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AlternativeRadio

David Barsamian

Alternative Radio is an "unembedded" weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the US, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and on short-wave on Radio for Peace International. AR provides information, analyses and views that are frequently ignored or distorted in other media. Visit alternativeradio.org for the complete catalog.

news & politics non-profit

All Episodes

57:01

[Noam Chomsky] Taking Control of Our Lives

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/12/26

On the occasion of Noam Chomsky’s 96th birthday on December 7, we are honored to broadcast for the first time this classic recording of a talk he gave in Albuquerque in the year 2000. Many of the issues he addressed then remain salient today. Chomsky says that the right of sovereignty is fundamental to the task of taking control of our lives. He describes what citizens are up against as “an array of mega-corporations often linked to one another.”

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57:01

[Koohan Paik-Mander] Algorithms, Digital Technologies...

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/12/19

Algorithms are processes or sets of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by computer. Sounds innocuous enough. But hang on. It has a dark side. Algorithms can make mistakes due to biases, poor design, coding errors, or flawed assumptions. They can collect and process large amounts of personal data which can put people’s privacy rights at risk. There are lethal dangers. Koohan Paik-Mander warns the algorithms that missiles have spawned “have been a

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57:01

[Francesca Albanese] Anatomy of a Genocide: Gaza

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/12/12

Francesca Albanese of the UN says, “Gaza is now a wasteland of rubble, garbage and human remains.” And it may be worse than that. In the litany of crimes genocide is the most heinous. Omer Bartov, Brown University genocide scholar and former Israeli military officer in November 2023, a month after the October 7 attack on Israel said, “There is no proof that genocide is taking place in Gaza.” By May 2024 he said, “I no longer believe that. It was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in

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57:01

[Naomi Klein] What Are We Going to Do?

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/12/05

The day after the Trump election, the New York Times wrote: “America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year-old history.” For many, the results of November 5th confirmed the view that we are in dark times. So, the big question is: what are we going to do? We can wallow in self-pity and depression, or we can find kindred spirits and organize and form alliances to not just resist the repression to come but promote progressive causes. As writer

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57:01

[P. Sainath] Gagging Democracy India-Style

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/11/28

India, the world's most populous country, is ruled by Narendra Modi who is the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP. He first became prime minister in 2014 and has been reelected twice since though in 2024 with much lower margins. Before coming to power in Delhi he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat where he presided over a major massacre of Muslims. Modi and the BJP promote Hindutva, Hindu majoritarianism. It is laced with Islamophobia. Modi is allied with India’s billionaire class

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57:02

[Brian Klaas] The Wrong People at the Top

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/11/21

Power. What is it? Political theorist Robert Dahl gave one example. He said, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do.” Why is it that often that those who are on top are the wrong people? The high rollers and the nabobs lust for power behind a smokescreen of homilies about doing good. Today, more and more power is concentrated in the hands of the few, thus weakening democracy. Who wields it? How is it allocated? What are effective ways to

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57:01

[Norman Solomon] War & the Media

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/11/14

In times of war the corporate media play a salient role in shaping public opinion. There are worthy and unworthy victims. Muslims, Arabs, and Iranians generally fall into that latter category whereas Washington and its allies are worthy victims that we support and empathize with. The current phase of the Gaza war did not begin on October 7 as the media repeat ad nauseum. But to dig into the underlying causes and provide context and history rarely occurs because it would undermine the dominant

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57:01

[Russell Means] Welcome to the Reservation

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/10/31

Indigenous communities are among the poorest in the U.S. This is one of many persistent symptoms of the colonial relationship imposed by force upon Indigenous peoples. As famed historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Neither arcane colonial laws nor the historical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time and certainly not when conditions of life and consciousness perpetuate them.” From the earliest days of colonial settlement, a theme of eliminating Indians in the name of expansion and settler

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57:01

[Noura Erakat] International Law: Real or Fiction?

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/10/17

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the term international rules-based order would be repeated by Washington officials almost daily to describe Moscow's action. Then a curious thing happened when Israel invaded Gaza in 2023. The term virtually disappeared as the U.S. sought to protect its close ally Israel. But the U.S. itself has a long record of violating the international rules-based order with its invasions, occupations, coups, assassinations, sanctions and UN vetoes. Compliant corporate

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57:01

[Ilan Pappé] Myths of Israel

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/10/10

A myth is a story passed down through generations that attempts to explain the origins of something. The foundational myth of Israel was “a land without people for a people without a land.” That myth had profound consequences that reverberate today. There were people there - the Palestinians. Such myths are characteristic of settler colonial societies such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Sure there were a few primitive savages but they had to give way to superior beings

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57:01

[Michael Parenti] Fascism: The False Revolution

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/09/26

Fascism is being mentioned more and more in the context of U.S. and European elections. It is a term that is bandied about often rather loosely. Orwell wrote that it is understood to be "something not desirable." But it is a complex political and economic synergy that has racism, force and nationalism as its animating matrix. It involves heavy doses of propaganda and media manipulation. Mussolini, in one of his more honest moments said, "Fascism should be more properly called corporatism, since it

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57:01

[Barbara Ehrenreich] A Tribute to Barbara Ehrenreich

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/09/19

Barbara Ehrenreich was a renowned social critic, journalist, feminist and author. She was born in Butte, Montana and studied chemistry at Reed College in Oregon and later received a Ph.D. in cellular immunology at Rockefeller University in New York. But she left a possible career in science and teaching to become a seasoned muckraker in the tradition of Ida B. Wells and Lincoln Steffens. She wrote many books. Her articles appeared in Ms., Mother Jones, and The Progressive. She wrote incisively and

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57:01

[Jason Stanley] How Fascism Works

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/09/12

What is fascism? Michael Parenti, author and historian says, “Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.” Fascism flourishes in times of economic insecurity and cultural backlash. Opportunistic politicians offer up a platter of racism, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism. They stoke fear and resentment

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57:00

[Thomas Suárez] Zionism: The Back Story

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/09/05

The back story in journalism and scholarship uncovers vital information on important issues that had been obscured or omitted. For example, the origin of Zionism is usually traced to a pamphlet Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896 called The Jewish State. However, the eminent Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe writes "Many people do not know that Zionism began as an evangelical Christian project long before any Jew was thinking about Zionism. Christian Zionists were advocating the establishment of a Jewish state in

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57:03

[Steven Levitsky] Tyranny of the Minority

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/08/29

The United States is moving toward a multiracial society. But that demographic development has sparked an authoritarian political backlash. Powerful forces like things just the way they are. Our political system makes the U.S. vulnerable to minority rule. Perhaps the most undemocratic mechanism enabling minority rule is the antiquated Electoral College. No other country has one. The Electoral College has given the presidency to a candidate that received fewer votes multiple times. Most recently, in

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57:01

[Alexandra Filindra] Race, Rights & Rifles

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/08/01

Guns, Guns, Guns. In the United States gun violence and shootings in schools, supermarkets, and malls are widespread and have almost become routine. The country is flooded with weapons. Americans may be the most heavily armed people on earth. Fascination with guns has its roots in the American Revolution when notions of patriotism fused with a belief in white male supremacy and maintaining racial and gender hierarchies. It’s patriotic to possess a gun. The corpses keep piling up and the rulers do

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57:01

[Keyu Jin] The Chinese Economic System

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/07/11

China is a paradoxical global power. It's run by the Communist Party and at the same time it has a huge private sector which includes the world's largest number of billionaires. Its economy has been described as a mix of state capitalism and market socialism. Internationally its Belt & Road Initiative has spread its economic and political influence. Washington views China as “a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States.” The trade war grows. Washington

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57:01

[Ilan Pappe] Gaza in Context

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/07/04

Gaza’s 2 million plus Palestinians are jam-packed in a small narrow enclave bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel. Since 2007 it has been ruled by Hamas. Hamas is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Israel immediately imposed a blockade. Since then, Gaza has routinely been called the world’s largest open-air prison. Its air, land and sea routes are controlled by Israel. On October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel resulting in over 1,100 Israelis dead and the taking of

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57:01

[Naomi Klein] Holocausts: An Historical Reckoning

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/06/27

Holocaust, derived from the Greek, is a large-scale calamity involving fire. Today, the term is specifically used to describe the German genocide of the Jews. But it has a long history. The European mass murder of Indigenous peoples in North and South America killed 55 million or 90% of the population, between 1492 and 1600, in a little more than one hundred years. More bloodbaths were to follow. In Africa, many millions were killed in the Congo by Belgium. Germany wiped out the Herero and Nama

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57:01

[Howard Zinn] Against War

AlternativeRadio ·

2024/06/20

In a May 1976 column in the Boston Globe Howard Zinn wrote “Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.” Sadly his column in the Globe was discontinued soon after. And even more sadly his words are evergreen. Veterans are still returning from foreign wars with lost limbs, bodies and souls. If an honest history

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73 results

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