Podcasts

Independent Radio on CDs, DVDs and the Internet

Debt, The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber in conversation with Charlie Rose

This program is part of a celebration of the connection of David Graeber’s work to the real-life events of our time – In late December, 2021, this long lost interview reappeared on YouTube
The name of the anthropologist David Graeber came – again – into huge prominence at the end of 2021 when the book he coauthored with archaeologist David Wengrow was published. “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” is described as a “dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution — from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality — and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation”.
Sadly, David Graeber is not present [ . . . ]

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Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, Part TWO of TWO

Archive: Journalist John Pilger has called Alex Carey “a second Orwell in his prophesies” This segment covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII. Carey also shows how the continued campaign against “Big Government” plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power. Also mentioned the famous secret memo by Lewis Powell, later Supreme Court Justice, that set in motion what Bill Moyers today calls “the revolt of the rich.”
Alex Carey said that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. Carey’s unique view of US history goes [ . . . ]

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Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, Part ONE of TWO

Archive: This is TUC Radio’s all time most popular program Alex Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. The 20th century, he wrote, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey’s unique view of US history goes back to World War I and ends with the Reagan era.
Noam Chomsky dedicated his book “Manufacturing Consent” to the memory of Alex Carey. Chomsky says that the Australian sociologist would have written the definitive [ . . . ]

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Reacting to the Assange Verdict with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer

From an interview by Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi This conversation was held Live on the day of the court ruling in the UK against Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks. The British Court of Appeal ruled that Assange could be extradited to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act of 1917.
The WikiLeaks website came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of documents and films provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video and the Afghanistan war logs. All with evidence of war crimes.
Six years later WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee email leaks which showed attempts to denigrate the Bernie Sanders’ presidential [ . . . ]

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Julian Assange can be extradited to the US – a ruling by Britain’s Court of Appeal

Chris Hedges interviews Joe Lauria
On the day of the court ruling against Assange, December 10, 2021, Chris Hedges invited Joe Lauria on the show he is hosting: On Contact on RT America.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author. He was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent. 
Allowing the extradition of Assange, an Australian national, to be tried in the US for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 raised protests around the world. If convicted Assange faces 175 years in prison and journalists everywhere fear the loss of free speech and freedom of the press.
Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The website came to [ . . . ]

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Sea Shepherd Panel – Impact of Climate Change on Marine Wildlife

With Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, Maike Baun and Taïme Smit
Paul Watson was cofounder of Greenpeace and led the campaigns against the slaughter of baby seals in the late seventies. Over a disagreement about direct action Watson separated from Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977. That’s a non-profit, marine conservation organization based on the San Juan Island, Washington, in the US.
Best known for their protection of whales in confrontations with Russian, Norwegian and Japanese fleets, Sea Shepherd have defended dolphins, seals, sharks, penguins, turtles, fish, krill and aquatic birds from poaching, unsustainable fishing, and habitat destruction. They say: “We have to halt the destruction of life in our Ocean, for if life in the Ocean dies, [ . . . ]

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Hoodwinked in the Hothouse – Resist False Solutions to Climate Change

With Ananda Tan, Tom Goldtooth, and Jacqui Patterson US, and Eriel Deranger, Canada, and Moneka De Oro, Micronesia
After the recent heat-waves, fires, floods and storms the word climate change finally shows in mainstream media and politics. And some hold out hopes that the burning of fossil fuels will be phased out.
For the last 20 years Indigenous organizations have come together to take their issues with deforestation, mining, ocean acidification and sealevel rise to the United Nations climate conferences but were not given a seat at the table and often forcibly expelled.
In 2009 the second edition of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse – False Solutions to climate change was published for COP15 in Copenhagen. It was 28 pages long. The [ . . . ]

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Hoodwinked in the Hothouse – The Women: Jacqui Patterson, US, Eriel Deranger, Canada, and Moneka De Oro, Pacific Islands

This is another webinar on Indigenous Resistance to Climate False Solutions. It was co-sponsored by the New School in New York City with the Indigenous Environmental Network as key organizer. This webinar is about fighting climate change from the grassroots and within indigenous communities in Canada, the Pacific Islands and the US.
Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project, a resource hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. Before that Patterson served as the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade.
Eriel Deranger was a founding member of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) in Canada and spent two years as interim director. She is challenging fossil fuel development and championing the [ . . . ]

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Hoodwinked in the Hot House – Leonardo Figueroa Helland, Tom Goldtooth and Ananda Tan

This is another webinar on Indigenous Resistance to Climate False Solutions. This one was co-sponsored by the New School in New York City with the Indigenous Environmental Network as key organizer.
The IEN was founded in 1990 within the United States. They are supporting Indigenous communities and Tribal Governments in the US and abroad in protecting sacred sites, land, water, and air. Tom Goldtooth has served as executive director of the IEN since 1996.
The New School is a private research university in New York City. Its original mission was to serve academic freedom, intellectual inquiry and be a home for progressive thinkers.
This News School sponsored webinar took place during New York City Climate Week on September 21, 2021, in [ . . . ]

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Hoodwinked in the Hothouse – Indigenous Resistance to Climate False Solutions

By all records fossil fuel burning has increased in spite of the quarter century long efforts of the United Nations conferences of parties, now in Glasgow with COP 26. That’s in part due to the power of Big Oil corporations – but also because of the promotion of – and subsidies to False Solutions.
One of the speakers on this program calls the Conferences of Parties literally a Festival of False Solutions. That includes: nuclear power, fracking and so-called natural gas, mega-dams and hydropower, hydrogen, bioenergy, waste incineration and land fill gas and more.
Most of these False Solutions have disproportionately affected indigenous and poor communities – but their sacrifices as well as their resistance have remained unknown or been [ . . . ]

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Protecting the Forests of the World – Professor William Moomaw and Stuart Scott

Prof. Moomaw wrote in 2021: Humanity puts out 11 billion tons of carbon each year – amazingly less than half ends up in the atmosphere. NASA satellite data and research show that a bit more than half of the remaining 6 billion tons of carbon are going into forests, plants, wetlands and soils. The other 40 – 45% is being absorbed by the oceans.
However the extraordinary capacity of forests to absorb carbon is being undermined by world-wide logging and clear-cutting – which ironically turns forests, that could be our best protection from climate disaster – into yet another powerful source of greenhouse gases.
William Moomaw is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at Tufts University. Stuart Scott was founder/executive producer [ . . . ]

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Fire and Forest Ecology – Questions & Answers – Chad Hanson and Monica Bond

On June 5, 2021, John Horning, Executive Director of the WildEarth Guardians, moderated a webinar on the life affirming functions of fire in forests. Also discussed were the problems caused by thinning and post fire logging promoted by the forest service and even subsidized by congressional mandates.
All this while so many of us are waking up to the urgent need to preserve and protect forests – not just for their beauty and complexity – but also for their power to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide and protect us from climate collapse.
Dr. Monica Bond is a wildlife biologist and biodiversity advocate with The Wild Nature Institute.
Dr. Chad Hanson is cofounder of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and author [ . . . ]

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Fire and Forest Ecology in the American West – Chad Hanson and Monica Bond

A meeting of the WildEarth Guardians with the John Muir Project and the Wild Nature Institute
On June 5, 2021, the wildlife biologist Dr. Monica Bond and fire ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson were speaking with an international audience at a webinar hosted by the WildEarth Guardians. In a year of catastrophic fires, not just in the US, they discussed what to do – and maybe even more importantly what not to do – for these burned ecosystems to recover.
Monica Bond,Ph.D., is a wildlife biologist and biodiversity advocate with The Wild Nature Institute. They conduct scientific research on endangered wildlife.
Chad Hanson is cofounder of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. His Ph.D. is in ecology with a research focus on fire [ . . . ]

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The Executioners of the Corporate State – Chris Hedges interviews Steven Donziger

Since 1993 attorney Steven Donziger has battled the oil giant Chevron on behalf of indigenous communities in the Amazon Basin. Their land has been polluted by toxic waste from oil drilling. 16 billion gallons of poisonous waste water that contained copper, mercury, lead and other carcinogens were dumped into rivers, lakes and impoundment ponds.
Steven Donziger, in 2013, helped lead the legal effort that won the largest court judgment in history for human rights and environmental justice, a $9.5 billion verdict against Chevron.
Chevron, following the verdict, sold their assets in Ecuador and left the country. The corporation threatened the plaintiffs with “A lifetime of litigation” if they attempted to collect. According to internal memos Chevron launched a highly funded and sustained [ . . . ]

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Smokescreen – Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate – Chad Hanson

Dr. Chad Hanson is the Director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. As Research Ecologist he is part of a growing movement of scientists and researchers who are calling into question many of the practices and policies of logging, not just the so-called fire suppression. Much of current research is presented in his 2021 book Smokescreen – Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. And the key themes are listed in his talk.
Hanson had a Zoom meeting in September 2021 with the Dogwood Alliance, a forest protection nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina – and prior guest on TUC Radio.
Rita Frost of the Dogwood Alliance moderated the meeting. The one hour talk and conversation [ . . . ]

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