Saturday, June 25, 2011

John Pilger


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 26 -- June 25, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #173, June 28, 2011

John Pilger


Empire, Obama, and America's Last Taboo: a fine speech by the Australian documentary filmmaker and social critic John Pilger. He spoke in San Francisco in July 2009--just 6 months into the Obama administration.

The talk is about U.S. imperialism ... Obama's continuation or extension of Bush's evil policies ... Obama's record of fealty to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex ... and the failure of the Left to protest & fight back.

Pilger ends with praise for the wisdom & ethics of the majority of America's people--unlike its pundits and "leaders."

 Two illustrations by David Dees

Notes, credits, & links

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "unisex bathroom") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio. See the gray sidebar on the right ("CONTENTS [Links]") for a table of contents.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)
  • July 5 -- Technology and Society, Part 1
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):
A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net


Saturday, June 18, 2011

George Carlin Tribute


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 25 -- June 18, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #172, June 21, 2011

George Carlin Tribute


George Carlin died three years ago, on June 22, 2008. Lacking much formal education, he proved to be an impressive thinker and political analyst. Originally a hit as a middle-of-the-road, Hollywood comic, his political thinking moved leftwards over the years. By the 1990s, he was America's preeminent Progressive comic and satirist--and more popular than ever. This tribute includes four of Carlin's finer routines from the 1990s, with introductions by me.

The routines presented are these (the titles are mine):

1. Religion = B.S.
2. Airlines English
3. War on Homelessness
4. Euphemisms


Notes, credits, & links

Two other fine Carlin routines--"They Own You" and "The Class System in the U.S."--are included in New World Notes #164 ("They Warned Us!," April 24).

Thanks to Scooter, of "The innerSide" on KPFT-FM, Houston, for the first Carlin routine.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "benign neglect") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio. See the gray sidebar on the right ("CONTENTS [Links]") for a table of contents.

Series overview:
Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)
  • June 28 -- John Pilger
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):
A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net

Saturday, June 11, 2011

The Hidden Life of Garbage


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 24 -- June 11, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #171, June 14, 2011

The Hidden Life of Garbage

Refilled glass soda-pop bottles (1949). Was this a bad idea?

We present Heather Rogers' 18-minute video documentary from 2005, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage plus introduction and other commentary by me.

It's about the growing mountains of waste generated by a consumer economy based on disposable products. It's about the inability of recycling programs to actually recycle most of the stuff they receive. It's about the massive "Keep America Beautiful" anti-littering campaign--an industry ploy designed to head off anti-disposables legislation.

We end with a couple minutes on plastic waste from Annie Leonard's The Story of Bottled Water
Above: Writer and Filmmaker Heather Rogers.
Below: Discarded water bottles.

Notes, credits, & links

"Gone Tomorrow" was adapted to radio by Robin Upton (http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/).

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "oppressive yoke") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.
Above: A consumer-industry scam: the Keep America Beautiful
campaign. (Back then, "pollution" meant only "littering.")
Below: ... But its slogans sure proved popular. Now you can
see why Progressive folksinger David Rovics bid adieu to his
home town--Norwalk, Connecticut--not long after he
received his drivers' license.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)
  • June 21 -- George Carlin Memorial -- Dead and gone three years now. And to quote Network's "Howard Beale": Woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble!
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Eros, Mars, and Other Gods


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 23 -- June 5, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #170, June 7, 2011
Eros, Mars, and Other Gods
In brief
This week's show is more loosely structured than most. Its three segments do have this in common: literally or metaphorically, each segment concerns one or more of three gods: Eros, Mars, and Jehovah/Allah.

We'll hear three comedy routines poking fun at the lapses of Christian congregants and clergy.I'll read an expose' of rampant, socially sanctioned homosexual pedophilia in Afghanistan--justified, practitioners claim, by Islamic Law. And we'll hear some unintentionally hilarious public-service announcements from the Defense Department (ca. 1960) on how to survive a nuclear war.

The comedy routines are by (in order) Neal DeGrasse Tyson, Jimmy Tingle, and Rowan Atkinson.
Above: Rowan Atkinson (right) in another role: Captain Edmund Blackadder.
Below: A "dancing boy" of Afghanistan.

Notes, credits, & links
Music added: Dr Strangelove and the Fallouts, "Love that Bomb!" (mid-1960s).

Thanks to Scooter, of "The innerSide" on KPFT-FM, for the comedy routines by Neal DeGrasse Tyson and Rowan Atkinson. Thanks to King Daevid MacKenzie for the song and the old Civil Defense announcements.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "bad influence") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)
  • June 14 -- The Hidden Life of Garbage
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):
A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net