Author Archives: Maria

Our Common Future Under Climate Change – Part ONE – Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Ségolène Royal

From the July 7-10 conference held in Paris
French Ministers Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (Education) and Ségolène Royal (Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy) with a guest appearance of Jon Stewart and climate change deniers on the Daily Show.
TUC Radio is focussing on climate change in preparation of the Climate Summit coming up in Paris from November 30 to December 11, 2015 (COP 21)
In the early days of July, 2015, over 100 countries sent 2000 delegates to Paris to discuss the physical, economic and social aspects of climate change. The conference hoped to inspire ambition for a global climate treaty later this year in December at the COP 21 Climate Conference, also in Paris.
Some prominent conference speakers stated matter of factly that we need [ . . . ]

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Sandor Katz: Wild Fermentation TWO of TWO

Sandor Katz is a much loved fermented food maker, teacher and respected author of two books: Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation. His mission is to rescue this ancient craft from oblivion and to inspire people to practice the arts of fermentation in their kitchens. This is the Question and Answer section after his talk at the second annual Heirloom Seed Expo in Santa Rosa, CA in September 2012. Katz responds to practical DIY questions about yoghurt, Kefir, and Kombucha. He ends with an inspiring linguistic flourish about political ferment and social change.
Recorded September 13, 2012

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Sandor Katz: Wild Fermentation (ONE of TWO)

Redemption of the much maligned bacteria that are essential to life.
Rounding out the programs by Paul Stamets and Jack Gilbert, it is my pleasure to repeat a talk by Sandor Katz and his eloquent redemption of the much maligned bacteria and microorganisms without which life would not be possible. The original broadcast was in February 2013.
When he left New York City and joined a rural off the electric grid community in Tennessee over two decades ago he knew very little about growing vegetables and even less about fermenting them. His amazing development as teacher and author of two books: Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, was fueled by fond memories of pickles he relished as a kid in NYC, [ . . . ]

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Bacteria and You: A Love Story (TWO of TWO) Dr. Jack Gilbert

Gilbert teaches at Argonne National Lab. and the University of Chicago
A recent article in Mother Jones described the work of Dr. Gilbert: “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard about the human microbiome. Research into the composition, function, and importance of the galaxy of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that, when we’re healthy, live in symbiotic balance in and on us has become one of the fastest moving and most intriguing fields of scientific study.”
Dr. Gilbert wrote: “There are a nonillion bacteria in the world – give or a take a few quadrillion. This almost incomprehensible number is greater than the number of stars in the known universe. Microbes are vital to [ . . . ]

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Bacteria and You: A Love Story (ONE of TWO) Dr. Jack Gilbert

Gilbert teaches at the Argonne National Lab. and U. Chicago
Dr. Jack Gilbert is on a mission to induce love, understanding and respect for bacteria. He has formidable academic credential with the Argonne National Lab. He is the group leader for Microbial Ecology in the Biosciences Division, and manages the Earth Microbiome Project. That’s an ongoing effort to characterize the microbial diversity of our planet. And he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, and the Associate Director of the Institute for Genomic and Systems Biology.
In this one hour lecture given in June 2015 in Chicago Dr. Jack Gilbert explains that we are unable to survive without the trillions of bacterial cells [ . . . ]

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Paul Stamets: Mushrooms, Bees, and Saving the World (TWO of TWO)

This is the conclusion of a one hour speech recorded in May 2015 in Seattle, not far from Stamets’ home near Olympia, WA. Stamets begins with the story of the rarest mushroom in the Pacific Old Growth forest, the Agarikon; and how the Department of Health bio-defense program had to acknowledge the extraordinary healing power of that mushroom. That’s followed by a groundbreaking recently concluded analysis of the deaths of honey bees and what can be done about it.
Paul Stamets has studied mushrooms for over 40 years. He discovered new species of fungi, saved ancient ones from extinction, and pioneered countless techniques of mushroom cultivation. Along the way he found many ways how fungi can be healers of people and [ . . . ]

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Paul Stamets: Mushrooms, Bees, and Saving the World (ONE of TWO)

More than any other scientist practicing today, Paul Stamets has dedicated himself to the life of fungi and that of their underground support system, the mycelium. Stamets says that the mycelia are soil magicians that give rise not just to mushrooms but form an integral part of the forest ecosystem. The mycelia are disassemblers, creating the debris fields that then feed their fungal descendants. They also show purpose in choosing microbial allies, and Stamets believes they are part of the earth’s natural internet that is in constant bio-molecular communication, governing the ecosystem.
Paul Stamets is a frequent guest at the Bioneer conferences and TED talks. But the so-called conventional scientists appreciate his work as well. That includes medical research into [ . . . ]

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Don’t Bank on the Bomb – The Nuclear Divestment Movement

PAX Christie is the international Catholic Peace Movement based in the Netherlands. Their project, Don’t Bank on the Bomb, identified 411 banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers in 31 countries with substantial investments in corporations that produce nuclear weapons.
Don’t Bank on the Bomb works with ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Together they are organizing appeals to financial institutions to stop investing in the nuclear arms industry, because any use of nuclear weapons violates international law and has catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
Susi Snyder is the nuclear disarmament program manager for PAX and the author of the annual Don’t Bank on the Bomb reports. She spoke at the Symposium on the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction on March [ . . . ]

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International Campaigns to Abolish Nuclear Weapons: Ray Acheson and Tim Wright

The overwhelming majority of nations on this earth are strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. They know that if those weapons were to be used they would affect everybody on earth. They do not understand that we have successful negotiations to ban chemical weapons, land mines and cluster bombs but have not banned the most dangerous weapons ever.
Even though the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been in force since 1970 and even though more countries joined than any other disarmament agreement the treaty has failed in many ways. The idea had been that: “the NPT non-nuclear-weapon states agree never to acquire nuclear weapons and the NPT nuclear-weapon states in exchange agree … to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction: The Deep State – SIX

Mike Lofgren -The Merger of Corporations and the US Government as an Underlying Cause of the Current Nuclear Situation
When Mike Lofgren gave his talk he rightfully began by saying that this was going to be something completely different. He pointed to the Deep State and the merger of US corporations and the government as causes for the danger of a nuclear war in our time.  
Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the prestigious House and Senate budget committees. He retired in 2011 and began writing about his experiences. His initial article as a private citizen, Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, received over a million views on [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Weapons in Space, FIVE

Bruce Gagnon: The Ongoing Danger of Militarization of Space and Nuclear War
Part FIVE of a mini-series
Bruce Gagnon is the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. That’s an international organization he co-founded in 1992. It has an unbroken record of education and activism on a rarely covered topic, the Weaponization of Space.
As vice president of a Young Republican Club in Florida, Gagnon volunteered in Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. His change in consciousness began with a small group of Vietnam War protesters who stood outside an Air Force base in California where he was stationed.
Gagnon’s new life began with the United Farm-workers; he organized fruit pickers in Florida. For 15 years he coordinated the [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Nuclear Winter, FOUR

Alan Robock: Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter – Climatic Effects of Nuclear War
Ever since the astrophysicist Carl Sagan coined the term of nuclear winter in 1983 an additional global risk of nuclear war became evident. Even a limited nuclear exchange would pose a grave danger to all life. If it was not by nuclear blast, fire and radiation – it would be by nuclear winter. High altitude dust clouds that spread through the stratosphere can block the sun for years and even decades and threaten the global ecology and with it the sources of food.
Professor Alan Robock was a participant in the scientific debates of the 1980. He praises the reduction in numbers of nuclear weapons but reminds us [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – MIT Physicist Max Tegmark, THREE

This TUC special series is timed to run parallel to the May 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference at the UN in New York City. Since its adoption in 1968, the NPT has become a critical mechanism to achieve nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament goals.
At the end of February 2015 the Australian physician and anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr. Helen Caldicott, organized a two day symposium to cover the many aspects of possible nuclear extinction.
A year earlier she had read statements of highly acclaimed physicists, including Nobel Laureate Stephen Hawking, and MIT physicist and cosmologist Max Tegmark. They had specifically warned of the potential for accidental nuclear war through computer glitches as well as the tendency to automate more and more functions with the [ . . . ]

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Robert Fisk on the Armenian Holocaust

Looking back at the 100 Year Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
INTERRUPTING THE NUCLEAR SERIES FOR THIS ONE TIMELY PROGRAM:
Interviewing the last exiled survivors of the 1915 genocide before they died in old folk homes in Beirut, Lebanon, where Robert Fisk lives, he has acted more like a historian than a journalist. As the Middle East correspondent for the London Independent, Fisk travelled to massacre sites, compiled lists of victims, as well as of officials who planned the extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman empire. He also identified the rare supporters who refused orders to kill, often at risk of their own lives.
In this 2001 talk to Armenian Americans in San Francisco Fisk presented some of that history and proposed [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Noam Chomsky, TWO

In his 2013 book: Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe Noam Chomsky warned that we are facing Quote: “two problems for our species’ survival — nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.” Up to this point in history problems caused by humans were regional. However just in the last few decades climate change and nuclear war have become a threat to all life.
Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the war on Vietnam and was arrested several times. He was appointed Institute Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 – where he [ . . . ]

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