AlternativeRadio

By David Barsamian

News & Politics Government & Organizations Non-Profit

What's AlternativeRadio about?

Alternative Radio is an "unembedded" weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the US, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and on short-wave on Radio for Peace International. AR provides information, analyses and views that are frequently ignored or distorted in other media.

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[Michael Eric Dyson] Chaos ...

04.22.2021

In his 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote these prophetic words: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The oceans of history ...

AlternativeRadio episodes:

04.22.2021 [Michael Eric Dyson] Chaos or Community? In his 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote these prophetic words: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The oceans of history ...
04.15.2021 [Jeff Cohen, Janine Jackson] Cutting Through Corporate Media BS With few exceptions the corporate mainstream media operate within very narrow parameters. In one corner you have MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and in the other you have Fox’s Sean Hannity. And they do present contrasting views but the boundaries of discussion ...
04.08.2021 [Angela Davis, Astra Taylor] Democracy: Theirs & Ours The term democracy is frequently invoked perhaps never more so than after the January 6th assault on the Capitol which was almost unanimously described as an attack on democracy. The Ancient Greeks coined the term, demos is people and kratia ...
04.01.2021 [Howard Zinn] American Exceptionalism American exceptionalism has been a fundamental tenet of U.S. foreign policy. International law applies to designated enemies, not for Washington and its vassals. Obey the master or face the consequences. Assassinations, sanctions, bombings, invasions and occupations are all tools of ...
03.25.2021 [Erica Chenoweth] Civil Resistance in the 21st Century The success and failure rates of civil resistance movements might seem like something studied at the U.S. Army War College. But social scientists and political activists always want to know why some tactics work, and some don’t. Boycotts, street protests, ...
03.18.2021 [David Harvey] Smash the Mirror: Imagining a Different System The global health and economic crises are points of opportunity. Arundhati Roy, the great Indian intellectual and writer says, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. And ...
03.11.2021 [Kali Akuno, Richard Wolff] Capitalism, the Pandemic & the Two-Party Monopoly The pandemic has revealed a huge systemic failure in the ability of the U.S. to effectively attend to the well-being of millions of its citizens. World-class inequality has exacerbated the situation. You don’t need a degree from MIT to figure ...
03.04.2021 [Noam Chomsky] Class Struggle or Get It in the Neck The ruling class, and there is such a thing, assiduously attends to its needs. That is to say, to maintain and expand its power and wealth. How does it do that? By manipulation, propaganda and political influence. It deploys divide ...
02.25.2021 [Chris Hedges] Beyond the Politics of Despair Despair. We all experience it. It can lead to demoralization. What’s the antidote? Engagement. Finding kindred spirits and acting collectively. Building bonds of solidarity. Working toward the common good. John Lewis, long-time Georgia Congressperson and civil rights icon had this ...
02.18.2021 [Diana Buttu, Ilan Pappe] Israel & Palestine: What’s Next? The decades-long one-sided Washington policy in favor of Israel reached new heights during the Trump regime. The peace process is a joke. The ever-expanding Jewish-only colonies, known euphemistically as settlements, have grown ever larger. The possibility of a sovereign, viable ...
02.04.2021 [Roxanne Dunbar-Ortíz] An Indigenous People’s History The history of the U.S. is one of settler colonialism. The state was established on the basis of white male supremacy, slavery, land theft and genocide. “From sea to shining sea” the Native nations were decimated and dispossessed. The survivors ...
01.28.2021 [Nader Hashemi, Trita Parsi] Retargeting Iran The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, the Iran Deal, was a major diplomatic accomplishment. By all accounts it was successful. However, it was unilaterally abandoned by the current president. The UK ambassador to the U.S. called Trump’s move ...
01.14.2021 [Robert Fisk] Chaos in the Middle East The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is one of the great crimes in modern history. No one has been held to account. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, many more wounded and millions became refugees. Washington’s insane action ...
01.07.2021 [Howard Zinn] Q&A in Albuquerque This recording, recently discovered in the piles at AR, features the great radical historian talking with students at UNM. He is asked about getting past the culture of denial of the powerful. Drawing on his vast knowledge of history he ...
12.31.2020 [Jason Stanley, Andy Zee] Resisting Fascism As a political ideology, fascism developed in Mussolini’s Italy, a century ago. At its core, fascism conjures up a mythic past. There is nostalgia for a so-called purer time. Its advocates deploy a raw appeal to nationalism. Opponents are demonized. ...
12.24.2020 [Noam Chomsky] The President, The Pandemic & the Election We are in “unchartered territory,” as the media incessantly remind us. We are on the eve of an election amidst a pandemic. The president has declared in advance that the election is a “hoax,” it is “rigged.” He would not ...
12.18.2020 [Arundhati Roy] What Have We Done to Democracy? India is often called the world’s largest democracy. Narendra Modi is the prime minister. He was elected in 2014 and again in 2019. Prior to becoming prime minister, he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, where in 2002, ...
12.17.2020 [Steven Levitsky] Polarization Can Kill Democracy It’s axiomatic that political discourse in the U.S. is becoming more and more extreme. There’s even talk of a coup. In textbook coups, martial law is declared. The internet and phones go dead. The opposition is jailed or killed. This ...
12.03.2020 [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] Gender Equality Legal battles for gender equality didn’t begin with the Women’s Movement of the 1960s. But it laid the groundwork for the historic 1972 Supreme Court decision that made gender discrimination unconstitutional. That case was successfully argued by then-38-year old Brooklyn-born ...
11.26.2020 [Jason Stanley] How Fascism Works What is fascism? Michael Parenti, author and historian says, “Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to ...
11.19.2020 [Yanis Varoufakis] Capitalist Bubbles & Covid-19 The world is at a crossroads. The COVID-19 pandemic, with hundreds of thousands dead across the globe and counting, has triggered a disastrous economic situation for millions. At some point, we will be in a post-pandemic world. What will it ...
11.12.2020 [Ralph Nader] Trump, the Pandemic & the Election Remember the popular TV series - The X-Files? FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully doggedly investigate unexplained, mind-bending cases known as "X-Files." The show’s signature line was, “The Truth is Out There.” We probably need Mulder and Scully ...
11.05.2020 [Chris Hedges] Trump & the Christian Right Talk about an odd couple. The 45th president and the Christian right. For the president, renowned for his wayward ways, the support from some of the mega-churches and their high priests form a key part of his base. According to ...
10.29.2020 [William Barber, Martin Luther King] It’s Time to Transform America Representative John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the struggle for civil rights, social justice and equality died in mid-July. He was called the “conscience of the Congress.” His passing evoked memories of the March on Washington and the bridge ...
10.22.2020 [Robin DiAngelo] The Fragility of Whiteness The great African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in his 1903 classic book, The Souls of Black Folk, wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Well, here we are in the ...
10.15.2020 [Stephen Bezruchka] The Human Cancer in the Covid-19 Era A famous Russian revolutionary once said, “'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The pandemic certainly feels that way. We are in limbo. The uncertainty is bewildering. What can we expect? What must we ...
10.08.2020 [Peter Andreas] Drugs & War The drugs and war nexus is an old story involving not just criminal gangs but states. Just go back to the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s and 70s or in Central America in the 1980s or ...
10.01.2020 [Vandana Shiva, David Suzuki] The Pandemic Wake-up Call The news about the pandemic goes from bad to worse. The term another grim milestone in the number of infections and deaths has become almost commonplace. But at some point, hopefully not too far away, the crisis will pass. Where ...
09.24.2020 [Camara Phyllis Jones] Racism & Health For more than a year the public was complaining about the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. The water was so pungent and foamy that one priest had stopped using it for baptisms. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality, confidently announced, ...
09.10.2020 [Michael Eric Dyson] White Privilege White privilege. What’s that? White people have choices and advantages simply because of the color of their skin. Many whites are unaware of it. Peggy McIntosh, a noted women’s studies scholar in her classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible ...
09.03.2020 [Marc Lamont Hill, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor] Dismantling the System Is it starry-eyed to think about not just regime change but something much larger: system change? The systemic failures of the current crisis and the calamitous fissures it has exposed has raised the question of the efficacy of reform, half-measures ...
08.27.2020 [Rob Larson] Technopolies The five biggest corporations in the world by market value are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. Their head honchos the Zuckerbergs, Gates and Bezos make the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Carnegies of the Gilded Age look like pikers. These “masters ...
08.24.2020 [Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy] Surviving the Future What will tomorrow bring in the age of COVID-19? There is so much uncertainty. Arundhati Roy sees an opportunity. She writes, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt. And in the ...
08.13.2020 [Noam Chomsky] The Politics of the Pandemic It should be abundantly clear that part of the president’s m.o., almost an article of faith, is never accept responsibility when things go wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault: Pelosi, the media, the WHO, Obama, China, immigrants. And if you ...
08.06.2020 [Sonia Shah] Outbreaks: From Epidemics to Pandemics Can you believe it? A hundred thousand U.S. dead and counting. The real number according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert, is “almost certainly higher.” A World Health Organization official warns that the coronavirus may become endemic, ...
07.30.2020 [David McNally] The Pandemic & the Economy: A Radical View The standard narrative about the current crisis is that the coronavirus pathogen triggered an economic collapse. But what is crucially ignored is that neoliberal capitalism was already weak and stressed out, a pre-existing condition, if you will. That systemic weakness ...
07.16.2020 [Adam Winkler] Corporate Constitutional Rights The term corporation is not in the Constitution, yet this entity has emerged over the years as the most dominant force in society. Although never oppressed like women and minorities, corporations have fought to win equal rights under the Constitution. ...
07.09.2020 [Stephen Bezruchka] Consequences of COVID-19 What kind of bizarre twilight zone world are we in? The coronavirus pandemic is a global altering moment. It has exposed huge fissures of vulnerability. The dead from COVID-19 in the U.S. now exceeds Vietnam War levels. The health crisis ...
07.02.2020 [Rashid Khalidi] Palestine: A Case of Settler Colonialism The conflict over Palestine is a century-long war involving a settler-colonial movement–Zionism–which succeeded in forming a national entity–The State of Israel. The term settler colonialism may not be well known but it accurately describes what has happened to multiple regions ...
06.25.2020 [Nader Hashemi] Pandemics, Democracies & Dictatorships Today, fear stalks the globe. The grim reaper is taking a heavy toll. The coronavirus pandemic has led to many thousands of deaths and tremendous economic dislocation. In this climate of fear, authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to Hungary, from ...
06.18.2020 [Stephen Kinzer] The CIA Search for Mind Control CIA skullduggery is legendary from overthrowing governments to germ warfare to assassinations but its MK-Ultra program may be at the top of the list. MK-Ultra was the code name for the top-secret CIA project in which the Agency conducted hundreds ...
06.11.2020 [Stephen Bezruchka] COVID-19 & Capitalism The COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic has cast in deadly high relief that the United States, the richest country on Earth has a dysfunctional health care system. One should not even call it a system. “It’s unimaginable,” a CNN anchor commented ...
06.05.2020 [Joseph Stiglitz] A New Social Contract After 40 years the economic doctrine of neoliberalism has reached a dead end. But not for everyone. The 500 richest people in the world, all of whom are billionaires, gained a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth in 2019. Advocates of ...
05.21.2020 [Stephen Bezruchka] The Coronavirus Pandemic The coronavirus pandemic has sent waves of fear across the globe. It is a dangerous moment. We are benumbed by the dizzying statistics of new cases and the number of deaths popping up all over the world. What is it? ...
05.14.2020 [Eric Foner] The Legacy of Reconstruction 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 ...
05.07.2020 [Jenny Brown] Women: Labor Pains In 2018, the birth rate in the United States reached its lowest level in decades. This alarmed the patriarchal class that wants to control women’s bodies. Reproductive rights and access to abortion are under sustained political attack. Roe v. Wade ...
05.07.2020 [Jim Hightower] It’s Up To You From hanging chads in Florida, to purged voter rolls in Ohio to the Iowa caucus debacle, democracy is in trouble. The venerable system is in the ICU. There is still a pulse but the long term prognosis is not good. ...
04.23.2020 [Michael Lerner] Faith, Politics & the Left (part 2) Rabbi Michael Lerner says many on the left are too quick to dismiss people who are religious. To reach people you disagree with, you can’t be condescending and arrogant. Is it possible to reach out to those who espouse views ...
04.09.2020 [Robert Fisk] Chaos in the Middle East The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is one of the great crimes in modern history. No one has been held to account. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, many more wounded and millions became refugees. Washington’s insane action ...
03.26.2020 [William Barber] Why Iowa Matters What’s the matter with Iowa is what’s the matter with large portions of the U.S. economy: extreme poverty in the presence of extreme wealth. In 1962, Michael Harrington wrote about it in his book The Other America. That America has ...

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