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Electric Politics Podcasts

PodcastDirectory / News and Politics / Liberal
PodcastDirectory / Regions / NA / USA

This is George Kenney's idiosyncratic political commentary, including also social commentary, religious commentary, arts commentary, news links, interviews, original reporting and whatever else he finds interesting. Think of it as a miniature, alternative NPR.

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Six Questions for Senator Abourezk

For your summertime listening edification, here's a quick interview with former U.S. Senator James G. Abourezk, recorded yesterday. An "in-between" podcast, between EP's regular Friday shows. Please note, in particular, the Senator's experience in trying to organize progressives and his observations regarding current efforts — or the lack thereof. It was very kind of Senator Abourezk to take time to talk with me and I'm grateful to him for his honest answers. Total runtime twenty thr ...

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The Art of Implementation

With a will, we can manage our environmental and energy crises. But it's policy that's too important to leave to politicians, policy-makers, and the market: a large part of the intelligent public must demand that the right things be done. To get a sense of what's possible here in the U.S. I turned to Terry Tamminen, formerly the Secretary of California's EPA and a top adviser to Governor Schwarzenegger. Terry provides a splendid, thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic tour d'horizon. The v ...

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Modeling Planetary Dynamics

One could attach different numbers to the curves in Limits To Growth, maybe push the timeline back several decades, but one can't argue much with the heuristic conclusion that unrestricted exponential growth results in sudden collapse. If we won't make the hard choices to control growth (e.g., population and industrialization), nature will. To get a better sense of how planetary dynamics works and what policy changes might be available I turned to the very distinguished scholar Dr. Dennis ...

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Not the American Way

For over two hundred years any notion that the United States government might officially practice torture was unthinkable, ridiculous. Under George Bush's tyranny, what have we become? Even if Congress has no stomach for a serious investigation, the thinking public must never let culpable officials off the hook. Zero tolerance for torture: it's the only civilized approach. For a sense of how a seasoned British lawyer sees the situation I turned to Philippe Sands, author of the superb, rece ...

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The Gangs of Pentagon Procurement

Politicians practically worship the Pentagon because it carefully, cleverly directs its gargantuan spending across almost every congressional district. And because contractors kick back a hefty tranche to politicians' bank accounts. Not so much of this supports the public good or authentic "defense." Call it the dark side of Keynesianism. Our ruinous military money conveyor can't go on indefinitely but most politicians won't discuss it or give reform the priority it deserves. And the mains ...

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It's not "Defense" Spending

One fact should be tacked on to all discussions of policy priorities: the U.S. spends over half a trillion dollars on its military, more than the rest of the world's military spending combined. To be blunt, that's insane. And it explains why the U.S. lags so far behind other advanced countries when it comes to social programs, public infrastructure, and generally every progressive metric that can be measured. There's no money left. To get at the cultural history behind our prohibitively ex ...

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Apartheid: For or Against??

The U.S. pays for and protects a system of Apartheid in Israel. The U.S. government routinely lies about this, describing Israel as a "Democracy." Worse, the U.S. encourages Israeli Jews to keep those Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank in a sort of outdoor prison-cum-shooting gallery. Absolutely contrary to what many of the Left have argued, seemingly forever, Jews are the ones calling the shots. It's the most odious, obscene abuse of human beings in the world — precisel ...

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Millennial Politics

Nobody knows for sure, but it looks like a very strong turn out in 2008 by the young and by African-Americans may well be what puts the Democrats over the top. The young — the Millennial generation — in particular are something of a mystery. Larger than the Baby Boom generation, ethnically much more mixed, and (unlike generation "X") politically active, for a variety of reasons the Millennials strongly tend towards progressive policy solutions. Will this last? For some answers ...

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The Art of Pragmatic Policy Making

It's a pity when domestic politics trumps rational foreign policy in the national interest. Should we talk with Hamas, even Hezbollah? Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, says yes. Should we talk with Cuba? Emphatically yes, says Larry. And why? Because the fact is, most of the time we get more of what we want by talking with people than by periodically bashing them with military power, or by ignoring them while the rest of the world maintains normal relations. Here's a ...

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"Mankind Must Put An End To War..."

"...or war will put an end to mankind." (JFK in a September 25, 1961 speech to the UN General Assembly.) A lot of people, these days, understand that the risks of nuclear war are too great. But what are those risks, exactly? As it turns out, nobody knows, and until now nobody's tried to figure them out. Dr. Martin E. Hellman — not for the first time — spotted the obvious that everybody else missed. His new project, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, starts by proposing a serious, urg ...

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The Art of Faith

Follow what you know how to do well. Frank Schaeffer's memoir, Crazy for God, offers an unexpected mirror into the American experience. From being one of the brains behind the founding of the evangelical political right, to his stalwart, enthusiastic support for Obama today (we talk about Obama a lot), Frank's trajectory has taken him through various stations of faith. Strong character having been bred into him, he's managed eventually to come to terms with it all. A great example of perso ...

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Wild Horses Flying

Horses have always been with us. At Lascaux. On the Ural steppes. Among the Sumerians, the Scythians, the Chinese… It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the domestication of the horse made civilization possible. And here's a little known fact: horses evolved in North America, were wiped out by the ice age about 8,000 years ago, but not before they crossed the Bering land bridge and spread throughout the rest of the world. When the Spanish reintroduced horses to the New World, ...

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Of Tongues and Ticking Time Bombs

Governments always insist on keeping their practice of torture secret — as well they should, because torture almost never works. And, in fact, it generally has profoundly negative, unintended, practical consequences. While we intuit that torture is wrong, we only know of its futility thanks to a few intrepid researchers who patiently sift the archives. For a sample of what can be known I turned to Dr. Darius Rejali, author most recently of the encyclopedic (and aptly titled) Torture ...

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The Art of Energy Politics

To Peak Oil aficionados (I'm including me here) it may be something of a surprise to learn that not all is doom and gloom, that the catastrophic collapse of civilization as we know it is neither imminent nor inevitable. In fact, we have an amazing, working, macro-scale example of emergent energy independence — right now — in Germany. To get the inside scoop I turned to Dr. Hermann Scheer, a member of the German parliament (Bundestag), and driving force behind German energy inno ...

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The Basic Right to Health Care

By most measures the U.S. has one of the worst health care systems (and most expensive) of any advanced country in the world. Why is that? To try to make some sense of the politics of health care I turned to Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. Thank you, Steffie, for your great determination and leadership! Clearly, a lot of doctors are fed up with their patients (read, clients) being corporations instead of real people. And I think most America ...

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Pricing the Elixir of Life

Few people know as much about the water situation in the U.S. as Dr. Robert J. Glennon. Though I'd take a different tack than he would in knocking heads together I think he's proposed innovative, workable, "market-ish" based ways to rationalize water usage. And I completely agree with him that the problem is how to prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. Total runtime an hour and three minutes. Comments welcome!

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Bleeding The Hyperpower Dry

Among available options, "victory" in Iraq doesn't exist. For an army of occupation perhaps it never did. The smart thing would be to get out as fast as practicably possible — sadly, that doesn't seem to be in the cards. Policy preferences aside, nevertheless, it's helpful to try to understand the political-military dynamic. For that I turned once again to Wayne White, a top middle east analyst, formerly with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. This is his thi ...

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Who Is My Neighbor?

For decades the Republican Party has used fear to drive religious voters away from the Democrats. The Republicans succeeded so spectacularly that much of the Democratic Party establishment got conditioned to automatically — and wrongly — write off Evangelicals. It's a big part of the reason why Democrats lose elections. To get some perspective on religion in politics I turned to Amy Sullivan, the nation editor at Time magazine and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democ ...

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Skimbleshanks

Of all the books on 9/11 Peter Dale Scott's learned The Road To 9/11(University of California Press, 2007) deserves special recognition for situating the events of 9/11 in an intelligible, albeit complicated, context. Unlike other leftist social critics who see a simple narrative in government actions, Peter sees rich textures in what he calls 'the deep state.' An agnostic about what actually happened on 9/11 Peter nevertheless convincingly and powerfully argues that everything is not as i ...

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The Organic Agriculture Movement

Organic food tastes better. It's healthier. It costs a bit more, but surveys show that, counterintuitively, it isn't consumed disproportionately by the affluent. And the most remarkable thing: organic food is increasing its market share relatively quickly. To learn about the current state of the organic agriculture movement and what accounts for its success I turned to Dr. Brian Obach, a committed organic consumer who's been trying to explain social movements for twenty years. As an organi ...

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Neptune's Cornucopia

Some mistakes you don't get to "do-over." Wiping out a unique fish, the Menhaden, the keystone species of America's Atlantic and Gulf fisheries, amounts to ecocide. And a peculiarly foolish mistake, too — nothing great accrues to any of the grubby perpetrators, or their equally grubby political enablers. Devastation only provides literally chicken-feed to a few. Dr. H. Bruce Franklin, an eminent literary expert and historian of American culture, tells this fish story in an unforgetta ...

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A Vulture's Bonanza

Protectionism can be a good thing. Protectionism, in fact, is the only way that a developing country can become developed. And, I daresay, it's the only way an industrial country like the U.S. can retain its industrial base and high standard of living in the face of wage arbitrage by large corporations that offshore their operations. Moreover, if, as Dr. Ha-Joon Chang argues, a rational high culture results from industrialization (and not the opposite, as is often wrongly — and racia ...

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War Mongers

Following my conversation about the Israel Lobby with John Mearsheimer in early January, I thought it would be helpful to take a more detailed look at the neo-cons. So I turned to Jim Lobe, Washington Bureau Chief of the Inter Press Service news agency, a recognized expert on the subject who knows probably almost as much about the neo-cons as they do themselves. Jim explains in a very straight-forward and thoughtful way how the neo-con godlings (my term) are out to create perpetual war. It ...

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Kosovo Options

According to many (usually) reliable sources, this weekend the Albanian majority in the Serbian province of Kosovo will, with tacit U.S. support, unilaterally declare independence. If not this weekend, then soon enough. Though unlikely to spark a new, full-blown round of Yugoslavia's civil war — made dormant by the Dayton agreement in 1995 — Kosovo's putative independence creates as many problems as it solves, or more. To get a sense of what's at stake and what sorts of logical ...

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Ghost Wars

International terrorists should be subject to normal police procedure and normal judicial trials. Disappearing people into an international gulag isn't any kind of a serious policy — indeed, it's merely terrorism of another sort. To understand a bit more about how our approach to terrorism could be so badly misguided I turned to Stephen Grey, an independent UK journalist and author most recently of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program. Stephen has also ...

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Whither Pakistan?

There aren't many experts on Pakistan's nuclear program, or in particular on its command and control systems. And fewer still who are also sensibly articulate about Pakistani politics. We're fortunate to have Dr. Shaun Gregory, Director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford, to explain things. No doubt about it: Pakistan has turned into a fine mess — it'll require sustained intelligent attention to recover safely but even so, outside help doesn't guaran ...

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Green Grievances

Most Americans want policies neither party has offered them: an end to the occupation of Iraq; return to the rule of law and constitutional protections; workable health care; decent paying jobs; a clean and safe environment; energy security — in short, the replacement of monied special interests by public spirited actors. Internationally, similar preferences have translated into electoral success for Green parties. Here in the U.S., not so much. Why not? According to John Murphy, a G ...

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Scala Naturæ

Consider this: The human neocortical surface covers 2,275 cm2, about the size of a dinner napkin, but the common dolphin neocortical surface covers 3,745 cm2, bigger than an unfolded newspaper. Making a very rough adjustment for mass, humans have a "gyrification index" of 1.75; dolphins run up to 2.7, killer whales even higher. In terms of brain to body size our highly evolved human brains are slightly larger and have a larger absolute number of neurons, while cetacean brains have more gli ...

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Six Questions for Charlie Peters

What a treat to talk with Charlie Peters, founding editor of the Washington Monthly! Charlie's imaginative common sense should be on your 'must read' list — at least occasionally from an issue off the newsstand even if you don't subscribe. And it's tough to figure Charlie's influence except that it's considerable among Washington literati. So here are his answers to the best six questions I could think of. Total runtime 25:32. Enjoy!

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Speaking Truth To Power

The Israel Lobby inflicts such significant damage to U.S. national security interests that one book could not possibly be enough for a detailed discussion. Hopefully, others will follow the courageous example set by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, bringing new ideas about how to measure the Lobby's influence, how to ask the right questions about what should be done to protect the integrity of the U.S. foreign policy process, and why thinking about the problem in moral terms sugges ...

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Money, Money, Money

With the global economy teetering on a precipice, I wanted to get the view from London as to our prospects. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the International Business Editor for the Telegraph, brings to the situation an incredibly well-informed, extremely intelligent, moderately conservative perspective. He makes fair points — putting a positive analysis to work, where possible. Yet even Ambrose has hair-raising things to say about the financial markets, some of which you may not have heard ...

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Digital Breadcrumbs

Until just a few years ago researchers into psi phenomena were not much better off than interested scholars of a hundred or even a thousand years ago. What's changed is not so much the use of scientific method — though that's a necessary part of it — but the advent of cheap, powerful computers adaptable to all manner of experimental tasks. Perhaps ironic (in a good sense) that inorganic machines may help us understand more about the fundamentals of the energy of consciousness t ...

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Who Knew?

It's an enormous conceit to think that population increases are everywhere and always a good thing. In the blessed tradition, however, of neo-classical economic theory (aka 'free markets') such is the miracle of rational choice that left to themselves people will 'optimize' the rate of population growth: no natural limit on population exists. Nevertheless, in reality the unacknowledged costs of population growth mostly shift to future generations. Call it the ultimate Ponzi scheme. And if ...

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The Kurds'Story

In trying to untangle the strands of modern "humanitarian interventionism"one could do worse than by starting with the implementation genius Fred Cuny. Apposite events, of course, go back to Biafra (as did Fred) and earlier, but the real turning point came with Fred's repatriation of Iraqi Kurds after the first Gulf War. Afterwards, the military and many/most aid organizations entered something of a consensual relationship; those who cut their teeth on the Kurds would later play key roles ...

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Angels of Our Better Nature

Put in the wrong situation, with the wrong incentives, it's pretty hard to do the right thing. But we can learn to think about things in all kinds of new and different ways (including learning from our mistakes), so why not learn to think, and act, heroically? Phil Zimbardo, one of America's most distinguished psychologists, reflects back on over three decades of experience and finds some fundamental lessons in the dungeons at Abu Ghraib. His book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Goo ...

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The Right To Vote

Most people figure the Constitution gives us the right to vote. They would be wrong. As Garrett Epps tells us, not only does the Constitution not define a right to vote, but for that very reason Supreme Court decisions talk about "the right to vote" in quotation marks. Which leads, naturally, to the question of what else we're assuming is there, in fact, isn't? In short, the Constitution is a seriously incomplete blueprint — our job is to make sense of it and, where necessary, build ...

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What Is Torture?

"Give me Liberty or give me Death." To put this famous saying attributed to Patrick Henry somewhat differently, we easily recognize that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Indeed, there seems a large class of worse circumstances, though we generally don't categorize them or, perhaps more importantly, often lack adequate language to describe them. Worse than death: it's a subtle difference that doesn't lend itself to formulation in terms of rules. Perhaps that's why, when w ...

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The View From Cleveland

At one point in this conversation Betsy Sullivan, editorial board member and columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, says she may be naïve but that she believes in absolute truth in politics. Amen. We should all be so naïve. People on the coasts often make fun of the mid-west's lack of sophistication but surprisingly often it demonstrates more highly developed sensibilities. To my mind, believing in truth in politics is a quintessential mid-western idea. The sort of stuff, indee ...

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Post Apocalypsis

Supposing it were the end of the world, the revelation due should be tapping, tapping at the door (to mix literary metaphors). And if you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Our political system doesn't work well anymore, if at all, but perhaps we're not really doomed since we're capable of thinking up something new. At least, that's the message I take from the artist Robert Shetterly's project, Americans Who Tell The Truth. Robert is pursuing a unique kind of grass-roots progressive ...

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Lodestar

Every once in a while somebody comes along with whom you can agree about most things — Samuel Clemens, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal... People with a capacity for unusually deep insight. I suspect that in important ways this gift can't be learned, although we can learn to appreciate it. Linda McQuaig is another who sees past the actual to what's possible, and she's got the tenacity and convivial personality to be able to present these ideas to an extremely wide audience. Author most recent ...

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Faith Based Intelligence

Valerie Plame, author of Fair Game, is the sort of person I'd feel safe going to if I were in a lot of trouble. And she's proof of two things: That the U.S. government bureaucracy can be and has been staffed by highly competent professionals, but that today a perverse, politicized 'de-professionalization' is in full bloom. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: professionals are going to be loyal to the Constitution, to their professional code, and to each another. So who are you g ...

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The Art of Counter-Terrorism

As Larry Johnson says, we can't afford to pretend that terrorism doesn't exist, but neither can we win a war against it or contain it through superior technology. Terrorism, essentially, is an international police problem that should be managed through traditional law enforcement tools together with a bit of shoe-leather espionage and greater sensitivity to its cultural and political context. If we think we can stomp on the Islamic world until we've eradicated terrorism, we've got another ...

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Who Killed Habeas?

"I" said the Meadowlark, "In my prison in the dark, I killed Habeas." Dating back over 700 years in the English speaking world, the notion that the custodian of a prisoner must justify their detention before a court lays the foundation for individual liberty. Without habeas corpus the state becomes all-powerful, whether that power be fully exercised, or not. To better understand what's happening in the so-called "war on terror," and where things are headed, I turned to Joseph Margulies, la ...

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It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Milgram World

In the 18th century elites predominated among the politically active. So it was natural for the founding fathers to worry mainly about faction while blissfully overlooking fanaticism or the problems of followership. Given the 20th century experience with authoritarian rule one wonders, however, whether contemporary government structures or ideas about democracy suffice. Clearly, for exactly the wrong reasons, the Cheney-Bush administration thinks not. We really must get into the details of ...

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Public Service Podcast

On Thursday, September 20, a collection of anti-war groups sponsored a colloquium (PDF) at American University. Ten speakers — actually, eleven, because one wasn't on the program — delivered their perspectives, leading up to the presentation of the Sam Adams Associates Corner-Brightener Candlestick award to Sam Provance, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib but followed his conscience and became a whistle-blower. The proceedings ran to three hour ...

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American Predators

Advocates of U.S. military strikes against Iran are pushing as hard as they dare for a series of confrontations that the White House can use to drag the rest of government behind it in a new, exponentially expanded war. Rationally, this should not be happening, yet it would be imprudent in the extreme to minimize the risk. Or to underestimate the stupidity of Congress. Nevertheless, it's also quite helpful to hear from the optimistic side of things — if we just get over the next elec ...

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Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair!

This is the 100th show on Electric Politics. So it seems appropriate to cover a series of subversive topics with a genuinely revolutionary soul, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. We talk about 9/11, about the emerging American police state, and about the realities of international economics which, unfortunately, all too few economists understand. Now, Craig calls himself a pessimist, but I detect an element of optimism here — certainly a fiery determination to make change happen. And as far as ...

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Celebrating Human Lives

It's almost pointless to go over all the rational reasons why a US attack on Iran doesn't make sense. The people that need to be convinced not to do it aren't thinking rationally — to them, what matters most is whether they might be able to get away with it. So, in a sense, going over pros and cons only encourages them to try stirring up enough confusion and laying enough blame to create the opportunity. Instead, they should be thought about, talked about, and treated as the criminal ...

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The Chessmen of Darfur

When the Cold War ended we should've gotten a peace dividend. Less military spending, more peace. Instead, we got the first Gulf War. And then, Yugoslavia. Now the second Gulf War, and the beginning of what looks like a new Cold War. None of this even remotely supporting U.S. security interests — indeed, antithetical to them. The intellectual framework behind such adventures (intellectual may be an inaccurate term) attempts to replace three hundred and fifty plus years of the Westpha ...

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Anthropogenic Climate Change

The main knock against anthropogenic climate change — more or less unchanged since the 1980s — is that a cabal of cunning computer modelers have managed to dupe, co-opt, bamboozle, or intimate climate scientists into believing fantastic, yet unsubstantiated, allegations. Recently put forward by the redoubtable Freeman Dyson, this critique also, unfortunately, picks up a certain amount of support in the progressive community. To help dispel these arguments and the confusion they ...

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The Art of Dissent

At any given time there are probably only about 100 foreign service officers who are truly extraordinary. Scattered across lots of different offices around the world, of all different ranks, they are the working elite, the master craftsmen of diplomacy. In his day, Roger Morris was among them. It's a real privilege for me to talk with Roger, who had the brains and the guts to resign his commission (together with Anthony Lake) over a major policy issue, the US invasion of Cambodia in the sp ...

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Dave of Al Jazeera

It's a pity that the Al Jazeera English service, for all intents and purposes, isn't available in the US cable market. Due, no doubt, to US government pressure — however maladroitly applied. Nonetheless, to those for whom it is available internationally Al Jazeera provides a vital corrective to sanitized American infotainment productions, particularly regarding reporting about the US. A diplomatic reminder that things are usually more complicated than the standard packaged narratives ...

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Just Following Orders

When the Cheney-Bush administration orders its minions to torture prisoners, prisoners from whom habeas has been stripped, prisoners thrown, essentially, into an oubliette, those actions place the United States squarely in the totalitarian tradition. Categorically, it is not the behavior of a democracy. Lest we despair to the point of acquiescence, the fulgent ideals of law do suggest both a correction and an ultimate accounting. To try to get at these issues I talk with Elisa Massimino, d ...

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Yesterday This Day's Madness Did Prepare

One fact to keep in mind. Instead of taking their recent, unprecedented, and obscene profits and reinvesting them, big oil companies are returning the money to shareholders as dividends. Ergo there's no more oil to be discovered. We know that for other reasons, but if somebody tries to argue with you about Peak Oil, just point out to them that big oil has zero interest in getting at the truth. Or big oil's lackeys. To take another tour d'horizon of the Peak Oil situation I turned to David ...

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The Art of Intelligence

It takes genuine commitment, and guts, to move from being a top CIA analyst to a leading progressive activist. Ray McGovern not only writes brilliant political essays on the internet, he puts himself right on the line — as he did this last Monday, getting arrested with Cindy Sheehan and Rev. Lennox Yearwood in Representative Conyers' office, protesting Conyers' inactivity on impeachment. One of these days maybe I'll have the honor of getting arrested with him, too, trying to keep Ame ...

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Reivers' Redress

Howard Zinn says that Joe Bageant "...evokes working class America like no one else." Joe does, in fact, bring us a large dose of raw intelligence from the hinterlands. And a particularly convincing argument, laid out more fully in his recent book Deer Hunting With Jesus, why if the Democrats can't enlist poor white working people they'll not only continue to lose elections but could hardly be called the "liberal" party. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Joe — I not only appreciate h ...

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Peak Oil Politics

According to a recent International Energy Agency report (subscription), cast in moderate diplomat-speak, the world is now officially running out of oil. It's a genuine milestone that within short order has led to the creation in the UK of an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, and this week the admission by one of the pillars of the UK media establishment, William Rees-Mogg, that "the world is coming to the end of the age of oil." In the UK, at least, energy policy is now o ...

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The Art of Being

There's a lot of strange stuff out there, if only people open their eyes to see it. Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and the sixth man to walk on the moon, got a good look and has had the courage — and kindness — to tell the rest of us. A helpful soul. If you want an idea of what the future has in store give a listen, as Dr. Mitchell talks about space, NASA, UFOs (including Roswell), and consciousness and the quantum hologram. To find out more, please visit the organizat ...

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A Belgian Intellectual

When a practicing theoretical physicist turns his attention to politics, picking up the progressive flag, political types should pay attention. Jean Bricmont, of the Catholic University of Louvain, is not only a prolific researcher in his profession but goes well beyond, writing about everything from the philosophy of science ("Determinism, Chaos, and Quantum Mechanics," PDF) to culture (Fashionable Nonsense), to politics — his latest being Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Right ...

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Memory and National Identity

When a country can't remember its own history — or doesn't want to — it risks losing more than dusty museum relics. It could lose its soul. That's what happens when the U.S. constitution is routinely flouted, or when, in extremis, a U.S. warship is sacrificed upon the alter of political expediency. If the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967, had succeeded in sinking her with all hands then this history, indeed, would have been permanently lost. But by some miracl ...

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The Horrors of Apartheid

One way — only one way — exists for Israel to become a normal state at peace with its neighbors: it must abandon its delusional world of 19th century nationalism for modern principles of equal justice and equal rights for all its people. Otherwise, Israel's future will remain tormented. Implicating the U.S., as it does, this question surely cannot belong to Israel alone, nor can outsiders ignore it without peril. Jewish supremacists, unless brought to their senses, have the pow ...

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The Garden of Technological Delights

A co-founder of the top website Ars Technica, Jon "Hannibal" Stokes may not be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but in immediate, critical ways he's making technology accessible to the rest of us. Plus which, as a theologian-in-training at the University of Chicago, Jon's insights into the nature and history of the relationship between technology and society go well beyond what we expect from the technologically adept. To me, Jon's a fascinating character, and I'm very grateful to him for shootin ...

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The Fallacy of Full Spectrum Dominance

The establishment's bête noir of the year award should go to Chalmers Johnson, for his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. (Reviewed quite recently and most favorably, to their credit, at the New York Review of Books.) A card-carrying former cold warrior and for decades one of the top U.S. experts on Asia, Chalmers has been seriously re-thinking the big picture, assembling a meticulous structural critique of where we're headed — one that's impossible to ignore ...

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A Stellar Heresy

In the past, people were always getting scientific things wrong — often laughably so. But modern science doesn't make those big mistakes anymore, or does it? Dr. Halton C. Arp thinks so. An eminent American astrophysicist, Dr. Arp was at the center of our scientific establishment until he insisted on talking about his observations from Mount Palomar, of red-shift, and what they mean for cosmology. No way to know how old the universe is, except that it's much, much older than conventi ...

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Akrasia in Iraq

The other day Gary Kamiya had an insightful essay at Salon to the effect that Bush hasn't been impeached because his "warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche." I think that's right — not enough people have made the connection between the pervasive tinpot militarism of American society and the persistence of gangsters successfully masquerading as national leaders. One way to undo the damage is to think clearly about what is actually happening in our wars of choice; ...

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Deconstructing Justice

If what you want is a banana republic what you do is hollow out the main departments of the executive branch from within until nothing but politics remains. A military coup naturally, probably inevitably, ensues. Sometimes I wonder — is that what Republican chieftains intend? Or are they so stupid that they actually don't see where their actions are taking us? Probably it's a mix of both. If the Tyrant could have a coup on his own terms he'd seize it. Which is why the administration' ...

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911 Truth

So you implement one of the most stupendous black-ops of all time. Considering the multitude of variables, you've put together a fairly convincing cover story that fixes blame on Islamic terrorists. Using the full weight of the political establishment you bulldoze away public discussion of the truth. A complaisant press repeats your lies in a ciclo infinito forte. Though a few malcontents won't buy it, they're marginalized. Then along comes your worst nightmare: a distinguished theologian ...

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Congo Lives, Part II

This is the second part of my interview with Larry Devlin (see prior show). Less "interview-ish," it consists largely, but not entirely, of light banter and story-telling. And I do encourage listeners to buy Larry's book, Chief of Station, Congo, a pretty darn good read. I was absolutely delighted to talk with Larry, am very grateful to him for taking the time, and I think I learned a few things in the bargain. Total runtime here of forty eight minutes. Enjoy!

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Congo Lives, Part I

One of the things I admire about Larry Devlin, who's got a new book out, Chief of Station, Congo, is his knack for getting things done. Call it implementation genius — not so many people have it... And I believe his motivations were honorable. Moreover, if you look, for example, at his judgment as applied to contemporary problems, like Iraq, you'll see how he makes a lot of sense. Some may complain that Larry was single-handedly responsible for wrecking most of post-colonial sub-Saha ...

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U.S. Welfare Tickets

Just as the U.S. spends more per capita for health care than other industrial states only to get less in terms of actually delivered services, we spend (believe it or not) nearly on par with our peers in terms of overall welfare programs, but again come up short in the results department. Of course, it's a political problem not a technical problem... To get some perspective on what's happening I turned to Chris Howard, a truly nice guy and author of The Welfare State Nobody Knows. I don't ...

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UN Limits?

The United Nations has strict limits on what it can do, argues Shashi Tharoor, because it cannot exceed the political consensus of its leading member states. Shashi, until recently the UN's Undersecretary General for Communications and Public Information, is as well placed as anybody could be to understand such things. But is Shashi right to accept such limits without having in mind alternatives of what the UN should be like? And is the UN any more likely to remain relevant in the 21st cen ...

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"Yes"to Health Care Reform

We're always hearing about "the best is the enemy of the good." Or "half aloaf is better than nothing." Especially in politics. Which it's true that most of life is made up of compromises, but not all. "Compromise" is not carved in stone — sometimes half a loaf isn't better than nothing and sometimes to get something even approximately right you've got to scrap what you've got. The health care system in the U.S. is exactly that way. But we need not fear experimenting in the dark: plen ...

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L'Orage

Probably more than any other single event, hurricane Katrina exposed the emptiness of federal "national security" mumbo jumbo. I don't think the Tyrant ever recovered — or can recover — from his shocking display of ineptitude. Or indifference. And in the aftermath we're faced with a new, interesting existential problem: what to do about New Orleans? 3,000-plus miles of the Mississippi wants to bypass it, southern Louisiana is subsiding rapidly into the Gulf of Mexico while simu ...

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Midwestern Common Sense

Now almost a century later (imagine that!) I wonder what Krazy Kat would have thought of the internet?It seems sometimes like the internet's been around forever, but it's really a very new thing. The net's impact on politics, already significant and rapidly evolving, should become a central factor within just a few years. To get a sense of what's going on from the perspective of grassroots Wisconsin — historically one of the great incubators of American political thought — I tur ...

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Urbi et Orbi

There's always been the sandwich-board crowd, telling us to repent as the end of the world is upon us. Beyond them, my sense is that human beings tend to have a deep-seated fear of planetary scale catastrophe (indeed, I'd love to find a good history of catastrophe thinking); why, I don't know. But we do now seem to have arrived at something new: a humanity induced set of simultaneous crises that is on the verge of critically stressing civilization. Since I've picked up this theme in bits an ...

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The Sky Is Falling (Or Not)

Bill Moyers says Jeff Chester "is the Paul Revere" of the internet revolution. Well, maybe not. It's true that Jeff is fighting some of the right corporate exploiters of culture — and it should be noted that Moyers has had plenty of experience fighting that same fight in the broadcast world — but it is unclear to me, still, how well or not the known history of broadcast maps onto the world of the internet. No doubt many powerful groups would like to see the internet turned into ...

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The Price of Real Estate in Baghdad

It's important to keep in mind that there are no easy options for theU.S. in Iraq. But that's not to say we shouldn't be realistic. As the calamity narrows our choices for us it becomes increasingly important to pay attention to what's actually happening instead of to the spin coming from those at several levels of remove from events, whether Pooh-bahs in the Emerald City or in Versailles on the Potomac. Tom Lasseter, of McClatchy, performs a tremendous service — at great personal ris ...

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Can Iraq Be"Fixed"?

This podcast is one in a series of collaborations between EP and the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. Here, I organized a panel discussion on Iraq, held at the National Press Club on Wednesday, February 28th. The moderator is Alton Frye, panelists are Ted Galen Carpenter, Helle Dale, Doug Macgregor, Frank Gaffney and Frank Anderson. I offer them all my profound thanks for their participation in an outstanding discussion, and I particularly want to thank ...

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Ecological Economics

Sometimes it takes an Irishman to shake things up and set them right. In the field of economics — the only discipline in the social sciences to have thrown out all ties with its origins, the only one to claim its authority supersedes that of all its sister disciplines (a mind-boggling assertion), and the only to effectively sanctify the wholesale destruction of our planet — change has long been overdue. Instead of playing with advanced mathematics economists should get out in t ...

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Mobile Chernobyls: Coming Soon to a Transportation Hub Near You!

Mea Maxima Culpa. It wasn'tuntil recently (within the past year) when I began to ask myself about the true cost of nuclear power that I became skeptical. After reading Helen Caldicott, and talking with her, I'm now an anti-nuclear believer. Actually, if you stop and think about it just a little bit, it doesn't make sense to create vast quantities of a super lethal waste product that remains super lethal for hundreds of thousands of years, especially when we have no idea — none — ...

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VAT: A Tax Too Fair

In the U.S., most people hate taxes. Why is that? Well, they've been brainwashed that taxes are bad, but logicallyit also would seem reasonable to suppose that Americans don't like taxes because it's painfully obvious that we get so little in return. That's something quite unique ("great" if you're chauvinistically inclined) about America, setting us apart from every other industrial democracy. To put taxes in perspective I turned to Neil Brooks, a Canadian tax expert, and coauthor of a bri ...

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Hamiltonian Conservatism

The real fight in America isn't between the right and the left, but between people who want representative democracy and people who prefer corporate control. "What's best for the country" used to be an attitude that one assumed existed in public officials. Now, hidden agendas and bad faith all too often drive honor out of the system. A corrupted politics brazenly exults in its priorities of money and power. So it's refreshing to talk with somebody with whom I may disagree about all sorts o ...

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Achilles In Vietnam

On January 16 of this year, back in Minnesota from Iraq, a young Marine hanged himself with an electrical cord. What's particularly troubling is that he'd begged the local VA hospital several times to be admitted and treated for suicidal depression and psychological injuries from combat, but was refused, only to be put on a waiting list. A symptom, no doubt, of a deeply disordered system. One can hate the war — and, properly, one does — but what about the warrior? How do the res ...

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A Republic, or A Monarchy?

Last November the voters sent a pretty clear message: "We're fed up, we think the country should be on a different track, and we want to see some accountability." Now that the Democratic party has taken control of Congress the question is whether they'll exercise that power according to their mandate — or were they merely the lesser hypocrites? Most importantly, will they accede to the Tyrant's unconstitutional aggrandizement of executive power or will they challenge it? Are the Democ ...

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In Search of Renewables

It might seem too good to be true: solar power, poised to become part of our energymix in a big way, thanks solely to market forces. Not only that, but the Solar Revolution bypasses centralized, hierarchical market structures and introduces a new era of decentralized, locally managed power generation. Presto, many of our problems solved. In other circumstances one might suspect that Travis Bradford—a thirty something overachiever with no background in energy, who rented a place in Spa ...

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Local Power

It's always fun to talk with Sam Smith, even when I'm a bit slow on the uptake. Here we have a very informal shooting-the-breeze sort of conversation, but in a low-key way Sam's actually laying out a fairly consistent philosophy of devolving as much political and economic power as possible to the local level. Listening the second time, while editing, I started to get the picture. So forgive my slowness—and I hope our bouncing around of ideas gives you something to think about during t ...

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Down To The Last (Cheap) Drop

Back in 1798 Malthus popularized the idea of animpending, catastrophic scarcity of the essentials of life, or at least permanently attached his name to gloomy forecasts. Since then, Malthusians of various stripes have been eager to find evidence of critical scarcity—any scarcity—that might validate their beliefs. In vain. As economists explain, when goods become scarce their prices rise and market forces generate substitutes. All well and good, until now. Petroleum is different: ...

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Podcast

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'Tis But A Scratch!

Nobody knows why the Black Knight guards his bridge, or for that matter Draco his gold. Seemingly irrational,they nevertheless represent real obstacles to be overcome. Conceived in bureaucratic terms it's the difference between the formal bureaucratic hierarchy and the informal network that really keeps things moving: understanding the latter takes a certain kind of genius. A maverick. For decades at the Pentagon Chuck Spinney—an insider's insider—fought the good fight, mostly ( ...

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Off To The Big House

Ask people what Bush's biggest mistake has been, most will say Iraq. And Iraq is a cornerstone of his "war on terror." Take away Iraq, most of his remaining popular support—such as it is—falls to pieces. Elizabeth de la Vega, a former Federal prosecutor, drives that point home in her witty new book which involves the presentation of a hypothetical indictment, for conspiring to push the country into war, to a hypothetical grand jury. As propaganda (the good kind) it's aces. And ...

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The Little Town of Bethlehem

It's amazing that what likes to thinkof itself as the world's premiere religion, Christianity, exhibits little organized concern that what presumably is one of its holiest sites—the birthplace of its founder—should be turned into an open prison camp surrounded by high concrete walls, owned and operated by fanatical followers of a rival religion, dedicated to the collective abuse and coercion of a people who are mainly adherents of yet a third religion. What hypocrites these Chri ...

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Mr. Green

I voted for Ralph Nader for President, twice. I'd probably do the same again—as a protest vote—but I must admit, Ralph has been an unmitigated disaster, not least because he failed to build alternative institutions after his campaigns. At any rate, I was quite curious to know whether in our latest election leading Greens had a pulse. Peter Miguel Camejo, Ralph's stalwart vice-presidential running mate in 2004, was running for California Governor on the Green Party ticket for th ...

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Paradise Lost

This is a public service podcast of a presentation by Dr. Bob Bowman, on 9/11, at a symposium organized by dc911truth.org held Saturday, November 11, at George Mason University's Arlington campus. Dr. Bowman—who last week got 44% of the vote in Florida's 15th congressional district—makes a reasonable case for further investigation into the events of 9/11, without pre-judging the outstanding questions. It's a model political analysis for activists.

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Clean Water: A Basic Human Right

I always think it's fascinating to talk with people working on the front lines to make our planet a better place to live—or liveable at all. Karin Krchnak is the international water expert at The Nature Conservancy (with over four billion dollars in assets it is, I believe, the largest environmental organization in the US). She knows, as well as anybody, what the problems are and where we should look for solutions, though she's pretty realistic about what to expect. And she's easy to ...

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Get 'Cher Fresh, Hot, Highly Enriched Uranium Here!!

In the popular imagination Cold War custodians of the bomb had a Dr. Strangelove zeitgeist. What we often forget is that most people doing the work did it with d