Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

UG#709 - Facing The Failing Culture Of Control - 2 (Atoms For Profit)

Robin Upton | 09.06.2015 16:01 | Anti-Nuclear | Anti-militarism | Technology | Sheffield | World

Power "too cheap to meter" offered humanity a whole lot of control, but that hardly describes what the plutonium industry actually delivered. Our continuing examination of the failing culture of control looks an aspect more serious than climate change - the nuclear power/weapons complex. Our first hour focuses on the close connection between the refinement of the technology of murder and the concomitant degradation of the deliberative process of waging war. Our second hour examines the intimate connections between nuclear war and nuclear power and between the privatization of the nuclear weapons establishment and the abandonment of any kind of effective oversight. The disturbing combination of a nuclear complex beyond government control and a commercially-controlled media which refuses to address the issue will be all too familiar to students of Deep Politics.

ug709-hour1mix.mp3 - mp3 27M

ug709-hour2mix.mp3 - mp3 27M


We build on episode 708, looking this time at the consequences of the collective decision, as happened in the Cold War that no amount of force was too extreme for "us" to use on "them". This deeper aspects of this decision were not understood as the cold war kicked off, mired as it was in deception and buttressed by an overwhelming narrative of good guys versus bad guys.

Our first speaker is Harvard Professor Elaine Scarry whose recent book "Thermonuclear Monarchy - Choosing Between Democracy and Doom" highlights the contradictions between the nominally democratic structure of the US state and its the increasingly dictatorial fashion in which it has been waging war as nuclear weapon technology has been developed. Her thought provoking January 2015 talk is intended to give peace activists food for thought, as she argues that nuclear weapons are fundamentally incompatible with two points of the US constitution. Should the President of The United States have the exterminate humanity by letting off nuclear weapons? Why is Obama committed to expanding this complex and what pretexts could possibly be used to try to justify the nuclear complex - arguably more dangerous and demonstrably more expensive than ever? Scarry's talk lasts around 50 minutes and was slightly edited to remove hesitations and misspeakings. The introduction, by Maria Gilardin, picks up on a remark of Richard Nixon to reporters in 1974: "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead".

The remainder of the show consists of three recordings from the third session of the first day of the 2015 symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, organized by Helen Caldicott. We begin with academic Greg Mello, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group on "The Role And Funding Of The US Nuclear Weapons Labs". He notes that the nuclear complex is extremely profitable and that it appears to have successfully removed any autonomy of the US government in decisions pertaining to nuclear matters. Next we hear Bob Alvarez of the Institute of Policy Studies, whose talk entitled "Lateral Proliferation Could Trigger a Nuclear Holocaust", who terms the US nuclear weapons program "a very large and expensive cargo cult". We conclude with Robert Parry of Consortium News on "Ukraine and the Human Factor: How propaganda and passion can risk nuclear conflagration" who looks at the efforts surrounding the Ukraine coup to re-ignite the cold war.

Thanks to TUC Radio for the introduction of the Elaine Scarry talk and to Dale Lehman for recording the symposium and posting the recordings to Radio4All.Net.

Robin Upton
- e-mail: unwelcome [At] unwelcome Guests [d0t] net
- Homepage: www.unwelcomeguests.net/709

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech