Author Archives: Maria

Marilyn Waring: War is the biggest growth industry of all – Archive TWO of TWO

Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system
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 [ . . . ]

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Marilyn Waring: War is the biggest growth industry of all – Archive TWO of TWO

Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system
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 [ . . . ]

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Marilyn Waring: Our economic system assigns no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment – Archive ONE of TWO

Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all 
Marilyn Waring’s work and inspiring life are described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. I’m 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 [ . . . ]

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Marilyn Waring: Our economic system assigns no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment – Archive ONE of TWO

Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all 
Marilyn Waring’s work and inspiring life are described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. I’m 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 [ . . . ]

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A New Global Treaty on Plastics is Being Negotiated at the United Nations

Mark Leon Goldberg interviews Andres del Castillo
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 [ . . . ]

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A New Global Treaty on Plastics is Being Negotiated at the United Nations

Mark Leon Goldberg interviews Andres del Castillo
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 [ . . . ]

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A Poison Like No Other – Matt Simon

How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
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 [ . . . ]

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A Poison Like No Other – Matt Simon

How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
Microplastics are making the news. This program opens with a clip from Aukland, 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 [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: How I Became an Activist – PARENTI SPECIAL

2023 Rebroadcast to remember and honor Michael Parenti who will turn 90 later this year
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 [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: How I Became an Activist – PARENTI SPECIAL

2023 Rebroadcast to remember and honor Michael Parenti who will turn 90 later this year
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 [ . . . ]

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A Love Letter to my Grandmother and a Detour into Fast Fashion

I’m 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 industry’s huge climate footprint. Synthetics also continue to have an impact long after production, shedding plastic microfibers into the environment when [ . . . ]

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A Love Letter to my Grandmother and a Detour into Fast Fashion

I’m 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 industry’s huge climate footprint. Synthetics also continue to have an impact long after production, shedding plastic microfibers into the environment when [ . . . ]

Read More

WWI – The Christmas Truce of 1914

Silent Night in trenches of the Western Front
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 [ . . . ]

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WWI – The Christmas Truce of 1914

Silent Night in trenches of the Western Front
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 [ . . . ]

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Joanna Macy – Inspiration for December 2022

“On the way to destroying our world we are beginning to wake up from a millennia long sleep.”
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. Robin’s 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 – it’s that we are beginning to wake up – as if from a millennia long sleep.”
Joanna Macy is an author, teacher and a scholar [ . . . ]

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