It's not about 'peace': interview with Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper of ICAHD, Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, spoke to Tidings from Jerusalem and gave us his take on 'the peace process' in which he makes these points:

1. Israel will never stop the Occupation (they haven't invested in all that infrastructure for nothing).

2. The US problem is not Obama but Congress--it's not just AIPAC but the war-industrial lobby which is actually bigger and stronger than AIPAC.

3. The only hope may come from BDS, the Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement, whose momentum and reach are extending daily, resulting in increasing isolation for the US which will one day be damaging enough to finally bring the message home.

4. He also says he really doesn't know how this thing will end. He can't see that far or around enough corners but believes it will happen sooner or later.

Please listen to his impassioned point of view. It's one that you won't hear in the mainstream media!

Check out this article and his most recent book too.

Tom Damiani: advocate for the birds

Because I don’t know how our society would function without them, I have a particular interest in knowing more about volunteers, why people become volunteers, remain volunteers but you so I interviewed Tom Damiani, who is an especially successful leader of volunteers. As one of volunteers, I got to know Tom this summer.

This is a very local story. Tom is on the board of the North Fork Audubon Society and runs its Endangered Species Program, a project designed to protect the piping plovers and least terns on the North Fork beaches of Long Island.

He talks about an entire life devoted to learning about birds and protecting them. He is a musician which accounts for his ability to capture the songs of numerous birds. Please listen to his story. It's wonderful!

EAARTH: an interview with Bill McKibben

I was honored that Bill McKibben agreed to be interviewed on Tidings from Hazel Kahan and am buoyed by knowing that his message will be heard by radio audiences in Connecticut and Eastern end of Long Island.

Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, writer, educator, research scholar and activist and a significant force in raising our awareness of climate change and in directing international action through his leadership of the 350 movement, the largest grass roots environmental movement in the world. If you want to feel uplifted, please visit his site.

Bill is the author of many books, the first The End of Nature originally published in 1989 and, most recently, in 2010, the book Eaarth, spelled e-a-a-r-t-h with two a’s to distinguish it from the earth we have known. In everything he does, Bill McKibben advocates tirelessly for a kinder relationship between human beings and the planet, whether it is eating local, having smaller families, dismantling our belief that growth is good and arguing against human engineering and the moral and existential threats of a post-human future.

His message today is more urgent than ever.

Welcome, citizens of earth, his web site greets us and introduces us to the new Eaarth. Bill McKibben goes on to say:

We live on a new planet. We’ve built a new earth. Its not as nice as the old one. It’s the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever.

What happens next is up to us.

McKibben then tells us what we can do as he offers us: a guide to living on a fundamentally altered planet.