AlternativeRadio

The world is at a crossroads. The COVID-19 pandemic, with hundreds of thousands dead across the globe and counting, has triggered a disastrous economic situation for millions. At some point, we will be in a post-pandemic world. What will it look like? More of the same old same old? Or can we imagine a different world? Where the planet and its people are nurtured and protected and there are no longer huge concentrations of wealth and grotesque inequalities. Can pressure from the streets break...

Remember the popular TV series - The X-Files? FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully doggedly investigate unexplained, mind-bending cases known as "X-Files." The show’s signature line was, “The Truth is Out There.” We probably need Mulder and Scully back on the job examining recent comments from the current president about “thugs wearing black uniforms” boarding planes. “They are people controlling the streets. People that you’ve never heard of. People who are,” the president said,...

Talk about an odd couple. The 45th president and the Christian right. For the president, renowned for his wayward ways, the support from some of the mega-churches and their high priests form a key part of his base. According to a Pew poll, over 80% of white evangelicals said they will vote for the current occupant of the Oval Office. The Christian right looks the other way when confronted with the facts. For them, it’s all about opposing same-sex marriage and abortion, funding...

Representative John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the struggle for civil rights, social justice and equality died in mid-July. He was called the “conscience of the Congress.” His passing evoked memories of the March on Washington and the bridge in Selma. And attention on the struggles today: the new Jim Crow, the Black Lives Matter movement and the widespread demonstrations protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In the tradition of his mentor Dr. King, John Lewis was...

A famous Russian revolutionary once said, “'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The pandemic certainly feels that way. We are in limbo. The uncertainty is bewildering. What can we expect? What must we do? There are no clear answers. Dr. Stephen Bezruchka presents a novel view of the novel virus. What if we are a cancer on this planet? The human species fits the definition of a cancer. We have practiced cancer denial and are paying the price...

The drugs and war nexus is an old story involving not just criminal gangs but states. Just go back to the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s and 70s or in Central America in the 1980s or more recently in Afghanistan to see the connections. Alliances with drug dealers and cartels were part of Washington’s playbook albeit mostly secret. Covert operations need covert funding and drugs are always a handy cash crop. Culturally, the topic always attracts attention. There have been...

The news about the pandemic goes from bad to worse. The term another grim milestone in the number of infections and deaths has become almost commonplace. But at some point, hopefully not too far away, the crisis will pass. Where will we be? The world will surely be different. There is so much uncertainty. Kim Stanley Robinson, the well-known science fiction writer, says, "The future isn’t cast into one inevitable course. On the contrary, we could cause the sixth great mass extinction event...

For more than a year the public was complaining about the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. The water was so pungent and foamy that one priest had stopped using it for baptisms. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality, confidently announced, “Anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.” Flint is a majority African-American city. In nearby Detroit, 85% black, schools are heavily infested with rats, roaches and mold. Might those conditions affect the...

The great African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in his 1903 classic book, The Souls of Black Folk, wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Well, here we are in the 21st century and the color line and racial injustice remain front and center. Some white people have acknowledged racism as a major issue. Others when challenged are defensive and uncomfortable. The murder of George Floyd brought out multi-racial demonstrations against police...

White privilege. What’s that? White people have choices and advantages simply because of the color of their skin. Many whites are unaware of it. Peggy McIntosh, a noted women’s studies scholar in her classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” wrote: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on...

Is it starry-eyed to think about not just regime change but something much larger: system change? The systemic failures of the current crisis and the calamitous fissures it has exposed has raised the question of the efficacy of reform, half-measures and tinkering around the edges. When under duress, the system is agile enough to make some concessions while crucially leaving the fundamental structures of power intact. From the outside systems can look invincible and impregnable. Just tell...

The five biggest corporations in the world by market value are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. Their head honchos the Zuckerbergs, Gates and Bezos make the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Carnegies of the Gilded Age look like pikers. These “masters of mankind” as Adam Smith called them, love to pay lip service to competition. But you know what? They want absolute domination and control. Monopoly is not a board game for them, it is the essence of their very being. And they rely on...

What will tomorrow bring in the age of COVID-19? There is so much uncertainty. Arundhati Roy sees an opportunity. She writes, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one...

Can you believe it? A hundred thousand U.S. dead and counting. The real number according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert, is “almost certainly higher.” A World Health Organization official warns that the coronavirus may become endemic, i.e., like HIV, “it may never go away.” Science writer and author Sonia Shah states, “Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious pathogens have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they’ve never...

The standard narrative about the current crisis is that the coronavirus pathogen triggered an economic collapse. But what is crucially ignored is that neoliberal capitalism was already weak and stressed out, a pre-existing condition, if you will. That systemic weakness went into freefall when the pandemic hit. In its long history, capitalism has produced many booms and busts but this period, particularly since Reagan, has produced spectacular inequalities in wealth and income. Tens of...

It should be abundantly clear that part of the president’s m.o., almost an article of faith, is never accept responsibility when things go wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault: Pelosi, the media, the WHO, Obama, China, immigrants. And if you criticize the leader expect retaliation. Just ask Rick Bright, a top government scientist who was removed from his job he says because he opposed the president’s touting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, as a coronavirus treatment. He has...

The term corporation is not in the Constitution, yet this entity has emerged over the years as the most dominant force in society. Although never oppressed like women and minorities, corporations have fought to win equal rights under the Constitution. Today, they have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Corporations have waged a persistent campaign to expand their power and to strike down regulation. They have systematically pursued and won legal privileges through the courts,...

What kind of bizarre twilight zone world are we in? The coronavirus pandemic is a global altering moment. It has exposed huge fissures of vulnerability. The dead from COVID-19 in the U.S. now exceeds Vietnam War levels. The health crisis has triggered an economic crisis. Tens of millions have lost their jobs in the largest mass unemployment since the Great Depression. The bread lines of the 1930s have turned into car lines as people wait for hours to get some free food. The lack of...

The conflict over Palestine is a century-long war involving a settler-colonial movement–Zionism–which succeeded in forming a national entity–The State of Israel. The term settler colonialism may not be well known but it accurately describes what has happened to multiple regions of the world from Ireland to Canada and from New Zealand to Palestine where indigenous populations have been subjugated and displaced. In the case of Palestine, the Zionist movement was supported by superpowers, first...

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...