KPFA

  • Let’s all join the fight for freedom

    Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader who rose to prominence in the Montgomery bus boycott (and who contributed the program Freedom Road to Pacifica’s history), speaks to 400 high school students at the 1962 American Friends Service Committee conference on goals for young Americans and the Black’s struggle for racial equality. Reverend…

  • Disposable patriots : an interview with Jack Terrell ; interviewed by Dennis Bernstein.

    Dennis Bernstein interviews Terrell, a former Contra military trainer and mercenary who worked with Enrique Bermudez in Honduras. Terrell, who went to Honduras for what he calls patriotic reasons, discovered upon arrival a criminal enterprise engaged in drug dealing, slave trading, and mass rape. Disgusted by these revelations, Terrell subsequently turned whistle-blower.|DISPOSABLE PATRIOTS: AN INTERVIEW…

  • The Criminal aspects of the Reagan-bush years / Joseph P. Trento ; interviewed by Dennis Bernstein.

    Joseph Trento, with the National Security News Service, discusses how the CIA got into a position of power, starting with the Truman administration up through the Bush Presidency. He begins with the origins of the CIA during World War II under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Its original function was to gather and evaluate…

  • Threats to our democracy / Noam Chomsky.

    Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, speaks about American concepts of Democracy, tracing the development of those ideas. |r.1. modern propaganda; the anti-war attitudes of 1916; slander toward Germans; liberal democrat participation in propaganda, such as Walter Lippman and Rhinehold Nebor; the breakup of the labor movement during the Great Depression; decline of unions…

  • The High cost of victory / Michael Parenti.

    Michael Parenti, author of “Democracy for the Few,” “The Sword and the Dollar,” and “Make Believe: The Politics of the Entertainment Media,” speaks on the United States reaction to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the resulting Gulf War, 1990-1991. He examines: the false use of historical examples to justify war; the misrepresentation of…

  • Personal activism, environmental solutions, and ending war / Helen Caldicott.

    Talk by Dr. Helen Caldicott, environmentalist, anti-nuclear activist and opponent to the Gulf War, 1990-1991. She examines the aggressiveness of the United States government, male dominance which promotes war priorities which dominate Third World affairs, exploitation of world resources, control of the media to ignore domestic economic and environmental issues, and the use of money…

  • Black history : early African-American presences in America, and the historic role of African Queens / Ivan Van Sertima ; interviewed by Bari Scott and Paris Williams.

    Dr. Ivan Van Sertima provides an historical view of Africa. He lists African achievements in medicine, mathematics and astronomy, and explains the transformation of the great African empires as a result of colonization. he goes on to documents parallels between African and Latin American civilizations: pyramids, papers, scripts, rituals, and royal paraphernalia. He concludes by…

  • Water on a duck / Oliver North ; interviewed by Larry Bensky.

    Interview with Oliver North, former advisor to Ronald Reagan and main participant in the Iran-Contra scandal. He pleads lack of knowledge and 5th Amendment to specific questions concerning: Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Bolend Amendment, John Hull, the Kerry Commission, Manuel Noriega and Ronald Reagan.|WATER ON A DUCK / Oliver North| interviewed by Larry Bensky.…

  • Voodoo economics and class welfare / Michael Parenti.

    Voodoo economics, a term coined in 1980 by Republican Presidential candidate George Bush about his then opponent Ronald Reagan. Bush became Vice President and stopped mentioning Voodoo economics, but instead began to practice supply-side economics. Parenti describes the federal tax system as biased against the poor, and points out that Bush pushes for cuts in…

  • Keep the hope alive : the measure of character / Jesse Jackson.

    Speech by Reverend Jesse Jackson which points to a fundamental lack of national vision in the American political system. Most United States cities are in fiscal crisis. There are no public works or public investment. Yesterdays middle class are todays working poor. The misplacement of government spending is obvious when one compares the tuition at…