Alternative Radio

Nov 01 2024 251 ep. 308

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Alternative Radio, established in 1986, is a weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and beyond. AR provides information, analyses and views that are frequently ignored or distorted in other media. Our program airs on over 175 radio stations. Our headquarters, with three paid staff, is located in Boulder, Colorado.

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Alternative Radio - Episode November 6, 2024

Gagging Democracy India-Style India, the world’s most populous country, is ruled by Narendra Modi who is the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP. He first became prime minister in 2014 and has been reelected twice since though in 2024 with much lower margins. Before coming to power in Delhi he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat where he presided over a major m

Alternative Radio - Episode October 30, 2024

The Wrong People at the Top Power. What is it? Political theorist Robert Dahl gave one example. He said, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do.” Why is it that often that those who are on top are the wrong people? The high rollers and the nabobs lust for power behind a smokescreen of homilies about doing good. Tod

Alternative Radio - Episode October 23, 2024

War & the Media In times of war the corporate media play a salient role in shaping public opinion. There are worthy and unworthy victims. Muslims, Arabs, and Iranians generally fall into that latter category whereas Washington and its allies are worthy victims that we support and empathize with. The current phase of the Gaza war did not begin on October 7 as the media repeat ad

Alternative Radio - Episode October 16, 2024

A Brief History of Zionism Zion is the name of a hill in ancient Jerusalem. The Jewish nationalist movement coined the term Zionism in the 1890s. Zionism got the big power backing it was looking for when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary stated: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establ

Alternative Radio - Episode October 9, 2024

Welcome to the Reservation Indigenous communities are among the poorest in the U.S. This is one of many persistent symptoms of the colonial relationship imposed by force upon Indigenous peoples. As famed historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Neither arcane colonial laws nor the historical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time and certainly not when conditions of life

Alternative Radio - Episode October 2, 2024

Blaming the Victim: Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Blaming the victim is as old as the hills. It occurs when the victim of a crime or tragedy is held at fault for the harm that befell them. In other words, you had it coming to you. The great scholar Edward Said ruefully remarked that the Palestinians were the victims of the victim hence it was very difficult for them

Alternative Radio - Episode September 25, 2024

International Law: Real or Fiction? After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the term international rules-based order would be repeated by Washington officials almost daily to describe Moscow’s action. Then a curious thing happened when Israel invaded Gaza in 2023. The term virtually disappeared as the U.S. sought to protect its close ally Israel. But the U.S. itself has a

Alternative Radio - Episode September 18, 2024

Myths of Israel A myth is a story passed down through generations that attempts to explain the origins of something. The foundational myth of Israel was “a land without people for a people without a land.” That myth had profound consequences that reverberate today. There were people there – the Palestinians. Such myths are characteristic of settler colonial societies such

Alternative Radio - Episode September 11, 2024

Chaos, Chance & Choice As a kid, did you ever play “What If”? Like, what if the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X weren’t gunned down in the 1960s? Like, what if the votes in Florida were counted and Al Gore won the 2000 election? What if the U.S. did not support the jihadis in Afghanistan? What if the U.S. did not invade Iraq? History, the world would have been very diffe

Alternative Radio - Episode September 4, 2024

Fascism: The False Revolution Fascism is being mentioned more and more in the context of U.S. and European elections. It is a term that is bandied about often rather loosely. Orwell wrote that it is understood to be “something not desirable.” But it is a complex political and economic synergy that has racism, force and nationalism as its animating matrix. It involves heavy