2017

Michael Parenti, The Supremely Political Court

Archival, updated to reflect Trump admin.
In February, 2017 the name of Michael Parenti and references to his 23 books and countless lectures are flooding the Internet. It appears that his writings on history, the demise of US democracy, capitalism and the rule of the one percent, fascism, patriotism and US First-ism that span the decades from the late 1960s to 2014 were meant to be read and used today.
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 his dismissal after he was arrested for protesting the US war on Vietnam. Parenti became [ . . . ]

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What climate change data can tell us about the emergence and spread of diseases

Dr. Howard Frumkin
On January 24, 2017, Marketplace, the American Public Media radio program, reported that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) abruptly cancelled a long scheduled three day Climate Change Summit that was set to take place in February in Atlanta.
On the same day Breitbart News – formerly run by the senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon, wrote: The CDC cancelation of their climate change event “is unquestionably a result of the Trump Effect: the CDC is one of many US federal agencies which have been forced rapidly to adjust their priorities…. the CDC’s job is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease… What does climate change have to do with this? Nothing. … The evidence that man-made climate change [ . . . ]

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Naomi Klein: Change the System, not the Climate

Naomi Klein is best known for her book: This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate. She wrote: … it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism… [and] we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
An important document towards building a better future is the Leap Manifesto. <https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/> It calls for a restructuring of the Canadian economy and an end to the use of fossil fuels. The Leap Manifesto was initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two-day meeting in Toronto. Among those who wrote it were representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, faith-based and labor movements. And Naomi Klein gives a summary of the manifesto in this program.
Naomi [ . . . ]

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The Story of Aaron Swartz – Film on Radio – ONE self contained 29 min. program

ARCHIVE – On the fourth anniversary of Aaron’s death
The life and work of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and Aaron Swartz are related around the question what the internet can be in our lives: an instrument of surveillance or of social change. And as the future of the internet and net neutrality and the role of the FCC all hang in the balance again in 2017 the extraordinary life and ideas of Aaron Swartz are worth remembering.
This program is based on the soundtrack of the 2014 movie: The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. His death at age 26 on January 11, 2013, made the internet light up with grief and also anger at a judicial system that [ . . . ]

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Ice Core Climate Records of the World: – Prof. Lonnie Thompson

Lonnie Thompson is University Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in the School of Earth Sciences and the Byrd Polar Research Center. He is the leading paleo-scientist who drilled and preserved ice cores from high mountain glaciers while others focussed on Greenland and Antarctica.
In 1952 the Danish geophysicist Willi Dansgaard made a discovery that opened up a completely new field of research. He found that the amount of heavy oxygen isotopes in rain correlates with the temperature at the location where the precipitation was formed. But more important in preparation for debates with climate change deniers is the record of CO2 that is also preserved in the ice cores. The correlation of temperature rise and decrease with increasing and decreasing [ . . . ]

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Prof. Lonnie Thompson: Melting of the High Mountain Glaciers of the World

Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future – ARCHIVE
This is a re-broadcast and partial update of one of the most appreciated and also rare programs by TUC. This program will be followed by two updates with Dr. Thompson.
Thompson issues a warning that the mountain glaciers he knows and loves are melting ever more dramatically within the last twenty years. He is the leading expert on glaciers with 30 years of on location research.
Thompson saw one of the first ice cores that was recovered from a glacier when he was in graduate school. He was fascinated by the amount of data on earth history, past climate and world changing events that can be read from these ice cores and made the exploration [ . . . ]

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