Monthly Archives: January 2023

George Monbiot REGENESIS: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet

George Monbiot’s latest book is Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, published by Penguin Books.

Since the 1980s, he has traveled the world doing on-the-ground investigations of how global dominant systems destroy crucial wildlife habitats and displace peoples from their ancestral homelands, while contributing to catastrophic climate change. This has led to his being made persona non grata in seven countries, sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Indonesia, shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked, stung into a coma by hornets, and pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in North-western Kenya from cerebral malaria.

From the first of his 13 books published in 1989, POISONED ARROWS: An Investigative Journey Through the Forbidden Lands of West Papua; to Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding; to his radio programs, and long standing weekly columns in The Guardian, he has informed us in delightful prose through the powerful lens of his political philosophy for social and ecological justice and sanity.

We spoke with him via Skype on January 24, 2023.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Meatball from Long Extinct Mammoth Created by Food Firm https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/28/meatball-mammoth-created-cultivated-meat-firm

Brown gold: the great American manure rush begins https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/02/manure-renewable-natural-gas-california

‘Let them eat lentils’ won’t save us from animal farming – we must embrace meat substitutes https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/01/environmentalists-animal-free-meat-livestock-farming

Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-technology-precision-fermentation-farming

Do we really care more about Van Gogh’s sunflowers than real ones? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/19/van-gogh-sunflowers-just-stop-oil-tactics

It’s democracy v plutocracy – this is the endgame for our planet https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/06/power-wealthy-earth-politics-democracy-plutocracy

The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

From the Amazon to Australia, why is your money funding Earth’s destruction? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/30/amazon-public-money-earth-destruction-fossil-fuels-subsidies

How a violent land seizure story led to my ‘death’ in Brazil https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/31/land-seizure-death-brazil-george-monbiot

My burning shame: I fitted my house with three wood-burning stoves https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/27/wood-burning-stove-environment-home-toxins

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/09/us-world-climate-collapse-nations

To change our future, we should change how we teach history to children https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/18/change-future-teach-history-children

Nate Gowdy INSURRECTION

Seattle photographer, Nate Gowdy, has documented over 340 political events and protests across 25 states. He flew from GA to Washington, D.C. the night before January 6, 2021 to cover the much publicized so-called “Stop the Steal” Rally on the Ellipse.

He was about a mile away and heading to that rally along the national mall, when a couple of hundred Proud Boys marched toward him and the US Capitol from the Rally at 10:45am – hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Having photographed many political events and demonstrations, he recognized some of them, and made the decision to turn and follow them, soon becoming swept along the growing flood of extremists to the very steps of the Capitol.

“10:43:47 am I recognize Ethan Nordean, a notorious Proud Boys brawler from the Seattle area known as ‘Rufio Panman,’ holding a bullhorn. To his left are Zach Rehl of Philadelphia and Joe Biggs of Florida. The three Proud boys lieutenants, each of whom is later charged with seditious conspiracy, lead chants of ‘Fuck Antifa!’ as they trek across the otherwise sparsely populated National Mall.”

His photographic compilation, Insurrection, not only documents the events of that day when our democracy hung by the thinnest of blue lines, but contributes to the art form of war photography in the highest traditions of Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White and Matthew Brady. We spoke with him via Skype on January 11, 2023.

“3:35:18PM – ‘Cowboys for Trump’ founder, Couy Griffin, incites the mob in insurrection. In September 2022, a New Mexico state judge rules that, under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the Otero County Commissioner is disqualified from public office. The decision is the first of its kind since 1869, and the first time that any court rules the events of January 6th, 2021, an insurrection. In August 2022, I travel to Santa Fe to serve as the plaintiffs’ eyewitness in the landmark two-day trial.”

You can find out more about his work here: http://www.nategowdy.com

Clarence Lusane Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy

Professor Clarence Lusane is the interim Chair of Howard University’s Department of Political Science and current Director of the International Affairs program.  For more than 40 years he has written about, and been active in, national and international human rights, anti-racism politics, democracy building, and social justice issues such as education, criminal justice, and voting rights. 
Among his books are The Black History of the White House; Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race, and the New American Century; and Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs.

We spoke with him about his most recent book, Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Struggle for Racial Justice and Democracy, published by City Lights Books.

Nate Gowdy’s book, INSURRECTION, of photos he took on January 6, 2021, as he was swept by a mob of Proud Boys and Three Percenters onto the steps of the US Capitol Building came to my attention. In the second part of today’s Forthright Radio, we share excerpts from an extended interview with Nate Gowdy about his work, and what he experienced that day.

You can hear the extended interview with Nate Gowdy here: https://forthright.media/2023/01/13/nate-gowdy-insurrection/