Author Archives: Maria

In Memory of Robert Fisk — His Warning, in 2002, of the Pending War on Iraq

By MariaMarch 3, 2026All Time Favorites, Catalog, Newest Podcasts

Robert Fisk, the award winning war correspondent and dean of Middle East journalists died in Dublin on October 30. He was only 74.
Robert Fisk won more British journalism awards than any of his peers, including British Foreign Reporter of the Year seven times and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2002. The New York Times described him as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain.” And that in spite of his principle of speaking truth to power.
Fisk reported for the London Independent on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, without sparing responsibility of the United States and his native Britain for so much of the carnage.
He became one of very few Western [ . . . ]

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

Michael Parenti Theocracy VS. Democracy – The Political Uses of Religion

By MariaFebruary 24, 2026Michael Parenti Audio CDs, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Politics

Michael Parenti (1933-2026) said that democracy couldn’t survive under religious rule – whatever that religion may be. Parenti’s warning in this archival recording is as timely and urgently expressed as it was when this speech was first given during the second term of the Reagan administration. This talk is also very funny. Parenti explains how God may be considered as a “founding father” and why Woody Allen calls him an underachiever. It is easy to extend this timeless analysis to the present circumstances.
With roots in a working class Italian district of New York and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale Michael Parenti became an internationally known writer and lecturer. He is the author of twenty books.

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

Michael Parenti, The Supremely Political Court

By MariaFebruary 3, 2026Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

In his extraordinary 26 minute history of the Supreme Court Dr. Michael Parenti warned us in 1995 that this partisan, aristocratic institution might one day empower an autocratic president. It seems that time has come and two Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, can push the scales of justice in favor of their politics. Unless there is a groundswell to question and change the legal rules of that institution. Why is so much power being given to 9 unelected, non term limited judges.
Michael Parenti was born into a working class Italian family in East Harlem, New York City. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in political science at Yale in 1962. His academic career was cut short by [ . . . ]

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

WWI – The Christmas Truce of 1914 – TUC Archive for 2025

By MariaDecember 16, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Silent Night in trenches of the Western Front The Christmas Truce was an unofficial cease-fire on parts of the Western Front. Guns fell silent for one to several days. Soldiers emerged from the trenches and talked, exchanged gifts and kicked around a soccer ball. Trenches were close in some places, separated by 50 yards or less.
The Story of the Christmas Truce WWI is a documentary film about this spontaneous cease-fire. Thanks to historians Peter Hart, Taff Gillingham and Robin Schaefer, and their choice of rare documentary photos, footage and archived letters from soldiers of both sides.
This archival TUC Radio program first went into distribution on December 13, 2022. By coincidence on the same day that nearly 1,000 faith leaders called [ . . . ]

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

Chalmers Johnson – Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic, Archive TWO of TWO

By MariaDecember 9, 2025All Time Favorites, Amazing Speakers & Events, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Johnson’s name is being quoted in the 2023 work of analysts and historians
Today’s analysts and historians say that one statement is more timely now than when Johnson first made it in 2006 that “nothing is more dangerous to democracy, than military expansion and war” and argued that the U.S. is in danger of internal collapse, due in large part to the vast expenditures required to maintain its ever-expanding empire.
Chalmers Johnson is the acclaimed author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis. He is a former analyst for the CIA and professor emeritus of the University of California San Diego.
Chalmers Johnson was interviewed by the California based author of “Imperial San Francisco”, Gray Brechin, in March 2007.
DATES: March, 2007
Location: [ . . . ]

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

Chalmers Johnson – Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic, Archive ONE of TWO

By MariaDecember 2, 2025All Time Favorites, Amazing Speakers & Events, Newest Podcasts

Johnson’s name is being quoted in the 2023 work of analysts and historians
Chalmers Johnson wrote that “nothing is more dangerous to democracy, than military expansion and war” and argued that the U.S. is in danger of internal collapse, due in large part to the vast expenditures required to maintain its ever-expanding empire.
Chalmers Johnson is the acclaimed author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis. He is a former analyst for the CIA and professor emeritus of the University of California San Diego.
He was interviewed by the California based author of “Imperial San Francisco”, Gray Brechin, in March 2007.
DATES: March, 2007
Location: MLK Junior High in Berkeley

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

TUC Archives: The Quest for Water and the American West

By MariaNovember 4, 2025About, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

By Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco
This is Part TWO of the history of San Francisco. The town that grew from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the West Coast in only 30 years.
Gray Brechin explains in the first chapter of his book Imperial San Francisco how the gold rush connected two major factors for city building: A swelling of the population and the growth of investment capital.
But the mix of people and money was lacking another major ingredient: water. As the first wave of destruction of California was brought about by gold mining, the second wave was caused by the damming of rivers, and the flooding of land for reservoirs, even eventually inside [ . . . ]

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

TUC Archives – The Underground History of the Gold Rush by Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco

By MariaOctober 28, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

This is part of the history of a city, grown from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the Pacific Coast in only 30 years. The book, Imperial San Francisco by Dr. Gray Brechin, is one of the few examples of a scholarly dissertation that becomes a very popular book. Imperial San Francisco brings to light the huge sacrifices extracted from the surrounding land by large cities, from Babylon to the Italian city states to the instant cities of North America.
This program focuses on the Gold Rush and the early conflicts between mining and farming. Next week we’ll talk about the valleys flooded and the rivers diverted to bring water to SF. Was it worth [ . . . ]

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

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, Part ONE of TWO

By MariaSeptember 23, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

Archive: This is TUC Radio’s all time most popular program Alex Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. The 20th century, he wrote, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey’s unique view of US history goes back to World War I and ends with the Reagan era.
Noam Chomsky dedicated his book “Manufacturing Consent” to the memory of Alex Carey. Chomsky says that the Australian sociologist would have written the definitive history [ . . . ]

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

The Assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, Michael Parenti – Archive

By MariaSeptember 16, 2025Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

Who was Julius Caesar, a dictator or a populist? And who really was Brutus, who murdered him on the Ides of March? A young hero or a participant in a deep seated conspiracy? This intriguing lecture by the noted author, speaker, activist and scholar Michael Parenti provides surprising new insights and parallels to today that are both shocking and amusing.
This rebroadcast is part of the very popular and ever expanding series on what Parenti called Real History, a different and intriguing reading of a surprisingly large number all too familiar stories.
Parenti spoke about his Pulitzer Price nominated book: The Assassination of Julius Caesar, a people’s history of ancient Rome. He was recorded in the summer of 2003 in San Francisco [ . . . ]

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

Conversation between Brian Eno and David Graeber

By MariaSeptember 9, 2025Newest Podcasts

Even though Brian Eno and David Graeber both had become internationally famous by 2014, the musician, visual artist and culture critic Brian Eno and the Professor of anthropology, author and co-founder of Occupy Wall street, David Graeber had not yet met in person. And here, thanks to the creative concepts of Artangel, they met on stage for an improvised conversation.
Artangel is a London-based arts organization that has – since 1985 – commissioned and produced notable site-specific works in unexpected places, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web.
Michael Morris is introducing Brian Eno and David Graeber. These are excerpts of their 80 minute conversation on Occupy Wall street, democracy compared to anarchism, and the need to protect the [ . . . ]

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

Hurricane Katrina and the War on the Poor (from Archive)

By MariaSeptember 2, 2025Newest Podcasts

SF Paramedics Prevented, at Gun Point, from Rescuing Themselves and Others
After being turned away from shelters they and a large group of African Americans try and walk to safety. Gretna Sheriffs block the Greater New Orleans Bridge across the Mississippi and shoot over their heads when they try to leave the flooded city. Later their temporary shelter is destroyed by a helicopter, a police officer, gun drawn, threatens them in a furious rage and takes away their food and water. Just before night he forces the group to flee into the night of a ‘shoot to kill’ curfew in New Orleans.
When they finally get picked up they, and thousands of others, sit in a dirty cage at the New Orleans [ . . . ]

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

Edward Said: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights, Archive 2003

By MariaAugust 26, 2025Newest Podcasts

Among the over twelve hundred programs in the TUC Radio archives this is one of my favorites. Thats based on the respect I have for the speaker, Edward Said, and the ongoing sadness that, to this day, so little is known about the history of Palestine.
This is Edward Saids 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 [ . . . ]

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

Onkalo ” Into Eternity ” TUC Radio Archives

By MariaAugust 19, 2025Newest Podcasts

Blasted into bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto in Finland on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Onkalo has to remain secure for 100,000 years.
Danish filmmaker Michael Madsens documentary of the building in progress of Onkalo is a meditation on eternity, insanity and the impossibility of projecting anything 100,000 years into the future.
The film also proves eloquently and with expert statements the terrible danger that arises from so-called spent nuclear fuel from power plants and makes us see Fukushima with very different eyes.
This radio program presents excerpts from the film and its amazing sound design.
DATE: film released in 2010

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

Timothy Mousseau: Chernobyl and Fukushima ” Biological Implications of radiation – TUC Archives

By MariaAugust 12, 2025Newest Podcasts

The team studies birds, insects, microbes, and plants at over 1,000 sites, returning year after year. They found significantly increased rates of genetic damage.
When the biologist, Professor Tim Mousseau, concluded this talk by showing heartbreaking pictures of the birds of Chernobyl and their tumors and birth defects, the physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott stepped up to the podium to thank him.
She said: I want to pay homage to Tim Mousseau, who with his colleagues is actually endangering his life by going into extremely high radioactive areas doing pioneering work, which is going to change the concept of radiation exposure to humans. What is happening to the animals, the insects and the plants is going to happen to [ . . . ]

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