Alternative Radio

Consumer Capitalism Rene Descartes, the 17th-century French philosopher once said, “I think, therefore I am.” In today’s context, it may be more like, I buy therefore I am. Orchestrated wants driven by sophisticated advertising techniques have created a culture of consumption. Appetites for the latest hot things are manufactured. Media campaigns sell cool and sexy. Data are collected. People are p...

Taking Control of Our Lives 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...

Algorithms, Digital Technologies & Warfare Algorithms, the dictionary tells us, are a process or set 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...

Anatomy of a Genocide: Gaza 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...

What Are We Going to Do? 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 ki...

Gagging Democracy India-Style 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. Mo...

The Wrong People at the Top 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...

War & the Media 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...

A Brief History of Zionism Zion is the name of a hill in ancient Jerusalem. The Jewish nationalist movement coined the term Zionism in the 1890s. Zionism got the big power backing it was looking for when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary stated: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of...

Welcome to the Reservation 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 perp...

Blaming the Victim: Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Blaming the victim is as old as the hills. It occurs when the victim of a crime or tragedy is held at fault for the harm that befell them. In other words, you had it coming to you. The great scholar Edward Said ruefully remarked that the Palestinians were the victims of the victim hence it was very difficult for them to generate support...

International Law: Real or Fiction? 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 violat...

Myths of Israel 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, Australi...

Chaos, Chance & Choice As a kid, did you ever play “What If”? Like, what if the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X weren’t gunned down in the 1960s? Like, what if the votes in Florida were counted and Al Gore won the 2000 election? What if the U.S. did not support the jihadis in Afghanistan? What if the U.S. did not invade Iraq? History, the world would have been very different. And on a personal le...

Fascism: The False Revolution 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...

A Tribute to Barbara Ehrenreich 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. Well...

How Fascism Works 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. O...

Zionism: The Back Story The back story in journalism and scholarship uncovers vital information on important issues that had been obscured or omitted. It provides background. 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...

Tyranny of the Minority 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...

Psychospiritual Roots of the Israel-Palestinian Tragedy In Sanskrit, Maya means illusion or magic. Maya is at work among people and nations who project carefully crafted positive images of themselves. The U.S. and Israel are no different from other countries. They claim self-defense as they launch massive attacks. They invoke international law when it suits them then ignore it when it doesn’t. The...

AI’s Promise & Peril The rise of AI, artificial intelligence, is a major development in human history. Its ramifications are profound. What is it exactly? AI provides a computer program with the ability to think and learn on its own. It is a simulation of human intelligence into machines to do things that normally humans do. A government advisory committee states that the emergence of AI as a domi...

Holocausts: An Historical Reckoning 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 yea...

Gaza in Context 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...

Race, Rights & Rifles 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 a...

The United States & Israel Few issues are more freighted than the U.S.-Israel relationship. Overwhelmingly, Democrats and Republicans give Israel “unwavering” support. Internationally, it’s a different story. Opposition to the U.S.-Israel alliance is mounting, particularly on Palestine. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the UN where scores of U.S. Security Council vetoes shield Israel from cri...