Energy and the Environment: Good News and Bad

New World Notes #478, 28:31 (May 1)
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Some recent news on energy and the environment is encouraging: The Coal Museum goes solar, and nuclear-plant-builder Westinghouse goes bankrupt. Other news, not so encouraging.

The show features two newspaper items read by KD, a talk by Noam Chomsky, and a song ("East Tennessee") by David Rovics.

Thanks once again to Chuck Rosina, who recorded the Chomsky talk live in Cambridge, MA, on April 24, 2017.

Work, Debt, and Crisis

Part 1: New World Notes #476, 29:11 (April 18)
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Part 2: New World Notes #477, 28:18 (April 25)
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A fine audio collage--originally titled Capital Games--by Chazk, a.k.a. Virtual Renderings. An intriguing and sometimes rocking blend of satire, music, and also analysis by several voices (among them economist Richard Wolff's).

It explores the economic problems of our time--fallling wages, consumer debt, overwork, unemployment, decline of manufacturing, corrupt politicians, crooked banks and bankers, soaring corporate profits, and stratospheric executive salaries ... among others.

I have slightly condensed the original audio collage--mostly by shortening some of the musical selections.  The original (of July 26, 2009) is available on Radio4all.net. You'll find a link to Virtual Renderings' (almost) complete work on the right sidebar to this page, under "Worth a Look."

This pair of programs was previously broadcast, as NWN # 371-371, in April 2015. MP3 files downloaded from the links, above, may be identified by those program numbers.

Cheap Junk and the Deindustrialization of America

New World Notes #475, 29:12 (April 11)
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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,  a passage on IKEA from Ellen Ruppel Shell's book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, and a song by Anne Feeney.

I recorded Connecticut United Electrical Workers Union president Marie Lausch at a symposium on converting Connecticut to a peacetime economy held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, November 14, 2009. The Shell passage is as reprinted by the Toronto Globe & Mail, July 19, 2009, condensed for radio by me.

This is a replay of NWN #180 (2011). MP3 files downloaded from the links, above, may be identified as NWN #180.

50th Anniversary of MLK's "Beyond Vietnam"

New World Notes #474, 29:17 (April 4)
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We play major portions of one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s finest--yet now little-known--speeches. He delivered "Beyond Vietnam" in New York on April 4, 1967.

For this speech, King was denounced by the entire Establishment (including the NAACP!) and the corporate-controlled media. The speech is a stirring indictment of misplaced national priorities, including cutbacks in social programs at home in order to fund an unnecessary, counterproductive, and evil war abroad.

This is as stirring an indictment of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex--and of the government's priorities, and of unrestrained capitalism--as we are likely ever to hear. And it's a strong call to resist.

Change a place-name or two--substitute "Iraq and Afghanistan" for "Vietnam"--and the speech talks directly to us, today ... about our own government and our own world.