The Green Planet Monitor Podcast Por David Kattenburg arte de portada

The Green Planet Monitor

The Green Planet Monitor

De: David Kattenburg
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Listen, Read, Watch2017-23 Earth Chronicle Productions Ciencia Ciencias Biológicas Ciencias Sociales Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • Wanted Man

    Wanted Man
    Sep 3 2023
    GPM # 26 Youth and protest. These are words that go together well. Older folks protest too. Many have been doing it for years. Michael Polanyi was in his twenties when he committed his first act of public disobedience. I recall walking into a room back then, seeing Michael getting his blood drawn. It would end up getting tossed on an outer wall of the Canadian Department of War, in protest against low-level jet fighter training in Labrador, over indigenous Innu land. Fast forward. Michael is now sixty, and still protesting. Just the other day, worried about wildfires sweeping across Canada – thousands of them, devastating splendid forests; sending colossal volumes of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere – Michael hopped into a car, drove over to a big highway outside Ottawa, and … Well, listen to Michael tell the story in today’s podcast. Click ‘play’ above, or go here. Michael Polanyi studied engineering, physics, political science and ecology at various Canadian universities. He was an assistant professor of health studies at the University of Regina. He’s particularly interested in participatory action research, where people design and implement research on matters that affect them. Climate protest in Ottawa Canadian musicians hungry for air play (fame and fortune, if they’re lucky) head down to the USA. Marcel Soulodre did. A native of St. Boniface, Manitoba, Winnipeg’s Francophone sister city, Marcel spent a few years in Louisiana and toured the States extensively. Then, in search of deeper roots, he moved to lovely Strasbourg, France, on the German border. Johnny Cash is huge in this part of the world, and Marcel Soulodre channels Johnny Cash very well. Here’s a story about Marcel – aka M. Soul. Click on the ‘play’ button on top, or go here. And check out Marcel’s tour dates here. M. Soul wows Epfig crowd (David Kattenburg) Are you disenchanted with politics? Do politicians turn you off? You’re not the only one. Vote for me, they shout, promising the moon and stars. They slag other politicians, yelling at each other in their chambers. Some of them take money from powerful corporations. When they’re through with politics, into some corporate law firm or directors board they go. Sure, most politicians are honest and conscientious, but their congresses and parliaments are poorly equipped to solve huge, complex challenges like climate change, that require unity, consensus, imagination and courage. Courtesy Citizens’ Assembly, Dublin On the other hand, citizens’ assemblies, made up of ordinary people from all walks of life, are much better suited to problem-solving in dark times. I spoke about citizens’ assemblies with Ansel Herz, Communications Director for an organization that promotes them — DemocracyNext. Listen to our conversation. Click on the play button on top, or go here. Thanks to Dan Weisenberger for his wonderful guitar instrumentals.
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    59 m
  • The First 9-11

    The First 9-11
    Sep 9 2023
    GPM # 27 Fifteen months after the US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning fifty years of abortion rights, millions of American women and girls face deteriorating access to reproductive health care. This is the finding of a group of human rights experts, communicated in a recent letter to the US government. Abortion services are now banned in fifteen US states, and sharply restricted in seven. So are a host of other fundamental rights, the experts say: to privacy, bodily integrity, autonomy, freedom of thought and conscience. Disadvantaged women and girls have been especially hard hit. Health care providers have been chilled, even in States where abortion is still legal. Threats of violence are common. And, law enforcement officials are using electronic data to track and pursue women. Reem Alsalem was the lead author of the letter. Alsalem is Special UN Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. I reached Reem Alsalem in Amman, Jordan. Listen to our conversation. Tap the podcast play button on top, or go here. Listen to our complete conversation here: It’s that time of year again – time to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of 9-11. Also time to commemorate the first 9-11, fifty years ago. On September 11, 1973, in a brutal coup backed by the CIA, Chile’s democratically elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende, was ousted, then killed. Over the following weeks, a hundred thousand Chileans would be detained in Santiago’s national stadium. Thousands were tortured, killed outright or disappeared. All under the beneficent gaze of the Nixon Administration and its foreign policy chief, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. North of the US border, Canadian officials were also pleased. Indeed, in cooperation with Washington, Pierre Trudeau’s government helped destabilize Chile’s economy. Yves Engler has written extensively about Canadian involvement in the Chilean coup. Here and here and here. Engler is a Montreal-based writer and political commentator. Listen to our conversation. Tap the podcast play button on top, or go here. Listen to our complete conversation here: Imagine an entire nation of imprisoned people. Thousands behind bars. Millions more within their own communities, hemmed in by walls, checkpoints and armed colonists, and a panoply of regulations restricting their movement; constantly surveilled; their most intimate details and relationships digitized; blackmailed into informing on each other. Instructions to Bethlehem Palestinians (David Kattenburg) This is the situation in Israeli-occupied Palestine. The numbers are startling. Since Israel’s conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, almost a million Palestinians have been jailed – most of them inside Israel, in flagrant breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Tens of thousands without charge; and children, routinely subjected to what experts call torture. In a recent report to the UN Human Rights Council, Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in occupied Palestine, laid out Israel’s carceral system in graphic detail – a system she says has turned occupied Palestine into a “constantly surveilled open-air panopticon.” Listen to our conversation. Tap the podcast play button on top, or go here. Listen to our complete conversation here: Thanks to Dan Weisenberger for his fabulous guitar instrumentals.
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    Menos de 1 minuto
  • Gut Microbes & Hospital Wine

    Gut Microbes & Hospital Wine
    Sep 16 2023
    GPM # 28 You are what you eat, so they say. As it happens, the trillions of bacteria living in your gut eat what you eat, and turn meals into molecules that boost your health and spirit – if you feed them well. I spoke about the gut microbiome with Genelle Lunken-Healey. Healey specializes in the influence of dietary fibre on gut bacteria. She’s a registered dietitian and Assistant Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Nutrition at the University of British Columbia. Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast edition. Click on the play button on top, or go here. Trillions of bacteria live in your gut. What you eat, they eat. Gut microbes enjoy a balanced diet, with lots of fiber, fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts. They also enjoy good drink. How about alcohol? It’s a question science has been debating for years. Of course, moderation is always advised. Is a glass or two of red wine actually good for your health? Or will it send you on a trip to the hospital? If you live in Strasbourg, France, it may well. Strasbourg Civic Hospital is one of France’s oldest medical institutions – as large as a small town, with a staff of over ten thousand. In the basement of the hospital’s administration building, there’s a wine cellar. Here, the finest wines from France’s Alsace region are available at a reasonable cost. Wine casks cleaning (David Kattenburg) Strasbourg’s Cave Historique des Hospices is a tourist destination – and you don’t have to buy wine. You can just wander through the cool, dimly-lit cellar, gawking at giant oak casks and reading about how the hospital got into the wine business six hundred years ago. Paying for health care was what it was all about. The hospital’s wealthiest patients forked out gold. Others handed paid with livestock, houses … or vineyards. Over time, the hospital became one of Alsace’s biggest vineyard owner. Groundwater levels are high in Strasbourg. So, like the city’s famous cathedral, the Civil Hospital’s wine cellar is supported by pillars built atop tree trunks up to five meters tall. “Fondacion sur pilotis,” the system is called. Along the walls of the cellar, huge oak casks filled with wines produced by twenty-seven vintners from across Alsace. All of the region’s illustrious vintages are here: Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Sylvaner, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Auxerrois. Also a pair of unusual cépages: Klevinger de Heiligenstein, from the village of Heiligenstein, thirty kilometers southwest of Strasbourg, and from the village of Ammerschwihr, a short drive west of Colmar, Alsace’s only blended grand cru, Grand Cru Kaefferkopf: sixty percent gewurtztraminer and forty percent of other grape types. Sticking out of each cask – a shiny spigot that opens with a “paradise key.” Alsatian vintners have paid for these casks to be refurbished. Still, storage costs must be covered. This is where the cellar’s wine shop comes in. Upon maturation, a small percentage of the wines in the Civic Hospital’s cellar will be bottled for sale. Some physicians are uncomfortable with the arrangement. But fine wines are prestigious in France – none more so than the 540 year-old wine stored at the very end of the Civic Hospital’s cellar — an Alsatian white wine from 1472. Behind a heavily locked steel gate, five hundred liters of the precious fluid sit tranquilly in a specially-built oak cask. Thibaut Baldinger and cask of very old wine Nearby, an enormous oak cask lies on its side. It’s empty now, but once contained twenty-six thousand liters of Pommard — enough to fill 34,000 bottles. Through a hallway and into another room, something most tourists don’t visit. Here, hundreds of years ago, corpses were dissected by doctors and students — many of them who’d just been executed by drowning at Strasbourg’s nearby Pont Corbeau. Strasbourg Civic Hospital’s historic wine cellar is open to visitors from 8:30 till 5:30, Mondays to Fridays; Saturdays till noon. Listen to this story in today’s podcast edition. Click on the play button on top, or go here. Thibaut Baldinger serves up a glass of chilled Alsatian cremant (David Kattenburg) A much darker story: In the annals of racist terrorism, few acts were more hideous or cowardly than the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Sixty years ago — shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 15, 1963 — nineteen sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device blew out a hole two-meters wide in the eighty year-old church’s back wall, and a half meter-deep hole in its basement. The blast knocked a passing motorist from his car, blew out windows blocks away and could be heard and felt across town. Five girls were in the church’s basement at the time, preparing for a sermon entitled “A Rock That Will Not Roll.” Four were killed: Carol Denise McNair was eleven. Addie May Collins, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Cynthia ...
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    56 m
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