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Michael Parenti: How I Became an Activist

Parenti rarely talks about his life. How does a NYC street kid get accepted to Yale? How does he lose the privilege of his PhD. in an arrest at a demonstration against the war on Vietnam, and become an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer?
Michael Parenti grew up in a poor, working class Italian community in New York City. When he received his PhD in political science from Yale in 1962 he was the success and pride of his family. He risked and ended his academic career when he openly opposed the war on Vietnam. Ultimately the choice he made then was a good one. He now is an independent political writer and thinker and author of over 20 books. His [ . . . ]

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Daniel Ellsberg – The Doomsday Machine (TWO of TWO)

Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner In 1969 Daniel Ellsberg secretly copied the plans for the United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967, later to be published as the Pentagon Papers. What was not known widely until late 2017 is that Ellsberg also copied the top secret plans for nuclear war that he consulted on for the Department of Defense and drafted for Secretary Robert McNamara.
Some of these papers, along with his first person report of the history of nuclear war planning, have now finally been published to high acclaim. The publication comes at an extraordinarily auspicious and dangerous time as nuclear tensions are mounting and the US president is challenging North Korea.
This program begins with two excerpts from the Nobel [ . . . ]

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Daniel Ellsberg – The Doomsday Machine (ONE of TWO)

Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner at Seattle Town Hall
Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame has another revelation to make. In 1961 he consulted for the Department of Defense and the White House and drafted Secretary Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war.
In 1969 Ellsberg copied the top secret documents along with those pertaining to the war on Vietnam. Ellsberg’s attempts to publish the nuclear war papers were stymied by the loss of his copies and the refusal by 17 publishers who told him that nobody was interested in a book about nuclear war. The Doomsday Machine was finally published in December 2017.
Now, in the context of Trump’s threats to North Korea, the question of what it means for the rest [ . . . ]

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The Execution of Martin Luther King, William Pepper (TWO of TWO)

updated archival program
In Part ONE: Bill Pepper became James Earl Ray’s lawyer when he found out that Ray was not the murderer. His friendship with King and his family goes back to 1967. Pepper had gone to Vietnam and taken photos of children burned by napalm. King asked to meet with him and they worked closely together during the anti-Vietnam war phase of King’s life.
After the failure of all his efforts to get James Earl Ray a new trial, William Pepper recommended one more option to the King family. In this Part TWO Pepper explains why he recommended a wrongful death suit against Loyd Jowers and other known and unknown conspirators. For the first time under oath in any assignation [ . . . ]

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The Execution of Martin Luther King – William Pepper (ONE of TWO)

Bill Pepper became James Earl Ray’s lawyer when he found out that Ray was not the murderer. His friendship with King and his family goes back to 1967. Pepper had gone to Vietnam and taken photos of children burned by napalm. King asked to meet with him and they worked closely together during the anti-Vietnam war phase of King’s life. In this recording Pepper explains why he became convinced of Ray’s innocence and, during 25 years of investigative work, pieced together the plot to kill King. The extraordinary story has implications for history, civil rights, justice and democracy. (Feb. 2003)
William Pepper is an acclaimed lawyer who practices international law in London. His book by Verso is: AN ACT OF STATE, [ . . . ]

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Where Are the People in the Nuclear Age, Norma Field

In the annals of nuclear accidents Fukushima has a special place.  In Chernobyl the government opted to remove the 116,000 people living around the power plant. In Fukushima there is an ongoing effort to remove the contamination and to bring the 154,000 evacuees back. The Japanese government claims the effort is successful – independent researchers have serious doubts.
Admittedly the cleanup so far reached only 5 percent of Fukushima province and the only published data on the status of radioactive substances come from independent researchers. They find that contamination returned to cleaned up areas via wind, rain and traffic.
Norma Field  is an author and professor emeritus of East Asian studies at the University of Chicago. She has taught Premodern Japanese Poetry [ . . . ]

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Where Are the People in the Nuclear Age, Arnie Gundersen

On December 2, 2017 the University of Chicago celebrated the 75th anniversary of the first nuclear chain reaction that led to the building of the atomic bomb and the nuclear power industry. The physicist Leo Szilard said at the time that by his and Enrico Fermi’s invention universal death had come into the world. Today critics of the 2017 anniversary say that the lectures and events were biased in favor of nuclear weapons and nuclear power and even insulting to radiation victims as they culminated in fireworks in the shape of a mushroom cloud. The Nuclear Energy Information Service, NEIS, called attention to the plight of people who suffer the consequences of radiation. Dave Kraft of NEIS introduces the first [ . . . ]

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Restoring a Forest with Fire and Love – Dennis Martinez

Rebroadcast from the TUC Archives
The 2017 California fires were the largest in State history. How did the management of the California forests and wild lands contribute to the inferno?
When Spanish Conquistadors rode up the West Coast they were astonished to see that they entered forests that looked like parks with widely spaced trees. Church and military records show that in the early 19th century California’s forests were carefully tended. The catastrophic wildfires of today were extremely rare. California Natives used controlled fires to create these parks that in turn provided food and shelter to them and thousands of animals.
Dennis Martinez talks about Indian forest practice and restoration. He has worked for over 50 years in eco-cultural restoration specializing in tribal [ . . . ]

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Evolution of Organic at the Grange

Community screening of the film by Mark Kitchell – In November 2017 Mark Kitchell brought his new documentary film, Evolution of Organic, to the Willits Little Lake Grange in Northern California. It’s a new film on the history of organic agriculture told by those who built the movement. Willits and the surrounding county of Mendocino have a rich tradition of organics and everybody in the audience was either a happy consumer of local food or a farmer/gardener themselves.
Gloria and Stephen Decater and Ruthie King are among those local farmer/gardeners and in addition they were important participants in the movie, Evolution of Organic. The Decaters began as students of Alan Chadwick’s in Santa Cruz, and founded in 1973 the Live Power [ . . . ]

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“Evolution of Organic” by Mark Kitchell

A new film on the history of organic agriculture told by those who built the movement
After WWII industrial, chemical agriculture almost erased the memory of farming and gardening as practiced for millennia. Even before the 1960s back to the land movement put out a flamboyant reminder for safe food free from oil based fertilizers and insecticides individual, unknown farmers and organizations preserved the ancient heritage.
Director and writer Mark Kitchell, best known for his movies: Berkeley in the Sixties and his environmental film A Fierce Green Fire decided to document the many sources for the Evolution of Organic. The film is going into distribution in early 2018.
Kitchell’s goal was to cover the range of practices and ideals that inspired the resistance [ . . . ]

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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz on the Green Corn Rebellion (THREE of THREE)

This is the last of three programs on the Indigenous People’s History of the US. On October 11, 2017 Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz gave a talk at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe New Mexico. In this last segment Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz makes inspiring comments on two questions asked by Nick Estes. He is member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, and doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico.
First she remembers the forgotten history of the Green Corn Rebellion in Oklahoma. When Woodrow Wilson declared war in 1917 the poor tenant farmers in Oklahoma forged a coalition of Whites, African Americans and Indians. They were united by the recognition that the family would starve if they lost [ . . . ]

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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz: History and the Role of the Military in US Settler Colonialism (TWO of THREE)

In her talk at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe on October 11, 2017, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz asked why the history of Native Americans is so rarely told. Some of that has to do with the wrongs inflicted on Native Americans throughout what is now the United States. She described the work done at the United Nations to define what constitutes genocide and to pass the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
Toward the end of this program Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is joined on stage in conversation by her friend and colleague, historian Nick Estes. He is member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, and doctoral candidate at the University of [ . . . ]

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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz on the Doctrine of Discovery (ONE of THREE)

In 1455 Pope Nicholas V issued to the King of Portugal the bull Romanus Pontifex, sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories. This became the Doctrine of Discovery that is amazingly still enforced today and enshrined in US Federal law. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz explains the doctrine in this Part One of Three programs. This program is based on a talk she gave at the Lannan Foundation.
The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, apart from awarding grants, presents speakers of extraordinary intellect and passion – among them just in 2017 Terry Tempest Williams, Glen Greenwald, Arundhati Roy, Óscar Martínez and Marlon James. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz spoke on October 11, 2017. You may remember her from [ . . . ]

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Dr. Helen Caldicott: North Korea, Donald Trump and the Threat of Nuclear War

Helen Caldicott is an Australian physician author, and anti nuclear activist. She led campaigns against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, nuclear testing and radiation from uranium weapons and mining to nuclear waste.
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War invited Dr. Helen Caldicott to speak at their September 2017 conference in Basel, Switzerland. At that conference she expressed her grave concern about Donald Trump’s extraordinary messages against North Korea, threatening fire and fury and total annihilation.
And she is not alone with her concern. As I am recording this introduction on November 14, 2017, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a public hearing on President Trump’s unlimited authority to deploy nuclear weapons. It’s the first time the Senate has [ . . . ]

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Helena Norberg Hodge: Big Picture Activism

Local Futures, also known as Economics of Happiness, is an organization founded by Helena Norberg Hodge. They are pioneers of the new economy movement, that is dedicated to the renewal of community, ecological health and local economies world wide.
In July 2017 Helena Norberg Hodge spoke at Schumacher College in England. She began her Earth Talk by recalling the experience that changed her life, her visit to the remote region of Ladakh, in northern India. Ladakh had escaped colonial domination until the late 1970. In 1975 Helena Norberg Hodge found an almost intact traditional culture. But by the late 1980s Ladakhi culture had been dramatically changed and many of their values destroyed – not by war or slavery but by the [ . . . ]

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