversation between Helen Caldicott and Michael Madsen whose film, Into Eternity, premiered in the US in February 2011. Helen called Madsen One of the more extraordinary people Ive ever interviewed. This is a thought provoking exchange between the veteran campaigner, Helen Caldicott, who dedicated her life to alerting us to the nuclear danger, and the young Danish artist. He introduces thoughts about civilization, language, danger and eternity.Into Eternity is a documentary about the building of the worlds first permanent repository for nuclear waste in Finland. It shows not only the construction under way that will take 140 years, but introduces the people involved, the scientists, regulators and corporate executives who oversee this project. None of them will be alive when Onkalo, as the repository is called, will be finished in 2120; and they must expect this repository to remain intact and untouched by future humans for at least 100,000 years. Such is the danger and longevity of waste from nuclear power plants.Come back for more programming on the topic of the revival and expansion of nuclear power when TUC Radio returns.DATE: 2010 and 2024
Blasted into bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto in Finland on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Onkalo has to remain secure for 100,000 years.Danish filmmaker Michael Madsens documentary of the building in progress of Onkalo is a meditation on eternity, insanity and the impossibility of projecting anything 100,000 years into the future. The film also proves eloquently and with expert statements the terrible danger that arises from so-called spent nuclear fuel from power plants and makes us see Fukushima with very different eyes.This radio program presents excerpts from the film and its amazing sound design.DATE: film released in 2010
When Judge Napolitano began his interview with Jeffrey Sachs, his opening question was: Which country is the worst enemy for Ukraine - Russia or the United States? And Sachs makes the case that the loss of life and infrastructure in Ukraine in the proxy war against Russia makes the US a candidate for worst enemy. He also quotes Henry Kissinger who said: To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.Jeffrey Sachs also explores how promises of NATO membership to Ukraine may have fueled the ongoing conflict; and why the peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in March 2022 failed. Jeffrey Sachs is Professor at Columbia University. There he was former director of The Earth Institute. He is an economist and public policy analyst and known for his work on sustainable and economic development, and the fight to end poverty. As Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Sachs works both in academia and at the level of the United Nations. He has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.Judge Andrew Napolitano is host of the podcast Judging Freedom. Once a week he interviews the same group of progressive commentators on war and current affairs. On July 1, 2024 he spoke to Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.DATE: 07/01/2024
Ray McGovern is interviewed by Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Podcast Judging Freedom.McGovern served as CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. His duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the Presidents Daily Brief. After retiring from the CIA, McGovern became a commentator on intelligence-related issues and was one of the best informed critics of the war on Iraq.Once a week Judge Andrew Napolitano interviews the same group of progressive commentators on war and current affairs. He spoke with Ray McGovern on June 17, 2024.You can find the video of this interview on Youtube on the channel: Judging Freedom. The title is: Ray McGovern: Dangers of Misreading Putin. And the video of the news segment on the escalation to war by NATO is on Caitlin Johnstones YouTube channel.DATE: June 17/2024
The Biden Administration authorized Ukraine to use American Weapons to attack inside Russia Once a week Judge Andrew Napolitano interviews the same group of progressive commentators on war and current affairs. On June 4, 2024 he spoke to Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.Sachs is an American economist, and public policy analyst. He is known for his work on Sustainable Economics and the fight to end climate change and poverty. He has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He works with the United Nations as President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). Judge Andrew Napolitano sat on the New Jersey bench from 1987 to 1995. He resigned his judgeship to return to private practice. He was a Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst from 1997 to 2021.You can find the full 35 minute video of this conversation on YouTube under Judging Freedom. Thats a daily discussion of news from a libertarian perspective by Judge Andrew Napolitano. Jeffrey Sachs: Why the West Hates Russia, was streamed live on June 4, 2024.
Among the over twelve hundred programs in the TUC Radio archives this is one of my favorites. Thats based on the respect I have for the speaker, Edward Said, and the ongoing sadness that, to this day, so little is known about the history of Palestine.This is Edward Saids last major speech on Palestine, the war on Iraq and the Bush administration. On September 25, 2003, a message made its way around the world. Edward Said, Palestinian American, world famous professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and fearless defender of the Palestinian cause had died of leukemia in New York City, far from the city of Jerusalem where he was born in 1935.In 1948 Said and his family were forced to leave Palestine for Cairo when the newly founded state of Israel took their ancestral home. Later Said came to the US, studied at Princeton and Harvard and went on to teach at Yale and Columbia. He was not only a renowned academic but also an eloquent spokesperson for Palestinian rights and sovereignty.Said leaves behind a treasure of writings including his most influential book, Orientalism (1978),as well as books inspired by his passionate advocacy of the Palestinian cause, including The Question of Palestine, (1979), Covering Islam (1981), After the Last Sky (1986), Blaming the Victims (1988), and Culture and Imperialism (1993).DATE: February 19, 2003 LOCATION: UC Berkeley, Zellerbach
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and political scientist. He is now a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. His best known book is The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Based on declassified British and Israeli government documents, the book explains that the expulsions of Palestinians were executed based on a plan drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders. Ilan Pappe left Israel in 2008 after being condemned in the Knesset. A minister of education had called for him to be sacked.Frank Barat, the French activist, author and film producer and long-time friend of Ilan Pappe spoke with Pappe on his podcast on May 26, 2024. This was within days of the missile launch into Israel, the International Criminal Court request for arrest warrants, and Pappes detention by the FBI when he arrived in Detroit for a speaking tour.You can find the full 29 minute talk on YouTube under the title: ILAN PAPPE: The US has no limits when it comes to Israel.DATE: May 26, 2024LOCATION: Internet
Professor Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is best known for describing the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the desire to achieve regional hegemony.Mearsheimer is also internationally known for the 2007 book he co-authored with Stephen Walt, entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The core argument is that the Israel Lobby wields disproportionate influence over U.S. policy - both domestic and international.Mearsheimer has recently been in high demand for his comments and interviews on China, Ukraine and Gaza. Mearsheimer was invited by Paul Salvatori, Presenter & Senior Producer at the Turkish public broadcast service. They spoke on 5/18/2024. You can watch the full 30 minute conversation on YouTube under the title: John Mearsheimer discusses Gaza.DATE: May 2/18/2024
Within a week, in early May of 2024, the renowned professor of economics put out two commentaries on his Wolff Responds podcast that break the mainstream media taboo, or misinformation, on the responses by university administrators and police to campus opposition to the war on Gaza. Richard Wolff is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs of the New School in New York City. This is also a personal response by Prof. Wolff to the extraordinary harsh actions by the New School administrators to the pro-Palestinian encampments at the university. They called the New York City police who arrested 43 people.Six days later, Professor Wolff published another commentary on his podcast, entitled: Antisemitism vs Antizionism, Biden, Gaza and Universities responses.As this podcast was being recorded on May 8, 2024, faculty at the New School became the first in the nation to launch their own pro-Palestine encampment in the New School University Center building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.Please follow the work of Professor Richard Wolff on Youtube podcasts under the title Wolff Responds or his weekly Democracy at Work lectures.DATE: May 2 and 8, 2024LOCATION: New York City
Even though mines - from iron to copper to gold to minerals, such as lithium mines can be so huge that they can be seen from space - and are destructive to land and water and forests - recent proposed legislation in the US aims at expanding mining.It turns out that, ironically, the transition to a green economy with wind turbines, solar arrays, electric vehicles and battery storage requires an unprecedented increase in mining for lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, tungsten, aluminum, graphite and more.Here is an archival TUC Radio program on Mining in America. In 1995 I bought a beat up RV, put all my radio equipment in it and took off on a tour of the Western States - In the course of four years I visited mines from Arizona to Washington State and from New Mexico to Montana.This is my report from Montana, and a conversation with Larry Tuttle in Portland, Oregon, in 1997. He founded the Center for Environmental Equity. They were helping communities to prevent the establishment of mines, or find help with the environmental catastrophes they caused.
Jonathan Haidt is the author of The Anxious Generation and the Epidemic of Childhood Mental Illness, published in March 2024. He is in conversation with Tristan Harris, an ex-employee of Google. Harris had a key role in the Netflix documentary film The Social Dilemma and explained how the design of social media platforms manipulates people's views, emotions, and behavior.Thanks to the Commonwealth Club of California Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris appeared together on stage on April 1, 2024.This is a 24 minute excerpt of their conversation. For the full hour recording, that also shows the images of the graphs that present the specific data for mental illnesses, the decline of reading and math scores and the proof that this has become an international phenomenon - go to the website of the Commonwealth Club of California. You can also search for the film on YouTube under the title: Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation and the Epidemic of Childhood Mental Illness. DATE: April 1, 2024LOCATION: Commonwealth Club of California
We are calling on countries around the world to pressure Israel to allow us free and safe passage to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Thats a message from Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of CODEPINK. She is one of hundreds of participants from 32 countries that are now gathered in Istanbul, Turkey, to sail on three ships to Gaza, carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid. TUC Radio is helping spread the word of this crucial effort by quoting George Galloway from the UK, and former U.S. Colonel Ann Wright in an interview with Eleanor Goldfield of Project Censored. Also a brief clip from a news report by CNN from a press conference by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, held in the harbor of Istanbul, Turkey. This program is placed into distribution to radio station on April 23rd, 2024. And as of this date the departure of the flotilla is scheduled for the last week of April.Please keep searching the news for the Freedom Flotilla and make an effort to pick up radio and video transmissions on the internet from the three boats as they depart Istanbul and sail for Gaza. For updates go to https://freedomflotilla.org/DATE: April 23, 2024LOCATION: InternetCREDIT: MOATS, Project Censored and CNN
This is the second part of a program on the epic struggle over dams, displaced people and the environment, that I recorded for TUC Radio in 2006.
Patrick McCully was then the executive director of the International Rivers Network. They are supporting communities around the world that are impacted by destructive dams.
On their 2023 website International Rivers Network dot org list 217 dam projects around the world that they have helped delay or stop. Globally the building of mega dam-projects is slowing down but the world is left with dams and reservoirs that are decaying and becoming a danger to people downstream.
Just this morning, as Im preparing this program for distribution, terrible news is coming in from Libya: The subtropical cyclone "Daniel" hit eastern Libya yesterday and floods from heavy rains overtopped the reservoirs of two dams south of the city of Derna. Both dams were destroyed and the flood swept entire neighborhoods with people, houses and bridges into the Mediterranean. (Included is a 43 sec. clip from Sky News from September 12, 2023)
Patrick McCully was then a member of the UN Environment Programmes Dams & Development Project. He was a co-editor of The Ecologist magazine in England, and is the author of Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams. Patrick McCully joined Reclaim Finance in 2021 as Energy Transition Senior Analyst.
Jacques Leslie discovered when he wrote for Harpers that At the core of every argument about water are dams, the modern pyramids, generators of extravagantly apportioned electricity, water storage, and environmental and social disasters.Millions of people have been displaced and some of the most fertile land been drowned. In spite of their size dams are not forever. Sooner or later they will all silt up and become expensive waterfalls. They pose a constant looming danger to life downstream when they fall into disrepair or are damaged by earthquakes or acts of war.A battle is being fought by independent scientists and those employed by the hydropower industry over the discovery that reservoirs behind the worlds dams are a source of global warming pollution. In the case of big reservoirs in the tropics " where most new dams are proposed " hydropower can actually emit more greenhouse gases per kilowatt-hour than fossil fuels, including dirty coal.Since the recording of this archival program in 2006 there is good news of positive action. Jacques Leslie kept campaigning and educating on the effects on dams and reported in April of 2023 that: The Era of Building Big Dams Draws to a Close. In an editorial in the Los Angeles Times Leslie wrote that the era of dam removals has begun and reported that The Iron Gate Dam on the lower Klamath River is one of four dams that will be torn down to restore salmon fisheries. https://www.jacquesleslie.com/
Todays analysts and historians say that one statement is more timely now than when Johnson first made it in 2006 that nothing is more dangerous to democracy, than military expansion and war and argued that the U.S. is in danger of internal collapse, due in large part to the vast expenditures required to maintain its ever-expanding empire.
Chalmers Johnson is the acclaimed author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis. He is a former analyst for the CIA and professor emeritus of the University of California San Diego.
Chalmers Johnson was interviewed by the California based author of Imperial San Francisco, Gray Brechin, in March 2007.
DATES: March, 2007 Location: MLK Junior High in Berkeley
Chalmers Johnson wrote that nothing is more dangerous to democracy, than military expansion and war and argued that the U.S. is in danger of internal collapse, due in large part to the vast expenditures required to maintain its ever-expanding empire.
Chalmers Johnson is the acclaimed author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis. He is a former analyst for the CIA and professor emeritus of the University of California San Diego.
He was interviewed by the California based author of Imperial San Francisco, Gray Brechin, in March 2007.
McGovern told Bob Scheer: I spent six decades following Soviet and now Russian policy. Most of that time professionally I have never, never had so much fear that we are on the cusp of a nuclear catastrophe. They discuss why the danger is so high right now, and how a peace agreement could be reached.
Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst on the Soviet Union and Russia from 1963 to 1990 and advisor to seven US presidents. He prepared the Presidents Daily Brief. In 2006 he protested the CIA's involvement in torture.
Bob Scheer came out of the student movement of the 1960 and was and remains a journalist and author of books. He has written for Ramparts, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, Huffington Post and many others. He co-hosted a nationally syndicated radio program: Left Right and Center on NPR and now hosts the Scheer Intelligence podcast that appears on public radio station KCRW.
The full interview by Scheer Intelligence is 90 minutes long and you can find it on YouTube under the title: Veteran CIA Analyst on Russia Ray McGovern Has Never Been More Scared of Nuclear Catastrophe.
DATES: August 9, 2023
There are two locations where all US nuclear weapons are designed. Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California is one of them. Since 1983 Tri-Valley CAREs has monitored nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up throughout the US, with a special focus on Livermore Lab.
Every year on August 6 Tri-Valley CAREs and supporters gather at the gates of Livermore Lab to remember the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This year, 2023, the silent vigil was also dedicated to Daniel Ellsberg. He had been at the gates of Livermore Lab many times in the past and gotten arrested for blocking the entrance. He died in June of this year at age 93.
Ellsberg had released The Pentagon Papers to hasten an end to the war on Vietnam. He was an analyst at the RAND Corp. and a consultant on nuclear warfare to the US Defense Dept. His acclaimed autobiography is titled, Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.
Ever since his experience with nuclear war planning Ellsberg demanded dismantlement of what he termed the Doomsday Machine
Enchanted Films showed a movie with Daniel Ellsberg at the August 2023 vigil at Livermore Lab. They assembled many profound and fact filled speeches Ellsberg had given at the gates of Livermore Lab, including two recent Zoom recordings when Covid made being there in person too risky. Here are recording from 2020 and 2021.
Thanks to Tri-Valley CAREs and Enchanted Films for recording and preserving the voice of their friend and supporter, Daniel Ellsberg - and sharing with me on TUC.
DATES: August 8, 2020 and 2021
Two weeks before Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day 2023 Paul Jay and Peter Kuznick had a conversation about the just released film Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. They acknowledged the importance of the film at a time when the risk of a nuclear war is the highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. But they also raised the question why it is still possible to claim that the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima saved lives by ending WWII.
Thanks to Paul Jay, host and co-founder of The Analysis, for inviting Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and co-author with Oliver Stone of the Showtime series, The Untold History of the United States.
This excerpt from their one hour conversation can be found on YouTube under the title: Oppenheimer: U.S. Developed First Strike Weapon and Used Japan to Prove it.
DATE: 7/27/2023
Kirkus Reviews called this book a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy and a provocative overview of the consequences of the medias appalling failures in making important truths known.
Norman Solomon is an American journalist, media critic, author and activist. He is the founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder and national director of the online organization RootsAction.org, which now has upwards of 1.3 million online supporters. He is the author of 13 books, among them Made Love, Got War; War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death; and Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You.
Massachusetts Peace Action invited Norman Solomon to a book-talk on July 19, 2023. They are working to foster a more just and peaceful U.S. foreign policy. Thanks to Massachusetts Peace Action for the recording. You can watch the talk including a very interesting Q/A session on Youtube. Search for Norman Solomon: War Made invisible.
DATE: July 19, 2023
This recording was made on July 12th when the World Meteorological Organization confirmed one record hottest day after another. Dr. Peter Carter, is expert reviewer for the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute. Paul Beckwith is a physicist, engineer, and now a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. And Regina Valdez is Climate Reality Project Director, NYC. They met by Zoom on July 12th, 2023.
And as I am recording this on Tuesday, July 18, AXIOS news reports that again - today - record highs have been set in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia. They call it an example of simultaneous, compounding extreme weather and climate events " which scientists have been warning of for some time. A sign that climate change impacts are escalating faster than expected in some parts of the globe Quote from Axios News.
Thanks for the material for this radio program to the Climate Emergency Forum and their Zoom entitled: Historic Heat -- Passing the Threshold. Its posted on their YouTube channel - just search for: Climate Emergency Forum.
DATE: 7/12/2023
Bertolt Brecht and many other artists in post WWI Germany were courageously and proudly democrats, socialists or communists. They had experienced the horror of the first World War and were determined to prevent a second one. So when Hitler and the Nazi party actually assumed state power in 1933 they were all marked and most of them left the country immediately. Their exodus destroyed much of the cultural/political rebellion of the 1920s.
Even though Brecht, the playwright, poet, director and theoretician of the stage, was persecuted by the Nazis, he was forced to leave his home in exile in the US when he was accused of being a communist. Nevertheless he did become a major influence on visual and performance artists such as Jean Luc Godard, Robert Wilson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Augusto Boal, Pina Bausch, Dario Fo and many others.
His most famous plays, the Threepenny Opera and the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny were just two of over sixty plays. During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Literature in Exile. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most often performed plays: Mother Courage, The Good Person of Szechwan, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Life of Galileo - that he revised after the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of his most searing, funny, frightening and historically accurate plays against Hitler is The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The play followed precisely the stages of the Nazis seizure of power and posed the most important question: Could Hitlers rise have been stopped?
For Brechts 100ds birthday in 1998 the Royal National Theatre from London, under their first formidable woman director Di Trevis, gave a performance in his honor in San Francisco. They presented songs, and read from poetry and plays. I was given permission to record the songs during the dress rehearsal and include them in this broadcast. They are, in order of appearance: Song of the SA Man, The Seven Deadly Sins, To a Portable Radio, The Ballad of the Jewish Whore Marie Sanders, To Those Born Later, Hollywood Elegy, The Moldau, and Everything or Nothing.
This rebroadcast in July 2023 calls attention to the fragile edge between war and peace; and fascism and democracy, that might lead to WWIII.
DATE: November 3, 1998 LOCATION: Theater Artaud, San Francisco
Neta Crawford co-founded the Costs of War Project at Brown University in 2010 and currently serves as a project co-director.
She is the author of "The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions" (MIT Press). She spoke at a book release event on September 29, 2022, at Harvard University.
The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense"military forces and DOD agencies"is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world's largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military's growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels.
DATE: September 29, 2022, at Harvard University
SOURCE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvFiSr7T0bs
When I joined Seniors for Peace at their second ever rally for peace in Iraq on February 7, 2003, I did not dream that 20 years later they would still be coming out every Friday from 4 to 5 pm to the busy intersection near their home. Undaunted - even by hostility - they have called for peace in all the subsequent wars since then.
Among those who I met in 2003 was a survivor of the firebombing of Dresden and a Red Cross worker in London who saw the young men dead on both sides and still mourned their loss of life.
Im honoring them now - 20 years later - for the work they have continued and expanded since then. Their website is www.mvseniorsforpeace.org/
DATE: Feb. 7, 2003 CREDIT: Seniors for Peace LOCATION: Redwoods Retirement Center
When the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) made the announcement on March 20, 2023, peace groups and investigative reporters raised the alarm. Toxic and radioactive uranium dust, that appears when these DU shells are detonated, pose a danger to the health of anyone who inhales it. And they contaminate the soil and water.
The investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker John Pilger remembers the devastating effects the DU shells had when they were used in Iraq. In conversation with John Pilger is Phil Miller, chief reporter for Declassified UK. Miller was the first to expose Britain's plan to send Depleted Uranium ammunition to Ukraine. Miller is reporting on the growing number of cases in European courts brought by soldiers who served in NATO wars and were sickened after serving in Iraq or NATO wars in he former Yugoslavia.
On June 13, 2023, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Biden administration is planning to follow the lead of the UK and equip the Abrams tanks they are sending to Ukraine with Depleted Uranium shells.
Now it remains to be seen if there is resistance to this decision in the US - or at least curiosity about the news - as shown by John Pilger and Phil Miller on this Consortium News video. Elizabeth Vos is hosting. She is joined by Joe Lauria - editor of Consortium News. The date was May 11, 2023.
They invited Professor Jeffrey Sachs to speak to the congregation. Sachs wrote a book on the American University speech entitled: To Move the World - JFKs Quest for Peace.
Jeffrey Sachs is an economist, academic, and public policy analyst. He is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and President of the UN Sustainable Solutions Network, and an SDG advocate for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Sachs has credentials for Eastern Europe and Russia as former advisor to the economic team of Presidents Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. He also spent time in Ukraine as advisor to the President of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma.
Working for peace is the mission of the Boston Community Church and they watched a documentary of Kennedys speech on World Peace and then gathered to talk with Prof. Sachs. Thanks to the Community Church of Boston for the excerpts of their meeting with Jeffrey Sachs. You can find the full two hour ZOOM recording on YouTube under the title Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on How we can make peace with Russia. That includes a lively Q/A session, and it all ends with a performance of a beautiful piece of choral music.
DATE: June 10, 2023 LOCATION: Boston, MA, and ZOOM
The event focused on the indigenous peoples of Northern California and how a growing LandBack movement can protect former tribal land from mining, logging and climate change.
Corrina Gould is the co-founder and Co-Director of the Sogorea Te Land Trust. She is the Spokeswoman and Tribal Chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, now known as the San Francisco Bay Area.
Five of the eight Ohlone Tribes lived on that land and their sacred sites are now buried under cement slabs and their rivers turned into toxic storm drains and their food trees were cut down. Today nobody even wonders why there is a city called Oak-land.
First an introduction to Corrina Goulds work: Her November 20, 2022, talk entitled: Rethinking Thanksgiving: From Land Acknowledgement to LANDBACK
Four months later Corrina Gould was the invited speaker at the Land Back Symposium 2023, on the Indigenous Land Trusts panel. Here is her talk and response to questions
This recording was made on March 24, at The Land Back Symposium 2023, Location Cal Poly Humboldt, CA. You can find videos of all sessions on the website of https://www.californiasalmon.org/landback
DATE: March 24, 2023, Location Cal Poly Humboldt, CA.
Daniel Ellsberg is best known for having made public the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They showed the world that the U.S. government had lied about planning war on Vietnam and using a lie to start it. At the same time Ellsberg had copied and taken 7,000 pages from the nuclear command and control system in the US - that also contained the targeting for a first strike launch against the Soviet Union and China. Ellsberg always said that this was information even more vital for the world to have than the Pentagon Papers. And in part one of this program he described how these records were lost in their hiding place after a landslide . Daniel Ellsberg managed to reconstruct the files from his own notes and from material that now has become declassified. That led to his 2017 book: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War PlannerOn Dec 13, 2017, Daniel Ellsberg was on stage at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He had an engaging conversation with the Clubs President, Dr. Gloria Duffy. She takes Ellsberg back to 1961, when Ellsberg gets the data on the number of deaths of civilians in a nuclear war to pass on to President Kennedy.This broadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has incurable cancer.
Daniel Ellsberg is best known for having made public the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They showed the world that the U.S. government had lied about planning war on Vietnam and using a lie to start it.
At the same time Ellsberg had copied and taken 7,000 pages from the nuclear command and control system in the US - that also contained the targeting for a first strike launch against the Soviet Union and China. Ellsberg always said that this was information even more vital for the world to have than the Pentagon Papers. And in part one of this program he described how these records were lost in their hiding place after a landslide .
Daniel Ellsberg managed to reconstruct the files from his own notes and from material that now has become declassified. That led to his 2017 book: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
On Dec 13, 2017, Daniel Ellsberg was on stage at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He had an engaging conversation with the Clubs President, Dr. Gloria Duffy. She takes Ellsberg back to 1961, when Ellsberg gets the data on the number of deaths of civilians in a nuclear war to pass on to President Kennedy.
This broadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has incurable cancer.
In 1971, the young defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg had taken on the Nixon administration, risking his career and freedom to leak the Pentagon Papers. He showed the world that the U.S. government had lied repeatedly about beginning and winning the war on Vietnam. Now, over 40 years later, Ellsberg is sharing the research from his most ambitious project yet, The Doomsday Machine " a stunning insiders tale of the American nuclear procedures.Ellsberg was a nuclear war planner during the 1950s and '60s. In The Doomsday Machine Ellsberg offers an expose about "the nuclear war planners, of which I was one, who have written plans to kill billions of people," calling it "a conspiracy to commit omnicide, the death of everyone." Ellsberg asks us, "Can humanity survive the nuclear era? We don't know. I choose to act as if we have a chance."For decades he has put himself on the line to oppose those plans: writing, speaking, standing up, and sitting-in against the threat of nuclear annihilation. Ellsberg has been hauled off to jail for civil disobedience against war over 80 times.On Dec 13, 2017, Daniel Ellsberg was on stage at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He had an engaging conversation with the Clubs President, Dr. Gloria Duffy. She and Ellsberg share a similar background. She worked as a resident consultant at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, where Ellsberg had been 6 years earlier. She then was Communications Director at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C..This broadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has pancreatic cancer and has only three to six months to live. He remains active in his anti-nuclear work and wrote that his editor knows that he works better under a deadline. And Ellsberg adds Quote: It turns out that I also live better under a deadline!
On Wednesday, April 26, 2023, Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years. The US would involve officials from South Korea in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea.How has it come to this, what is the experience of people on the ground in North and South Korea. And why do we know so little about the US War on Korea, that began 70 years ago, and never ended in a peace agreement.I had the moving experience to record one of the few living veterans of that war. The great late folk singer and story teller Utah Phillips said that being drafted and stationed in Korea changed his life. Jeff Blankfort is a much traveled journalist and photographer. He did in depth research on the origin of the war and invited Christine Ahn to be the guest on his program on August 23, 2017. Thanks to Jeff Blankfort and KZYX for sharing part of the one hour program.Christine Ahn is founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War. Christine is also the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now! She has addressed the UN, Congress and the National Human Rights Commission in South Korea. This program was recorded in August 2017. Now - 6 years later - Christine Ahn gives an update as guest on the April 28, 2023, edition of Democracy Now.DATE: 2017 and 2023
Daniel Ellsberg has used his experience to defend Julian Assange and other whistleblowers - even up to current days - when it has become known that he received a cancer diagnosis that gives him only a few more months to live. Frank Barat spoke with Daniel Ellsberg on Jan 19, 2023. He is a French activist, author and film producer and has edited books with Ilan Papp, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis and Vijay Prashad.On May 22, 2021, during the Biden administration, The New York Times reported that Daniel Ellsberg had just released classified documents revealing the Pentagon in 1958 drew up plans to launch a nuclear attack on China amid tensions over the Taiwan Strait. According to the documents, US military leaders supported a first-use nuclear strike even though they believed China's ally, the Soviet Union, would retaliate and millions of people would perish.Here is part of an interview that Paul Jay held with Ellsberg on September 21, 2022 that gives a contemporary cast to the problem. The title of the interview is Why is Biden Risking Nuclear War With China? Paul Jay is a journalist and filmmaker. Hes the founder and host of theAnalysis.news, a video and audio current affairs interview and commentary show and website.This rebroadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has pancreatic cancer and has only three to six months to live. He has remained active and productive and wrote that his editor knows that he works better under a deadline. And Ellsberg adds Quote: It turns out that I also live better under a deadline!
This is the second part of a talk by Daniel Ellsberg that he gave on December 18, 2007 in downtown San Francisco to a small group of members of the Republican Roundtable. Those were the George W Bush years and it was well known that Ellsberg campaigned against the threats war on Iran. I had permission to film the event and was concerned about a possible confrontation. Half-way through this 29 minute segment Ellsberg responds to a statement that he was advocating treason - to which he gives a legally and historically brilliant response that still applies today, to Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and all whistleblowers. But in the end he received a good round of applauseThis rebroadcast is part of a celebration of the work and life of Daniel Ellsberg. He recently disclosed that he has pancreatic cancer and has only three to six months to live. He has remained active and productive and wrote that his editor knows that he works better under a deadline. And Ellsberg adds Quote: It turns out that I also live better under a deadline! As of April 18 - there are already over 1300 entries on search engines for Daniel Ellsberg Week in quotation marks. Join in with your memories and appreciation and affection for Daniel Ellsberg.DATE: 2007/12/18
It was the evening of December 18, 2007, and I was setting up my recording equipment in an unfamiliar downtown San Francisco conference room.The events coordinator of the Republican Roundtable had offered me an invitation to record Daniel Ellsberg - and of course I said yes - in spite of the unfamiliar venue.One of the guests walked past me and said matter-of-factly: Ellsberg is a traitor and proceeded to his chair. And by the time that Daniel Ellsberg arrived I was certain that there were only two people in the room who were not Republican. In spite of some skepticism Ellsberg moved the audience with one of the most personal and detailed descriptions of his experiences as Marine and then inside the Pentagon that in the end he received warm applause.DanielEllsberg recently wrote a public letter disclosing that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has only three to six months to live.Radio producers, video makers, artist and writers are celebrating Daniel Ellsberg Week at the end of April 2023. And this is my way of showing him love and appreciation.DATE: 2007/12/18
This interview - plus the original article by Varoufakis: Let the Banks Burn, published in Project Syndicate on March 24, 2023, generated over a quarter million entries on search engines in only ten days. They may be one of the most unorthodox but also well thought out solutions to the current banking crisis.The interviewer, Marc Lamont Hill, is an American author, activist, and professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera is the international news conglomerate, based in Doha and financed by the Qatari government. Yanis Varoufakis is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens and former finance minister of Greece. He led negotiations with Greece's creditors during the government debt crisis. The insights into the exercise of destructive financial power that Varoufakis gained in his meetings with the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund inspired his current political and academic work.After his resignation from his post of Finance Minister Varoufakis remained engaged as academic and activist. He has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since 2018 and regained a seat in the Greek Parliament in July 2019. And the book Yanis Varoufakis is finishing right now: Techno-Feudalism: The Demise of Capitalism and the Rise of a New Power is expected to be published on September 28, 2023Date: 2023/03/31
Britain already has sent the first Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine and the Depleted Uranium munitions are designed to be fired from these tanks. This announcement came just two days after the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, where DU ammunitions were used on a large scale. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has attacked the UKs decision. Kate Hudson, its General Secretary, said: CND has repeatedly called for the UK government to place an immediate moratorium on the use of Depleted UraniumDU munitions were used by the US and Britain in the Gulf war in 1991 and in Iraq in 2003. Their use has caused a sharp increase in the incidence rates of some cancers, such as breast cancer and lymphoma.Depleted Uranium also been implicated in a rise in birth defects in areas adjacent to the main battlefields. Other health problems associated with DU include kidney failure, nervous system disorders, lung disease and reproductive problems. Kate Hudson says that the DU pollution will be long-term for many generations to come. It can make agricultural land unsuitable for use.No treaty explicitly banning the use of DU is yet in force, but it is clear that its use runs counter to the basic rules and principles of international humanitarian law. In 2006, the European Parliament called for the introduction of a total ban, classifying the use of DU, along with white phosphorus, as inhumane.Since 2007, repeated UN general assembly resolutions have highlighted serious concerns over the use of DU weapons. However four states have consistently prevented the adoption of the resolutions. They are Britain, the US, France and Israel. The first Challenger 2 tanks have already arrived - and with them the fear that Depleted Uranium munitions may get fired soon. The concern is now that the Abrams tanks from the US also might have Depleted Uranium munitions on board.
They spoke on March 15 - when the news broke that the Silicon Valley Bank was to receive a bailout.Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. Jordan Chariton is an investigative reporting news producer with Status Coup News. They feature in-field and investigative reporting, and aim to cover what corporate media covers up.Find the interview from March 15, 2023 on YouTube under the title: Professor Richard Wolff: Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Crisis.Date: 2023/03/15
This is the conclusion of Dr. Riffat Hassans extraordinary feminist lecture on the story of Adam and Eve, a story that forms the basis for the oppression of women in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Plus my interview with her about her radical re-interpretation of the significance of Eves acceptance of the apple.Dr. Riffat Hassan is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and critique the source.In the original text, says Hassan, women are neither inferior nor sinful. Adam is not a mans name " it is the word for human. In fact in the Koran the original being created by god is feminine, a fact that is concealed in all translations.Riffat Hassan says the original meaning was altered by later writings, the so-called Hadiths. These are quotes attributed to the prophet Mohammed and passed on by people who say they heard him tell the story. And it is here " and only here, in the Hadiths that the story of creation of woman from Adams rib is told six times. The Hadiths say that woman is secondary because she was made of Adams rib and sinful since she is responsible for the expulsion from paradise.Riffat Hassan was Professor of Religious Studies and Humanities at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She received her PhD from Durham University, UK, in 1968 and has taught in many institutions, including Oklahoma State University and Harvard Divinity School.Riffat Hassan has since retired after 33 years of teaching in the US. She gave courses not only in theology but also in literary criticism, Shakespeare, Romantic Poets, international relations and foreign policy. However through all her academic accomplishments and to this day she was and is a human rights activist on behalf of women.
Dr. Riffat Hassan is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and investigate the source. This required courage since challenging traditional interpretation of the Koran can be a capital offense. On the other hand we are all familiar with the claim that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition. And Riffat Hassan decided to deal with that contradiction.Riffat Hassan began her quest in 1984 when her feminist friends in Pakistan asked her to help define the theological argument for womens liberation. That request change her life. The events of 9/11 made her work much harder and she continued to promote understanding of Islam internationally.This is a rare TUC Radio archive recording of Riffat Hassan from April 1993 at UC Berkeley. We had never heard a purely theological argument for womens liberation and learned much about Islam that night. We realized how closely related Islam, Christianity and Judaism are, making women of these three faiths the largest minority of any kind in the world. The basic myth of Adam and Eve is embedded in all three religions and is used by all of them to define woman as secondary, inferior and sinful. In this talk Riffat Hassan takes a closer look at the original story told in the Koran and by the end of this program your idea of Adams identity, or who was first and the whole issue of the rib will be thoroughly shaken.Riffat Hassan was Professor of Religious Studies and Humanities at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She received her PhD from Durham University, UK, in 1968 and has taught in many institutions, including Oklahoma State University and Harvard Divinity School. She retired in 2009 after 33 years of teaching.She remains active today and never dropped her engagement with these issues. You can find talks by her on YouTube by searching for her name.Date recorded: April 1993 UCBerkeley, CA
Peter Carter from British Columbia, Canada, is a retired medically trained doctor with a background in environmental health protection.In 2009, moved by James Hansen's public statement that the world was in a state of planetary emergency due to climate change, he founded the Climate Emergency Institute and remains its director. He published on global climate change science and impacts, Arctic climate change,risk assessment and biodiversity.He has presented at many leading science and climate change conferences including the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU). And he is an IPCC expert reviewer.The IPCC and other United Nations organizations have warned us that fossil fuel uses need to be phased out by the end of the 2020s - Instead the war in Ukraine has become the largest threat to global climate. DATE: Feb. 19, 2023
This thought provoking conversation took place on January 25, 2023, one day after the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight"in large part due to war in Ukraine. Dr. Helen Caldicott is an Australian peace activist and environmentalist. She discusses the extreme and imminent threat of a nuclear holocaust due to a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine. She also addresses nuclear fusion and the relationship between the nuclear power industry and nuclear weapons. Helen Caldicott is the author of many books and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was named by the Smithsonian as one of the most influential women of the 20th century. Her public talks describing the horrors of nuclear war from a medical perspective raised the consciousness of a generation.Helen Caldicott believes that the awareness of the possible destruction of all life on the planet has receded from public consciousness, making doomsday more likely. The title of her recent book states: we are sleepwalking to Armageddon.My thanks to Steve Taylor and the Global Justice Ecology Project for their permission to re-broadcast this interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott.DATE: 1/25/23
Chris Hedges wrote: The panic over Russian disinformation that followed the election of Donald Trump often relied on a source now known to have been fraudulent, Hamilton 68.Matt Taibbi wrote: Virtually every major news organization in America has used material from the Hamilton 68 dashboard, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the groups research. Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source.This is a February 10, 2023, interview by Chris Hedges of Matt Taibbi on The Real News Network. Taibbi is one of the journalists who was given access to the Twitter archives by the new owner, Elon Musk.Matt Taibbi is an author, journalist, podcaster, and former contributing editor for Rolling Stone. He is publisher of the newsletter, Racket on Substack. Chris Hedges is a journalist, Presbyterian minister, author, and commentator. He worked as war correspondent and reported for the New York Times from 1990 to 2005.
In his speech to the U.S. National Association of State Chambers on Jan. 23rd, 2023, Zelensky credited asset managers and corporations that are already active in Ukraine - among them BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan Chase, Elon Musks Starlink and Westinghouse.But that is just the beginning. Rebuilding Ukraine, Zelensky said, will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe. The areas of investment listed by Zelensky range from weapons and defense to construction, from communications to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine. And, I invite you to work with us right now.Ben Norton, investigative journalist and the founder and editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report just did an update on this huge privatization project - beginning with the Zelensky speech to the National Association of State Chambers and going back in time to the September 2022 discussion of the formation of: Advantage Ukraine, the investment initiative of the Government of Ukraine. Ben Norton is an investigative journalist and the founder and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report. These are excerpts of his 29 minute film and the footnoted article for: Ukraines Zelensky sends love letter to US corporations, promising big business for Wall Street. DATE 2023/01/25
When this conversation took place in April 2022 Ari Whitten and Prof. Yogi Hendlin had just met in Costa Rica and were inspired by their common interests.Here are excerpts from their 90 minute conversation on environmental toxins and how they affect our health. They discuss in detail how industries, that produce these toxins, manipulate research and evade responsibility. Ari Whitten is the founder of The Energy Blueprint, and a best-selling author.Prof. Yogi Hendlin is an environmental philosopher and public health scientist. He has a PhD in Environmental Philosophy from the University of Kiel, Germany, and holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and UCLA and bachelors degrees from UC Berkeley. Hes currently an assistant professor in the Erasmus School of Philosophy, core faculty of the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity Initiative at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.Hes a research associate in the Environmental Health Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, working on the chemical industry and fossil fuel industry documents. I highly recommend to listen to the full 90 minute conversation. It is posted free on youtube on The Energy Blueprint Podcast under the title: How Science Is Manipulated By Industry.
Marilyn Waring was only 22 when she was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament. She was shocked and dismayed when she learned that all countries that are members of the UN are forced to keep their books and design their budgets under the system of National Income Accounting. The international trade in arms is the biggest growth industry of all. Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system. The death, homelessness, injury, poverty and starvation caused by the use of these weapons is not even registered as a deficit.This segment opens with war. Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all. A segment recorded in the Philippines shows that the labor of women feeding their children with subsistence agriculture is of no value, while sexual slavery that brings tourists to the country is counted as valuable in the GDP. Waring ends by proposing a time based accounting system and recommends that women take over the political process by demanding gender parity.
Marilyn Warings work and inspiring life are described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. Im bringing back the soundtrack of this film to support a debate on the unquestioned need for economic growth at all cost and on what course to take to end the war on Ukraine.At age 22 (in 1974) Marilyn Waring became the youngest member of the New Zealand Parliament. She chaired the prestigious Public Expenditures Committee and became familiar with the Gross Domestic Product system and decided to disclose its pathologies in a film, her teachings at AUT University in Auckland and really her life as a feminist economist. The film, Whos Counting traces her quest to explore how the fate of women and of the earth are irrevocably tied up with the deadly pursuit of economic growth.Marilyn Waring was shocked and dismayed when she learned that all countries that are members of the UN are forced to keep their books and design their budgets under the system of National Income Accounting. This GDP system counts only cash transactions in the market and recognizes no value other than money. This means there is no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment.
By now we have all seen images of plastic garbage patches floating in the ocean, beaches and riverbanks swamped with plastic trash, entangled sea-creatures suffocating - but data on the presence of plastics in soils and air are new - Discarded plastics break down into microplastics less that 5 mm in length - and they degrade further into nano-plastics that can only be seen under a microscope.There are now microplastics found in human lungs and blood and placentas; and the latest scientific studies show that babies are drinking microplastics in their mothers milk.Here is a report from the first meeting to control plastic held in Uruguay in December 2022. 160 of the 192 UN member states attended. Andres del Castillo attended the first round of negotiations for a new Global Treaty on Plastics, formally kicked off in early December 2022 in Uruguay. He is a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law.Mark Leon Goldberg is the producer of Global Dispatches, a podcast for foreign policy and Global development. He is the editor of the United Nations and global affairs blog UN Dispatch and host of the Global Dispatch Podcast.
Microplastics are making the news. This program opens with a clip from Auckland, New Zealand, broadcast on December 15, 2022. Research published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal shows that 74 tons of microplastics fell from the air on Auckland in 2020.Almost all plastics in use today are so called petrochemicals, products made from fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. This industry is booming and plastics are showing up not just in manufacturing, construction and road building, but in our personal environment, our homes, households, clothes, furniture, and the food distribution systems we depend on.The very thing that makes plastic so useful " its toughness " means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter the atmosphere and be inhaled, or be absorbed by food crops that are watered with sewage sludge. We are already exploring the spread of microplastics in the oceans. Included in this program are excerpts from Plastic Talks - hosted by Erica Cirino, the Communications Manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. She is speaking with Matt Simon, Science writer for Wired Magazine and author of A Poison Like No Other. How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.
Parenti rarely talked about his life. How does a NYC street kid get accepted to Yale? How does he lose the privilege of his PhD. in an arrest at a demonstration against the war on Vietnam, and become an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer?Michael Parenti grew up in a poor, working class Italian community in New York City. When he received his PhD in political science from Yale in 1962 he was the success and pride of his family. He risked and ended his academic career when he openly opposed the war on Vietnam. Ultimately the choice he made then was a good one. He now is an independent political writer and thinker and author of over 20 books. Invitations to speak come from all over North America. His topics are history, fascism, US Imperialism, globalization and terrorism. His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.TUC Radio has an extensive collection of audio and video recordings representing about 30 years of work by Michael Parenti. You will hear more rebroadcast throughout this year.Recorded in Berkeley, CA, June 6, 2003
Im recording this at the end of December 2022 - as a celebration of three decades of producing TUC radio as an independent community program. And as a love letter to my grandmother who did all the clothes-making and repairing at home.If she were now by my side would she even recognize the land she walked on when she was a teenager at the turn of the century? And how would she react to fast fashion?An article in the Guardian says that textile production consumes more oil than Spain uses in a year, and significantly contributes to the fashion industrys huge climate footprint. Synthetics also continue to have an impact long after production, shedding plastic microfibers into the environment when clothes are washed.Comments on fast fashion in this program come from Rollie Williams, a New York street comedian with a degree in climate policy from Columbia University. Followed by excerpts from a report on How Fast Fashion & Polyester Create The Microplastics In Our Blood - And finally 10 Fast Fashion Facts You Might Not Know assembled by Planet Proof, a channel that is dedicated to researching and evaluating businesses, brands, and products.
The Christmas Truce was an unofficial cease-fire on parts of the Western Front. Guns fell silent for one to several days. Soldiers emerged from the trenches and talked, exchanged gifts and kicked around a soccer ball. Trenches were close in some places, separated by 50 yards or less.The Story of the Christmas Truce WWI is a documentary film about this spontaneous cease-fire. Thanks to historians Peter Hart, Taff Gillingham and Robin Schaefer, and their choice of rare documentary photos, footage and archived letters from soldiers of both sides. The documentary focuses on the section of the trenches where British and German soldiers were facing each other. This radio program goes into distribution on December 13, 2022, - by coincidence on the same day that nearly 1,000 faith leaders called for a temporary ceasefire in the War in Ukraine. They write that the way out of the war in Ukraine will not be a military solution and believe that a Christmas Truce offers an opportunity for moral clarity that could be the first step toward a negotiated peace.Thanks for excerpts from the 50 minute documentary entitled Silent Night: The Story of the Christmas Truce WWI. The film is posted on the Timeline history channel for World History Documentaries.Date: 2020
Here are excerpts from a conversation between the scholar of Buddhism and activist Joanna Macy and Vicki Robin, a writer, speaker, and host of the What Could Possibly Go Right podcast. Robins goal is to interview people who see far and serve the common good and help us to see more clearly and act more courageously.Joanna Macy wrote: The most remarkable feature of this historical moment is not that we are on the way to destroying our world - its that we are beginning to wake up - as if from a millennia long sleep.Joanna Macy is an author, teacher and a scholar of Deep Ecology. She is a respected voice in movements for peace and justice and in opposition to nuclear weapons and war. She is able to find a connection between Buddhist thought and modern science. With gratitude to Joanna Macy and Vicki Robin and encouragement to listeners and readers to find out more about their work here is a reminder of their websites:Joanna Macy: joannamacy.net/Vicki Robin is affiliated with resilience.org/ a project of the Post Carbon Institute: postcarbon.org/The title of her podcast is what-could-possibly-go-right DATE: 2022/11/06
This is Part TWO of the history of San Francisco. The town that grew from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the West Coast in only 30 years.
Gray Brechin explains in the first chapter of his book Imperial San Francisco how the gold rush connected two major factors for city building: A swelling of the population and the growth of investment capital.
But the mix of people and money was lacking another major ingredient: water. As the first wave of destruction of California was brought about by gold mining, the second wave was caused by the damming of rivers, and the flooding of land for reservoirs, even eventually inside the protected space of Yosemite National Park.
Brechin also explains the connection between the building of Los Angles and the draining of farmland in the Owens Valley. He ends with an intriguing sketch of the creation of the Bureau of Reclamation. They made the quest for water a national issue. The Bureau claimed to supply water to small farmers but ended up becoming the greatest builder of cities.
And as this program from the TUC Radio archives is re-broadcast in early December 2022, an extraordinary news item from November 17 headlines that: The largest dam demolition in history is approved for a Western river. ... Two weeks ago U.S. regulators approved a plan to demolish four dams on the Klamath river and open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat. That would be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world when it goes forward.
This is part of the history of a city, grown from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the Pacific Coast in only 30 years. The book, Imperial San Francisco by Dr. Gray Brechin, is one of the few examples of a scholarly dissertation that becomes a very popular book. Imperial San Francisco brings to light the huge sacrifices extracted from the surrounding land by large cities, from Babylon to the Italian city states to the instant cities of North America.
This program focuses on the Gold Rush and the early conflicts between mining and farming. Next week well talk about the valleys flooded and the rivers diverted to bring water to SF. Was it worth it? And really also by extension - what was it worth and for whom. This is a provocative, intriguing and unusual way at looking at a city. Especially at one everybody loves - San Francisco the beautiful the dream of travelers and immigrants.
This interview was recorded on August 11,2000, and and comes with an update that shows how contemporary many of the issues are. Gray Brechin is visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography and has embarked on a new project that continues to give him pleasure and inspiration. He and a team of researchers are chronicling the often forgotten works of the 1930s and 40s New Deal. The website of the livingnewdeal dot org shows the record of a lost society of a once intensely public spirited America. They have so far mapped more than 17,000 sites across the US and now, in 2022, it amounts to more than 100 sites in every state. All this both in contrast as well as inspirations to the current New Deal.
Date recorded: 2000/08/11
A new generation of writers Rebecca Solnit, Mike Davis, and Gray Brechin are inspiring us into seeing our familiar surroundings with new eyes. They also offer a different perspective on the radical transformation that development and venture capital have brought to so many cities. San Francisco, formerly famous for taking a travelers heart away, is now reaching for the soul and the wallet. A dot com boom combined with the growing biotechnology industry have driven housing prices up and residents and local small businesses out.
Rebecca Solnit says she wrote Hollow City in a hurry to document the beauty and rich culture that was being destroyed, and to support the growing movement of resistance. The publisher Verso said about the book that it shows that wealth is just as capable of ravaging cities as poverty.This re-broadcast is part of the tribute to Solnits fellow urban historian Mike Davis.
Cecile Pineda had come to the Unitarian Universalists Fellowship Hall in Berkeley on Hiroshima Day 2014 to support Harvey Wasserman. He campaigns to prevent the opening of nuclear power plants - to limit their operation - or to close them down.
Cecile Pineda had just finished her novel: Devils Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step, that the Nations John Nichols called: An astonishing anatomy of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster..."
Cecile Pineda died at home on August 11, 2022. Her friends and students miss her voice, her humor, her deep scientific knowledge and her rebellion - all inside her art of writing.
This replay of her appearance, along with Harvey Wasserman, has an eerily contemporary cast. In August 2022 nuclear power is being sold as solution to climate change. Also, just yesterday (Aug. 29, 2022) a bill was introduced to extend the life of Californias last remaining nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. Harvey Wasserman, still active today in August 2022, joined the campaign to defeat the bill.
As people using and promoting solar power we often jokingly said that we prefer our nuclear reactor in the sun at a safe 93 million mile distance. As humans have mastered one power of the universe and split the atom, the discovery has outstripped human ability to understand the consequences. We have copied the nuclear heating mechanism of the sun in 440 nuclear power plants along coastlines and rivers of the world and are barely aware of the danger they cause way beyond their place and time of use.
The physician and anti nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott says that vast amounts of highly toxic radioactive waste are generated every day in Nuclear Power Plants. The 440 nuclear power reactors in the world are operating in 32 countries plus Taiwan. And about 55power reactors are currently being constructed in 15countries.
None of the worlds reactors have so-called permanent safe underground storage for the highly radioactive waste they are producing. And only one country in the world, Finland, is attempting to build one, called Onkalo, the hiding place.
In spite of all the risks nuclear power is still supported. NBC News announced in April 2022 that Biden launched $6B effort to save distressed nuclear plants. Owners or operators of nuclear power reactors, that are expected to shut down for economic reasons, can apply for funding to avoid closing prematurely.
And there are more countries showing interest lately in expanding unclear power. Thats due in part to the recent European Union's decision to designate nuclear power as a green fuel. The green fuel designation suddenly propelled a small island off the coast of Finland into prominence. The Olkiluoto nuclear island contains three reactors and the world's first permanent storage site for high-level radioactive waste, called Onkalo.
Michael Madsen, a Danish artist and documentary filmmaker, had come to Onkalo in 2009 before it became a tourist destination. He spoke to Helen Caldicott about his film Into Eternity shorty after the US premiere.
This is a re-broadcast of Helen's interview from her weekly radio program, If You Love This Planet, first broadcast in June 2011.
A meditation on nuclear danger and war, and the 100,000 year legacy of nuclear waste
The shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the managed acceptance of Onkalo, the underground storage site for nuclear waste in Finland, are in the August 2022 news while I am updating this re-broadcast.
Helen Caldicott called Madsen "One of the more extraordinary people I've ever interviewed. This is a thought provoking exchange between the veteran campaigner, Helen Caldicott, who dedicated her life to alerting us to the nuclear danger, and the young Danish artist. In his documentary film he introduces thoughts about civilization, language, danger and eternity.
Into Eternity is a film about the building of the world's first permanent repository for nuclear waste in Finland. It shows not only the construction under way that will take 140 years, but introduces the people involved, the scientists, regulators and corporate executives who oversee this project. None of them will be alive when Onkalo, as the repository is called, will be finished in 2120; and they must expect this repository to remain intact and untouched by future humans for at least 100,000 years.
This is a re-broadcast of Helen's interview from her weekly radio program, If You Love This Planet, first broadcast in July 2011.
When the rules of the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were re-written, and the World Trade Organization formally established in 1995, the world was promised peace, prosperity and an end to hunger. However the WTO, with now 164 members and representing over 98% of global trade, did not follow through on its commitments. Today, in 2022, there is no peace, the gap between rich and poor is larger than ever, and the environment is devastated by mining, logging, fishing and industrial agriculture. What role has global trade played in all this?
For example at the June, 2022, WTO conference in Geneva WTO members were mandated, under Sustainable Development Goals, to reduce subsidies to factory fishing. These floating fish processing fleets have caused a collapse of fish stocks worldwide. The WTO acknowledged the problem but refused to cut the most important subsidy. China, the EU and US are allowed to guarantee cheap fuel to the fishing fleets. In contrast poor WTO member countries asked for special treatment to continue fishing for sustenance just to keep alive. That was rejected.
Food insecurity and the dominance of large corporation in the WTO were predicted by Vandana Shiva 30 years ago. She also anticipated the use of intellectual property rights and genetic engineering to commodify and control nature.
Vandana Shiva is often referred to as Mahatma Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement. She lives on the farm in India that she inherited from her mother and has written more than 20 books. Her most recent is Terra Viva, published in Australia in July 2022.
Shiva was also one of the founding board members of the International Forum on Globalization, the IFG. I worked for the IFG as radio producer from 1992 until 1999 and recorded the members at the working meetings and public events. Thanks also to film maker Elizabeth Garsonnin who shared the recordings from her film: The Secret Side of Free Trade.
Looking back over the last three decades and trying to understand the heating of the climate and the melting glaciers and the poisoning of all waters and the air; and when hard pressed to put it all into one sentence I used to say that the worlds largest corporations re-wrote the rules of international globalized trade that accelerated mining and manufacturing and transport and fuel extraction and led to climate collapse and concentrated power in very few hands.
In the 1990s I worked as radii producer with the IFG, The International Forum on Globalization. They pointed out that the globalized trade rules of the GATT and the WTO fundamentally limited rights and power of peoples of all member states, and even restricted the decision making powers of their governments.
At the IFG I met some extraordinary activists, economists, scholars, and researchers among them Ralph Nader who has never stopped his fight against corporate power and who I still follow now - 30 years later - on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
Here is his 1994 analysis of the impact of global trade agreements such as the WTO on each member countrys laws, democracy and environment - even on powerful countries such as the US.
The program ends with a clip by Noam Chomsky on global trade organized by what he calls the New World Order Inc. - the global economy and the demise of democracy.
How the rules of the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were re-written and how, in 1995, the GATT became the WTO. The World Trade Organization enforces the rules of globalized trade and is the most powerful organization that hardly anybody heard of - to this day. The WTO can override a member countrys governments, laws and regulations if they are deemed a barrier to trade.
Against the background of the war in Ukraine, the collapse of the climate and todays extraordinary power of corporations, some business consultants are now warning that we are heading into an era of de-globalization with guaranteed disorder and scarcity. They say that global trade relations are coming apart, supply lines collapse and the war in Ukraine affects the world.
So it is time to visit again the rules of global trade. Expanded trade in the last 30 years has led to unprecedented environmental destruction; even the promoters of the World Trade Organization, such as the US, suffered the consequences of the export of jobs and industries.
Only 30 years ago I was present for the formation of the IFG, The International Forum on Globalization. At the exact time as the most powerful nations of the western world - foremost the US - wrote expanded and enforceable rules to globalize world trade, the IFG came up with an analysis and critique of the cultural, social, political, and environmental impacts of such economic globalization project.
The IFG was a North-South research and educational institution. They invited leading activists, economists, scholars, and researchers not just from the US but from Norway to Malaysia and from India to the Philippines. Here is the re-broadcast of the first program in the radio series on the history of trade rules under GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade with voices of some of the founders of the IFG.
Today some of the consultants who are advising business, finance and the military, are warning that we are heading into an era of de-globalization with guaranteed disorder and scarcity. Thanks to Sam Harris for hosting a debate on some of the causes of de-globalization on his podcast: Making Sense. Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, and New York Times best-selling author. Peter Zeihan founded the consulting firm Zeihan on Geopolitics. His clients include energy corporations, business associations and the US military. Ian Bremmer is president and founder of the Eurasia Group, a research firm advising investors and business decision-makers with offices in Washington, DC, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Singapore.
In a Zoom call on the summer solstice of 2022 in India and the winter solstice in Australia, the founders of Spiniflex Press celebrated the publication of Vandana Shivas most recent book: Terra Viva.
Among her many prior books such as: Soil not Oil; Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature & Knowledge; or Oneness Vs. The 1%, this is the first that might be called a memoir.
Her 50 years of activism and writing began with her volunteer work for the Chipko movement. Women in India embracing trees to save them from the running chainsaws of loggers, to taking on the World Bank, corporations such as Monsanto, and Bill Gates promotion of geoengineering and false climate solutions.
Find the one hour video of this Zoom conversation on Youtube under the title: Terra Viva by Vandana Shiva - Online Book Launch. And thanks to the publishers of Spiniflex Press for the Australian edition.
In the US the book Terra Viva by Vandana Shiva will be available from Chelsea Green in October of 2022
DATE: 2022-06-22
Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who cofounded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published material provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The material includes the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video from April 2010, the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and more. All containing evidence of war crimes.
Julian Assange is currently held in the high security Belmarsh prison in the UK pending extradition to the US.
George Galloway is a British politician and broadcaster. He was a member of parliament between 1987 and 2010, and then between 2012 and 2015. He is host of The Mother of All Talk Shows.
Craig Murray is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist and former diplomat. As ambassador to Uzbekistan he exposed human rights violations by that government and was fired by the British Foreign Office. Stella Assange AKA Stella Moris is an established lawyer and expert in international law, she had been hired in 2011 as part of Assanges legal team. They began a relationship and have two sons. The couple got married in March 2022 at Belmarsh high-security prison. Glen Greenwald set up the conversation between Stella Assange and his husband, David Miranda. Miranda is a Brazilian politician and Federal Congressman representing the state of Rio de Janeiro since February 2019. Glen Greenwald is a journalist, author and lawyer. He cofounded The Intercept and resigned in 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on substack and on Rumble with System Update. You can hear the full episodes on George Galloways Mother Of All Talk Shows, Number 161; and the June 11, 2022 segment of System Update with Glen Greenwald on Rumble.
Rob Johnson is President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, iNEP. They publish interviews on line and on June 6, 2022, Johnson spoke with Professor of Economics, Jeffrey Sachs, about Ukraine; the danger of nuclear war inherent in the current US/Russian confrontation (with reference to the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis); and on US Exceptionalism.
Jeffrey Sachs is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. Sachs is known as an expert on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight against poverty.
During the dissolution of the Soviet Union he was invited first by Soviet President Gorbachev and then by Russian President Yeltsin to advise on the transition from central planning to a market economy. From 2001 to 2018, he served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General. His books covered in this interview are: A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism; and To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace. DATE: June 6, 2022
On May 7, 2022, I heard Hazel Henderson in a spirited one hour interview on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. She was introduced as Naders personal friend and advocate for economic models that are based on principles of cooperation and sharing in our abundance. She sadly died, age 89, only two weeks after the interview.
Here is my tribute in memory of Hazel Henderson. I met her in 1993 and recorded her whenever she visited San Francisco. This is my archival recording of Hazel Henderson from the Healthy Cities and Communities Conference in SF in December 1993. She was applauded as a world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of the award-winning book entitled, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.
Hazel Henderson campaigned, along with notables such as Edward Goldsmith and Ralph Nader, against the emerging trade agreements - such as NAFTA and GATT, The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that was later renamed the World Trade Organization.
Here is my recording of Edward Goldsmith and his critique of Global Trade. In the early 1990s I had become part of a campaign to derail or fundamentally redirect the global trade negotiations - most of my radio work was done in association with the IFG, the International Forum on Globalization. I recorded Edward Teddy Goldsmith in 1994 and published him and Hazel Henderson in a 13 part TUC Radio series under the title: The Secret Side of Free Trade.
This re-broadcast from the TUC Radio archives of The Secret Side of Free Trade is to honor the legacy of Hazel Henderson, who died on May 22, 2022, and in honor of Edward Goldsmith who died on August 21, 2009.
Imagine a woman running and winning in 2013 as socialist for City Council in a town that is dominated by some of the worlds largest corporations. Seattle Washington is home to Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and seven more Fortune 500s.
Kshama Sawant helped lead the fight, in 2014, that made Seattle the first major American city to mandate a $15 an hour minimum wage. She and her allies took on Jeff Bezos and pushed through a business tax that increased city revenues by an estimated $230 million a year. In December 2021 Amazon had spent over $3 million to recall her but failed.
Here are excerpts of an inspiring conversation between Kshama Sawant and Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize"winning journalist, author and former foreign correspondent forThe New York Times. Chris Hedges interviewed Sawant on May 27, 2022, on his program on the Real News Network.
Hedges is the host of The Chris Hedges Report, (therealnews.com/chris-hedges-report) and he publishes columns on (sheerpost.com). Please look up the full 34 minute interview and support both networks. The title of this conversation with Kshama Sawant is: How to defeat the billionaire class.
On April 19, 2022, the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern spoke in a talk sponsored by the Social Justice Forum, Raleigh. Excerpts on this program focus on nuclear weapons, the Maidan Coup, and the Minsk Agreement.
McGoverns CIA career began under President John F. Kennedy, and lasted through the presidency of George H.W. Bush. McGovern advised Henry Kissinger during the Richard Nixon administration. Under Ronald Reagan he chaired the National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the Presidents Daily Brief.He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, returning it in 2006 to protest the CIA's involvement in torture.
McGovern had been invited by the Social Justice Forum, Raleigh, to fill in what was not talked about in the media regarding Ukraine. There was a palpable desire to go beyond the prevailing discussion whether Putin is a satan or a saint and address the global consequences of any war conducted among nuclear power plants and in the shadow of nuclear weapons. Here is Ray McGoverns comment on the question of how a cease fire could be achieved. You can find the full 90 min recording of the Zoom: Ukraine: Its NOT What Theyre Telling You on Ray McGovern website https://raymcgovern.com/
Or on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NczKnBB0Pw
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese monk, peace activist, poet, author, teacher and an inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Called Thay for short, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 after expressing opposition to the war. A year later Martin Luther King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. After a 39-year exile, Thay was permitted to visit Vietnam in 2005. He died on January 22, 2022.
Joanna Macy has lived in the SF Bay area for much of her life. While I was living in the area as I never missed a chance to hear her and talk to her. What intrigued me most were her anti nuclear campaigns - her many ways to inspire peace and her early recognition about the climate crisis and motivation to protect the living world - all animated by her practice of love and engaged Buddhism.
This is a passionate appeal for peace by the former academic and Minister of Finance. After resigning from the Greek government in 2015 Yanis Varoufakis did not return to academia. He is now engaged in European politics as a visionary speaker, writer, and active participant. In February 2016, he launched the Democracy in Europe Movement and is active in the building, social justice and financial goal setting of the European Union and holds a parliamentary seat since July 2019.
The first clip is Varoufakis message for peace in Ukraine to the Progressive International. Varoufakis records from his kitchen for the meeting on March 9, 2022.
On Mar 6, 2022, the British comedian and YouTuber with a following of over 5 million invited Varoufakis for a conversation about peace in Ukraine. Russell Brand gave it the title: So THIS Is Why Ukraine Is Being Attacked and after a brief introduction turned the broadcast over to Varoufakis.
Varoufakis recommendations on how to bring about peace in Ukraine are widely supported in Europe. Since the future of NATO is crucial in negotiations for peace and there is so much disagreement over NATOs history and the power plays in the background, this program ends with quotes from a twitter feed @RnaudBertrand. Arnaud Bertrand hosts a crowd sourced collection of critical comments on NATO under the title: How Western Strategic Thinkers Warned US-NATO over Ukrainian Conflict.
Strategic thinkers include historian, economists and politicians such as Clintons defense secretary William Perry; Noam Chomsky; and CIA director Bill Burns, and and all are backed by video or text links. The collection ends with then Senator Joe Biden who held a different opinion on NATOs potential threat to Putin in 1997.
In early February of 2022 a news caster warned that the US may be about to lose its status as a world superpower to China, based on the GDP. The Gross Domestic Product is the total market value of the goods and services produced by a countrys economy. For the year 2021 the GDP of the US has been growing by only 5.7% - while that of China has grown 8.1%
The GDP system counts only cash transactions in the market and recognizes no value other than money. This means there is no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment.
Hawaii was taken over in 1898 by American sugar planters and missionaries, with the support of the US marines. For the last 16 years the Hawai'i Book & Music Festival recovers and celebrates the cultures of the islands. They bring together Hawaiian poets, storytellers and musicians, with community thought leaders and experts in Hawaiian sustainability and resilience.
In cooperation with the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, they are also inviting international speakers. In 2021 it was the climate scientist Michael Mann, from Pennsylvania State University. And the English economist Kate Raworth, who studied economics at Oxford. Disillusioned by modern economics, she dedicated her life to changing the way economic success is measured and public policy determined.
Kate Raworth puts the needs of people first - be it food, water, housing, health, equity, and a political voice and wants them met without overshooting the Earth's ecological ceiling. This and more is laid out in her graphic presentation of three concentric circles which she tongue-in-cheek calls Doughnut Economics.
Kate Raworth is being introduced at the 16th annual Hawai'i Book & Music Festival on October 7, 2021, by Kamana-maikalani Beamer, a full professor at the University of Hawaii-Mnoa. DATE: 2021/10/07