Global
Our GREEP zoom #87 leaps into the issue of Civic Duty Voting with the great MILES RAPOPORT, former Secretary of State of Connecticut.
Miles has served as president of Common Cause and Demos. He is most recently the co-author, with E.J. DIONNE, of 100% Democracy being published this week by New Press.
Miles’s discussion of universal mandatory voting is groundbreaking and fascinating. He’s a great presenter and his hour with us is utterly riveting.
We then hear from MYLA RESON and election protection activists SUSAN YOUNG and TERRI BURKE about the major challenges facing voters in Texas. Leading that agenda is a brutal race for Attorney-General, where a grassroots victory could be a game-changer nationwide.
We follow with an astounding dive into the unreal rabbit hole that is Ohio. As we hear from RACHEL COYLE, DAVID DEWITT and STEVE CARUSO, GOP fanatics have trashed public mandates to draw fair and balanced districts for upcoming elections for the state legislature and US Congress.
Minute by minute, Putin’s “Peaceful Atom” pushes us to the brink of an atomic Apocalypse…maybe as you read this….likely within hours or days.
Some 440 atomic power reactors now heat this planet, 93 in the US. For a half-century opponents have warned that a madman like Putin could make them spew out enough radiation to burn our species off this planet. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/science/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant.html )
We are headed precisely in that direction. The clock ticks down in real time.
Start at Chernobyl. Despite decades of industry denials that any commercial reactor could explode—-Soviet or otherwise—-Unit Four blew up on April 26, 1986. (For a gut sense of what happened, watch HBO’s five-part mini-series “Chernobyl.”)
The last of Chernobyl’s other three reactors ran through 2000. Unit Four’s blown core is still so hot the world community spent some $2 billion to cover it with a giant shield, aptly called a sarcophagus.
At this 86th zoom session of the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition we are joined by activist Nicole Dvorak who has pioneered powerful new means of tracking the purchase of politicians by giant corporations. Nicole’s work offers a roadmap for building the critical data base needed to expose exactly how our democracy is being destroyed by big money.
We also proudly host Nancy MacLean of Duke University, whose landmark Democracy In Chains digs deep into the destruction of our essential government structured by a greedy Uber-rich class of fascists and autocrats who threaten us all. Nancy is interviewed by the great Tatanka Bricca, whose detailed knowledge of what plagues our electoral system sets a critical framework from a truly unique discussion.
A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.
Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state itself.
For Palestinians, sports is a critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet, the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international sports organizations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian sports.
I had a breakthrough yesterday — and I don’t mean metaphorically.
Wars rage, countless humans suffer, the rich get richer, life goes on. I still have my morning coffee. But not yesterday.
What happened — about 5 a.m. — was a fleeting . . . oh so fleeting . . . insight into life beyond its small certainties and routines. When life suddenly spins out of control, the Great Unknown is momentarily present. I have decided to write about it, or try to write about it, to honor the vulnerable everywhere.
That hour of the morning is not my normal get-up time, but as I enter geezerhood (I turned 75 half a year ago) I find myself waking up throughout the night and heading with sudden urgency to the bathroom. No big deal. This is part of the routine.
In this special emergency edition of the SOLARTOPIA GREEN POWER & WELLNESS SHOW we confront the horrifying realties of the fifteen Ukrainian nuclear power plants now teetering on the brink of the Apocalypse.
Finally, France will be leaving Mali, nearly a decade after the original military intervention in 2013. The repercussions of this decision will hardly be confined to this West African nation, but will likely spread to the entirety of the Sahel Region; in fact, the whole of Africa.
