If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

Register to watch a 7:00 to 8:30 pm EST webinar on Zoom featuring remarks by Dr. Helen Caldicott and Martin Sheen. Dr. Caldicott will introduce the 1983 Academy Award-winning film “If You Love This Planet” about the effects of nuclear war, and discuss the present Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. President John F. Kennedy’s American University address on world peace will also be shown. Dr. Caldicott will answer questions from the Zoom audience.

Register here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlc-qrqTMoHtWKsHBFPpvEEpaTayxERpFE#/registration

Event sponsored by the JFK Peace Committee and the Community Church of Boston.

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In this episode, we hear more presentations from the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium held at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City in February 2015. Some of the speeches include visuals which can be seen by watching the presentations in streaming format on the official conference hosting site. Since the conference, U.S. politicians and mainstream media have only amplified the reignited hatred of Russia, particularly president Vladimir Putin, and made nuclear war more likely. Read Demonization of Putin as “Personally” Behind Clinton Hack Is Old Propaganda Technique, Mikhail Gorbachev: Appears ‘The World Is Preparing for War’ and Thanks, Trump. Doomsday Clock Now Two and a Half Minutes to Midnight.

First up is Steven Starr, Associate of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and Senior Scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility. Hear Dr. Caldicott’s 2010 interview with Starr. Visit Starr’s website NuclearDarkness.org to learn more about the consequences of nuclear war, nuclear winter and how nuclear weapons explosions would irreparably harm the global climate. In Starr’s presentation, “Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event,” he explains how nuclear war would be the crime to end all crimes, and would mean the end of all human life on earth. Among the issues addressed are the phenomenon of nuclear winter, why political leaders by and large do not discuss nuclear war, and the lack of Read the rest of this entry »

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In this program, we hear the first series of speakers at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, a two-day symposium organized by If You Love This Planet host Dr. Helen Caldicott at The New York Academy of Medicine last year. With the continuing revival of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the presentations are still timely. Read the June 2016 article by Noam Chomsky, The Doomsday Clock: Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change and the Prospects for Survival, the May 2016 article U.S., NATO Look to Combat an Aggressive Russia, the April 2016 article Inevitability: Nuclear War is Coming and the February 2016 story Russia-NATO relations have fallen to new Cold War level – Russian PM. Some of the presentations include visuals which can be seen by watching the presentations in streaming format on the official conference hosting site.

In her introductory remarks, Dr. Caldicott tells the audience how her concern about accidental nuclear war was raised by reading a 2014 article on Read the rest of this entry »

TUC Radio recently aired
Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This special two-part If You Love This Planet feature, The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?, comes courtesy of TUC. Listen to Part One here and listen to Part Two here. To hear other programs produced by TUC, visit this page. Here is TUC Radio’s description of the program:

“On October 8, 2014, the life long antinuclear campaigner and author Helen Caldicott addressed the National Press Club Newsmakers in Washington, DC. She said Read the rest of this entry »

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Renowned journalist Bob Herbert interviews Dr. Helen Caldicott at The New School in New York, November 2012.
Dr. Caldicott discusses her latest book, Loving This Planet (The New Press, Oct. 2012) which features 25 interviews from “If You Love This Planet,” as well as the state of the earth and U.S. presidential election (held two days before this interview). Among the topics covered are the urgency of addressing global Read the rest of this entry »

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This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s March 31, 2011 lecture in Hanover, New Hampshire, three weeks after the Japan earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima nuclear power plant. She discusses the dangers of radioactive elements and the future of the planet. Note: Dr. Caldicott is convening a two-day international symposium on the medical and ecological effects of Fukushima on March 11 and 12, 2013 at the New York Academy of Medicine. The public is welcome. Details at nuclearfreeplanet.org. At the start of her lecture, Dr. Caldicott refers to the book Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. She also mentions her appearance on Democracy Now, debating George Monbiot, after Fukushima. Later in the talk, she refers to Read the rest of this entry »

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Subhankar Banerjee is an Indian-born American photographer, writer and activist. Over the past decade he has been a leading international voice on issues of arctic conservation, indigenous human rights and global warming, and over the past five years he has also been focusing on forest deaths from global warming. His photographs and writing have reached tens of millions of people around the world through exhibitions, publications and public lectures. His new book is called Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. At the start of this interview, Dr. Caldicott refers to a September 2012 report of a massacre of members of the Yanomami Indian Tribe of the Amazon. A week after this program was recorded, the report was found to be false, yet the general situation of native Read the rest of this entry »

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In this conversation recorded in June, Dr. Caldicott talks with California anti-nuclear activist, Marion Pack. Pack is one of many members of the Orange County community who highlight serious safety issues with the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, located a few miles south of San Clemente, California. If San Onofre were to melt down, it would contaminate Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and make large regions of southern California uninhabitable forever. As background, read Shut down San Onofre: The continuing nuclear threat to southern California and Bad Vibrations: San Onofre steam generators cannot safely be repaired – new Fairewinds video and report. Topics addressed in the interview include nuclear waste, the 1980s Nuclear Read the rest of this entry »

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This week’s guest is Tom Engelhardt, creator of the TomDispatch.com website, a project of the Nation Institute, a non-profit media center based in New York, where he is a fellow. Englehardt is the author of two collections of his TomDispatch columns: The United States of Fear and The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, as well as The End of Victory Culture, a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. Another of his recent books Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare 2001-2050, which he co-authored with Nick Turse. Note: This particular interview was recorded in summer 2012, before the November election. Topics discussed include the Read the rest of this entry »

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This week’s guest is Holly Barker, author and teacher at the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Barker worked for the Republic of the Marshall Islands Government’s Embassy in Washington D.C. for 17 years, helping conduct research in the Marshall Islands about the effects of nuclear testing from a Marshallese perspective. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Marshall Islands from 1988-1990, and lived on a remote outer island with a Marshallese family for two years while teaching in a local elementary school. Barker is the author of Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World (which just came out in second edition), and co-authored with Dr. Barbara Rose Johnston an award-winning book called Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report. During the interview, Barker mentions the activism of Dr. Neal Palafox. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s 2011 interview with Dr. Palafox. Dr. Caldicott recommends listeners watch the documentary film Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1

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This week’s special guest is Brian Daizen Victoria, Professor of Japanese Studies and director of a program at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio titled: Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions. Apart from numerous journal articles, Victoria’s major writings include Zen at War; Zen War Stories; an autobiographical work in Japanese and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji. In this discussion, Dr. Caldicott and Victoria look at the evolution of Buddhism in Japan including its role in Japan’s militarism in World War II, how individuals in societies can be gripped by tribalistic thinking or embrace a universalist point of view, death and dying, why men kill, and the moral choices we all face in a time when nuclear war still threatens everyone, and other profound questions. Victoria refers to the film Joyeux Noël [note: the website has a clickable English-language version].

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This week’s guest is Jay Harman, entrepreneur and inventor. Harman has taken a hands-on approach to his lifelong fascination with natural fluid systems. In the process, he has grown companies that design innovative products, ranging from prize-winning watercraft called the WildThing and the Goggleboat, to a medical research company that developed a non-invasive technology for measuring blood glucose, to his latest company, PAX Scientific. Born and raised in Australia, Harman’s love of nature began as a boy swimming in the ocean near his home. He began his career as a naturalist with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, but he quickly demonstrated talents as an inventor. While still with the Australian government, Read the rest of this entry »

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This week, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Professor Wayne Getz, and ecologist and population biologist with the Getz Lab at University of California at Berkeley. Students and postdoctoral students in the lab work on a broad range of theoretical and applied questions in population biology and behavior with application to problems in epidemiology and conservation and wildlife biology, particularly in Africa. This conversation was recorded in June, but has many important points relevant to Hurricane Sandy, which caused unprecedented destruction in the U.S. this week. Dr. Caldicott asks Getz to discuss the recent article the Getz Lab produced, Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere.

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This week, Dr. Helen Caldicott speaks with Sydney-based peace activist Donna Mulhearn, an author, former journalist and political adviser. She was a human shield in the war in Iraq in 2003 and later returned to Iraq as a humanitarian aid worker. Mulhearn was part of an international team of volunteers that established a small NGO “Our Home - Iraq’ which set up a shelter for street kids in Baghdad, a center for traumatized children and provided emergency aid to displaced families. During this time she witnessed the massacre of Fallujah in April 2004, survived constant bombing, being kidnapped by fighters, and being shot at by American soldiers. In 2004- 2005, Mulhearn spent four months in the West Bank of Palestine as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. During these years she continually wrote reports and reflections called pilgrim notes, which were distributed widely around Australia and the world. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s June 2010 interview with Mulhearn.

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This week’s guest is Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, an organization which has steadily researched consequences of drone attacks, night raids and aerial bombings in Afghanistan. Risking imprisonment, they frequently protest U.S. government plans to continue U.S. military presence in Afghanistan until 2024 and beyond. Drawing from recent experiences living for a month at a time in Afghanistan, Kelly frequently speaks and writes about perspectives of Afghan Peace Volunteers. They have told her and her companions their thoughts about prospects for their future in relation to NATO and the U.S. 21st Century military. Kelly previously lived alongside ordinary Iraqis whenever she and other Voices activists traveled there to break the U.S./UN economic sanctions against Iraq. They remained in Iraq throughout the Shock and Awe bombing in 2003 and during the initial months of U.S. occupation.

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Dr. Caldicott’s guest this week is David Freeman, a senior advisor with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign. Freeman has more than four decades of experience directing federal, regional and local energy policies. He was appointed chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, where he stopped the construction of eight large nuclear power plants and pioneered a massive energy conservation program. Subsequently, Freeman served for two decades as general manager of several large public power agencies including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the New York Power Authority and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. He is a renowned expert on clean energy, efficiency and the risks of nuclear power.

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This week’s special guest on If You Love This Planet is Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote systemic solutions to today’s social and environmental crises. Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, and has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than 30 years. Trained in linguistics, she has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared on broadcast, print, and online media worldwide, including MSNBC, The London Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian. Her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, or ‘Little Tibet’, earned her the Right Livelihood Award, or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and her book, Ancient Futures, along with a film of the same title, has been translated into more than 40 languages. For more resources relevant to this interview, visit theeconomicsofhappiness.org.

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This week, we play a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s 2011 interview with Ann Wright, a diplomat and retired U.S. Army colonel. Col. Wright is also a peace activist and co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience, published by Koa books in 2007. She holds a Master’s degree in Law, and a Master’s degree in National Security Affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. In 1987, Col. Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone. Read the rest of this entry »

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This week, Dr. Caldicott talks to Chris Maser, author and international consultant in forest ecology and sustainable forestry practices. Trained primarily as a vertebrate zoologist, Maser has spent over 25 years as a research scientist in natural history and ecology, including positions as a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management for thirteen years from 1974 the last eight studying old-growth forests in western Oregon and a landscape ecologist with the Environmental Protection Agency for one year in 1990. Maser is the author of Resolving Environmental Conflicts and Decision-Making for a Sustainable Environment: Read the rest of this entry »