Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • Peace Coming to Korea? It Could Happen!
    Because of factors beyond his control, Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-Un may actually succeed. The new leadership of China, and especially of South Korea, have much to gain from fostering a real peace between North and South. And despite the dangerous bluster of Trump’s new national security advisor John Bolton (often described as  just plain stupid), the meeting between Trump and Kim stands a good chance of working. Veteran international journalist Patrick Lawrence shares what he knows, beyond the cartoonish impression painted by the corporate media. There is real reason for optimism!
     
    1 hr
  • States Crack Down On Dissent
    Much of the national agenda is enacted at the state level. The popular protests of The Dakota Access Pipeline scared the crap out of oil companies and they are using something called ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) to draft cookie-cutter legislation at the state level to make such protests illegal. Attaching exceptionally harsh civil liability or even severe criminal punishment on anyone who would dare to impede the workings of “critical land or infrastructure.” By that, they don’t mean access to water for indigenous people. They mean oil companies right to impose pipelines; that’s a “critical infrastructure.” This, of course, is intended to have a profound chilling effect on freedom of speech. On this show, investigative journalist Steve Horn shares the information we need.
    1 hr
  • Immigrants More Likely to Be Law Abiding Than Americans as a Whole
    Immigrants under Trump are painted as the dangerous “Others.” Yet despite the successful campaign of fear, the reality is immigrants are more likely to be good hard working, law abiding citizens than Americans as a whole. Journalist Arnold “Skip”Isaacs, who has written widely on refugee and immigration issues,  argues that the facts do not support the inflammatory rhetoric used against refugees and immigrants. He argues that the immigration system is not the problem. And fear of Muslims comes from the same American tradition as lynching: whipped up fear of The Other. The reality is Muslims are more effective at stopping Muslim terrorism than any current policy.
    1 hr
  • Russia/Trump Scandal Stands in the Way of Preventing a Big War
    You read that right: The chances of a big war between the US and Russia are greater now than ever. But the Russia/Trump scandal effectively prevents the dialogue essential to preventing a war. Our guest Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, shares his deep knowledge about the powderkeg that is the Middle East. Did you know that the US has established a military base in Israel, specifically putting our troops in harms way. If they are attacked, of course a big war will follow. And since Iran couldn’t beat Iraq, Wilkerson argues they are no threat to super-militarized Israel.  Oddly enough, Israel’s super-hawk Netanyahu is most popular in the US Congress while Trump is most popular in the Israeli Knesset.  Meanwhile Trump intends to deliver plutonium to the Saudis, again greatly increasing the chances of a big regional (or even bigger) war.
    1 hr
  • For Our Common Empowerment, Let’s Learn What Works
    All too often in recent decades social, cultural, and political movements have worked in isolation from one another. But there’s so much to learn so none has to reinvent the wheel. Among the more successful movements has been that of gay rights. NYU professor of Sociology of Education  Lisa M.Stulberg, in her new book, talks about some of the challenges and opportunities shared by all social political and cultural empowerment movements. It’s wasteful not to learn from one another.
    1 hr
  • Teens As Targets. Parkland and Kent State: Real Change Coming?
    Change only comes after enough innocent blood soaks into America’s soil. Is it enough now? Forty eight years ago, the war came home. From the Kent State Massacre, college students learned they were not safe exercising their first amendment rights. Now high school kids across America realize “It could have been me,” and they are not taking it lying down. They have great power and they know it. In this discussion, Laurel Krause who was 15 when her 19 years old sister Allison was one of the four students killed at Kent State on May 4, 1970, talks about this moment. As only someone like Laurel could know about the survivors of the Parkland Massacre,”This is just the beginning of their trauma.” The truth, she argues, is essential for the real healing we need.
    1 hr
  • The Many American Wars No One Notices
    We don’t even know we’re being kept in the dark. America’s wars are everywhere. With the mainstream news focus on all Trump all the time, major stories affecting us all get virtually no attention. Did you know, for example, that America is waging wars in 76 countries? No one is paying attention to our numerous wars. Part of the reason, according to Stephanie Savell, co-director of Costsofwar.org at Brown University’s Watson Institute, is that there is a war being waged on information. The rest of the world is all too aware, but here in America they are wars no one notices. More of our tax dollars than you can imagine are being used and the results are not in our interest.
    1 hr
  • America First Means China First//Trump’s “Infrastructure Plan” a Gift to Polluters
    On the first part, we try to talk with author Dilip Hiro in London about his new article “Donald Trump Offers a Helping Hand to Russia and China,” but the connection most regrettable. If you can bear with the poor audio at his end, Hiro talks about how America First is really harming America. The second part is crystal clear audio (luckily): reporter Julia Conley of CommonDreams.org talks about how the Trump Infrastructure Plan is just a scam to help the wealthy polluting old industries. But it’s hardly a done deal. Bernie Sanders has introduced a competing plan.
    59 min
  • Grit Is Not Enough: Structural Barriers Remain To High School Kids
    The pervasive myth of kids just needing “grit” and lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps is false and is doing real harm.Our guest today Linda Nathan spent fourteen years as founder and co-headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, Boston’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts. Linda Nathan began every year with a promise to the freshman class: all of them would graduate and continue on to either college or a career. And she came to realize the promise could not be kept. Now, in her new book When Grit Isn’t Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-for-All Promise, Nathan confronts long-held assumptions about college access and takes a sobering look at how current practices and policies actually serve to push poor and first-generation students not onto but off the college track. She discovered how career and technical education done well might provide a viable alternative to the four-year degree. What young people need for success are multiple points of entry.
    1 hr
  • Today’s Wars: Still Trying to Win Vietnam
    The military brass sees new wars as a way to finally do what we should have done in Vietnam, and that is: Win. Guest on this show is Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His new article on TomDispatch.com is called The War That Never Ends.  Sjursen is in a position to know, obviously, and says military commanders are reading the wrong books and are steadfastly ignoring the real lessons of Vietnam. How many more must die? And why aren’t Americans paying attention to this?


    1 hr

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