The Authoritarian Absurdity of the U.S. Constitution TWO of TWO

Paul Street on Why it Matters Today  This is the conclusion of Part ONE of the talk by Paul Street, an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, teacher, journalist, historian, and author of seven books. In this talk, that he gave at the Open University of the Left in Chicago in March 2019, he offered arguments and proof that the US constitution is not the sacred document protecting the “Peoples Rights”, but on the contrary is authoritarian and anti-democratic by design.
After a summary from Part ONE the topics in this part TWO range from problems with impeachment, the Supreme Court decisions equating money with speech and with the Democratic Party neo-liberal tendencies. Conversely the formation of a third party is also made [ . . . ]

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The Authoritarian Absurdity of the U.S. Constitution ONE of TWO

Paul Street on Why it Matters Today – Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, teacher, journalist, historian, and author of seven books. In this talk, that he gave at the Open University of the Left in Chicago in March 2019, he offered arguments and proof that the US constitution is not the sacred document protecting the “Peoples Rights”, but on the contrary is authoritarian and anti-democratic by design.
For the 18th Century slaveholders and merchants popular sovereignty was the ultimate nightmare and they embedded safety mechanisms into the constitution that remain in force today via the Senate, Supreme Court and Electoral College. Street details how U.S. politics and policy are badly distorted by the nation’s exceptionally durable charter and [ . . . ]

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Vandana Shiva: Oneness VS. The 1% – An Interview by Chris Hedges

Vandana Shiva came to the US in the early 1990s in the campaigns against the World Trade Organization and globalization. She was well known as protector of seeds and a brilliant critic of biotechnology. Her most recent 2019 book: Oneness VS. The 1%, culminates that work in an amazing indictment of a new world-wide power center reaching from Monsanto to Artificial intelligence. Vandana Shiva describes what she calls a poison cartel comprising of Bayer that just took over Monsanto, to Dow that has merged with Dupont; and Syngenta that has merged with ChemChina. What these corporations have in common is the control of our foods and the chemicals used on them. They are defining industrial agriculture and have enormous impacts [ . . . ]

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Arnie Gundersen – Fukushima at Eight

Interview by Michael Welch on the Ongoing Cover-Up of Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad – Michael Welch is host and producer of the Global Research News Hour in Canada. His guest, Arnie Gundersen, holds an MA in nuclear engineering and once worked for the nuclear industry. Gundersen was a licensed reactor operator and managed and coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants in the US. However he became increasingly more aware of the high risks while at the same time observing serious safety breaches. He spoke out and became a whistle blower. After 20 years as nuclear engineer and executive, Gundersen was fired from his job in 1990.
He was an expert witness on the Three Mile Island partial melt-down, [ . . . ]

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Extinction Rebellion – Rupert Read and Alison Green TWO of TWO

In an open letter signed by Vandana Shiva, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben and many more Extinction Rebellion states: “The climate crisis is worsening much faster than previously predicted. Every single day 200 species are becoming extinct … Political leaders worldwide are failing to address the environmental crisis … International political organisations and national governments must … urgently draw up comprehensive policies to address it.”
Dr. Rupert Read is an academic teaching Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is a long time Green Party politician and a former Green Party spokesperson for transport.
Dr. Alison Green has held many senior academic positions in UK universities. Last year she resigned from academia to become a full time activist. She co-wrote [ . . . ]

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Extinction Rebellion ONE of TWO – Dr. Rupert Read

In October 2018 about one hundred academics signed a call to action. They established Extinction Rebellion in the United Kingdom. The movement has become international with Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva and Noam Chomsky signing their support to the second letter.
The goal of Extinction Rebellion is to use non-violent resistance to bring about radical change to prevent climate collapse, loss of biodiversity and to reduce the risk of human extinction.
Dr. Rupert Read is teaching Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is a long time Green Party politician and a former Green Party spokesperson for transport.
He spoke on February 6, 2019 at the University of East Anglia.

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Kevin Anderson: Talk to the Oxford Climate Society, TWO of TWO

Opening with Greta Thunberg addressing EU politicians in Brussels – In August 2018, at age 15, Greta Thunberg started the first school strike for climate outside the Swedish parliament building. She skipped classes and maintained a regular presence every Friday. By the time she addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland, and the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019, her courageous and well researched talks were seen by hundreds of thousands via the internet. This is part of her talk to EU politicians on 2/21/2019.
Greta Thunberg and Prof. Kevin Anderson have great respect for each other. They agree on the urgency of the task and on many details of the solutions. [ . . . ]

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Kevin Anderson: Talk to the Oxford Climate Society, ONE of TWO

On Jan 25, 2019, Professor Kevin Anderson, the chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester spoke at the Oxford Climate Society.
He is one of the rare academics with a background in mechanical engineering even worked on oil platforms as a young man. I addition to producing peer reviewed research he engages with European governments on issues ranging from shale gas, aviation and shipping. He also brings a strong sense of justice and equity into his recommendations on how to prevent climate chaos.
He said that it’s twenty-eight years since the IPCC’s first report on climate change and over a quarter of a century since the 1992 Rio [ . . . ]

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Kevin Anderson – A Rule Book for the Climate Casino

Even though climate scientist Kevin Anderson has given up flying he attended, via train and ferry, most of the annual COPs, the Conferences of the Parties. They are held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. And, as Deputy Director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the UK, he contributes to the science.
Kevin Anderson says that we have known since 1990 about the need to end fossil fuel use. However now, 28 years later, emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up and are now a staggering 65% higher than in 1990.
The economists Thomas Piketty (in “Carbon and Inequality”) found that only 10% of world population are responsible for 30% of CO2 emissions. [ . . . ]

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Professor Peter Wadhams – The Fate of the Ice Sheet on the Top of the World

In early 2019 news about accelerated melting in Arctic and Antarctic made me return to trusted sources. For the Arctic I returned to Prof. Peter Wadhams, the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist, professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.
As opposed to the Antarctic, a continent of mountains and valleys covered in ice, the North Pole is an ocean covered with an ice sheet that touched the coast lines of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia for 100.000 years. In only 30 years the retreat from the coast lines during the Arctic summer accelerated and an ice free Arctic in September may [ . . . ]

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NASA Scientist Eric Rignot on Melting Glaciers in Antarctica

A collaboration between Radio Ecoshock and TUC Radio archive Even mainstream media reported at the beginning of February, 2019, a sensation in sea level rise. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, confirmed that a huge cavity — two-thirds the size of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet tall — has melted into the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. This glacier is about the size of Florida, and is currently already responsible for about 4 percent of global sea level rise.
Thwaites is sometimes called a culture changer since the collapse of that one glacier would raise the oceans by two feet, threatening so many centers of civilization that are built on the coast lines of the world.
Eric Rignot of [ . . . ]

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Happy 16th Anniversary, Seniors for Peace

From the archives of TUC radio, recorded in 2003  I’m recording this introduction on January 29, 2019 after returning last night from a huge, heart-warming celebration of the Senior for Peace in Mill Valley, CA. They live in the Redwoods Retirement Community just North of the Golden Gate bridge. Every Friday from 4 to 5 pm, rain or shine, ongoing and for the last 16 years, they walk to the busy intersection with banners, posters and hand drums, Cymbals, guitars and a violin and amaze passing drivers and the student of the high school right across with their songs and message for peace and justice.
On their web site millvalleyseniorsforpeace.org they explain that they first came out in January 2003, when [ . . . ]

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Mary Oliver

When the poet Mary Oliver passed in her 83rd year on January 17, 2019, the huge response revealed her as one of the most popular writers of our time. That despite her refusal to be famous or rich, and the rare interviews she gave. She wanted her poems to speak for themselves and came up with titles such as Owls and Other Fantasies, The Leaf and the Cloud, Wild Geese and the Truro Bear.
A dear friend wrote to me: “I can’t think of a contemporary poet who better than Oliver expresses such depth of feeling and thought about the natural world, and what it is to experience earth as an animal in the web of life. And I like the [ . . . ]

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Ray McGovern – RussiaGate: The Absence of Evidence? (TWO of TWO)

Includes a clip from Noam Chomsky explaining his skepticism of the RussiaGate claims.
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. His duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief to Ronald Reagan’s security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
After retiring he became a trusted source of information on the falsified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that was used to bring the US into the disastrous war on Iraq.
For over two years McGovern has focused on what came to be dubbed RussiaGate and in part ONE you heard about his assessment of Julian Assange, and the so-called hacking of e-mails of the [ . . . ]

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