Sunday, April 3, 2016

The Crisis of Civilization

Part 1: New World Notes #422, 28:04 (April 5)
Broadcast quality MP3 (39 MB)
Decent quality MP3 (13 MB)

Part 2: New World Notes #423, 29:09 (April 12)
Broadcast quality MP3 (40 MB)
Decent quality MP3 (13 MB)


U.K. political analyst Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed has written and narrates an engaging documentary film, The Crisis of Civilization. I have condensed and adapted the film to radio,

New World Notes first broadcast this two-part program (as #238-239) in September 2012--a Presidential election year, like this one. In case you were wondering why Part Two talks a bit about George Romney.

In the film, Ahmed surveys (by my count) seven serious global crises that are now besetting Western Civilization as we know it. He argues that the seven are interconnected. So none can be fixed (or even much improved) without addressing the other six.

The seven interconnected crises are
  • climate change
  • peak energy
  • food production and distribution
  • economic instability
  • international terrorism
  • militarization
  • destruction of civil liberties
Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed 

Clips from old films enliven Ahmed's discussion, which is pretty interesting in itself.

In Part One of our adaptation, Ahmed looks at economic instability and terrorism.

In Part Two, he examines militarization and destruction of civil liberties. Also in Part Two, we'll read a good essay by Bruce Dixon, of Black Aganda Report, on how Obama and Romney agree on almost every issue. (Replace these names with "the Democrats" and "the Republicans," and the point is valid today too.)

Another thing politicians have agreed on: not to mention six of the crises we're identifying--and not to say anything sensible about the seventh, terrorism.  And I think that applies to every candidate running for President at any time in 2016--with perhaps the partial exceptions of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Part Two has new introductions and comments by K.D.


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