2014

The Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable (THREE of FOUR)

By MariaJune 4, 20142014Antarctic, Climate Change

Interview on Remote Sensing Technology with Professor Eric Rignot. He teaches Earth System Science at UC Irvine and is a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena
A new study by Professor Eric Rignot and researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, presented in May, 2014, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline.
The Amundsen Sea Embayment with its five glaciers is one of the hardest to reach areas of West Antarctica. The advent of over-flights by airplanes and now observation from satellites was a game changer for research, says Professor Rignot.
This is an interview about the current technology of observation, and the way in which [ . . . ]

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

The Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable (TWO of FOUR)

By MariaMay 28, 20142014Antarctic, Climate Change

Professor Eric Rignot, NASA and Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine
Program TWO of FOUR
A new study presented by Professor Eric Rignot and researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, presented in May, 2014, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline. The Pine Island, Thwaites, and four other glaciers contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet and they are melting faster than most scientists had expected. These new findings, we are told, will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise.
The NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot who is also Professor of Earth System Science at [ . . . ]

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

The loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable (ONE of FOUR)

By MariaMay 21, 20142014Antarctic

Professor Chris Rapley, former Director, British Antarctic Survey
Program ONE of FOUR
A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, presented on May 12, 2014, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea. The Pine Island, Thwaites, Haynes, Pope, Smith, and Kohler glaciers discharge ever more rapidly into the Amundsen Sea. And even though the Amundsen Sea Embayment is a very small area of the continent of Antarctica these glaciers contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet and they are melting faster than most scientists had expected. [ . . . ]

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

Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu TWO of TWO

By MariaMay 14, 20142014Native Americans

on ceremony, broken treaties, corporate theft and the relationship between salmon and water
It has been argued that no state or even country of comparable size has changed its water distribution as dramatically as the state of California. There is some truth to the worn out joke that the water from Northern California is pumped hundred of miles to fill the swimming pools of Southern California where huge cities such as Los Angeles were built in the desert. In the process of building reservoirs, pipelines, pumping stations and canals whole landscapes were destroyed or flooded, Native American settlements and cultures obliterated, and species such as the Chinook Salmon taken to the brink of extinction.
But the swimming pool reference is also misleading. [ . . . ]

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

Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu ONE of TWO

By MariaMay 14, 20142014

on ceremony, broken treaties, corporate theft and the relationship between salmon and water
In 1941 Winnemem Wintu land that would be flooded by Lake Shasta had been taken under three provisions. The Wintu were to receive like land to that they had lost, a cemetery to re-bury their dead and money to rebuild. By 2014, none of the promises had been fulfilled. And worse. In 1986 the Wintu also were excluded from federal recognition as a bonified Indian tribe.
As the Winnemem Wintu began fighting for the compensation of their losses as well as federal recognition a new threat emerged. Plans to raise the Shasta Dam are well underway and such a dam raise would submerge another 1.5 miles of the McCloud [ . . . ]

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

The US Israel “Special Relationship” – Is Israel really a U.S. ally?

By MariaApril 30, 20142014

The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship – Three retired members of the CIA present their answers.
Three former high level CIA employees were the speakers on the last panel of the one day summit at the National Press Club in Washington DC. held on March 7, 2014. Paul Pillar, Ray McGovern and Philip Giraldi addressed the question: Is Israel really a U.S. ally?
Professor Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the CIA. His last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. He was Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster. He studied at Oxford and Princeton and is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for [ . . . ]

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

The US Israel “Special Relationship” – Grant Smith on Weapons and Uranium Smuggling and Alison Weir on The History of Zionism

By MariaApril 23, 20142014

A brief history of un-prosecuted Israeli smuggling and espionage cases by Grant F. Smith – AND
What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine
by Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew
Alison Weir and Grant Smith were the lead organizers of The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” on March 7, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington DC.
By strange coincidence one of the topics covered by Grant Smith became international news exactly as I was preparing his talk for broadcast on TUC Radio. On April 17th, 2014, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists released an article with the intriguing title: Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States? 
The authors, Victor Gilinsky and Roger J. Mattson, had suspected that [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.9MB)

The U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” – Gareth Porter on Iran

By MariaApril 15, 20142014

The historian, investigative journalist, and author Gareth Porter specializes in U.S. national security policy. He was one of the speakers on Panel 2 at the National Summit: “Does Israel and its lobby exercise too much influence on U.S. decisions to wage war in the Middle East?”
His talk on the “manufactured crisis” and drive for U.S./Israel military actions against Iran was seen by many as an expose of government malfeasance – going as far back as the George Herbert Walker Bush and Clinton administrations and maintained through Bush Junior and the Obama White House.
Porter researched for his book, the Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published in February 2014, what he calls the false evidence that [ . . . ]

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

The U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” – Keynote: Stephen Walt

By MariaApril 9, 20142014

The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship,” was held March 7, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. It was the most high profile, public response and critique to-date of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s foremost US Lobby, whose mission is to quote “urge(s) all members of Congress to support Israel through foreign aid, government partnerships, (and) joint anti-terrorism efforts.”   Just days earlier, from March 1st through 3rd, AIPAC had held its annual policy conference in our nation’s capital, celebrating the US Special Relationship with Israel. According to AIPAC’s web site more than half of the Senate, a third of the House of Representatives and countless Israeli and American policymakers were among the [ . . . ]

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

Testing the Earth – Radioactivity (TWO of TWO)

By MariaApril 2, 20142014

Part two of Testing the Waters – Our Radioactive Ocean
A program about the phenomenon of radiation and ways to monitor it. Opening with a clip from the song Radioactivity by Kraftwerk, leading into a sketch of the life and death of Madame Curie. She discovered radiation but was unable to understand its danger and died from radiation poisoning.
Next the comedian Dick Gregory who states that radiation is worse than hunger and war: “Because I can feel hunger. I can see war. .. I cannot see radiation. I cannot smell radiation. I cannot hear radiation. I look around one day and I am dead.”
On to the synopsis of 36 years in the life of a Geiger counter builder, Dan Sythe, whose [ . . . ]

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

Testing the Waters – Our Radioactive Ocean (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 26, 20142014

Three years after Fukushima
In an age when the ocean currents are as well mapped as river systems on land there has never been any doubt that radiation flowing into the ocean at Fukushima would eventually arrive at the west coast of North America on the Kuroshio Current. It was just a question of time and what the risks might be once they arrived.
Canada was going to be the canary in the coal mine. The Kuroshio Current arrives there first and then branches down along the coast of the US. In February 2014 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Hawaii that they detected the radioactive signal as early as June [ . . . ]

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

Helen Caldicott: Nuclear Power, Radiation & Our Health TWO of TWO

By MariaMarch 18, 20142014

ENCORE for Women’s History Month/Fukushima anniversary
This is the conclusion of Helen Caldicott’s keynote presentation at a public forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on July 7, 2013. Caldicott covers essential knowledge: How do radioactive iodine, strontium and plutonium affect the body? Why do the body and placenta mistake plutonium for iron and strontium for calcium and embed them in our organs and the fetus? Caldicott also covers the latest studies on birds in the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones by biologist Timothy Mousseau and she ends with a personal account of how she, as young med-student, was moved by the novel On The Beach. The author, Nevil Shute, describes how a nuclear world war III can poison the earth with radiation.
The organizer [ . . . ]

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

Helen Caldicott: Nuclear Power, Radiation & Our Health, Part ONE of TWO

By MariaMarch 12, 20142014

ENCORE for International Women’s History Month and Fukushima Anniversary
The keynote presentation at a public forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on July 7, 2013. The organizer was an antinuclear alliance of mothers called Mom Loves Taiwan. They are campaigning to prevent the opening of yet another nuclear power plant on that small island and invited Dr. Helen Caldicott to help inform the public and the media.
This is a brief and concise talk covering the nature of power plants accidents, the different forms of radiation released, and how exactly radiation acts on human cells and causes cancer.
Notes
There are very few people currently alive who have given as much time and effort to the whole complex of the nuclear nightmare, as Helen Caldicott. [ . . . ]

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

The Safe Food Movement VS Agrochemical Giants Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta and More (TWO of TWO)

By MariaMarch 5, 20142014GMOs, Organic Farming

With Vandana Shiva, Andy Kimbrell and David Bronner
Biotech corporations are now facing a huge problem of their own making, the so called super-weeds that have adapted to the multi year dousing of Roundup on 50% plus of the corn and soy growing areas in the US. Super-weeds are invading other industrial Ag. land and are spreading into gardens, parks and organic farms. Biotech corporations are currently driving the approval process for more toxic herbicides to eradicate these super-weeds, including 2,4-D, an ingredient of Agent Orange.
Andy Kimbrell covers the history of Michael Taylor’s astounding trip from Monsanto to the FDA. In 1992 the FDA issued a policy, that GMO crops are substantially equivalent to other crops and therefore do not require [ . . . ]

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

The Safe Food Movement VS Agrochemical Giants Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta and More (ONE of TWO)

By MariaFebruary 26, 20142014GMOs, Organic Farming

With Vandana Shiva (Navdanya in India) and Andy Kimbrell (Center for Food Safety)
Campaigns for labeling genetically engineered food have swept the US from California to Washington and on to Connecticut, Maine, and Alaska, Oregon and Vermont. Actually by January 2014, according to the Center for Food Safety, 26 states had introduced mandatory labeling legislation. People who participated in these campaigns realized with surprise and shock that they were fighting for a right that is already guaranteed in 64 other countries, including all the industrial democracies that we compare ourselves to.
The other shocking discovery was that such a simple and obvious demand, the right to know what food we put into our bodies was challenged wherever it was about to be [ . . . ]

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