Jul 15, 2019
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a six-hour documentary that originally aired on PBS in 2002. It is based on the best selling book of the same name by Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin. The Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century as well as the process of globalization. Episode One, The Battle of Ideas
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Daniel Yergin– Jul 15, 2019
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a six-hour documentary that originally aired on PBS in 2002. It is based on the best selling book of the same name by Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin. The Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century as well as the process of globalization. Episode One, The Battle of Ideas
Commanding Heights: The Agony of Reform- Episode Two (Official Video)
Daniel Yergin– Jul 15, 2019
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a six-hour documentary that originally aired on PBS in 2002. It is based on the best selling book of the same name by Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin. The Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century as well as the process of globalization. Episode Two, The Agony of Reform
Commanding Heights: The New Rules of the Game- Episode Three (Official Video)
Daniel Yergin– Jul 15, 2019
Commanding
Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a six-hour documentary that originally aired on PBS in 2002. It is based on the best selling book of the same name by Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin. The Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century as well as the process of globalization. Episode Three, The New Rules of the Game
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May 5 2022
TRNN viewers may remember a recent interview we published at the beginning of February in which Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke with retired railway engineer Jeff Kurtz about a US District Court blocking railroad workers at BNSF Railway from striking over the recent implementation of an oppressive new attendance policy. Even if the story has faded from the headlines, the struggles railroad workers are facing have not gone away in the slightest, and workers and their families have reported that BNSF’s “Hi-Viz” policy has been a disaster for them and for the railroad industry. In this crucial follow-up report, Alvarez speaks with Jeff Kurtz and Ron Kaminkow of Railroad Workers United about what workers have been going through since the implementation of this new attendance policy and what can be done about it. Jeff Kurtz was a railway engineer and union member for 40 years. He served as a union officer most of his career, including eight years as president of BLET Local 391 and chairman of the BLET Iowa State Legislative Board, where he oversaw safety and legislative matters for the union in the state for four railroads for 10 years. He retired in 2014 and served as state representative for one term in the Iowa House after winning the 2018 election in his House district. He now works in a volunteer capacity with Railroad Workers United and the local labor chapter of the Iowa Federation of Labor. Ron Kaminkow is currently serving as General Secretary of Railroad Workers United. Prior to hiring out as a brakeman with Conrail in 1996, he served as President of AFSCME Local 634 in Madison, WI. In 2005, Kaminkow helped to found Railroad Operating Crafts United (ROCU), an RWU predecessor. A former brakeman, conductor, and engineer for Conrail and later NS in Chicago, he formerly worked for Amtrak in Milwaukee and Chicago. He currently is working as an Amtrak engineer in Reno, NV, where he is the Vice President of BLET Local 51.
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May 5 2022
America’s Lawyer E03: The Biden Administration is creating a new office at the Department of Homeland Security to monitor misinformation, and the impacts of this program could shut down independent media outlets for good. We’ll bring you the details. Gas prices are still going through the roof – but so are the profits and executive pay at the largest oil companies. Will tell you how these companies have pulled a massive con on the American public. And Republicans are fighting to stop President Biden from getting rid of student loan debt – we’ll tell you why this fight matters. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
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May 5 2022
Beginning in December 1997, Ritter, with the approval of UNSCOM head Richard Butler and other top UNSCOM leaders, began to supply the UK’s foreign intelligence service MI6 with documents and briefings on UNSCOM’s findings to be used for MI6’s propaganda effort dubbed “Operation Mass Appeal”: “I was approached by the British intelligence service, which I had, again, a long relationship with, of an official nature, to see if there was any information in the archives of UNSCOM that could be handed to the British, so that they could in turn work it over, determine its veracity, and then seek to plant it in media outlets around the world, in an effort to try to shape the public opinion of those countries, and then indirectly, through, for instance, a report showing up in the Polish press, shape public opinion in Great Britain and the United States.
“I went to Richard Butler with the request from the British. He said that he supported this, and we initiated a cooperation that was very short-lived. The first reports were passed to the British sometime in February of 1998. There was a detailed planning meeting in June of 1998, and I resigned in August of 1998. […] This is an operation—Operation Mass Appeal, that had been going on prior to UNSCOM being asked to be the source of particular data, and it’s an operation that continued after my resignation.”
In January 1998, Ritter’s inspection team in Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials who stated that information obtained from these sites would be used for future planning of attacks. UN Inspectors were ordered out of Iraq by the United States Government, shortly before Operation Desert Fox attacks began in December 1998, using information which had been gathered for the purpose of disarmament to identify targets which would reduce Iraq’s ability to wage both conventional and possibly unconventional warfare. UN Weapons Inspectors were thereafter denied access to Iraq. Ritter spoke on the Public Broadcasting Service show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons. program.
When the United States and the UN Security Council failed to take action against Iraq for their ongoing failure to cooperate fully with inspectors (a breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154), Ritter resigned from the United Nations Special Commission on August 26, 1998.
In his letter of resignation, Ritter said the Security Council’s reaction to Iraq’s decision earlier that month to suspend co-operation with the inspection team made a mockery of the disarmament work. Ritter later said, in an interview, that he resigned from his role as a United Nations weapons inspector over inconsistencies between United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154 and how it was implemented.
The investigations had come to a standstill, were making no effective progress, and in order to make effective progress, we really needed the Security Council to step in a meaningful fashion and seek to enforce its resolutions that we’re not complying with.
On September 3, 1998, several days after his resignation, Ritter testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and said that he resigned his position “out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq.” Ritter said that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had supposedly “blocked more inspections in 1997 than Saddam Hussein did,” a charge which Albright disputed.
During the testimony on September 3, 1998, Ritter was asked by Senator Joe Biden about his position on inspections, which Biden criticized as “confrontation-based policy.” According to Barton Gellman, Biden questioned if the inspector was trying to “appropriate the power ‘to decide when to pull the trigger’ of military force against Iraq,” with Biden stating that the Secretary of State would also have to consider the opinion of allies, the UNSC, and public opinion, before any potential intervention in Iraq. Later on, Biden stated that the decision was “above [Ritter’s] pay grade.” According to Gellman, Senate Democrats joined Biden and “amplified on the Clinton administration’s counterattack [against] Scott Ritter” with exceptions such as John Kerry, while Senate Republicans “were unanimous in describing Ritter’s disclosures as highly damaging to the credibility of the Clinton administration on one of its core foreign policies.”
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May 5 2022
Plus, a look back at a history-making American pilot Originally published at – https://www.voanews.com/a/internation…
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Democracy Now! – May 5, 2022
We speak to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder about his latest article for The New Yorker, “The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War.” Snyder writes about the colonial history that laid the foundations for the Russian war in Ukraine, such as Russia’s imperial vision and how leaders including Hitler and Stalin have aimed to conquer Ukrainian soil on different premises. “The whole history of colonialism … involves denying that another people is real. It involves denying that another state is real,” says Snyder. “That is, of course, the premise of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
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Democracy Now! – May 5, 2022
This week U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is in Nigeria, where he warned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is leading to a growing hunger crisis in Africa. A new report by Human Rights Watch finds the Russian invasion of Ukraine has worsened food insecurity, particularly for African countries that were already experiencing a hunger crisis. Russia and Ukraine are leading exporters of wheat and other grains, while countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda are among the largest importers. With climate change and trade stalled by the coronavirus pandemic, “all these changes within the availability of food has sent the food prices to new levels,” says Lena Simet, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. Advocates are calling on exporting countries such as the United States and Canada to “open their markets, to not introduce export restrictions, and provide essential grains at an affordable price to humanitarian organizations,” she adds.
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NowThis News Streamed live 32 minutes ago
Attorney General Garland is holding a press conference to discuss issues of environmental injustice in America. He will be joined by EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. Watch live.
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NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED
October 11, 1996
When the Faculty voted three years ago to approve a new concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP), it didn’t expect the concentration to be as popular as it has become.
While organizers of the concentration said they expected about 20 to 25 students, 47 students enrolled in the concentration its first year. That number jumped to 84 in 1994 and 91 in 1995.
This year, the number rose by about 30 percent, to 120 concentrators, and students, faculty and alums praise the concentration for its interdisciplinary nature and the chance it offers to develop a sub-field of expertise.
The concentration has enormous breadth, encompassing coursework in biology, chemistry, earth and planetary science (EPS), government, economics and mathematics.
ESPP concentrators generally say they appreciate the broad base of knowledge of the environment and policy-making they receive from the curriculum.
A few argue, however, that the concentration falls short because its courses are too disparate.
They also say that while it forces students to develop innovative solutions to environmental problems, their answers are not feasible and their exercises are often futile.
Uniting Interests
Despite the Faculty’s near-unanimous vote in approving ESPP, critics warned that the concentration was unnecessary because students could study EPS and take electives in social science areas.
But those concentrating in ESPP say those criticisms are not valid, and cite their foundation in the politics of environmental policymaking as opposed to EPS’s emphasis on the science of the earth.
As the first class of seniors who originally declared ESPP as a concentration approaches graduation, many say ESPP allowed them to unite their interests better than any of the older concentrations would have.
And they add that they are happy with the concentration overall, citing the hands-on approach of the junior tutorial and the opportunity to develop relationships with respected professors as its major strengths.
“[ESPP’s] best successes are the fact that it seems that the faculty really cares about the students and it’s a small enough group that you get specialized attention,” says James S. Castle’97.
Rudd W. Coffey ’97 says he went on a spring-break field trip to Florida last year with the members of his junior tutorial and two professors who insisted that the class call them by their first names.
“ESPP allows you a lot of freedom to design your own program and take courses in different programs and have it count,” he says.
James J. McCarthy, chair and head tutor of ESPP, agrees with Coffey. One of the initial proponents of the concentration, he says he believes it is needed and appreciated by undergraduates.
“There were a number of students who were particularly interested in this interface [between] environmental and policy issues,” he says.
He says that lectures on environmental issues have been given to packed Science Center audiences.
“It’s a strong statement that the interest of young people in the environment is much greater than we thought,” he says. “It’s impossible to ignore us now.”
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Transition Studies 