Author Archives: Maria

Prof. Steven Starr: Radiation Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium from Fukushima, TUC Archive

Replay of the Fukushima Symposium, 2013, the first comprehensive analysis of the health and environmental damage done by one of the worst nuclear accidents of our time      Steven Starr says: “Long lived radio-nuclides such as Cesium 137 are something new to us as a species. Although they are invisible to our senses they are millions of times more poisonous than most of the common poisons we are familiar with. They emit radiation, invisible forms of matter and energy, that we might compare to fire. It’s not a fire that can be scattered of suffocated because it burns at the atomic level, it comes from the disintegration of single atoms”.
Starr gives an update as to what people in Japan are facing now [ . . . ]

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Nuclear War and the Devastating Power of Nuclear Weapons – Annie Jacobsen and Steven Starr

When Penguin Random House prepared the release of Annie Jacobsen’s 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 [ . . . ]

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Economic Update: How Deep Fascist Parallels Run

Richard Wolff Speaks
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff, responding to requests, explores the parallels between what led to the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany after World War I and what has brought the US to Trump and his current policies.
Democracy at Work is a non-profit 501(c)3 that produces media and live events.
DATE: June 30, 2025
CREDIT: Democracy at Work
LOCATION: INTERNET

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

The JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State, Michael Parenti (ONE of TWO)

TUC Radio Archives re-broadcast on the 61st anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination       Parenti criticizes the lone assassin theory, goes over details of the murder and addresses the bitter question that haunts so many, whether government agencies of a democratic country participated in the assassination of an elected President. This is one of Parenti’s most highly acclaimed talks, ending with a standing ovation. He spoke on the 30th anniversary of the assassination in Berkeley, CA.
When Oliver Stone’s movie JFK opened in December 1991 a huge PR campaign was mobilized against the film. Even progressives spoke out. Noam Chomsky wrote in support of the Warren Commission’s lone assassin findings. In contrast Michael Parenti supported Stone and began by examining what he calls “the [ . . . ]

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Marilyn Waring: War is the biggest growth industry of all – Archive 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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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)

Marilyn Waring: Our economic system assigns no value to peace – Archive ONE

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 wars.
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, “Who’s Counting” traces her [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:55 — 39.7MB)

Alastair Crooke: Moscow’s Silence and Moscow’s Threats

Is the West underestimating the threat of nuclear retaliation?     Judge Andrew Napolitano welcomes former British diplomat and geopolitical analyst Alastair Crooke to discuss Russia’s response to the recent, June 1,2025, NATO-backed drone attacks on strategic Russian airfields.
But before going to Alastair Crooke, here is a brief comment on the same topic by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
Before he retired Alastair Crooke was a ranking figure in both British Intelligence with MI6 and European Union diplomacy. Judge Andrew Napolitano served as Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995 and became a legal [ . . . ]

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Elon Musk Abandons Ship – The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich says: “Trump’s tariffs are in turmoil, his big beautiful bill is buckling, and the Muskrat has left his sinking ship. Is this the beginning of the end for Trump 2.0? Heather and I discuss it all on today’s Coffee Klatch”.
Here is a 27 minute excerpt of Robert Reich’s weekly podcast, recorded on May 31st, 2025. He is a professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator and worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter; and as Secretary of Labor for President Clinton. His co-host, Heather Lofthouse, is Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action.
The full version of this program is 38 minutes long and you can find it for free on YouTube [ . . . ]

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Today is day 585 of genocide. Prof. Noura Erakat’s Urgent Plea at the United Nations

On May 15 Erakat delivered a searing statement at the UN Headquarters in New York to mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba – better known as The Catastrophe
The United Nations are commemorating the violent expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948 to make room for the state of Israel.
Noura Erakat is a Palestinian human rights lawyer and Rutgers University professor. In her address she focused on the ongoing campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. As trained lawyer Erakat confronts the narrative that frames this as, quote, War. This is not a legal controversy, she says, there is no question that this is genocide; it is a political controversy. And she urged the [ . . . ]

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