Janet Redman (Sustainable Energy and Economy Network): UN conference reflects lack of urgency from developed countries and focus on private finance
‘The Union List’
Finance Rules at Doha UN Climate Summit
by The Editors, posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2012 at 8:15 pm“We are Running Out of Time”: Obama Urged to Match Rhetoric to Action on Climate Deal
by The Editors, posted on Friday, December 7th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
from Democracy Now!
Most major issues remain unresolved at the U.N. climate summit in Doha as negotiators enter the final stretch of the two-week summit. While the Doha talks involve nations working toward a pact to limit greenhouse gases starting in 2020, many say the world cannot wait that long. The United States has come under intense criticism at the summit from environmentalists and smaller nations who say President Obama has failed to meet his stated commitments to tackle global warming. We’re joined by Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International; and Samantha Smith, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative.
Bill McKibben: Connecting the Dots on Climate Change
by The Editors, posted on Friday, December 7th, 2012 at 3:03 pm from The Nation
“We should not have called it Hurricane Sandy. We should have called it Hurricane Exxon,” says climate activist Bill McKibben. In the aftermath of a superstorm, Americans are finally making the connection between the changing weather and our fossil fuel addiction. McKibben took a break from his “Do the Math” tour, which calls on universities and other organizations to divest from the fossil fuel industry, to discuss the pressing structural changes we need to slow our warming planet.
Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick on the Untold History of the United States from the Atomic Age to Obama’s Drone War
by The Editors, posted on Friday, November 16th, 2012 at 5:29 pm from Democracy Now!
Part One
Academy Award-winning Oliver Stone has teamed up with historian Peter Kuznick to produce a 10-part Showtime series called, “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States.” Drawing on archival findings and recently declassified documents, the filmmakers critically examine U.S. history — from the atomic bombing of Japan, to the Cold War, to the fall of Communism, and continuing all the way through to the Obama administration. Contrary to what’s taught in schools across the country, the filmmakers found the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible.
Part Two
Stone and Kuznick also suggest the Soviet Union, not the United States, ultimately defeated the Germans in World War II. And, they assert the United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War. The filmmakers also found U.S. presidents, especially in wartime, have frequently trampled on the Constitution and international law, and they note the United States has brought the world dangerously close to nuclear war by repeatedly brandishing nuclear threats. The first episode of the series aired Monday night on Showtime. For more about this series and the companion book, we are joined by Stone and Kuznick
Food for Thought: Larry Grossberg on Cultural Studies
by n0madic, posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 9:00 am“For me, cultural studies was always partly a response to the dominant practices of the academy, and the dominant practices of knowledge production. … It seemed to me that cultural studies was an attempt to find a different way to be an intellectual, a different way of bringing politics into the academy, and a different way of producing knowledge.” — Larry Grossberg
This video is a preview of a full length conversation with Larry Grossberg, an internationally renowned scholar of cultural studies as well as popular culture, conducted by University of Ottawa professor Boulou Ebanda de B’béri and his research assistant Michael Audette-Longo.
Part 1: Cultural studies as a specific project
Part 2: Discussion on articulation
Part 3: Discussion on past and present projects
Part 4: Discussion on modernity
The full-length conversation can be found after the jump.
Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Election, Obama and Progressives
by The Editors, posted on Friday, November 9th, 2012 at 1:31 pmfrom Democracy Now!
Part One
As the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history comes to an end, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West join us to discuss President Obama’s re-election and their hopes for a national political agenda in and outside of the White House during Obama’s second term. At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”
Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. “We believe if [Obama] is not pushed, he is going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president,” Smiley says. “We believe the time is now for action and no longer accommodation… To be the most progressive means you’ve taken some serious risk. And I just don’t see the example of that.” West says that some prominent supporters of Obama “want to turn their back to poor and working people. It’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way.”
Part Two
“If there was ever a wake-up call, this is it” — Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change
by The Editors, posted on Monday, October 29th, 2012 at 1:12 pmfrom Democracy Now!
Bill McKibben (350.org) and climate scientist Greg Jones on Hurricane Sandy and climate change.
See also: McKibben’s “Do the Math” Tour, beginning November 7th.
Michael Pollan on California’s Prop. 37 and Other Local Efforts to Challenge Agrigiants’ Influence
by The Editors, posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 at 6:30 pmfrom Democracy Now!
As California voters prepare to vote on whether to label GMOs in food, we go to Berkeley to discuss Prop 37 and its implications for the broader food system with journalist and best-selling author Michael Pollan. Among the nation’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy, Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism. He’s written several books about food, including “The Botany of Desire,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” and the forthcoming, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.”
From California’s Proposition 37 initiative to New York City’s soda ban, journalist and best-selling author Michael Pollan argues that local efforts hold the key to challenging the agricultural industry’s stranglehold over national food policy. With companies like Monsanto influencing Congress and state legislatures, Pollan warns the United States risks falling into a “two-class food system,” where only those who can afford to live outside the industrial food system can access healthy ways to eat. Among the nation’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy, Pollan is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism and author of several best-selling books, including “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”
Where Did the Debt Come From?
by The Editors, posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 at 6:00 pmfrom the Center for American Progress
We hear a lot about our debt. And it is a pressing issue. But where did it come from? Michael Linden, the Center for American Progress’s Director of Tax and Budget Policy, looks at what happened in the 10-years since the Congressional Budget Office projected a massive surplus.
Big London Protests Against Austerity
by The Editors, posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 at 3:39 pmProtest brings tens of thousands into the streets, but are such mobilizations enough to stop the cuts?
