December 30, 2009, 10:40 pm
The Climate talks in Copenhagen saw mass civil society protests and action on the streets. Demonstrators from all over the world met in Copenhagen to call for immediate necessary and just action on Climate Change. Running tandem to the official Copenhagen Climate program were peoples forums where delegations from third world countries and civil society groups could raise awareness of alternatives to the corporate dominated official outcome.
Simon Butler is a Sydney based analyst and contributor to Green Left Weekly.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 30th of December.
December 30, 2009, 10:31 pm
By any measure the conclusion of the official Copenhagen Climate Talks was a complete failure. A non-legally-binding three page document was produced at the exclusion of global south and civil society input.
Back Story spoke to David Spratt about the official Copenhagen Accord. David is a Melbourne based analyst for Carbon Equity and author of Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action. His personal blog is accessible here.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 30th of December.
December 27, 2009, 1:06 am
Now supplying 25% of imported oil to the United States, Africa has quickly increased in strategic importance to the US. This has lead to an escalation of US military and political presence in the region, a policy formally established with AFRICOM, the United States African Command.
Daniel Volman is the Director of the African Security research Program in Washington, D.C. and a member of the board of directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 23rd of December.
December 17, 2009, 5:56 am
The United States “War on Drugs” has been a disaster if we consider the level of illegal drug use domestically in the US. It is a policy position that tries to find a solution to a domestic problem by looking internationally and has seen continuity across all US Administrations since the inception of the “war” in the 1980’s. One of the tactics that is used is the targeting of so called “source countries” where base ingredients of illicit substances are grown, often intervening in the countries militarily and politically.
James Brittain is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada and the author of Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and direction of the FARC-EP.
Back Story spoke to James about the policy of the US international War on Drugs, specifically in Colombia and the South American region.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 16th of December.
December 17, 2009, 5:54 am
While the United Nations plays an important role in the international community it is often found lacking in the face of countries whose position within the UN’s power structure allows them to act unimpeded by decisions made by the body.
Denis Halliday spent a career at the United Nations in development and humanitarian assistance related posts. In 1997 he was appointed United Nations Assistant Secretary General and Head of the Humanitarian Program in Iraq. One year later, Halliday announced his resignation from the United Nations over the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq and the failure, as he saw it, of the UN effort to bring humanitarian aid to the country.
Back Story spoke with Denis about his experience at the United Nations, his humanitarian work and his campaign to end the sanctions on Iraq both from within and outside the UN system.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 16th of December.
December 11, 2009, 2:29 am
This interview was conducted by Catherine Zengerer for Your Rights at Night, the SA Unions access program that focuses on activist media, work rights and social justice issues and is broadcast 6pm Thursdays on Radio Adelaide.
Catherine spoke to author and historian Humphrey McQueen who was in Adelaide to run a seminar at the Australian Education Union called “Australian Worker’s Paradise: Does it Exist?” on October 29th 2009. You can see his personal website here. Catherine started by asking Humphrey whether an Australian worker’s paradise ever existed.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 9th of December.
December 3, 2009, 10:16 am
Mass civil actions have changed the course of history, notably the blocking of the World Trade Organization’s agenda in Seattle in 1999 an the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference it is clear that a necessary and just outcome will only be achieved through world wide civil-society protests working in solidarity with developing and third world nations that are badly effected by climate change. We will all be worse off under a poor agreement that fails to address issues of global justice in relation to climate change, the extent of emissions targets that need to be set and a series of mechanisms to reach those targets.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster and co-author with her brother David of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, a short anthology looking at how that watershed event has been misrepresented and what we can learn from it.
Sean Robinson started by asking Rebecca to take us back to 1999 Seattle and what the World Trade Organization was hoping to accomplish at the conference.
This interview was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 2nd of December.
