Public Policy

Talk Nation Radio: Jonathan Newton on Ending Police Brutality

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-jonathan-newton-on-ending-police-brutality

Jonathan Newton is founder of the National Association Against Police Brutality ( http://naapb.org ). He discusses steps that can be taken to address the problem, including eliminating the conflict of interest involved in police investigations of themselves.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Intersection of Mistakes With Misdeeds

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On a pleasant spring day in December it’s nice to drive past the endlessly under-construction intersection of Route 250 and McIntire Road in Charlottesville, Va., and realize that the darn thing must nearly be completed. It looks sturdy and attractive. There’s a nice new bicycle path heading north from it. All must be right with the world.

This intersection has its own official website stating that it won’t really be done until next read more

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Silver Linings in Rolling Stone Rape Fiasco

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Rolling Stone alleged a gang rape at UVA and now doubts its own report. I have no knowledge of the matter. Maybe the victim was completely honest. Maybe she was largely honest but too drunk, or just too traumatized, to remember which fraternity house she was in. Maybe she made it all up. I have no idea and hope a competent police department, rather than an incompetent magazine, tries to find out if possible.

Predictably enough, the internet is now being flooded with articles pointing out that even read more

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Watch Schooling the World, Stop Schooling the World

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It’s becoming slightly more common in the Western industrialized world to propose radical cultural change away from consumerism and environmental destruction. It’s not hard to find people making the case that in fact nothing else can save us.

But we should have one eye on what our governments and billionaires are doing to educate the rest of the world with the way of thinking that we are beginning to question.

What if the United States were to radically reform and abandon its role as read more

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Peace Work Because of You

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A note from David Swanson:

You may have seen this article I wrote recently on ongoing U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons. It’s on dozens of websites, including my own WarIsACrime, but also Al Jazeera, Truthout, Counterpunch, FireDogLake, OpEdNews, Washington’s Blog, Z, and many others.

Guess what I got paid, in total, from all of those outlets? —–>>>

But I can pay the bills and keep working for peace if you help read more

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Talk Nation Radio: George Vradenburg on How Alzheimer's Is Killing Us

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-george

George Vradenburg is the Chairman and Co-Founder of http://USAgainstAlzheimers.org We discuss the new report finding Alzheimer’s to be a leading cause of death in the U.S. We also ask Vradenburg whether perhaps a little money could move from the military to Alzheimer’s research. Listen for the answer. Vradenburg is a read more

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Misplaced Lessons of Tahrir

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I still want Dirty Wars to win the Oscar, but The Square is a documentary worth serious discussion as we hit the three-year point since the famous occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo that overthrew Mubarak — in particular because a lot of people seem to get a lot of the lessons wrong.

I suppose some people will leave Dirty Wars imagining that we need clean wars, whatever those would be.  But too many people seem to be drawing from The Square lessons they brought with read more

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Talk Nation Radio: After the Legalization of Marijuana

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/after-the-legalization-of

Jon Walker is a writer and a senior policy analyst at FireDogLake.com and the author of the new book After Legalization: Understanding the Future of Marijuana Policy in America. We look into his crystal ball.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from Archive or LetsTryDemocracy.

Pacifica stations can also download from AudioPort.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

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Talk Nation Radio: 72 Cities Demand Clean Air Act Be Enforced to Protect Climate

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-72-cities

Rose Braz is the Climate Campaign Director for the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.  The Clean Air Cities campaign has thus far organized 72 cities, large and small, across the United States, to pass resolutions demanding that the EPA make full use of the Clean Air Act to cut the greenhouse gas pollution that is drastically changing the earth’s climate. See http://CleanAirCities.org

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Now Two States Pursue Truly Affordable Education

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Maryland may soon join Oregon in exploring solutions to the crisis of student debt and unaffordable education.

Education is supposed to be a human right.  But the United States puts people into deep debt to pay for it.  Short of taxing billionaires or dismantling bombers (both of which we’re all, I hope, working on), what’s the solution?

The state of Oregon has passed a law creating a commission to study a plan called “Pay it forward. Pay it back.”  See read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-medical

Judith Newman is, together with Allen Hornblum and Gregory Dober, author of Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America. She discusses the background for and the extent of non-consentual experimentation on human beings, in particular underprivileged children, in the United States through the twentieth century.

Dr. Judith Newman has been a faculty member at Penn State’s Abington read more

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A Nuclear Free World

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We’ve managed to outgrow or to come within sight of outgrowing cannibalism, slavery, blood feuds, duels, capital punishment, child labor, tar and feathering, the stocks and pillory, wives as chattel, the punishment of homosexuality, and listening to Rush Limbaugh.  To various degrees, these practices — and many others — have been eliminated or reduced and stigmatized. 

While the stupidest practice ever created — the mass killing known as war — remains, we’ve read more

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TPP: Terrible Plutocratic Plan

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Remarks July 21, 2013 at an Occupy Harrisonburg (Va.) Event. 
Make your voice heard here.

Thanks to Michael Feikema and Doug Hendren for inviting me.  Like most of you I do not spend my life studying trade agreements, but the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is disturbing enough to make me devote a little time to it, and I hope you will do the same and get your neighbors to do the same and get them to get their friends to do the same — as soon as possible.

I spend most of my time reading read more

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Blowing the Whistle on the TPP in Harrisonburg VA

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Free Trade Pact or Corporate Coup?

Presentation & Discussion with Author & Activist David Swanson

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the most highly secret trade agreement in the history of the United States.   It is massive in scope, and is being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations.  It is bad for jobs, bad for democracy, and bad for our national sovereignty.  President Obama is expected to try to “fast-track” read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Gar Alperovitz Points to Worker Ownership as Fix for Broken Democracy

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-gar

Gar Alperovitz discusses his new book, What Then Must We Do: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution.  Alperovitz points to long-term trends in wealth and income inequality, environmental destruction, civil liberties loss, incarceration rates, and others, to argue that ordinary political change is not enough, that systemic changes in the distribution of power are badly needed.  See http://www.garalperovitz.com

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Talk Nation Radio: Highway Boondoggles Bypass Budget Crunch

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Randy “Salz” Salzman is a transportation writer and researcher and the author of Fatal Attraction: Curbing Our Love Affair With the Automobile Before it Kills Us.  He discusses how highway construction boondoggles that are bad for health, heritage, the environment, and even the flow of traffic, have survived in these times of cramped public budgets.  In particular, Salzman looks at the example of a proposed highway in Charlottesville, Va., opposed by the public read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Here Comes Corporate Nationhood

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And you thought corporate personhood was bad enough!  Lacey Kohlmoos, Senior Field Organizer, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, tells us that the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) will create corporate nationhood by empowering corporations to sue and overrule real nations, as well as incentivizing the offshoring of jobs, hurting food safety, damaging environmental protections, enriching drug companies at the expense of human health, banning some generic read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Richard Wolff on Putting Workers in Charge at Work

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Richard Wolff is a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Democracy at Work.  See http://democracyatwork.info

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from Archive or  AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available read more

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