All Programs — Page 89 of 166 — Alternative Radio

Water & Security: Challenges for the 21st Century
Sandra Postel
Water. It is essential to all plant and animal life. In developed countries, turn on a faucet and water flows with seemingly unending abundance. For those who have adequate access, water is so basic it’s easy to forget its importance. As world populations increase, tensions between nations which share rivers is growing. How to equitably […]
Attack Iraq: A Debate
Katha Pollitt, Peter Berkowitz, Rashid Khalidi, Raymond Tanter
Thomas Jefferson held that a “little rebellion” is the “medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” Fast forward a couple of hundred years and we have George Bush dismissing as irrelevant massive worldwide demonstrations against the impending attack of Iraq. Debate in the mainstream media avoids substantive content. It is mainly limited to discussions […]
Welfare Reform Revisited
Frances Fox Piven
In the years following the 1996 welfare reform act, the media were full of success stories of women on welfare who had given up their dependency and were now hard working contributors to society. Their putative laziness and promiscuity were things of the past. Welfare reform would deliver them to the workplace and dignity. It […]
Why Americans Still Don’t Vote
Frances Fox Piven
The Election of 2000 was the most contentious and controversial in over a century. The infamous butterfly ballots and dangling chads are now part of folklore. Yet beyond those things, deeper and troubling questions about the nature of American democracy arise. Voter turnout is appallingly low. Less than half the population votes for President and […]
Labor in a Globalized Economy
Frances Fox Piven
The pundits say globalization is the wave of the future. If you’re against it, says Tom Friedman of The New York Times, then you are part of a “Noah’s ark of flat earth advocates.” Workers are the cogs in the global economy. Yet when it comes to the media, labor is an afterthought. Programs like […]
The Politics of the Rich & Poor
Frances Fox Piven
The political system is largely the captive of special interests and lobbyists who dole out bushels of money. In the old days it used to be called influence peddling. Today it is simply politics as usual. In the din of ringing cash registers the voices of ordinary people cannot be heard. Voters don’t vote and […]
Welfare: Myths & Facts
Frances Fox Piven
The public discourse on welfare is often characterized by hyperbole and falsification. Ronald Reagan was a great one for making up stories. He spoke of a welfare queen in Chicago with eighty names, thirty addresses and a dozen social security cards who collected thousands of dollars in checks. Another Reagan fabrication had people buying vodka […]
The Politics of Family Values
Frances Fox Piven, Richard Cloward
“Family values” is a political football thrown all over the field. It’s a rich vein of rhetoric mined by politicians who can’t seem to finish a paragraph without denouncing “deadbeat dads” and “welfare moms.” What are the underlying impulses that drive both Democrats and Republicans in making family values such a contentious issue? How do […]
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Steven Pinker
Imperialism, War, and Journalism
John Pilger
“The first causality when war comes is truth,” warned Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. Those words resonate strongly today. When the country goes to war, the corporate media are virtually cheerleaders. Journalists extol the noble virtues and intentions of U.S. state power. There’s a time-honored system of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. If […]
Wealth and Democracy
Kevin Phillips
The French have a theory that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. The recent corporate crime wave certainly lends credence to that idea. Corporations & the individuals who own them use their money and power to exert an inordinate influence on national politics, thus undermining democracy. Rather than government of, for and by […]
Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Prospects and Obstacles
Matti Peled
The Israeli-Palestinian issue is often described as intractable and complex. Pundits and scholars tell us it is an extremely complicated problem, i.e., be intimidated and leave it to the experts. The media and popular culture routinely depict Palestinians as kaffiyeh garbed terrorists brandishing AK-47s. Israelis, on the other hand, are a lot like us, whatever […]

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