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Richard Wolff on Ukraine, Sanctions & War

On April 20, 2022, the podcaster Katie Halper presented Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus at UMassAmherst, and Visiting Professor at New School, New York City, with a very different view on Ukraine. How is the war affecting the status of the US as dominant Empire, and how will the sanctions on Russia change all global economic relations.
This is an excerpt from a 45 minute presentation – beginning with the history of the world wars.
Professor Richard Wolff is the author of several books including Democracy at Work, Understanding Marxism, and Capitalism Hits the Fan. He hosts the weekly radio program Economic Update.
Thanks to podcaster Katie Halper for excerpts from her interview. She is a comedian, writer, filmmaker, and political commentator. [ . . . ]

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Who’s Counting – Marilyn Waring: War is the biggest growth industry of all – Archive TWO of TWO

Marilyn Waring was only 22 when she was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament. She was shocked and dismayed when she learned that all countries that are members of the UN are forced to keep their books and design their budgets under the system of National Income Accounting. The international trade in arms is the biggest growth industry of all. Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system. The death, homelessness, injury, poverty and starvation caused by the use of these weapons is not even registered as a deficit.
This segment opens with war. Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all. A segment recorded in the [ . . . ]

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Who’s Counting – Marilyn Waring on Endless Economic Growth – Archive ONE of TWO

Our economic system assigns no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment
Marilyn Waring’s work and intriguing life are described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. I’m bringing back the soundtrack of this film to support a debate on the unquestioned need for economic growth at all cost and on what course to take to end the war on Ukraine.
At age 22 (in 1974) Marilyn Waring became the youngest member of the New Zealand Parliament. She chaired the prestigious Public Expenditures Committee and became familiar with the Gross Domestic Product system and decided to disclose its pathologies in a film, her teachings at AUT University in Auckland and really her life as a feminist economist. The film, [ . . . ]

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Joanna Macy: A Wiser, Braver World (TUC Archives)

“This transition to a life sustaining culture is a revolution in the magnitude and scope of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago.”
The Great Turning, Awakened Action Symposium
On the Summer Solstice of 2020 Joanna Macy, from her home in Berkeley, spoke at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The Buddhist monastery had called for Awakened Action and invited Women Leaders to Speak to Race, Poverty, Climate, and the Covid Pandemic.
Joanna Macy is an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Now in her very early nineties she has for decades helped transform despair and apathy into constructive change. As teacher, writer of eight books and antinuclear activist she has created [ . . . ]

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Joanna Macy Remembers Thich Nhat Hanh

An interview by lay Buddhist practitioner Jo Confino
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese monk, peace activist, poet, author, teacher and an inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Called Thay for short, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 after expressing opposition to the war. A year later Martin Luther King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. After a 39-year exile, Thay was permitted to visit Vietnam in 2005. He died on January 22, 2022.
Joanna Macy has lived in the SF Bay area for much of her life. While I was living in the area as I never missed a chance to hear her and talk to her. What intrigued me most were her anti nuclear campaigns – her many [ . . . ]

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The Role of NATO in War and Peace in Ukraine – Professors Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer

Neutrality or Membership? On January 10, 2022, the author, linguist, and historian Noam Chomsky addressed the question: Was Ukraine invited to become part of NATO – and who did the inviting and when. Chomsky speaks on the risk of Europe being subordinated to US NATO politics. After a lifetime teaching at MIT Chomsky is now Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona; and still active as philosopher, historian, and author.
On March 3, 2022, John Mearsheimer spoke on the topic of Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine. NATO membership VS neutrality has become the most contested factor in the attempts to bring peace to Ukraine. However the history of the founding and subsequent expansion of NATO is [ . . . ]

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Yanis Varoufakis – How do we get the Russian troops to withdraw from Ukraine

Varoufakis March 9 message to the «Peace Forum» and his response to radio host and YouTuber Russell Brand.
This is a passionate appeal for peace by the former academic and Minister of Finance. After resigning from the Greek government in 2015 Yanis Varoufakis did not return to academia. He is now engaged in European politics as a visionary speaker, writer, and active participant. In February 2016, he launched the Democracy in Europe Movement and is active in the building, social justice and financial goal setting of the European Union and holds a parliamentary seat since July 2019.
The first clip is Varoufakis’ message for peace in Ukraine to the Progressive International. Varoufakis records from his kitchen for the meeting on [ . . . ]

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Chris Hedges: War Profiteers are Fueling the Crisis in Ukraine

In conversation with Marc Steiner on The Real News Network On March 4, 2022, Marc Steiner talked with Chris Hedges about the path that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and about the corporations that benefit from the expansion of NATO and the current war. The five largest weapons makers are all American. In first place Lockheed Martin – followed by Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a columnist at ScheerPost.
Marc Steiner came from FM Radio beginning in 1993. In 2018 he started The Marc Steiner Show on The Real News Network – where [ . . . ]

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Ukraine is on the Brink of a Nuclear Catastrophe – Linda Pentz Gunter and Dr. Ira Helfand

QUOTE: “We are in an unprecedented situation. For the first time a war is being fought in a region where there are operating nuclear reactors. This presents an extreme risk to human life unlike anything we have seen in previous wars.” That’s a statement from Beyond Nuclear, of Feb. 25, 2022.
For a relatively small country the nuclear statistics are impressive: Ukraine operates 15 reactors, ranking 7th in the world in 2020. The single largest nuclear power plant in Europe is in Ukraine. Ukraine’s power sector is the twelfth-largest in the world in terms of installed capacity. 54 gigawatts are providing over 50% of Ukraine’s electricity.
Linda Pentz Gunter presents a list of 6 catastrophes that can befall a nuclear power [ . . . ]

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NATO’s Russia-Ukraine Crisis – Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and Prof. David Gibbs
Professor of History at the University of Arizona, David Gibbs joined the effort by Rootsaction to explain Russia’s longstanding issue with NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to – in their own words: “provide collective security against the Soviet Union.”
Both Gibbs and Wilkerson say that the promise of not expanding NATO East towards the then Soviet Union was indeed a formal quid pro quo in return for the USSR allowing Germany to re-unite, not just a casual conversation.
On February 6, 2022, the Coalition for Peace Action held a webinar with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on peaceful alternatives in the Russia-Ukraine-NATO crisis.
Wilkerson [ . . . ]

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Doughnut Economics – Serving the Needs of All Within the Means of the Living Planet

Kamana-maikalani Beamer, Hawaii and Kate Raworth, England Kamana-maikalani Beamer is full professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa. In his teaching and everyday practice he is uncovering the restorative way in which most people of the Hawaiian Islands interacted with the natural world before colonization by the US. From the late 1800s settlers began by imposing sugar plantations and cattle herds that began the destruction of whole ecosystems.
Kate Raworth, based in Oxford, England, is the author of the book Doughnut Economics that has been translated into over 20 languages. She is Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
Kate Raworth puts out the challenge that we need to eliminate human deprivation and ecological degradation at the [ . . . ]

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Doughnut Economics VS the The Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Kate Raworth, England, and Kamana-maikalani Beamer, Hawaii In early February of 2022 a news caster warned that the US may be about to lose it’s status as a world superpower to China, based on the GDP. The Gross Domestic Product is the total market value of the goods and services produced by a country’s economy. For the year 2021 the GDP of the US has been growing by only 5.7% – while that of China has grown 8.1%
The GDP system counts only cash transactions in the market and recognizes no value other than money. This means there is no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment.
Hawaii was taken over in 1898 by American [ . . . ]

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The Framing of Leonard Peltier

Chris Hedges Interviews Judge Kevin Sharp
On Friday, January 28, 2022, Leonard Peltier’s attorney Kevin Sharp, confirmed what had been feared for several months. Peltier, who is incarcerated at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida, had been diagnosed with Covid. Since Peltier also suffers from heart problems and diabetes this diagnosis may become his death sentence if he is not released now.
Peltier has been in prison for 45 years without any evidence, as we now know from freedom of information records, that he committed a crime. He was charged with the 1975 murders of two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation.
There are few political prisoners in the US who had, and continue to have, as [ . . . ]

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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Emma Dabiri in conversation with David Wengrow
The British Library held a celebration of ideas in the book by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They said: The Dawn of Everything challenges our assumptions about the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy and slavery and, in doing this … offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom and new ways of organizing society. David Wengrow co-authored the book with the late David Graeber.
Emma Dabiri is a teaching fellow in the African department at SOAS, a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths and the author of Don’t Touch My Hair and What White People can do Next: From Allyship to Coalition, a Sunday Times and Irish Times bestseller. She has [ . . . ]

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Conversation between Brian Eno and David Graeber

Hosted by Artangel at the Royal Geographical Society, London on October 7, 2014 Even though Brian Eno and David Graeber both had become internationally famous by 2014, the musician, visual artist and culture critic Brian Eno and the Professor of anthropology, author and co-founder of Occupy Wall street, David Graeber had not yet met in person. And here, thanks to the creative concepts of Artangel, they met on stage for an improvised conversation.
Artangel is a London-based arts organization that has – since 1985 – commissioned and produced notable site-specific works in unexpected places, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web.
Michael Morris is the co-director. He is introducing Brian Eno and David Graeber. These are excerpts [ . . . ]

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