TUC Radio

Blasted into bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto in Finland on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Onkalo has to remain secure for 100,000 years.

Danish filmmaker Michael Madsens documentary of the building in progress of Onkalo is a meditation on eternity, insanity and the impossibility of projecting anything 100,000 years into the future.

The film also proves eloquently and with expert statements the terrible danger that arises from so-called spent nuclear fuel from power plants and makes us see Fukushima with very different eyes.

This radio program presents excerpts from the film and its amazing sound design.

DATE: film released in 2010

Honoring Utah Phillips –   From the archives of TUC Radio – this is a celebration of his life and an account, in his own words, of how he became an activist.

In this Part TWO Utah talked about founding the Poor People’s Party, working with the Mormon Church, the Black Panthers and Judi Bari, and how he became involved with the Singer Songwriters movement. He closed with moving, enduring advice on how to work and organize together.

In the early-1960s, Phillips was involved with Fair Play for Cuba and the struggle for open housing laws in Utah. In 1968, he was nominated and campaigned for the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket. The experience led to Phillips being dismissed [ . . . ]

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Honoring Utah Phillips,  the folk singer, labor organizer, storyteller, activist and poet. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 15, 1935, he died in Nevada City, CA, on May 23, 2008.

From the archives of TUC Radio – this is a celebration of his life and an account, in his own words, of how he became an activist. “The golden voice of the great American Southwest”, Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips came to the Unitarian Fellowship Hall in Berkeley on May 18, 2004, to talk about his life.

Phillips parents were union organizers in the 1930s. When he left home to join a road crew in Yellowstone Park the older workers, who played guitars, taught Phillips how to turn his ukulele chords into guitar [ . . . ]

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Recent news: The Bandolero was seized on August 1 by the Icelandic Coast Guard and the crew detained.  Reported by AP. Story here.

When Captain Paul Watson – co-founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society returned from exile in France, TUC radio broadcast an interview with him that surpassed in downloads all programs of 2016 except for one. So here is an update on occasion of the beginning of the Japanese whale hunt in the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Their 1977 founding mission is to end the destruction of habitat and the slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans. Their decades long practice of aggressive non-violence has led to charges of [ . . . ]

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Interview of Annie Jacobsen by tech writer Quentin Hardy for the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

The investigative journalist and acclaimed author, specializing in weapons and war, Annie Jacobsen, has come closer than other investigators to the razor edge of secrecy that surrounds the current nuclear war machine. Her book, Nuclear War, is based on hundreds of interviews with war planners and engineers – plus recently declassified documents.

Annie Jacobsen, reminds us that a Doomsday killing machine has been designed, capable of destroying not just two cities but life on this planet – first with fire and heat and then seven to ten years of darkness and ice sheets from nuclear winter.

Annie Jacobsens book, Nuclear War, A Scenario, has 373 pages of [ . . . ]

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This is an updated archival program in memory of Cecile Pineda

Cecile Pineda had come to the Unitarian Universalists Fellowship Hall in Berkeley on Hiroshima Day 2014 to support Harvey Wasserman. He campaigns to prevent the opening of nuclear power plants – to limit their operation – or to close them down.

Cecile Pineda had just finished her novel: Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step, that the Nation’s John Nichols called: “An astonishing anatomy of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster…”

Cecile Pineda died at home on August 11, 2022. Her friends and students miss her voice, her humor, her deep scientific knowledge and her rebellion – all inside her art of writing.

This replay of her appearance, along with Harvey [ . . . ]

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Prof. Moomaw wrote in 2021: Humanity puts out 11 billion tons of carbon each year – amazingly less than half ends up in the atmosphere. NASA satellite data and research show that a bit more than half of the remaining 6 billion tons of carbon are going into forests, plants, wetlands and soils. The other 40 – 45% is being absorbed by the oceans.

However the extraordinary capacity of forests to absorb carbon is being undermined by world-wide logging and clear-cutting – which ironically turns forests, that could be our best protection from climate disaster – into yet another powerful source of greenhouse gases.

William Moomaw is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at Tufts University. Stuart Scott was founder/executive producer of [ . . . ]

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A small bookstore in Point Reyes Station, a coastal town in West Marin, California, was the first to invite Suzanne Simard for a conversation. Three days earlier, on May 4, her book had been published. Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, has already become a best-seller.

Suzanne Simard was born in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia and grew up in an old growth forest. She was educated at the University of British Columbia and Oregon State University; and is now Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry.

Over 1,000 people participated on the Zoom book release hosted by David Haskell. He is professor of biology and environmental studies at [ . . . ]

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On August 28, 2008 analysis of the media Michael Parenti’s most up-to-date contribution. He gave the keynote speech for the Modern Media Censorship lectures by Project Censored. Each year Project Censored gives awards for the most censored news stories of the year. Parenti lists important criteria by which to judge media bias, ranging from ownership to labeling, false objectivity and sensationalism, omission, outright lies and the denial of causality with the famous theory of “stuff happens”.

Michael Parenti (1935-2026) wrote and lectured on the mainstream media for decades. His key book on this topic is “Inventing Reality – The politics of the News Media.” With roots in a working class Italian district of New York and a Ph.D. in political science [ . . . ]

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This is The second part of Dr. Michael Parenti’s talk on his book: God and His Demons. The 2010 book covers the many evils committed in the name of godly virtue throughout history, and the threat posed by fundamentalists and theocratic reactionaries.

Parenti (1935-2026) was one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. He was a prolific author and an engaging speaker. Parenti grew up in a conservative, catholic, working class Italian community in New York city. After receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Yale he taught at colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. He risked and ended his academic career when he openly opposed the war on Vietnam. He served on the board of judges for [ . . . ]

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