Alternative Radio

Genocide & Settler Colonialism Genocide is the most heinous of crimes and it connects to settler colonialism. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Settler colonialism requires genocidal violence to attain its goal” of acquiring land. In North America and elsewhere this meant the Indigenous population was targeted for mass murder. North America’s huge landmass and resources drove the policy. In Ge...

A Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict The world’s eyes are on Gaza and Hamas. Hamas is an acronym in Arabic for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Here’s a bit of history, usually ignored. Gaza came under Israeli military control in 1967. That continued for thirty-eight years until 2005. Since 2007, it has been subjected to a punishing Israeli-imposed siege and blockade and a series of...

The Israeli-Palestinian War The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza will soon surpass 20,000 with many more wounded. The UN says Gaza is “a graveyard for children.” The history of the Israeli-Palestinian war did not begin on October 7. While the atrocities of that day cannot and should not be excused, they have to be located in the context of decades of Israeli annexation, occupation, sieges, block...

The Madness of Militarism Many are familiar with Eisenhower’s 1961 warning of “the military industrial complex.” Veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern has expanded on Ike’s phrase. He coined the term MICIMATT, the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Inteligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank complex. How does it work? The notorious revolving door syndrome links the Pentagon to the arms manufacturers to Congre...

When Lunatics Run the Asylum The future of humankind and the planet are in danger from the twin existential threats of terminal nuclear war and climate catastrophe. The response? The Biden administration is following through on Pentagon plans to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. Instead of eliminating these weapons of mass destruction, we are upgrading them. And the clock is ticking louder and loud...

Democracy & the Failure of Neoliberal Globalization Neoliberal economics has exposed the dark side of the American dream. It took off with Reagan and Thatcher. For most workers incomes have stagnated except for the very rich, whose incomes have more than quadrupled. Biden correctly points out that millions of people have gotten new jobs. But despite that, the typical family is actually getting pai...

Knowing Who You Are: Lessons from Native America For years the indigenous peoples of the U.S., after having been dispersed and decimated and relegated to reservations, were reduced to caricatures. We all knew Indians and their culture. There was the familiar medicine man, the trading post, Geronimo and Crazy Horse, papooses and squaws, tepees and tomahawks, war dances and war parties. Tonto was th...

A Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict The world’s eyes are on Gaza. It is ruled by Hamas. Hamas is an acronym in Arabic for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Here’s a bit of history, usually ignored. Gaza came under Israeli military control in 1967. That continued for thirty-eight years until 2005. Since then, it has been subjected to a punishing Israeli-imposed siege and blockade and...

Ending Cycles of Violence: Israel & Palestine The conflict between Israel and Palestine is in a new and extremely deadly period with many thousand dead, wounded and displaced. The battleground is the narrow coastal enclave of Gaza, home to over two million Palestinian Arabs. Often called the world’s largest open-air prison it is ruled by Hamas and has been subjected to an Israeli blockade since 20...

Real Food, Real Farming We live in a time where our connection with food and with the farmers that grow it has been undermined. The root of the problem is a growing dependence on a dysfunctional paradigm based on pesticides and monocultures, and a separation between humans and nature. How we produce, distribute, and consume food is increasingly becoming the center of the multiple crises we face to...

Armenia, Artsakh & Azerbaijan Quickly lost in media coverage was the conflict between the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh, Artsakh in Armenian, and Azerbaijan. It resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the overwhelmingly Armenian enclave. For many months, their land was under siege and blockade by Azerbaijan. Putin and his so-called peacekeepers did nothing. The international community was silent. On S...

The Resurgent U.S. Labor Movement In 1970 unions represented about 30% of private-sector workers. Today that number is just 6%. As unions declined over the past half-century, workers suffered. They were paid poorly, they lost health care, retirement benefits and control over their schedules. Deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol and suicide surged among blue-collar workers. And the bosses, the fat...

Cold Wars: Old & New We are in the midst of a new cold war. In this go-round, the principal adversary is China with Russia taking second place. In the old Cold War, it was the reverse. Today, Russia is nowhere near China economically. And Moscow’s performance in Ukraine suggests its military has serious problems. China is already an economic superpower and is seen by the U.S. as a long-term threat...

Conspiracy Culture Conspiracy. Conspiracy culture. Conspiracy theories. Just hearing those words can make some people cringe and others embrace them. Conspiracy theories are as old as the hills. But today, thanks to social media algorithms that push users toward ever more emotional, fact-adverse content, it’s never been easier for wild implausible ideas and hate to go viral. It’s a rabbit hole tha...

Class Struggle from Roman Times to Today A constant throughout history from Ancient Rome to today is the rich and powerful seek ever more wealth and control. If a popular leader innovates reforms that help the poor they come under sustained attack or worse they are killed. Go back to Caesar in Rome. The standard view is he was a power-hungry tyrant who was slain by the “noble” Brutus and his cohor...

Palestine: Memory, Inequality & Power The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israelis and Palestinians. You might recall the scene. Arafat, Rabin and Clinton at the White House beaming away and shaking hands. It was a euphoric moment. Peace and stability were at long last at hand. Did that happen? Take a look at a map. Oslo enabled greater Israeli control and expansion of colonies, euphemistically called s...

Iran: The Struggle for Democracy Zhou Enlai of China once said, “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.” Perhaps the former Chinese premier was being too harsh, but then again maybe he wasn’t. Take the case of Iran. Some people remember the 1979 hostage crisis when Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 53 Americans hostage. Bu...

The Other September 11: Chile, 1973 September 11 is now engraved on the consciousness of Americans. Yet for the South American country of Chile, the date has a different and much more tragic significance. It was on that day in 1973 that the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup. Augusto Pinochet seized power. In the ensuing years, tens o...

Africa: From Neocolonialism to Independence Almost every country in Africa was colonized by Europe. Today, while nominally sovereign many of these countries are in the clutches of the big international banks. The old colonial masters Britain and France still have a foothold in Africa but the U.S. has been pushing them aside, moving in to capture resources and markets. Washington has established an...

You Can Save the Planet The crises facing humankind are, to use a much overused but accurate word – unprecedented. Plutocratic power in the hands of the few is a disaster for democracy and our ecosphere. The ruling class is driven by its voracious lust for domination and money. It’s an old American story. Over a century ago Theodore Roosevelt warned against “a small class of enormously wealthy and...

Interconnectedness The corporate takeover of food with its toxic chemical inputs poses serious health and environmental problems. Corporate agriculture, The New York Times states unequivocally “is causing irreparable harm to the planet.” It is “ravaging the air, soil and water, destroying wildlife habitats and spurring climate chaos. The system, a vast web of industries and processes that stretche...

Arms Race = Suicide Race The “Oppenheimer” movie and the Ukraine war have brought much-needed attention to the possibility of terminal war. The arms race will end the human race. To call nukes weapons of mass destruction comes nowhere near describing the level of devastation that their use would result in. To be clear, these are weapons of annihilation that would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look t...

Environmental Law & the Defense of Nature As ecosystems collapse and the climate emergency intensifies, the government often uses its authority to allow the very harm that it is supposed to prevent. Sound crazy? It is. The granting of permits is a battleground where corporations, with their oodles of money to buy influence, have the upper hand over nature. In the face of corporate greed and the en...

Censorship, Free Speech & the Media States want to dominate the narrative with their version of events. There are two basic models. One follows Aldous Huxley, the other George Orwell. The latter is best known for 1984. Big Brother is brutal. He wields a big stick while Huxley uses a much softer carrot. Censorship is self-imposed because the journalist knows the boundaries of permissible thought. E...

Naming Names: The Hollywood Blacklist The anti-Communist hysteria rampant in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s is often called the McCarthy period. But the red-baiting and persecution started even before McCarthy was elected to the Senate in 1946. The notorious House Un-American Activities Committee led the crusade to ferret out alleged Communists in the U.S. They struck gold when they took on Holly...