From Serving Money to Serving Life

New World Notes #387, 29:05 (August 4)
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A new audio collage by Chazk (aka Virtual Renderings), slightly condensed by me. It features selections from David Korten's Earth Day talk in Seattle (2015).

Korten shows that the fundamental maxims of corporate capitalism--"the Sacred Money and Markets Story"--are both false and preventing us from saving our environment (among other bad effects). Based on a synthesis of principles from religion, science, and mysticism, he proposes a different set of maxims--the "Sacred Life and Living Earth Story."
 
As usual, Chazk interweaves with the spoken words several relevant song passages, film clips, and other interesting audio.

With a brief introduction by me.

David Korten was a professor at Harvard Business School.  He is now an activist warning of the dangers--to society and to the planet--of unrestrained corporate capitalism.  His best-known books are When Corporations Rule the World (1995, 2001) and The Great Turning (2007).

A free archive of Chazk/Virtual Renderings' audio collages is available: see the link on the sidebar to the right of this page (under "Worth a Look").

The "Seven Sisters" and the Oil of the Middle East

Part 1: New World Notes #385, 28:50 (July 21)
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Part 2: New World Notes #386, 28:56 (July 28)
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The "Seven Sisters" was Big Oil. It was the cartel of huge private oil corporations that ended up owning almost all the oil in the Middle East. They stole and kept this treasure by hook and by crook, in violation of many laws, with help from corrupt monarchs abroad and muscle from the U.S. government, armed forces, and CIA.

We adapt to radio a new video documentary on the very subject.

Part 1 takes us from the founding of the cartel in 1928 (by Standard Oil, Shell, and BP) to the creation of OPEC in 1960.

Of note in Part 1: The story of how BP came to own all of the oil in Iran--and how, in 1953, Iran's parliament tried to regain control of the country's oil--and how the United States government responded by overthrowing Iran's democratic government and installing the Shah as dictator of Iran. (We then gave Iran's oil to US-based oil companies, not back to BP.)

Man of the Year: The last prime minister of democratic Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq (January 1952). For his crimes against Big Oil, the CIA ousted him and installed a brutal dictator, the Shah.

Part 2 takes us from the creation of OPEC in 1960 to the fate of Iraq today (its oil weath again taken away from the Iraqi people and again handed over to the big oil companies). Includes the Suez crisis, OPEC price hikes, Iraq's nationalizing of its oil in 1972 (succeeding where Iran in 1953 had failed), the Iranian revolution, and Gulf Wars I and II.

Introductions by K.D.   

New World Notes previously broadcast these two installments (as NWN #273 & 274) in May-June 2013.

Dispatches From the Class War

New World Notes #384, 27:51 (July 14)
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T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") astride Vincent SS100

Insightful comments on class conflict in America--some recorded, some read aloud--by Noam Chomsky; Nicholas Kristoff; Paul Burchheit; yours, truly; and (very briefly) George Carlin.  Plus a song on the same theme by Jonathan Blackshire.

Three Populists

New World Notes #383, 28:30 (July 7)
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Tommy Douglas

Three notable & highly entertaining populists, in their own words:

• Canadian reformist politician Tommy Douglas (d.1986), telling his comic fable about unresponsive politicians, Mouseland
• Texas journalist & commentator Molly Ivins (d. 2007), speaking in Berkeley, CA, around 2005. (Don't miss her stories about governor Rick Perry.)
• Texas commentator, agitator, & former state official Jim Hightower, with some recent brief podcasts.

Each offers a witty critique of The System--and a call to action.

This installment was previously broadcast, as NWN #187, in October 2011.

Molly Ivins recording courtesy of Scooter, of "The innerSide" on KPFT-FM (Houston, Texas). Jim Hightower's commentaries are from his Web site: http://www.jimhightower.com/air

Molly Ivins