Author Archives: Maria

The ‘Slow Motion Execution’ of Julian Assange

Chris Hedges in conversation with Craig Murray
Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed author. Craig Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan and now is one of Britain’s most important human rights campaigners.
Thanks to The Real News Network for broadcasting Hedges’ conversation with Craig Murray on September 15, 2023. That’s a date of great importance as the extradition of Julian Assange from Great Britain to the US might be only weeks away.
Hounded by US law enforcement and its allies for more than a decade, Assange has been stripped of all personal and civil liberties for the crime of exposing the extent of US atrocities during the [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The Environmental Impacts of Large Dams and Reservoirs with Patrick McCully, updated Archive

McCully was the executive director of the International Rivers Network
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 I’m preparing this program for [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The Environmental Impacts of Large Dams and Reservoirs – updated Archive

Jacques Leslie is a foreign correspondent turned non-fiction writer who once covered the war on Vietnam for the Los Angeles Times
Jacques Leslie discovered when he wrote for Harper’s 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 [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)

Chalmers Johnson – Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic, Archive TWO of TWO

Johnson’s name is being quoted in the 2023 work of analysts and historians
Today’s 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: [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Chalmers Johnson – Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic, Archive ONE of TWO

Johnson’s name is being quoted in the 2023 work of analysts and historians
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.
DATES: March, 2007
Location: MLK Junior High in Berkeley

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Ray McGovern, Veteran CIA Analyst on Russia, Warns of Nuclear War

An August 9, 2023, conversation with Robert Scheer
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 President’s 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 [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Dismantle the Doomsday Machine – Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Daniel Ellsberg at the gates of Lawrence Livermore Lab
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. [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Oppenheimer and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Paul Jay and Peter Kuznick challenge the claims that the bombing ended WWII
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 [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)