Author Archives: Maria

Yanis Varoufakis: Why we should “let the banks burn”

Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Varoufakis on UpFront on Al Jazeera on March 31, 2023 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 [ . . . ]

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

Britain will send Depleted Uranium munitions to Ukraine

Annabelle Goldie, the British minister of state for defense, made this announcement last week, on March 20, 2023
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 UK’s 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 Uranium…”
DU munitions were used by the US and Britain in the Gulf war in 1991 and in Iraq in [ . . . ]

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

Professor Richard Wolff: Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Crisis

Jordan Chariton asks Prof. Wolff – Is this crisis contained – or will it spread?
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.
Credit: Jordan Chariton, Status Coup News
Date: 2023/03/15

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

Feminist Theology and Women in the Muslim World (TWO of TWO) Archive

Special for International Women’s Month
This is the conclusion of Dr. Riffat Hassan’s 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 Eve’s 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 man’s name – it [ . . . ]

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

Feminist Theology and Women in the Muslim World (ONE of TWO) Archive

Special for International Women’s Month 2023
 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 [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 39.8MB)

Fossil Fueled Climate Change & War: Double Doomsday with Dr. Peter Carter

A speech on the one year anniversary of the climate destroying war in Ukraine 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 it’s 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 [ . . . ]

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

90 Seconds to Midnight with Dr. Helen Caldicott

An interview by Steve Taylor for the Global Justice Ecology Project
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 [ . . . ]

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Chris Hedges interviews Matt Taibbi on Hamilton 68

Hamilton 68 was a Twitter based dashboard designed to be used by reporters and academics to “measure Russian disinformation”
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 group’s “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 [ . . . ]

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

Ukraine’s President Zelensky is promising ‘big business’ for Wall Street and US corporations

Credit to Ben Norton, founder and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report
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 Musk’s 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 [ . . . ]

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