Podcasts

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on: How we can make peace with Russia by learning from JFK’s example

The Community Church of Boston celebrated the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s speech on World Peace on June 10, 2023
They invited Professor Jeffrey Sachs to speak to the congregation. Sachs wrote a book on the American University speech entitled: To Move the World – JFK’s Quest for Peace.
Jeffrey Sachs is an economist, academic, and public policy analyst. He is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and President of the UN Sustainable Solutions Network, and an SDG advocate for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Sachs has credentials for Eastern Europe and Russia as former advisor to the economic team of Presidents Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. He also spent time in Ukraine as advisor to the President of independent [ . . . ]

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The Land Back Symposium 2023, Corrina Gould on Indigenous Land Trusts and LANDBACK in the S.F. Bay Area

The Land Back Symposium was a day-long event at Cal Poly Humboldt, Arcata, held on March 24, 2023
The event focused on the indigenous peoples of Northern California and how a growing LandBack movement can protect former tribal land from mining, logging and climate change.
Corrina Gould is the co-founder and Co-Director of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. She is the Spokeswoman and Tribal Chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, now known as the San Francisco Bay Area.
Five of the eight Ohlone Tribes lived on that land and their sacred sites are now buried under cement slabs and their rivers turned into toxic storm drains and their food trees were cut down. Today nobody even wonders why there is [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Daniel Ellsberg: How many will die in a Nuclear War launched by the U.S.?

From Ellsberg’s 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” Daniel Ellsberg is best known for having made public the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They showed the world that the U.S. government had lied about planning war on Vietnam and using a lie to start it.
At the same time Ellsberg had copied and taken 7,000 pages from the nuclear command and control system in the US – that also contained the targeting for a first strike launch against the Soviet Union and China. Ellsberg always said that this was information even more vital for the world to have than the Pentagon Papers. And in part one of this program he described how these records [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Daniel Ellsberg: The Doomsday Machine – Secret Launch Plans for US Nuclear Weapons

From Ellsberg’s 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”
In 1971, the young defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg had taken on the Nixon administration, risking his career and freedom to leak the Pentagon Papers. He showed the world that the U.S. government had lied repeatedly about beginning and winning the war on Vietnam.
Now, over 40 years later, Ellsberg is sharing the research from his most ambitious project yet, The Doomsday Machine — a stunning insider’s tale of the American nuclear procedures.
Ellsberg was a nuclear war planner during the 1950s and ’60s. In The Doomsday Machine Ellsberg offers an expose about “the nuclear war planners, of which I was one, who have written plans to kill billions [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)

The Northern California Land Back Symposium 2023, Panel on Land-Grab Universities

How the Morrill Act of 1862 gave nearly 11 million acres of land, taken from more than 250 tribal nations, to finance 52 land grant colleges
Land Grant Universities got their money through land confiscations, often through violence and threats. The Land Back Symposium was a day-long event at Cal Poly Humboldt, Arcata, CA, held on March 24 of 2023. A powerful movement of land return is spreading across the world and has even reached some support from state governments.
The Land Grab Universities session was led by Dr. Brittani Orona, Hoopa Valley Tribe (Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies, San Diego State University)
The panelist were: He-Lo Ramirez, Menchoopda Indian Tribe, (Council Member & Director of Environmental Planning and Protection [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The Northern California Land Back Symposium 2023, Welcome Session

Panels discussed Public & Private Land Return, Land Grant Universities, Indigenous Land Trusts, and Legal Recommendations
The Land Back Symposium was a day-long event at Cal Poly Humboldt, Arcata, held on March 24. The meeting broke many taboos and told the story how a powerful movement of land return is spreading across the world and – at least in California – has even reached some support by state government.
The opening session began with a welcome from Chairman Ted Hernandez of the Wiyot Tribe, followed by Geneva Thompson, the Assistant Secretary for Tribal Affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency; and ended with a talk by Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy on “Land Histories & Decolonial Land Futures”. She is Cal Poly Humboldt’s [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Forgotten History of the US War on Korea

Told by veteran Utah Phillips, journalists and historians, with a 3 min. update from Democracy Now On Wednesday, April 26, 2023, Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years. The US would involve officials from South Korea in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea.
How has it come to this, what is the experience of people on the ground in North and South Korea. And why do we know so little about the US War on Korea, that began 70 years ago, and never ended in a peace agreement.
I had the moving experience to record one of the few living veterans of that war. The great [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Daniel Ellsberg on Freedom of the Press, Julian Assange, and the Risk of Nuclear War

Of course Ellsberg is best known for the release of the Pentagon Papers, a top secret study of the decision-making of the U.S. government in relation to the war in Vietnam, how long it had been planned for, and how – like in the bombing of Iraq – lies were used to actually begin the war in Vietnam. Less known is his support of whistle-blowers and his anti-nuclear work.
Daniel Ellsberg has used his experience to defend Julian Assange and other whistleblowers – even up to current days – when it has become known that he received a cancer diagnosis that gives him only a few more months to live.
Frank Barat spoke with Daniel Ellsberg on Jan 19, 2023. He is [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers – TUC Radio Archives – TWO of TWO

His encouragement to others to disclose government lies – and his response to the accusation of treason
This is the second part of a talk by Daniel Ellsberg that he gave on December 18, 2007 in downtown San Francisco to a small group of members of the Republican Roundtable.
Those were the George W Bush years and it was well known that Ellsberg campaigned against the threats of war on Iran. I had permission to film the event and was concerned about a possible confrontation. Half-way through this 29 minute segment Ellsberg responds to a statement that he was advocating treason – to which he gives a legally and historically brilliant response that still applies today, to Julian Assange, Chelsea [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Yanis Varoufakis: Why we should “let the banks burn”

Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Varoufakis on UpFront on Al Jazeera on March 31, 2023 This interview – plus the original article by Varoufakis: “Let the Banks Burn”, published in Project Syndicate on March 24, 2023, generated over a quarter million entries on search engines in only ten days. They may be one of the most unorthodox but also well thought out solutions to the current banking crisis.
The interviewer, Marc Lamont Hill, is an American author, activist, and professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera is the international news conglomerate, based in Doha and financed by the Qatari government.
Yanis Varoufakis is [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Britain will send Depleted Uranium munitions to Ukraine

Annabelle Goldie, the British minister of state for defense, made this announcement last week, on March 20, 2023
Britain already has sent the first Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine and the Depleted Uranium munitions are designed to be fired from these tanks. This announcement came just two days after the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, where DU ammunitions were used on a large scale.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has attacked the UK’s decision. Kate Hudson, its General Secretary, said: “CND has repeatedly called for the UK government to place an immediate moratorium on the use of Depleted Uranium…”
DU munitions were used by the US and Britain in the Gulf war in 1991 and in Iraq in [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Professor Richard Wolff: Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Crisis

Jordan Chariton asks Prof. Wolff – Is this crisis contained – or will it spread?
They spoke on March 15 – when the news broke that the Silicon Valley Bank was to receive a bailout.
Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. Jordan Chariton is an investigative reporting news producer with Status Coup News. They feature in-field and investigative reporting, and aim to cover what corporate media covers up.
Find the interview from March 15, 2023 on YouTube under the title: Professor Richard Wolff: Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Crisis.
Credit: Jordan Chariton, Status Coup News
Date: 2023/03/15

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Feminist Theology and Women in the Muslim World (TWO of TWO) Archive

Special for International Women’s Month
This is the conclusion of Dr. Riffat Hassan’s extraordinary feminist lecture on the story of Adam and Eve, a story that forms the basis for the oppression of women in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Plus my interview with her about her radical re-interpretation of the significance of Eve’s acceptance of the apple.

Dr. Riffat Hassan is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and critique the source.
In the original text, says Hassan, women are neither inferior nor sinful. Adam is not a man’s name – it [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)

Feminist Theology and Women in the Muslim World (ONE of TWO) Archive

Special for International Women’s Month 2023
 Dr. Riffat Hassan is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and investigate the source. This required courage since challenging traditional interpretation of the Koran can be a capital offense. On the other hand we are all familiar with the claim that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition. And Riffat Hassan decided to deal with that contradiction.
Riffat Hassan began her quest in 1984 when her feminist friends in Pakistan asked her to help define the theological [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 39.8MB)