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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Weapons in Space, FIVE

By MariaMay 20, 20152015

Bruce Gagnon: The Ongoing Danger of Militarization of Space and Nuclear War
Part FIVE of a mini-series
Bruce Gagnon is the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. That’s an international organization he co-founded in 1992. It has an unbroken record of education and activism on a rarely covered topic, the Weaponization of Space.
As vice president of a Young Republican Club in Florida, Gagnon volunteered in Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. His change in consciousness began with a small group of Vietnam War protesters who stood outside an Air Force base in California where he was stationed.
Gagnon’s new life began with the United Farm-workers; he organized fruit pickers in Florida. For 15 years he coordinated the [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Nuclear Winter, FOUR

By MariaMay 13, 20152015

Alan Robock: Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter – Climatic Effects of Nuclear War
Ever since the astrophysicist Carl Sagan coined the term of nuclear winter in 1983 an additional global risk of nuclear war became evident. Even a limited nuclear exchange would pose a grave danger to all life. If it was not by nuclear blast, fire and radiation – it would be by nuclear winter. High altitude dust clouds that spread through the stratosphere can block the sun for years and even decades and threaten the global ecology and with it the sources of food.
Professor Alan Robock was a participant in the scientific debates of the 1980. He praises the reduction in numbers of nuclear weapons but reminds us [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – MIT Physicist Max Tegmark, THREE

By MariaMay 6, 20152015

This TUC special series is timed to run parallel to the May 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference at the UN in New York City. Since its adoption in 1968, the NPT has become a critical mechanism to achieve nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament goals.
At the end of February 2015 the Australian physician and anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr. Helen Caldicott, organized a two day symposium to cover the many aspects of possible nuclear extinction.
A year earlier she had read statements of highly acclaimed physicists, including Nobel Laureate Stephen Hawking, and MIT physicist and cosmologist Max Tegmark. They had specifically warned of the potential for accidental nuclear war through computer glitches as well as the tendency to automate more and more functions with the [ . . . ]

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

Robert Fisk on the Armenian Holocaust

By MariaApril 29, 20152015

Looking back at the 100 Year Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
INTERRUPTING THE NUCLEAR SERIES FOR THIS ONE TIMELY PROGRAM:
Interviewing the last exiled survivors of the 1915 genocide before they died in old folk homes in Beirut, Lebanon, where Robert Fisk lives, he has acted more like a historian than a journalist. As the Middle East correspondent for the London Independent, Fisk travelled to massacre sites, compiled lists of victims, as well as of officials who planned the extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman empire. He also identified the rare supporters who refused orders to kill, often at risk of their own lives.
In this 2001 talk to Armenian Americans in San Francisco Fisk presented some of that history and proposed [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Noam Chomsky, TWO

By MariaApril 21, 20152015

In his 2013 book: Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe Noam Chomsky warned that we are facing Quote: “two problems for our species’ survival — nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.” Up to this point in history problems caused by humans were regional. However just in the last few decades climate change and nuclear war have become a threat to all life.
Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the war on Vietnam and was arrested several times. He was appointed Institute Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 – where he [ . . . ]

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The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – Artificial Intelligence, ONE

By MariaApril 15, 20152015

Part ONE of mini-series
The anti nuclear campaigner and physician Dr. Helen Caldicott organized a two day symposium in February 2015 with an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence. They addressed the risk of accidental nuclear war, recently proven facts about a global nuclear winter that can be caused by the unleashing of just a few nuclear weapons, the expanding militarization of space, the power and pathology of the US military industrial complex, privatization of the US nuclear weapons labs, nuclear war crimes in the Marshall Islands, as well as two of the vibrant movements to abolish nuclear weapons, a divestment effort under the title Don’t Bank On [ . . . ]

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

The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (TWO of TWO)

By MariaApril 6, 20152015

Enrico Fermi’s experiment, setting off the first nuclear chain reaction, provided the blueprint for the plutonium bomb. In his commemoration of this little known event that changed the world, the historian of technology, Iain Boal, describes the mindset of the early nuclear scientists who began releasing the most long lived toxic substances on earth. He also sketches the beginning of resistance to nuclear weapons in SDS and CND.
TUC Radio ARCHIVE, last offered in 2011.
Exactly 25 years after that experiment, with Fermi already dead of radiation induced leukemia, a statue by Henry Moore was unveiled on December 2, 1967, at the University of Chicago, to commemorate the first self sustained nuclear chain reaction.
Boal describes the fascinating clash of ideas, [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 30, 20152015

Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore
Did the nuclear age begin at Alamogordo, in Hiroshima, or with Fermi’s nuclear chain reaction? Einstein said that the unleashed power of the atom changed everything except our modes of thinking; “thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
TUC Radio ARCHIVE, last offered in 2011.
Fermi’s experiment provided the blueprint for the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Early on, hidden from the public, the military initiated mass production of nuclear weapons. The mile-long building of the Piketon Uranium Enrichment plant is proof of that effort. The Hanford Reactor is the million-fold scaled up extension of the Fermi experiment. And both now stand in huge tracts of poisoned land, sacrifice zones.
Boal speaks of scientists who dream of [ . . . ]

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Howard Zinn: The Occupation of The United States (TWO of TWO)

By MariaMarch 24, 20152015

This is the second part of a one hour program with the late Howard Zinn.
He began by analyzing the ideology specific to the Unites States: We are number One, the epitome of liberty and democracy. Americans are not supposed to challenge the idea that started way back with the Massachusetts Bay “City on a Hill”. Combined these ideas have made the US into a global interventionist power.
Zinn made an eloquent appeal to end all wars and cited a poem by Marge Piercy as inspiration for connecting in expanding circles of solidarity and mutual support to bring about that change.
Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. He taught political science at Boston University and wrote more than [ . . . ]

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

Howard Zinn: The Occupation of The United States (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMarch 16, 20152015

Howard Zinn spoke about the United States as occupied territory. He said that political and ideological power have been seized by a small group of radical anti-democratic ideologues. They have pursued an illegal, unconstitutional effort in their disastrous drive to solidify their reactionary agenda.
Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. He taught political science at Boston University and wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People’s History of the United States. Zinn died suddenly in January 2010. He was about to give two major talks in Santa Monica, CA.
He grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At 18 he became a shipyard worker and then joined the Air Force and flew [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz – An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, TWO of TWO

By MariaMarch 10, 20152015Native Americans

This is the second part of a one hour program with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. She grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She holds a Ph.D. in history and is an activist in the international Indigenous movement.
Her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, was published to high acclaim in the Fall of 2014. In part re-writing the official history of the US Dunbar-Ortiz is looking for reasons why the founding ideology of the US proved so deadly for the indigenous peoples living here. She explains how the early settlers considered themselves to be the chosen people and claimed a covenant with god that is later expressed in the US constitution.
During Q&A [ . . . ]

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

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, ONE of TWO

By MariaMarch 3, 20152015

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She holds a Ph.D. in history and has been an activist in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades.
The late great Howard Zinn, author of the now world famous book: A People’s History of the United States, was her friend and he played a role in convincing Beacon Press to commission and publish An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
This first part of the program brings you Dunbar-Ortiz’ description of North America before invasion, the emergence of the US concept of a chosen people, the development of the role of the US military as a force for genocide that seamlessly [ . . . ]

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

Thermonuclear Monarchy – Prof. Elaine Scarry TWO of TWO

By MariaFebruary 24, 20152015

Choosing Between Democracy and Doom
Highly praised by Noam Chomsky as inspiring us to abolish the colossal folly of nuclear weapons, Professor Elaine Scarry proposes how to accomplish that task in her book: Thermonuclear Monarchy.
Elaine Scarry says that Social Contract practice is a tool for preventing injury and overseeing entry into war. She argues that the constitution and bill of rights hold two clauses that can be used to control and disarm nuclear weapons.
The first such clause is the right of Congress to declare war, laid down in Article one, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US constitution. The second provision that can help safeguard nuclear weapons – to everybody’s surprise – is the second amendment protecting the right [ . . . ]

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Thermonuclear Monarchy – Prof. Elaine Scarry ONE of TWO

By MariaFebruary 17, 20152015

Choosing Between Democracy and Doom
Noam Chomsky said about the book Thermonuclear Monarchy:
“That we have escaped disaster so far is a near miracle. (Elaine) Scarry’s remarkable contribution should inspire us to abolish this colossal folly.”
Elaine Scarry is Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard. Her most recent book: Thermonuclear Monarchy, reminds us that one man, the President of the United States, has the power to end life for every one else by setting off nuclear weapons. Richard Nixon told reporters in 1974, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.”
Professor Scarry says that this violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally [ . . . ]

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3 Minutes to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock

By MariaFebruary 11, 20152015

On January 22, 2015, the Doomsday Clock was moved from 5 to only 3 minutes to midnight
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by atomic scientists who had participated in the Manhattan Project. They were in shock by the impact of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1945 they founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in order to alert people to the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need to abolish them. Over the 70 years since then the Bulletin has published without interruption and has welcomed other scientists who are working on nuclear power and climate change to join them and more precisely describe the existential risk humanity is facing.
The decision to move the hand of the [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)