Showing posts with label neoliberal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neoliberal. Show all posts

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Food, Hunger, and Globalized Corporate Agriculture (1)

New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 34 -- August 21, 2010

This week in New World Notes, radio program #129, August 24 & 28:

Food, Hunger, and Globalized
Corporate Agriculture (1)

In brief

The price of food spiked in 2007-2008, greatly increasing hunger--and triggering food riots--worldwide. The riots drew attention to the bizarre system now in place, in which a handful of huge, vertically integrated corporations control food production and distribution globally. They are aided by corrupt transnational institutions such as the World Bank and corrupt national governments.

And financial speculators know that food bubbles can be just as profitable as high-tech bubbles and housing bubbles--even if they involve starving a few dozen million additional people.

This installment features a lively discussion of such matters by food-and-agriculture experts Katarina Wahlberg and Raj Patel (recorded in 2008) and a reading of Paul Craig Roberts' recent essay, "Chelsea's Wedding: Let Them Eat Cake."

Top: Church soup kitchen in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Bottom: Somewhere in Africa. Most photos: Click to enlarge.

Notes, credits, & links

This installment on agriculture is the first of a series. We'll have the next installment (insh'allah) in three weeks.

Thanks to the weekly radio program "Building Bridges," and to producers Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg, for the Wahlberg-Patel dialogue.

I have condensed Paul Craig Roberts' essay. The original is printed here. Thanks to Roberts and to counterpunch.org .

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

Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.
Free weekly NWN email newsletter on request.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. New World Notes' main audio archive is at radio4all.net. Installments beginning with #90 are archived also at The Internet Archive, in a variety of file formats. 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.

Bottom: In the background stands the Kansas National Guard Agribusiness
Development Team, shortly before being packed off to Afghanistan. What
the heck?? By now you know I'm not clever enough to make stuff like
this up. Check out the Official Story.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)

  • August 31 -- The U.S. War Against Iran, featuring Phil Wilayto.
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A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net


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Friday, January 15, 2010

Cheap Junk & The Deindustrialization of America



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 3 -- January 16, 2010

Annie Leonard (from NWN #48, "The Story of STUFF")

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #98, Jan. 19:

Cheap Junk and
The Deindustrialization of America

Workers' summary

We explore the connections among ubiquitous cheap junk merchandise, domestic unemployment and poverty, starvation wages abroad, pollution everywhere, the destruction of the environment, the deindustrialization and Third-World-ization of America, and the ever-increasing wealth of the already-rich. Was there a vote on all this that somehow I missed? Includes unflattering words on G.E. by labor leader Marie Lausch and an equally unflatttering discussion of IKEA from Ellen Ruppel Shell's book, Cheap: The High Price of Discount Culture.

Marie Lausch at UCONN, November 14, 2009

This week's song

  • Anne Feeney, Brave New Christmas

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • January 26 -- Lenny Bruce and the Meaning of Obscenity
  • February 2 -- Merchants of Fear (Installment #100!)

Ellen Ruppel Shell

Credits

  • Connecticut United Electrical Workers Union president Marie Lausch recorded by me at a symposium on converting Connecticut to a peacetime economy held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, November 14, 2009.
  • Shell passage as reprited by the Toronto Globe & Mail, July 19, 2009, condensed for radio by me.
  • New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "radar") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

David Rovics: Capitalism and Community

Listen to or download this radio program now (192 kbps HiFi -- 41 MB)
Listen to or download this radio program now (40 kbps MedFi -- 8.5 MB)
List all . . . and listen to or download any . . . installments


David Rovics in Nablus

This week in New World Notes, radio program #81, September 15 & 18:

David Rovics:
Capitalism & Community
A Conversation, Part 1

As you've heard, journalist Dahr Jamail will speak on several occasions in Hartford and Windham counties (Connecticut), September 19-21. Beginning 7:30 PM of the 21st, in Wesleyan's Memorial Chapel, he'll be joined on stage by acclaimed singer-songrwiter David Rovics. All events are free.

Rovics' business motto is a good if uncommon one: Songs of social significance. His business model is even more uncommon. For the most part, he gives his musical recordings away via the Internet. (See "Resources," below.)

Rovics calculates that, if a musician of his echelon makes any money at all, the money comes from concert performance fees, not royalties on album sales and radio airplay. Every summer a pop star like Paul McCartney can buy a cottage on the Isle of Wight with his quarterly royalty check. With their quarterly royalty checks, normal musicians can buy a couple sets of guitar strings and a falafel sandwich.

Dahr Jamail

The political/social/economic/ecological concerns and stands in Rovics' music fit very nicely with New World Notes' own value set. In the 19 months this show has been on the air, we've probably played 85 recorded songs, and fully a third of them must have been by Rovics.

This week's installment of the show features Rovics. Here's the official synopsis:

In a phone interview, politically-engaged singer-songwriter David Rovics discusses two of the concerns that are central to his music: (1) Community and (2) the great enemy of community, Capitalism, American-style. Plus two songs by Rovics and commentary by KD.

Music this week:

  • David Rovics, Used To Be a City In This Town and New Orleans

Danbury Fair (1970s?)

Resources:

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