Author Archives: Maria

Thermonuclear Monarchy – Prof. Elaine Scarry ONE of TWO

Choosing Between Democracy and Doom
Noam Chomsky said about the book Thermonuclear Monarchy:
“That we have escaped disaster so far is a near miracle. (Elaine) Scarry’s remarkable contribution should inspire us to abolish this colossal folly.”
Elaine Scarry is Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard. Her most recent book: Thermonuclear Monarchy, reminds us that one man, the President of the United States, has the power to end life for every one else by setting off nuclear weapons. Richard Nixon told reporters in 1974, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.”
Professor Scarry says that this violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally [ . . . ]

Read More

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

3 Minutes to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock

On January 22, 2015, the Doomsday Clock was moved from 5 to only 3 minutes to midnight
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by atomic scientists who had participated in the Manhattan Project. They were in shock by the impact of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1945 they founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in order to alert people to the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need to abolish them. Over the 70 years since then the Bulletin has published without interruption and has welcomed other scientists who are working on nuclear power and climate change to join them and more precisely describe the existential risk humanity is facing.
The decision to move the hand of the [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

How the West Caused the Crisis in Ukraine – Part THREE: John Mearsheimer Q&A

This is an urgent appeal to pay attention to the crisis in Ukraine where the two largest nuclear powers, the US and Russia are in direct and escalating confrontation.
John Mearsheimer is Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.
Mearsheimer states emphatically that in the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis is blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. But this account is wrong says Mearsheimer: The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
Questions in this Q & A period range from who engineered the February 2014 Coup in Ukraine, to what role the Neo-Nazis play.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:55 — 19.9MB)

How the West Caused the Crisis in Ukraine – Part TWO: Rick Rozoff

On The Role of NATO
It is widely acknowledged that the expansion eastward of NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – is a major provocation of Russia and a huge and under-reported factor in the origins and the conduct of the war in Ukraine.
Few investigative journalists follow the day to day politics of NATO – that are directed largely by the US – as closely as Rick Rozoff. He is the manager of the organization Stop NATO International and has been an active opponent of war, militarism and intervention for over 40 years. He writes on the threat of international militarization, especially on the globalization of NATO. Rozoff blogs at https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
Rick Rozoff spoke on January 10, 2015, along with Professor [ . . . ]

Read More

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

How the West Caused the Crisis in Ukraine – Part ONE: John Mearsheimer

In January 2015 Evanston Neighbors for Peace organized an event with two eminent speakers, John Mearsheimer, Professor at the University of Chicago and Rick Rozoff the foremost investigator of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Here is part one of a set of four programs that include two lectures and a long questions and answer period. Prof. Mearsheimer spoke about the origins of the crisis and how to avert the ever heightening risk of war between the United States and Russia. He gave an update of his acclaimed article in the magazine Foreign Affairs: How the West Caused the Ukraine Crisis.
John Mearsheimer is Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of [ . . . ]

Read More

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

The Story of Aaron Swartz – Film on Radio (ONE of ONE) Archive

Please remember Aaron today for his co-founding of Demand Progress and defense of internet freedom on occasion of the impending Feb., 2015, FCC vote on Net Neutrality, and the needed reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under which he was prosecuted.
This program is based on the soundtrack of the 2014 movie: The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. His death at age 26 in 2013 made the internet light up with grief and also anger at a judicial system that haunted and hunted him. He was facing 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for bulk-downloading from a site, JSTOR, that was freely available to Massachusetts Institute of Technology students.
“Aaron’s story touched a nerve [ . . . ]

Read More

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

Peter Dale Scott: The American Deep State (TWO of TWO)

Wall Street, Big Oil and the Attack on U.S. Democracy
There was a heavy rainstorm and flooding in the forecast for November 9 but a group of friends and colleagues were undaunted and came to the opening party for Peter Dale Scott’s 2014 book on the Deep State, published by Rowman & Littlefield. We met in the poetry room of the historic City Lights bookstore and publishing house in San Francisco’s North Beach.
Professor Peter Dale Scott is a Canadian-born former diplomat, and retired Professor of Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books and articles on state terrorism, surveillance, drug-dealing by the CIA, and political assassinations.
In Part ONE Professor Scott spoke about the hidden [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:02 — 19.9MB)

Peter Dale Scott: The American Deep State (ONE of TWO)

Wall Street, Big Oil and the Attack on U.S. Democracy
Professor Peter Dale Scott is a Canadian-born former diplomat, and retired Professor of Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books and articles on state terrorism, surveillance, drug-dealing by the CIA, and political assassinations.
His most recent book, The American Deep State, October 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield, makes a compelling case for a hidden “deep state” that influences and often opposes official U.S. policies. The deep state is a second order of government, behind the public or constitutional state, that has grown considerably stronger since World War II. Peter Dale Scott cites convincing evidence that the deep state is partly institutionalized in non-accountable intelligence [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Gasland Update (one 29 minute special)

A celebration of the December 2014 ban on Fracking in New York State
This program is also produced with gratitude in memory of Theo Colborn, author of Our Stolen Future. Her research into the risks associated with the chemicals used in fracking played a huge part in that victory. She died, age 87, three days before the ban was announced.
On Wednesday, December 17, 2014, a victory made the news: The state of New York banned fracking for natural gas. After activists demanded that the health effects of fracking be studied, a two year investigation by the state’s own commission confirmed what the movement had been saying all along, that fracking cannot be done safely. The acting Commissioner of Health for [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

Ward Churchill: A Little Matter of Genocide (TWO of TWO)

Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 
This talk is based on Ward Churchill’s 1997 book, A Little Matter of Genocides. It is a shattering and deeply disturbing survey of ethnic cleansing in the Americas from 1492 to the present. Churchill compares the treatment of North American Indians to historical instances of genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Turks against Armenians, as well as Nazis against the Poles and Jews.
This segment on Genocide ends with an extraordinary statement by Ward Churchill on the importance of knowing history: “We got an entire society here that, with its own collaboration, quells certain knowledge that would disrupt its very convenient scenarios of what it wants to be by denying what it has been… And [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

John Trudell: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN BEING (TWO of TWO)

From TUC Radio Archives
The Native American musician, poet and former national chairman of A.I.M., John Trudell, continues his moving, thought provoking spoken word and poetry address. He is opening this part with a surprising new analysis of the practice of voting for the lesser of two evils and continues with thoughts about democracy, technology, and dominance, and the curious construct of god in a human form.
Trudell describes Columbus as one who did not know what a human being is, and tries to activate ancient memories of those who arrived with and after Columbus and their long submerged links to their own tribal ancestry that was erased by the inquisition. Respect and responsibility are the leading values Trudell refers to [ . . . ]

Read More

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

John Trudell: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN BEING (ONE of TWO)

From TUC Radio Archives
This is a moving, thought provoking spoken word and poetry address by the Native American musician and leader John Trudell. He did not set out to be a writer. His poetic gift developed out of the remarkable, sometimes unbearable circumstances of his life.
Trudell grew up on and around the Santee Sioux reservation near Omaha, Nebraska. In 1969 he participated in the Indians of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz. From 1973 to 1979 her served as national chairman of the American Indian Movement. The government response to A.I.M. was swift Trudell said, “They waged a war against us. They hunted us down. They killed, jailed, destroyed by any means necessary.”
In 1979 that war took a terrible personal toll [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Helen Caldicott with Stephen Cohen (TWO of TWO) The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?

On October 10, 2014, Stephen Cohen, the eminent scholar of Russian Studies from Princeton, gave an extensive interview to Sophie Shevardnadze on RT. (Formerly called Russia Today, this is the Russian cable and satellite TV channel that is aimed at an international audience). This program begins with clips from that interview. Stephen Cohen says we are in a new Cold War with the added danger of a nuclear confrontation. Cohen gives an erudite critique of the current sanctions and the US led NATO expansion Eastward that has destabilized Europe.
In the second part of this program we return to Helen Caldicott’s appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, that was covered in Part ONE of this program. Following [ . . . ]

Read More

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

Helen Caldicott (ONE of TWO) The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?

On October 8, 2014, the life long antinuclear campaigner and author Helen Caldicott addressed the National Press Club Newsmakers in Washington, DC. She said that the United States and Russia are dangerously close to stumbling into a war over Ukraine that could go nuclear and kill millions of people in a single day.
Over the last eight months, since Russia annexed Crimea in response to the Western-orchestrated coup in Kiev, there have been almost 40 incidents involving Western and Russian air and naval forces. That’s according to a report issued by the London-based, European Leadership Network on November 10, 2014. The report said that “to perpetuate a volatile standoff between a nuclear armed state and a nuclear armed alliance is risky [ . . . ]

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)