Patricia Kullberg fills in as host today for the Old Mole, which features these segments:
Chemical Time Bomb: Bill Resnick speaks with John Rumpler, the clean water program director and senior attorney for Environment America, a national organization dedicated to protecting clean air, clean water, and promoting clean energy. Rumpler has spent years investigating the 80,000 chemicals approved for commercial sale in the U.S. and their toxic effects on our health and environment. They discuss the difficulty of winning in court against poisoning our environment, the uneven enforcement of laws against environmental contamination and the inadequate approval process that neglects to examine, for example, the toxic interactions between the chemicals as they are released together into our air, water and soil.
The Well-read Red: A reading from a recent blog by social critic Mike Davis, author of the 2005 book, The Monster at the Door: the Global Threat of Avian Flu, a prescient examination of pandemics in the context of late-stage capitalism. Davis’s piece was recently published on the Haymarket Books blog. Davis analyzes how market-driven health care in the U.S. has rendered the country uniquely vulnerable to the corona virus and applies the lessons of history to predict the likely outcome of the pandemic in the Global South, a topic shamefully neglected by the mainstream media.
Pie in the Sky: Joe Clement digs into the musical history behind some political rhetoric Joe Biden has used against Bernie Sanders lately. Joe will first share some historical audio of wobbly singer song-writer Haywire McClintock discussing how he introduced some of Joe Hill's most famous songs on the streets of Portland 110 years ago. We'll hear the song mentioned, followed by Joe's commentary on the perverse irony of how Joe Hill's anti-capitalist rhetoric ended up in Joe Binden's mouth.
The Great Barrier: A reading of a poem by Barbara Kingsolver, inspired by the burning of Notre Dame one year ago. Kingsolver renders her poem into an ironic commentary on the devastation of global warming.
To hear the whole show, use the play button below; to listen to separate segments, follow the links above.
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- KBOO