Author Archives: Maria

A Quarter Century of Unheeded Warnings: Stephen Schneider Tribute (ONE of TWO)

By MariaJanuary 9, 20132013

When the Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider died on a return flight from a climate conference in Sweden in 2010 the world lost one the great and courageous climate scientists. He and Prof. James Hansen risked their careers by researching and publishing on climate change since the 1980s and the world would be a very different place today had their warnings been heeded instead of denied and disparaged.
This conversation was recorded in March 2001 in the garden of Schneider’s home near the Stanford Campus. He had just returned from his work with the IPCC. Thousands of scientists are making contributions that are reviewed by the IPCC and then must be approved line by line by all 120 plus member nations. [ . . . ]

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Global Warming – A Quarter Century of Unheeded Warnings

By MariaJanuary 2, 20132013

Remembrance of the late Dr. Stephen Schneider
Topics: CO2 now 20% higher than in last half million years; rate of CO2 increase higher than in geologic time; extreme weather; solutions: carbon pricing and equity.
In TUC radio’s last program you heard Hansen’s acceptance speech. This – by extension is my credit to Schneider whose name on the press coverage of the award came up only as a quote: “a Stanford professor who died”. Nothing about his very unique and holistic view based on his expertise in biology and atmospheric science, his ability to describe how climate and life evolved together – and how that process is falling apart as humans are disturbing the earth. And nothing about his work with the Intergovernmental [ . . . ]

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Dr. James Hansen: CALL TO ACTION – LEAVE COAL IN THE GROUND AND PUT A PRICE ON CARBON

By MariaDecember 26, 20122012

Topics: Superstorm Sandy, carbon pricing VS cap and trade.
Dr. James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He is one the first climate scientists to issue an urgent warning on climate change and has been embattled ever since – and stood his ground. Now, a quarter century later he speaks, campaigns, and issues scientific papers with an ever growing group of concerned scientists from across the world. He works with Bill McKibben on the campaign against the Keystone XL Pipeline, joined in civil disobedience and was arrested. Hansen has very clear ideas as to what needs to be done politically to face the immediate danger of climate change.
On December [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism (TWO of TWO)

By MariaDecember 19, 20122012

Parenti explores how the post World War II prosperity emerged in the US and how at the same time the organized destruction of the human and environmental support systems accelerated.
This is the conclusion of a one-hour speech by Dr. Michael Parenti, given in October 2012 at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. Parenti, with a Ph.D. from Yale, is an independent scholar, lecturer and author of over 20 books.

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

Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism (ONE of TWO)

By MariaDecember 12, 20122012

Dr. Michael Parenti gave this keynote speech for the 4th Annual People’s Movement Assembly at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington in October, 2012. He talked about economics, neo-liberalism, globalization and the history of capitalism.
Parenti spoke and wrote about these topics long before most other academics dared mention – and much less critique –capitalism, the chosen economic form in the US, and really the world.
Raised in a working class Italian family in East Harlem, New York City, Parenti went on to receive his Ph.D. in political science at Yale in 1962. His academic career was cut short by his dismissal after he was arrested for protesting the US war on Vietnam. Parenti became an independent scholar, lecturer and author of over [ . . . ]

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

By MariaDecember 5, 20122012

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 so we punch holes into the domes of false reality that have been constructed to shield the society from an understanding of itself. All this in order to get to the subliminal circumstances which can motivate people to tangibly, finally, oppose the order of things that we encounter in such a way as they can be transformed. I think the key to the whole of America lies right [ . . . ]

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Ward Churchill: A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE (ONE OF TWO)

By MariaNovember 28, 20122012Native Americans

Holocaust and Denial in the Americas
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us we may be more open to an unflinching look at genocide and denial in America. 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. With one important difference. This genocide is unparalleled in term of the size of population killed and in the way it was sustained through time.
In this first of two parts Churchill sets out to prove that the numbers of how many Indians lived North of the Rio Grande were cooked – there appear to have been not one but 15 million Native Americans.
The [ . . . ]

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

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

By MariaNovember 20, 20122012

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 and he asks [ . . . ]

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

By MariaNovember 14, 20122012

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 on John Trudell. [ . . . ]

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Edward Said: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights (Part TWO of TWO)

By MariaNovember 6, 20122012

Said gives a report on GAZA, still under military occupation, but then and now a huge prison. He also refers to the first and second Intifada, the beginning of the building of the separation wall; and the divestment and boycott campaign in the US. All events are important historic dates that are eerily contemporary.
Said ends with a very personal description of the healing collaboration between him and the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim. The youth orchestra that they founded together in 1999 to bring Palestinians and Israelis together still performs in 2012.
In 1948 Said and his family were forced to leave Palestine for Cairo when the newly founded state of Israel took their ancestral home. Later Said came to the US, [ . . . ]

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Edward Said: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights (Part ONE of TWO)

By MariaOctober 31, 20122012

This is Said’s last major speech on Palestine, the war on Iraq and the Bush administration. On September 25, 2003, a message made its way around the world. Edward Said, Palestinian American, world famous professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and fearless defender of the Palestinian cause had died of leukemia in New York City, far from the city of Jerusalem where he was born in 1935.
In 1948 Said and his family were forced to leave Palestine for Cairo when the newly founded state of Israel took their ancestral home. Later Said came to the US, studied at Princeton and Harvard and went on to teach at Yale and Columbia. He was not only a renowned academic [ . . . ]

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

Miko Peled: The General’s Son (Part TWO of TWO)

By MariaOctober 23, 20122012

In this second half of his talk Miko Peled, son or General Matti Peled, one of the founding fathers of Israel, talks about the moment in his life where everything changed. His 13 year old niece Smadar was among those killed in Jerusalem by two Palestinian suicide bombers. Miko Peled learned from his sister Nurit. She surprised the world press by blaming not the Palestinians but the Israeli government for the death of her daughter. She said the brutal occupation of Palestine had led to a measure of despair that caused the young suicide bombers to take their own lives, along with that of her daughter. Peled also explains why the two state solution is no longer possible and calls [ . . . ]

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Miko Peled: The General’s Son (ONE of TWO)

By MariaOctober 17, 20122012

Miko Peled’s father was the Israeli major general Matti Peled. He was part of the General Staff during the Six Day War in 1967. Israel then conquered the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and Sinai, setting the stage for the untenable situation the Palestinians face today. His son Miko visited the very territories his father had helped to conquer. He formed friendships in the West Bank, re-considered his own upbringing and did much original research to re-write with authority the history he was taught growing up in Israel.
Miko Peled’s book: The General’s Son, was published in 2012. The poet Alice Walker wrote the foreword and said that this book is the most hopeful on the topic of Israel/Palestine. Peled [ . . . ]

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Prof. Don Huber: THE IMPACT OF GMOs AND THE HERBICIDE ROUNDUP (Part TWO)

By MariaOctober 10, 20122012Genetic Engineering, GMOs

A revolution in our food supply and in agriculture has taken place in the last 15 years that has remained unknown, secret or unrecognized – depending on your point of view. However the efforts to label genetically modified organisms by consumers and the forceful resistance to the right to know what we eat by corporations that produce the genetically engineered corn, soy, beets, wheat, alfalfa etc. that are already in our food have triggered a fundamental question. Roundup ready corn and soy or bt corn and soy have already replaced all but 10% of all corn and soy grown in the US using the argument that they are nutritious, safe and ecologically sound – so why are corporations not proud [ . . . ]

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Professor Don Huber: THE IMPACT OF GMOs AND THE HERBICIDE ROUNDUP ON CROPS, ANIMALS, PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

By MariaOctober 2, 20122012Genetic Engineering, GMOs

An insiders speaks out: The battle lines are drawn over safety of genetically modified plants and animals between the corporations that make them, and farmers and consumers expected to handle and eat them.
Don Huber is Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology. He taught, researched and published at Purdue University for thirty-five years on plant physiology, microbiology, pathology and soil-borne disease control. Huber came out of retirement to speak out on the dangers of glyphosate and genetically modified plants.
Monsanto already launched a campaign to discredit him in spite of his impeccable credentials that even include his work, from 1963 to 1971, at the U.S. Army Edgewood Proving Ground and Ft. Detrick Biological Laboratories in Maryland. There he did research on chemical and [ . . . ]

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