Author Archives: Maria

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

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 [ . . . ]

Read More

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

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

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 [ . . . ]

Read More

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

Onkalo ” Into Eternity ” TUC Radio Archives

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

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 [ . . . ]

Read More

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

Nuclear War ” Annie Jacobsens Reasons for Peace

Replay of an interview of Annie Jacobsen by tech writer Quentin Hardy for the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
The investigative journalist and acclaimed author, specializing in weapons and war, Annie Jacobsen, has come closer than other investigators to the razor edge of secrecy that surrounds the current nuclear war machine. Her book, Nuclear War, is based on hundreds of interviews with war planners and engineers – plus recently declassified documents.
Annie Jacobsen, reminds us that a Doomsday killing machine has been designed, capable of destroying not just two cities but life on this planet – first with fire and heat and then seven to ten years of darkness and ice sheets from nuclear winter.
Annie Jacobsens book, Nuclear War, A Scenario, has [ . . . ]

Read More

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