Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
Genocide Gentry: The Genocide Gentry Project exposes the executives and board members of major weapons companies who also hold prestigious and powerful positions at museums, cultural organizations, universities & hospitals - the deeply embedded power structure undergirding institutional decisions on how to respond to the genocide in Gaza. The site is a project of the Public Accountability Initiative--also known as LittleSis (the opposite of Big Brother)--along with the Adalah Justice Project and the Action Center on Race and the Economy. Frann Michel talks with Munira Lokhandwala, Director of Technology and Training with Little Sis, about the Genocide Gentry, Little Sis, and the value of researching networks of social-political-economic power in order to strengthen campaigns and liberatory movements. LittleSis hosts a database, publishes research, and offers monthly trainings for organizers interested in building research skills.
The Problems with Polls: If you’re following the polls obsessively, you’re putting your faith in a phenomenon that does more to undermine democracy than enhance it. So argues Samuel Earle in his recent review of a book by G. Elliott Morris, called Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them. Earle’s review of Morris’s work appeared in the New York Review of Books on October 17, titled The Problems with Polls. The Moles’ Well Read Red, Patricia Kullberg, reads excerpts from Morris’s review. In part one of the reading, Morris argues that polling is closely intertwined with the profit motive while claiming to be a democratizing force, that it dangerously simplifies complex issues, that polling itself influences public opinion in potentially disastrous ways, and suffers from persistent biases and blind spots. Part two, which will air on November 4, will examine polling’s symbiotic relationship to the press and how it is driven by the need for drama and conflict.
False Promises of the “Nuclear Renaissance”: In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker take up the current push by Amazon, Google and Microsoft to unite BIg Tech and Small Nuclear to satisfy their corporations' voracious appetites for electricity. Business journals herald this new deployment of nuclear power as good for the environment and very good for investors. Jan and Mike unpack the obscene falsehoods behind the campaign and the perpetual promises of a "nuclear renaissance."
In Memoriam: “I got involved in climate change organizing in particular because it seemed to me it was the overwhelming issue facing the world right now.” In this 2017 interview, Lowen Berman (1942-2024), who came of age as a Jewish labor organizer involved in Civil Rights organizing in Chicago in the 1960s, talks about organizing with Rising Tide to block megaloads headed for the Tar Sands, and about the deep sense of urgency around climate change that led him, in his late 70s, to put his body on the line in direct actions to hold The Thin Green Line against fossil fuels and climate collapse. And he talks about the need for a Marshall Plan to shift the U.S. away from planet-killing fossil fuels. Produced by Desiree Hellegers in collaboration with The Thin Green Line is People’s History Project. A memorial for Lowen Berman is being held on Saturday, Oct 26, 2024 10:00 AM Pacific Time
In person: Multnomah Friends Meeting, 4312 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97215
Zoom Link: Meeting ID: 856 7849 9841 Passcode: 558449
- KBOO