Staff Favorites

Russia, Ukraine, the War & the U.S.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Russian invasion of Ukraine with its horrific atrocities and massive refugee crisis has turned the world upside down. The war will have a huge impact on global food security as both countries are major exporters of wheat, barley and other grains. As usual, the media provide very little context and background. We are told […]
Reheating the Cold War
Stephen Cohen
Winston Churchill once observed, the further back you go, the farther forward you can see. We know little of Russia and its history beyond bears, Siberian winters, the Kremlin and Doctor Zhivago. The United States emerged victorious at end of the Cold War. An era of cooperation was to be ushered in. What should have […]
The Pathology of Wealth
Michael Parenti
As the planet moves closer to environmental catastrophe, the captains of industry, the robber barons of the age, could hardly be bothered. They have more important matters to consider. Making money. And they better be on the ball and deliver those dividends because if they don’t they will soon be replaced. Profits uber alles is […]
Real Politics, Real Poetry
Amiri Baraka
The role of creative people in society has long been debated. Should they focus on their art and stay away from politics? Poets, writers, painters, filmmakers, musicians, artists in general occupy a unique position. Their impact and influence extend far and wide. They illuminate realities in imaginative ways that expand awareness and understanding. Think of […]
Making & Breaking Stories
Rebecca Solnit
Dominant paradigms, dominant stories, the big picture through which our lives move. How much of it is constructed for us? Most of it. What are the prevailing paradigms and cultural narratives really made of? Words. Language. To coin a phrase, define the terms, frame the issue, to write the story that sticks in the public […]
The Meaning of Freedom
Angela Davis
The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve? Or if the candidates on the ballot are yoked to unjust power structures, what’s that? The freedom to vote? The colonies in Asia and Africa gained […]
The Radical Leap
Naomi Klein
Political organizers are aware of “wedge issues” that divide us and “web issues” that bring us together. What could be more unifying than saving the planet? The Earth is heating up. Polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. April was the 12th consecutive hottest month on record. The December 2015 Paris Climate Change […]
Propaganda & Control of the Public Mind
Noam Chomsky
2 CDs Most people associate the term “propaganda” with totalitarian dictatorships like Iraq or North Korea. Yet propaganda, in different shapes and forms, is an important element in democratic societies. The control and use of images and information can alter perceptions, frame debate and influence opinion. This special two-part program features Noam Chomsky in a […]
The Working Class
Michael Yates
Warren Buffett, the much-admired genius investor and one of the world’s richest men said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And who are the losers? The working class, people who work for an hourly wage or are salaried. The ruling class has driven […]
Unmasking the NSA
Glenn Greenwald
Imagine a gigantic vacuum cleaner scooping up all electronic communications. That’s what the National Security Agency does. Think you are safe from NSA snooping? That you can hide behind clever passwords? Think again. The Agency has the capability to generate one billion password guesses per second. On top of that it can remotely activate your […]
The Armenian Holocaust
Araxie Barsamian, Robert Fisk
In 1915, the Turkish government launched a premeditated organized campaign to eliminate the millennia-old Armenian people from their traditional homeland in what is now southeastern Turkey. The Turkish officials responsible for the genocide were never brought to account. This was not lost on Adolf Hitler. Just days before launching World War Two he told his […]
The Legacy of Reconstruction
Eric Foner
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 […]

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