AlternativeRadio

Today, fear stalks the globe. The grim reaper is taking a heavy toll. The coronavirus pandemic has led to many thousands of deaths and tremendous economic dislocation. In this climate of fear, authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to Hungary, from Russia to Turkey, from Iran to the Philippines use the crisis as a pretext to curtail civil liberties, expand police power and surveillance, silence their opponents, settle old scores, muzzle the press and jail dissidents. The pattern repeats in...

CIA skullduggery is legendary from overthrowing governments to germ warfare to assassinations but its MK-Ultra program may be at the top of the list. MK-Ultra was the code name for the top-secret CIA project in which the Agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments, often on unwitting people, to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control and psychological torture. MK-ULTRA, was essentially a continuation of experiments that began in Japanese and German...

The COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic has cast in deadly high relief that the United States, the richest country on Earth has a dysfunctional health care system. One should not even call it a system. “It’s unimaginable,” a CNN anchor commented upon seeing footage of hospital tents in New York’s Central Park and a refrigerator truck loading up corpses in Brooklyn. The reports of shortages of everything from testing kits to ventilators to masks to gloves to hospital beds boggle the mind....

After 40 years the economic doctrine of neoliberalism has reached a dead end. But not for everyone. The 500 richest people in the world, all of whom are billionaires, gained a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth in 2019. Advocates of neoliberalism preach a kind of economic fundamentalism, i.e., markets rule, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and austerity. As Ganesh Sitaraman in The Nation magazine reports, "Neoliberal policies created gaping inequality, unleashing the...

The coronavirus pandemic has sent waves of fear across the globe. It is a dangerous moment. We are benumbed by the dizzying statistics of new cases and the number of deaths popping up all over the world. What is it? It is a novel virus named for the crownlike spikes that protrude from its surface. It can infect both animals and people and can cause various illnesses and can be fatal. How contagious is it? Very. The top government infectious disease expert says “We’re at a critical point now....

The Declaration of Independence declared equality as an American ideal, but it took a century to even partially realize that goal. One of the key periods of U.S. history is Reconstruction. They were the years following the Civil War. The era began with promises of egalitarianism. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were revolutionary. They abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and gave black men the right to vote. In a few...

In 2018, the birth rate in the United States reached its lowest level in decades. This alarmed the patriarchal class that wants to control women’s bodies. Reproductive rights and access to abortion are under sustained political attack. Roe v. Wade is under threat. What role does misogyny play in gender relations? Feminist activists assert that declining birth rates represent a work slowdown, or strike, in the face of the poor conditions for those who do the work of bearing and raising...

From hanging chads in Florida, to purged voter rolls in Ohio to the Iowa caucus debacle, democracy is in trouble. The venerable system is in the ICU. There is still a pulse but the long term prognosis is not good. There are serious structural problems. Can anyone say electoral college or why elections are held on a workday? And then of course there is money. And the media. The experts sit around tables opining on who is surging and who is fading. It’s more like horseracing trying to handicap...

Rabbi Michael Lerner says many on the left are too quick to dismiss people who are religious. To reach people you disagree with, you can’t be condescending and arrogant. Is it possible to reach out to those who espouse views that are diametrically opposed to ours? How to do that? How can we navigate the treacherous currents that are running through our politics and by extension into our personal lives? What is the intersection of faith, politics and the left? 2CDs. Interviewed by David...

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is one of the great crimes in modern history. No one has been held to account. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, many more wounded and millions became refugees. Washington’s insane action unleashed a cascade of disasters across the Middle East from Syria to Libya and sparked the rise of jihadi groups. But Western intervention in the region has a long history. One can mention the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement or the Balfour Declaration the following...

What’s the matter with Iowa is what’s the matter with large portions of the U.S. economy: extreme poverty in the presence of extreme wealth. In 1962, Michael Harrington wrote about it in his book The Other America. That America has not gone away. President Johnson’s war on poverty was not won. It was abandoned in the battlefields of Indochina. Today, the United Way estimates almost one in four Iowans live in poverty. And depending on how it is defined, the number of poor people nationwide...

Rape. From Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein to NFL star Antonio Brown, this ancient crime is in the news. The #MeToo movement has enabled many women to tell their stories for the first time. Who can forget Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony under oath at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings? Forever, women who have been raped have not been believed. That seems to be changing. In one case, which did attract some media attention, a California judge sentenced a...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a contradictory record when it comes to the climate crisis. On one hand, he declared a “national climate emergency.” On the other hand, he plucked down more than $4 billion in public money to buy TMX, the Trans Mountain pipeline which will carry dirty tar sands oil. James Hansen, the renowned U.S. scientist warns, "Oil from tar sands makes sense only for a small number of people who are making a lot of money from it. It doesn't make sense for the...

The India of its current prime minister Narender Modi is a far cry from the India of Gandhi and Nehru. Tolerance and secularism are being replaced by Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology which seeks to establish Hindu dominance in a country where there are hundreds of millions of religious minorities. Modi is the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP. It is the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS. One scholar says the RSS "was explicitly influenced by European...

This recording, recently discovered in the piles at AR, features the great radical historian talking with students at UNM. He is asked about getting past the culture of denial of the powerful. Drawing on his vast knowledge of history he says, “It always takes time and persistence. Every movement looks like it is hopeless in the beginning. It seems people have no power. But then people took risks. The most important thing we can do is not to hold back. Resist authority. The more people speak...

The stunningly beautiful land of Kashmir, nestled in the Himalayas, has seen much bloodshed and suffering. Over the decades the Indian state in attempts to stifle resistance to its rule in Kashmir has deployed hundreds of thousands of troops, imposed curfews, clampdowns and crackdowns. But nothing approaches the current situation. On August 5 the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi took unprecedented steps. Key provisions of the Indian Constitution dealing with...

The history of indigenous people is full of acts of resistance. One such dramatic action was the seizure of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by activists from the American Indian Movement. November marks the 50th anniversary of that event. More recently the blockade at Standing Rock in North Dakota galvanized indigenous communities to defend their land, water and sacred burial grounds. The Standing Rock resistance injected into public discourse such terms as water protectors and stewards...

Why are so many people all over the world out in the streets demanding change? What are the root causes of revolt? What about U.S. Syria policy and the betrayal of the Kurds? And BDS and Palestine? How do we overcome sectarian differences? Why are Americans so afraid? Eco-disaster and nuclear war threaten human existence. The former garners some attention because of the surge in youth-led activism but the latter is out of sight even though the dangers are escalating. The U.S. pulling out of...

One of the techniques of ruling class control is to isolate people from one another. “Look out for yourself,” is the constant drumbeat. We are reduced to self-centered consumers not engaged citizens. Saul Alinsky suggests a different path. In his Rules for Radicals he said, “Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.” And that is happening. Popular movements such as Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise are...

The wheels of justice turn slowly. How long before Jim Crow laws were overturned? How long for the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize gay marriage equality? How long the wait times in immigration courts? And even when someone, or some cause, has its proverbial day in court, the courts have an uneven record in dispensing justice. The legal field recognizes the power exerted by major court decisions. But civil rights organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union and others, point to...