Author Archives: Maria

Fast Food World – TUC personal archive – One of Two

Michael Pollan, Carlo Petrini and Wendell Berry
In the seventh month of Covid, September 2020, life for so many is coming into focus around the essentials – Home and Food. Including my home, threatened by the California fires, and my tiny garden with tomatoes and peppers. Meanwhile the whole world is bursting in with Covid news. And a conversation is beginning about how bes to rebuild the food web when Covid ends.
For me this brings back memories of an extraordinary on-stage conversation at UC Berkeley at the end of November 2003. The hall filled to capacity long before the beginning of the event. Who would have thought that a simple title such as “Fast Food World” would draw over [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 39.8MB)

Vandana Shiva: The Future of Food and Farming in a Pandemic World – Part TWO of TWO

This the conclusion of a masterclass on this theme taught by Vandana Shiva to students at the University of British Columbia on August 17, 2020. This program also includes a rare bonus-track of a TUC Radio recording of Shiva’s keynote at the Fast Food World conference at UC Berkeley on November 24, 2003.
Before earning her PhD in quantum theory Vandana Shiva had been training in India in the atomic energy commission. She credits the Chipko Movement, where she volunteered, with teaching her about biodiversity. Chipko was a nonviolent ecological movement in India in the 1970s started by rural villagers, mainly women. They were protecting trees and forests slated for government-backed logging by embracing the trees and stopping the chainsaws.
Vandana [ . . . ]

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

Vandana Shiva: The Future of Food and Farming in a Pandemic World – Part ONE of TWO

On Aug 17, 2020, the University of British Columbia in Canada invited Dr. Vandana Shiva to hold the first on-line Masterclass with students from UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Vandana Shiva gave a presentation and then the students self-organized the lively and warm Q and A period.
Vandana Shiva remembers with fondness her time as a student in Canada. She was trained as a physicist before shifting to interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy. She earned her PhD in quantum theory at the University of Western Ontario.
Currently she is based in Dehra Dun, India. She has authored over 20 books, including The Violence of the Green Revolution, Monocultures of the Mind, Soil not Oil and Oneness [ . . . ]

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

Chris Hedges: Challenging Corporate Power – Chevron VS Donziger

On September 5, 2020, Chris Hedges talked to attorney Steven Donziger. Donziger battled the corporate oil giant, , over environmental pollution and destruction in Ecuador and won a settlement of $9.5 billion for indigenous communities.
Since then Chevron has waged a campaign against Donziger to destroy him economically, professionally and personally. Their goal is to prevent the settlement to be paid out for the urgently needed cleanup.
Chis Hedges is an investigative journalist, New York Times best selling author and former staff, and television host of On Contact. This is the September 5 interview with Steven Donziger.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 39.8MB)

In Memory of Glaciologist Konrad Steffen

Professor Steffen was a renowned scientist who did research at the world’s two largest ice sheets, Antarctica and Greenland. His 30-year study of Greenland proved to the world that the ice sheet melting is accelerating. Glaciers are both losing mass and sliding into the ocean faster. On August 8, 2020, Konrad Steffen fell into a crevasse that had opened next to the research station that he had founded in 1990. He was 68 and had gone out on a routine data collection walk.
Professor Konrad Steffen began his studies in the Arctic in the 1970s, founded Swiss Camp, the Lab and dining room for scientists and students in 1990 and worked there almost every year. He was also a professor of [ . . . ]

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

Witness To The Melting Of The Greenland Ice – TUC Archives

An Inuit Elder Speaks
Ithluk was recorded by Cien Fuegos in July, 2007, during a rainstorm in the Valley of the Ancients on Greenland.
When I first heard his voice in 2007 I wished I could move radio stations to play this recording every day to show that voices like his can reach us and inspire us to recognize our common future and save Greenland from melting. But even though there is enough water bound up in the Greenland ice sheet to raise sea level by 21 feet and drown the cities of London and New York this program had a limited reach.
And now, in August 2020 a headline in the British Guardian read: Greenland ice sheet lost a record 1 [ . . . ]

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

Richard Wolff and Nomi Prins: The Federal Reserve’s Rigged Money Management

On August 10, 2020 Economics Professor Richard Wolff invited Nomi Prins, the former Wall Street executive turned whistle blower, author and investigative journalist, on his weekly show: Economics Update. They discussed the consequences of the increasingly larger infusions of cash that the Federal Reserve injects when there is a crisis. First for the dot com of 2000 – then the subprime of 2008 and now the covid 19 crisis. Professor Richard Wolff began with his ten minute news segment.
Nomi Prins has written for The New York Times, Fortune, Newsday, Mother Jones, The Guardian, The Nation and other publications. She was also a member of Senator Bernie Sanders panel of top economic experts to advise on Federal Reserve reform.
Richard Wolff is [ . . . ]

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Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Dr. John Campbell: Coronavirus, Community testing and diagnosis

In his August 7, 2020, presentation the British retired Nurse Teacher Dr. John Campbell used his daily Covid briefing to present what might be a breakthrough in testing.
Given that testing all over the world is inadequate or even impossible at the scale needed, he described a new COVID Symptom Study and App. It was developed by a consortium of scientists with the goal of collecting information to help healthcare workers, researchers, and public officials to address the COVID-19 outbreak. This initiative was led by Professor Tim Spector in the UK and Dr. Andy Chan in the US, and was covered by the journal Science in March and peer reviewed in Nature.
This App collects daily information from individuals in the community [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)