Author Archives: Maria

The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Artificial Intelligence, ONE

Part ONE of mini-series
The anti nuclear campaigner and physician Dr. Helen Caldicott organized a two day symposium in February 2015 with an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence. They addressed the risk of accidental nuclear war, recently proven facts about a global nuclear winter that can be caused by the unleashing of just a few nuclear weapons, the expanding militarization of space, the power and pathology of the US military industrial complex, privatization of the US nuclear weapons labs, nuclear war crimes in the Marshall Islands, as well as two of the vibrant movements to abolish nuclear weapons, a divestment effort under the title Don’t Bank On [ . . . ]

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The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (TWO of TWO)

Enrico Fermi’s experiment, setting off the first nuclear chain reaction, provided the blueprint for the plutonium bomb. In his commemoration of this little known event that changed the world, the historian of technology, Iain Boal, describes the mindset of the early nuclear scientists who began releasing the most long lived toxic substances on earth. He also sketches the beginning of resistance to nuclear weapons in SDS and CND.
TUC Radio ARCHIVE, last offered in 2011. 
Exactly 25 years after that experiment, with Fermi already dead of radiation induced leukemia, a statue by Henry Moore was unveiled on December 2, 1967, at the University of Chicago, to commemorate the first self sustained nuclear chain reaction.
Boal describes the fascinating clash of ideas, [ . . . ]

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

The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (ONE of TWO)

Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore
Did the nuclear age begin at Alamogordo, in Hiroshima, or with Fermi’s nuclear chain reaction? Einstein said that the unleashed power of the atom changed everything except our modes of thinking; “thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” 
TUC Radio ARCHIVE, last offered in 2011.
Fermi’s experiment provided the blueprint for the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Early on, hidden from the public, the military initiated mass production of nuclear weapons. The mile-long building of the Piketon Uranium Enrichment plant is proof of that effort. The Hanford Reactor is the million-fold scaled up extension of the Fermi experiment. And both now stand in huge tracts of poisoned land, sacrifice zones.
Boal speaks of scientists who dream of [ . . . ]

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Howard Zinn: The Occupation of The United States (TWO of TWO)

This is the second part of a one hour program with the late Howard Zinn.
He began by analyzing the ideology specific to the Unites States: We are number One, the epitome of liberty and democracy. Americans are not supposed to challenge the idea that started way back with the Massachusetts Bay “City on a Hill”. Combined these ideas have made the US into a global interventionist power.
Zinn made an eloquent appeal to end all wars and cited a poem by Marge Piercy as inspiration for connecting in expanding circles of solidarity and mutual support to bring about that change.
Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. He taught political science at Boston University and wrote more than [ . . . ]

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Howard Zinn: The Occupation of The United States (ONE of TWO)

Howard Zinn spoke about the United States as occupied territory. He said that political and ideological power have been seized by a small group of radical anti-democratic ideologues. They have pursued an illegal, unconstitutional effort in their disastrous drive to solidify their reactionary agenda.
Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. He taught political science at Boston University and wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People’s History of the United States. Zinn died suddenly in January 2010. He was about to give two major talks in Santa Monica, CA.
He grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At 18 he became a shipyard worker and then joined the Air Force and flew [ . . . ]

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

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, ONE of TWO

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She holds a Ph.D. in history and has been an activist in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades.
The late great Howard Zinn, author of the now world famous book: A People’s History of the United States, was her friend and he played a role in convincing Beacon Press to commission and publish An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
This first part of the program brings you Dunbar-Ortiz’ description of North America before invasion, the emergence of the US concept of a chosen people, the development of the role of the US military as a force for genocide that seamlessly [ . . . ]

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Thermonuclear Monarchy – Prof. Elaine Scarry TWO of TWO

Choosing Between Democracy and Doom
Highly praised by Noam Chomsky as inspiring us to abolish the colossal folly of nuclear weapons, Professor Elaine Scarry proposes how to accomplish that task in her book: Thermonuclear Monarchy.
Elaine Scarry says that Social Contract practice is a tool for preventing injury and overseeing entry into war. She argues that the constitution and bill of rights hold two clauses that can be used to control and disarm nuclear weapons.
The first such clause is the right of Congress to declare war, laid down in Article one, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US constitution. The second provision that can help safeguard nuclear weapons – to everybody’s surprise – is the second amendment protecting the right [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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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 [ . . . ]

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