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TUC Archives – The Underground History of the Gold Rush

By Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco
This is part of the history of a city, grown from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the Pacific Coast in only 30 years. The book, Imperial San Francisco by Dr. Gray Brechin, is one of the few examples of a scholarly dissertation that becomes a very popular book. Imperial San Francisco brings to light the huge sacrifices extracted from the surrounding land by large cities, from Babylon to the Italian city states to the instant cities of North America.
This program focuses on the Gold Rush and the early conflicts between mining and farming. Next week we’ll talk about the valleys flooded and the rivers diverted to [ . . . ]

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Rebecca Solnit, HOLLOW CITY – TUC Archive

The destruction of San Francisco in the late 1990s
A new generation of writers Rebecca Solnit, Mike Davis, and Gray Brechin are inspiring us into seeing our familiar surroundings with new eyes. They also offer a different perspective on the radical transformation that development and venture capital have brought to so many cities. San Francisco, formerly famous for taking a travelers heart away, is now reaching for the soul and the wallet. A dot com boom combined with the growing biotechnology industry have driven housing prices up and residents and local small businesses out.

Rebecca Solnit says she wrote Hollow City in a hurry to document the beauty and rich culture that was being destroyed, and to support the growing movement of [ . . . ]

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Prof. Michael Hudson: Super Imperialism, from the World Bank to Ukraine

Here are excerpts from a conversation on the new podcast site: India & Global Left. The well prepared host, Jyotishman Mudiar wants to know: “Why the US has a unique place in the history of imperialism?” And Michael Hudson describes how much power can be projected by control of the instruments of finance.
Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City – But unlike most academics he has also practiced banking as a balance of payments economist in Chase Manhattan Bank from 1964 to 1968.
Michael Hudson acts as an economic advisor on finance and tax law to governments worldwide including China, Iceland and Latvia.
Michael Hudson is the author of many books, among them:
Super Imperialism: [ . . . ]

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From the City of Quartz to San Francisco – Mike Davis

A Conversation with Tim Redmond – TUC Archives
It was with sadness that I received the news that the urban historian Mike Davis died on October 25, 2022, at home in San Diego – in the county his parents reached by hitch-hiking during the Great Depression. From meat cutter and truck driver to college student and teacher – editor of The New Left Review, and successful author of twenty books – his life and academic career were extraordinary.
I met and recorded Mike Davis in San Francisco in March 2000 when he visited my neighborhood, the North East Mission Industrial Zone. We had all been affected by the dot.com boom of 1998 through 2000, driven by [ . . . ]

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Yanis Varoufakis – Techno-Feudalism & the Death of Capitalism

Steven Parton interviews Varoufakis on Singularity Radio
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician who was the acting Minister of Finance in Greece during their debt crisis in 2015.
Varoufakis defines Techno Feudalism and how corporations have appropriated our identity and convinced us to consume things that we neither need nor want – creating environmental destruction. Also covered in this interview: why 2008 is a watershed moment for Capitalism; block chain VS bit coin; Universal Basic Income; and the question of democratic control of our technologies.
The host of Singularity Radio, Steven Parton, has focused on how technology is impacting the human condition and society as a whole. These are excerpts from the original podcast published on Sept. 23, 2022 [ . . . ]

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President John F. Kennedy’s Speech for Peace

American University, June 10, 1963
Considered one of his most visionary and courageous speeches, Kennedy outlined a way to stop an imminent nuclear disaster, and beyond that find a path to world peace and nuclear disarmament. The historic records give much of the credit to Kennedy for avoiding a nuclear war with the Soviet Union in 1962 over nuclear missiles in Cuba and Turkey during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On the 60th anniversary of the Missile Crisis, that brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever, analysts say that history repeats itself now, in October 2022. The two largest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, are in confrontation over Ukraine.
And instead of de-escalating all sides in this conflict [ . . . ]

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Pathway to a Negotiated Peace in Ukraine with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs

The New York based organization Brooklyn For Peace invited Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to help devise a strategy to prevent nuclear war by negotiating a peace agreement. In their introduction to this talk on October 6, 2022, they praised him as a world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author. Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the rank of University Professor.
Jeffrey Sachs is very familiar with Russia and the former Soviet Union. Soviet President Gorbachev, and then Russian President Yeltsin, invited him to advise them on the transition from central planning to a market economy. He also observed directly the history and expansion of NATO.
Brooklyn For Peace has begun a campaign [ . . . ]

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Freedom for Julian Assange and All Journalists

With Chris Hedges, Taylor Hudak and Stella Morris-Assange
Support for the journalist and publisher of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange focused on rallies in London and Washington DC on October 8, 2022. The former war correspondent and author Chris Hedges gave the most eloquent summary of the situation.
A new generation of journalists is coming out in support of Assange. Taylor Hudak is an American-Hungarian journalist and covers human rights, free speech, press freedom, US foreign policy and corruption. She produces video reports and interviews for the online publication acTVism Munich. She was invited to speak about Julian Assange at the Better Way Conference in Vienna on September 29, 2022.
Ten days earlier Chris Hedges was the guest of Project Censored. Director Mickey Huff asked [ . . . ]

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Free Leonard Peltier – Imprisoned for 45 years for a crime he did not commit

With Rachel Thunder and Attorney Kevin Sharp
At the end of September 2022, after Leonard Peltier’s 78th birthday, chances for his release are possibly better than ever before. His new attorney, Kevin Sharp, confirmed that no proof exists that ties Peltier to the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation.
And the Democratic National Convention voted unanimously on September 10, 2022, to urge President Biden to release Leonard Peltier from prison. The Huffington Post called this a sign of the growing momentum to remedy what many consider a decades long stain on the nation’s criminal justice system.
And a 2 1/2 months long walk began in Minneapolis on September first with an arrival date in Washington, DC, for [ . . . ]

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

TUC Radio is joining independent media across the country in the Fall of 2022 for a celebration of the 100th birthday of this great historian
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.
In this part TWO Zinn talks about US exceptionalism, the myth of the US being number One, and the various forms of patriotism that cloud views and perceptions. And he asks how a war on terrorism can be declared – even though war itself is terrorism.
Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. He taught political science at Boston University and wrote more than 20 books, including [ . . . ]

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

TUC Radio is joining independent media across the country in the Fall of 2022 for a celebration of the 100th birthday of this great historian
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.
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 [ . . . ]

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The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant in California may get another extension to operate

Diablo Canyon was scheduled to close by 2025
Governor Gavin Newsom got a bill approved in California’s assembly and senate (SB-846), that changed state law so the operator of Diablo Canyon, Pacific Gas and Electric, (PG&E) can receive at least $1.4 billion of taxpayer and ratepayer money to keep the compromised Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors operating.
Even before construction at Diablo Canyon began in the 1960s local and national organizations campaigned to prevent the plant from being built on the California coast line on top of several earthquake faults and in a tsunami zone. Placed half way between two major cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a reactor vessel explosion (a class 9 nuclear accident) would affect either metropolis – depending [ . . . ]

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Cecile Pineda with Harvey Wasserman: From Fukushima to Solartopia!

This is an updated archival program in memory of Cecile Pineda
Cecile Pineda had come to the Unitarian Universalists Fellowship Hall in Berkeley on Hiroshima Day 2014 to support Harvey Wasserman. He campaigns to prevent the opening of nuclear power plants – to limit their operation – or to close them down.
Cecile Pineda had just finished her novel: Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step, that the Nation’s John Nichols called: “An astonishing anatomy of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster…”
Cecile Pineda died at home on August 11, 2022. Her friends and students miss her voice, her humor, her deep scientific knowledge and her rebellion – all inside her art of writing.
This replay of her appearance, along with Harvey [ . . . ]

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Helen Caldicott and Michael Madsen: Onkalo and the Dangers from Nuclear Power Plants

A meditation on the 100,000 year legacy of nuclear waste – TUC Archives
As people using and promoting solar power we often jokingly said that we prefer our nuclear reactor in the sun at a safe 93 million mile distance. As humans have mastered one power of the universe and split the atom, the discovery has outstripped human ability to understand the consequences. We have copied the nuclear heating mechanism of the sun in 440 nuclear power plants along coastlines and rivers of the world and are barely aware of the danger they cause way beyond their place and time of use.
The physician and anti nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott says that vast amounts of highly toxic radioactive waste are generated every [ . . . ]

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Helen Caldicott and Michael Madsen: Into Eternity – from the TUC Archives

A meditation on nuclear danger and war, and the 100,000 year legacy of nuclear waste
The shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the managed acceptance of Onkalo, the underground storage site for nuclear waste in Finland, are in the August 2022 news while I am updating this re-broadcast.
Helen Caldicott called Madsen “One of the more extraordinary people I’ve ever interviewed”. This is a thought provoking exchange between the veteran campaigner, Helen Caldicott, who dedicated her life to alerting us to the nuclear danger, and the young Danish artist. In his documentary film he introduces thoughts about civilization, language, danger and eternity.
Into Eternity is a film about the building of the world’s first permanent repository for nuclear waste [ . . . ]

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