8 O'Clock Buzz

One child in Yemen dies of hunger every 75 seconds, and UNICEF calls Yemen one of the most dangerous places for children. Iman Saleh is one of a number of people from the Yemeni Liberation Movement currently engaged in a hunger strike against U.S. support of a Saudi-led blockade of fuel, medicine, and food in Yemen. Their demands are two-fold: Biden must speak out publicly against the Saudi blockade, and the U.S. must end any support to Saudi Arabia.

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Dr Damita Brown (in exile) …

Dr Crystal Ellis, Community Power-building Manager from Freedom, Inc joins to talk about the election, their get out the vote efforts, the continuing struggle of BIPOC and LGBPTQ+ communities in Madison and Dane County, and the importance of participating in local elections, like today’s!

Photo from Facebook

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Dr Damita Brown (in exile) …

It’s funk, rock, soul, punk, blues, rhythm, alligator shoes, foot stomps, hand claps, Hammond B3s and mini-Moogs.

Three Time Grammy award winning blues musician Fantastic Negrito joins us from Oakland joins us to talk about his latest Grammy award, living with mental illness, building community, gun violence and reflecting on 25 years in the music business.

Promotional Photo by Lyle Owerko

Birds are primarily visual creatures.  Billions of years of evolution have honed avian brains and eyes to achieve extraordinary visual feats, from seeing into the ultraviolet spectrum, or in the case of raptors, picking out a small rodent from an altitude of hundreds of feet above the ground.  Birds are also skilled navigators, in many cases, undertaking transglobal journeys from wintering grounds to breeding grounds and back again each year.  Nothing in that rich evolutionary history, however, has prepared birds for the glass-enclosed, reflective buildings constructed by humans.  When a bird sees a glass building, it often sees nothing but more sky and trees.  This leads to potentially deadly collisions — some one billion birds die from building collisions in the United States each year.  Here in Madison, the Audubon Society has developed a Bird Collision Corps to help document bird fatalities, and to help come up with solutions.  Matt Reetz is the Executive Director of Madison Audubon.

Featured image: A sparrow killed by a window strike.

Photo by: Liz Hargreaves

After successfully navigating his multi-trillion dollar COVID relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, through the treacherous waters of the U.S. Congress, President Biden returns to Capitol Hill with an equally ambitious two trillion dollar infrastructure bill, dubbed the American Jobs Plan.  As with any infrastructure legislation, the bill includes a hefty dollop of road building, including 115 billion dollars for roads and bridges.  But all the transportation spending together — roads, bridges, airports, transit, rail — comes to only one-third of the total package.  Where would the other 1.2 trillion dollars go?  Well, sizeable chunks go to things like child care, education and cleaning up drinking water.  Sarah Halpern-Meekin is a sociologist with the University of Wisconsin School of Human Ecology.

Featured image: Visiting nurses such as Joanne Madigan provide at-home health care to service members and their families.

Photo by: U.S. Marine Corps, public domain

You’ve no doubt heard of the military-industrial complex, but have you heard of the boarder-industrial complex? Between 2008 and 2020, over $55 billion in your tax dollars (including $25B in Trump’s last year in office) have gone to large and small contractors transferring military technology (Lockheed-Martin and others), prison companies, and others for border fortification, according to Todd Miller, reporter for TomDispatch in his latest article “The Greater the Disaster, the Greater the Profits: The Boarder-Industrial Complex in the Post-Trump Era“.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom’s annual profits have increased by 4000%, a whopping $660 million in pre-tax profits, reports Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. And yet, Zoom pays $0 in federal income taxes, according to his report “Zoom pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes on Pandemic Profits“, by shifting money and writing off stock options paid to staff. Matt details the money and suggests how to more fairly account for profit.

The 4th Amendment, protecting citizens from unreasonable search and seizures and providing a level of expectation of personal privacy, came about as a result of British control over the colonies. Today, with a myriad of technology in use and the desire of government to access this information, the “Carpenter Ruling” of 2018 put limits on access to this data. Laura Hecht-Felella, fellow in Liberty and National Security from the Brennan Center for Justice talks about how our reliance on connected digital equipment and data puts this privacy at risk.

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Sikowis (in exile), talking about Pipelines…

Mahmud Fitil, Crimean Tatar and founder of Ní Btháska Stand joins us to talk about fighting Trans Canada pipelines on both sides of the Missouri River in Nebraska.

Submitted Photo

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Sikowis (in exile), talking about Pipelines…

Donnielle Wanatee from Great Plains Access Society joins us from Washington, DC, where she is working with youth from Standing Rock to keep pressure on the Biden administration to continue taking a stand for the climate and the future and fight Keystone XL, Line 3 and Dakota Access Pipelines.

Photo from Facebook