2016

In 2016 I began focusing on climate change.

The Dublin Interview with Professor Kevin Anderson (ONE of TWO)

At the Paris Climate Talks in 2015 195 countries made pledges how to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius – or even better 1.5 degrees. However there is very little information as to how or if at all – these pledges are being honored.
Kevin Anderson is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, and Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
In March 2016 he came for a whirl wind speaking tour of Ireland and sat down for an interview in Dublin with John Gibbons from the National Trust for Ireland. Gibbons calls Anderson one of the world’s best known and most influential – and outspoken – climate specialists.
Here is the first part [ . . . ]

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The Project for the New American Century (TWO of TWO)

Updated Archival Program
On the enduring power of the neo-conservative movement in the US
This is the conclusion of the reading of a once well guarded document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New American Century”. It was commissioned by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the year 2000, before any of them were in government. Named in the text are the countries to be invaded: On the A-list: Iraq, Syria, Libya and later Iran and North Korea. This is evidence that the invasion of Iraq on false “intelligence” was promoted – successfully one might say – by a neo-conservative interventionist movement of which Cheney and Rumsfeld were two important players among many who are still active. [ . . . ]

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The Project for the New American Century (ONE of TWO)

Updated Archival Program
The enduring power of the Neo-conservative movement in the US
The program opens with the peace poem: “Speak Out” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, features General John Allen’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president with Bernie Sanders supporters shouting “no more war”; and ends with a reading by SF Mime Troupe founder R.G. Davis from the bone chilling neo-con plan for US global military dominance.
The original 2003 program by TUC Radio was an appeal for peace and a disclosure of a well guarded document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New American Century”. The document was commissioned by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the year 2000, before any of them were in government. Named in [ . . . ]

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From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, Arjun Makhijani (Part TWO of TWO)

Hiroshima Day Archival Special 
Makhijani asks how it had been possible to exclude almost all military and civilian leaders of the WWII war effort from the Pentagon to the US government, including even the Vice President, and all but a handful of members of Congress, from knowing about and influencing the Manhattan Project.
Among the few in charge was the engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush. He was the first presidential science advisor and coordinated around 6,000 scientists working on war technologies. Bush was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in the Roosevelt White House, the very organization that initiated the Manhattan Project.
Notes: Makhijani has written books and articles on the nuclear fuel cycle, weapons production, testing, workers’ exposure [ . . . ]

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From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, Arjun Makhijani (Part ONE of TWO)

Hiroshima Day Archival Special
Arjun Makhijani is an extraordinary and rare mix of nuclear scientist, historian and socially engaged philosopher. I’m presenting him every two years because his analysis is embedded in rarely scrutinized facts and remains shockingly timely:
Disarmament is more urgently needed now that nuclear weapons have spread far beyond the original weapons states and there are even voices in Japan today that call for nuclear weapons. And Makhijani shows that we can only find the path back from the abyss if we are clear and honest about how nuclear weapons were invented and first used. And there is much information in this talk that has been shunned or kept secret.
Questions raised in this part are: Why was the US [ . . . ]

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Who’s Counting – Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics (ONE of TWO) – ARCHIVE

A TUC Radio classic on the destructive power of endless 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.
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 [ . . . ]

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The Earth Wants YOU! – Bill Talen

30sec Preview/Promo is HERE

AKA Reverend Billy
Reverend Billy in his smart white suit and Elvis Presley hairdo is preaching the stop shopping gospel while standing knee deep in the rising floods of climate change. That’s the photo on the cover of his recent book by City Lights: The Earth Wants YOU, a motivational handbook meant to inspire its readers to challenge the consumerism that is killing our planet.
Bill Talen moved from San Francisco to New York City in the early nineties after many years in Bay Area Theater and performance art. There he began preaching on street corners in Times Square in front of Disney stores and advertising bill boards. His solo appearances soon attracted crowds and sympathizers and the Church of Stop Shopping [ . . . ]

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American Nuremberg – The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes

an interview with Rebecca Gordon
To this day the people of the United States have no accounting of what has been done in our names in the so-called war on terror. But we are left with ongoing misery for literally millions of people, destabilized regions in the Middle East, South East Asia, North Africa and blow-back and spill over into Europe. And it is extraordinary how a small group of political leaders could have created such ongoing expanding devastation and has not been held responsible in any way.
Rebecca Gordon writes that for the sake of the victims of the war on terror we need real accountability for American war criminals. Her book, American Nuremberg, published by Hot Books at Skyhorse, NY-City, [ . . . ]

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‘The End of Water As We Know It’ with Argonne National Lab Scientist Dr. Seth Darling (Part TWO of TWO)

This is the conclusion of a one hour talk by Dr. Seth Darling. In Part ONE he spoke about increasing water depletion while economists project that water demand will rise by at least 55% by 2050.
In this Part TWO Dr. Darling is turning to science, describing the amazing characteristics of water as well as its global history. Also included are a few of the questions that he answered at the end of his talk. They range from fracking to different methods of water cleaning and desalinization
Seth Darling is a Scientist at Argonne National Lab. and a Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He is the co-author, with Douglas L Sisterson, of the 2014 book: [ . . . ]

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‘The End of Water As We Know It’ with Argonne National Lab Scientist Dr. Seth Darling (Part ONE of TWO)

Even though water is most vital for survival the status of depletion or contamination is not well known to the public and there are very few mechanisms in place world wide for water protection and access to water as a human right.
In this May 18, 2016, talk valuable information is introduced to support and inspire local efforts. Dr. Darling updates statistics about the water embedded in certain products.
He also makes an interesting connection between energy production and water and surprises us with research that shows how the energy industry withdraws 200 billion gallons of water per day in the US alone.
Seth Darling is a Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the [ . . . ]

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Robert Fisk on the Armenian Holocaust (UPDATED ARCHIVE)

The ongoing controversy about the Armenian Genocide 
When on June 2nd, 2016, the German Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 a genocide, the Turkish government angrily denounced the vote as “null and void,”. And Prime Minister Erdogan called his ambassador in Germany back to Ankara for consultations. Fear spread among German political leaders that Erdogan might retaliate and unleash tens of thousands of refugees that Turkey currently hosts.
Robert Fisk is the award-winning Middle East correspondent of the London Independent. He has reported from the Middle East since 1976, speaks arabic and lives in Beirut, Lebanon.
Fisk wrote on June 2, 2016 in the Independent that Germany now joined France and Russia and at [ . . . ]

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Climate Change is Here – Now What? Professor Bill Collins (TWO of TWO)

There are three surprises embedded in this headline. “Climate change is here” as statement of fact in a time of climate change denial. Combined with the question “Now What?” – that seems to indicate a new turn for scientists who hesitated to make recommendations. Also this acknowledgment of the current situation is coming out of a venerable 75 year old institution, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, that conducts scientific research on behalf of the US Department of Energy.
This is a lively Q/A over geoengineering, carbon intensity of food and agriculture, air pollution, methane, and heat waves. These are excerpts from an almost 2 hour event that also covered direct recommendations for the SF Bay Area – and by implication any [ . . . ]

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Climate Change is Here – Now What? Professor Bill Collins (ONE of TWO)

The Berkeley Lab, short for: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, overlooks the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. They conduct scientific research on behalf of the US Department of Energy, and are managed and operated by the University of California.
In September 2015 the Berkeley Lab established the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division. The mission of the new Division is to understand, predict, and advance stewardship of the Earth’s Climate and Ecosystems. They pay attention to water, energy, and agriculture.
The Director for the new Climate and Ecosystem Science Division is Dr. Bill Collins. He is an internationally recognized expert in climate modeling and climate change science and also serves as director of the Climate Readiness Institute, a new multi-campus initiative to [ . . . ]

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Palestine is Still the Issue (TWO of TWO) – by Israeli Historian Prof. Ilan Pappé

NOTE:
Since tempers can flare on any issue critical of Israel you may want to precede this program with a disclaimer that the opinions offered here a that of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of the station, it’s staff or board of directors.
I do hope that you will play this important program but also want to be sure that you know that you may draw criticism. Maria Gilardin
INFO ON THE PROGRAM:
Prof. Ilan Pappe is the best known member of Israel’s generation of “new historians” who have been rewriting the history of Israel’s founding in 1948. Pappe’s seminal book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, was published in 2006 while he was teaching at Haifa University. The publication led to [ . . . ]

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Palestine is Still the Issue (ONE of TWO) – by Israeli Historian Prof. Ilan Pappé

Prof. Ilan Pappé is the best known member of Israel’s generation of “new historians” who have been rewriting the history of Israel’s founding in 1948. Thanks to the declassification of British and Israeli documents in the 1980s Pappé has dedicated himself to exposing the truths behind the long established myths around what Israel calls its war of independence in 1948. That war led to the ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 of their villages in what is now Israel.
That’s described in Pappé’s seminal book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published in 2006 while he was chair of the Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies at Haifa University. The publication led to [ . . . ]

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