Les AuCoin represented Oregon’s 1st Congressional District from 1975 to 1992. At the age of 32, he was the first Democrat to do so since 1936. After serving 18 years, he gave up his seat to run for the US Senate against incumbent Republican Senator Bob Packwood, who although winning that race, resigned under threat of expulsion in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault of women emerged.
In this interview he shares his thoughts and experiences as one of the first cohort to be seated after Richard Nixon’s resignation under threat of impeachment in 1974, “The Watergate Babies.”
It was recorded on December 18,1019, as the US House of Representatives was impeaching Donald J. Trump .
Born in the Civil Rights era of the Southern U.S., Susan Neiman has spent most of the last four decades in Berlin. She is the Director of The Einstein Forum. Her latest book is Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Among the many things she reminds us of in her book is that the Nazi regime lasted only 12 years – from 1933 to 1945. Likewise, the period we call “Reconstruction” also lasted only 12 years from 1865 to 1877. She quotes her colleague, the late Tony Judt: the historian’s task (is) “to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well-organised society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves”.
What can Americans learn from the Germans about confronting and moving on from our racist past toward more social justice? Susan Neiman has much to share of what she has learned from the Germans.
What can we learn of what Southerners have done and are doing to heal the wounds of our past? Susan has much to share of what she has learned in Mississippi and Alabama.
Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host. He’s a New York Times bestselling, 4-times Project Censored Award-winning author of 24 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Among his many books are Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It; Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” – And How You Can Fight Back; Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom Hartmann’s book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, to make the movie “The 11th Hour” (in which he appears). His latest books are in his Hidden History Series: The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment and The Hidden History of The Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, both published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. In it, Thom Hartmann address questions such as Why did the founders create the Supreme Court? What is judicial review – and how does it make the Supreme Court what thomas Jefferson, post-1803 – a despotic branch? How does the history of the US Constitution explain the Court’s frequent decisions in favor of the wealthy and corporations? The HAS the Court sided with popular opinion – and how have people successfully challenged the Court in the past? How did a 20th Century coalition of business and billionaires seize control of the American government, including the Supreme Court? How did America’s great democratic experiment end in a functional oligarchy? Most important, how can we change course in time to address the planetary crisis of climate change?
University of Notre Dame History professor, Darren Dochuk is the author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plainfolk religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, which has received numerous prizes and awards. He has also co-edited several other books in American history, including most recently, The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States. His most recent book is ANOINTED WITH OIL: HOW CHRISTIANITY AND CRUDE MADE MODERN AMERICA, published by Basic Books.
“Power is never so overwhelming that there’s no room for resistance.” Henry Giroux
In this interview with Professor Henry Giroux, we discuss his latest book, THE TERROR OF THE UNFORESEEN, published by LARB Provocations, from The Los Angeles Review of Books. Just the latest of over 65 books he has written.
Henry Giroux is the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest & The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. The Toronto Star has named him one of the 12 Canadians Changing the Way We Think. He has also been named in Routledge’s Key Guides as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period. He is on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly journals. He is on the Board of Directors for Truthout.
Henry Giroux is a regular contributor to a number of online journals including Truthout, Truthdig, and CounterPunch. He has published in journals including Social Text, Third Text, Cultural Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Theory, Culture, & Society, and Monthly Review.
His primary research areas are: cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education. He is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neoliberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe.
Since the death in 1967, of Koch patriarch, Fred Koch,
Charles Koch has governed the private corporation, Koch Industries, influencing the economy and politics of the United States as few individuals have ever done in history.
An early, lucrative investment was the acquisition of the Pine Bend Refinery, a “cash cow” for the Kochs for over 50 years. Conflicts with labor unions and violations of environmental laws marked Koch management of Pine Bend
In Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America (Simon & Schuster, 2019), business journalist, Christopher Leonard, delves deeply into the history of the Koch family and businesses, whose products are foundational to the U.S. economy – from fertilizer for food to energy for transportation, industry and homes, to the fibers we wear and more.
Among its numerous acquisitions over the past 50 years, Georgia-Pacific was one of its biggest, affecting many communities, including Ft. Bragg, CA. The former mill site was bought from Koch Industries by the City of Ft. Bragg. Many are concerned about the toxic residues, including lead, arsenic, dioxin and PCBs.
“…the US military has conducted thousands of experiments exploring the use of ticks and tick-borne diseases as biological weapons, and in some cases, these agents escaped into the environment. The government needs to declassify the details of these open air bioweapons tests, so that we can begin to repair the damage these pathogens are inflicting on humans and animals in the ecosystem.”
Those are the words written by award-winning science writer at Stanford University, Kris Newby, in her scrupulously researched and referenced, controversial new book, BITTEN: THE SECRET HISTORY OF LYME DISEASE AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, published by Harper Wave, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Kris Newby has two degrees in engineering, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah and a master’s degree from Stanford University.
She was the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. Previously, she was a technology writer for Apple and other Silicon Valley companies.
In 1951, Swiss born scientist, Willy Burgdorfer began working at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, where he began researching ticks and tick-borne diseases. He began working with the US Biological Weapons program at Forth Detrick, MD. In 1981, Willy Burgdorfer discovered the spirochete, Borrelia brugdorferi, believed to cause Lyme Disease.
The area around the Long Island Sound where the sudden outbreak of three unusual tick-borne diseases – Lyme Disease, first identified near the township of Lyme, CT; Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a bacterial disease; and Babesiosis, a disease caused by a malaria-like parasite. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is pinpointed.
The feeding apparatus of a female Ixodes ricinus. (Courtesy of Dania Richter, Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, Germany)
