The unfolding level of violence in the Middle East, and the resulting increases in oil prices have grabbed everyone's attention. Many of us must feel a sense of helplessness since our nationally elected officials lack credibility to come up with solutions, and our engrained national power structures only reinforce this status quo.
I thought I would share 3 excellent resources, radio listening opportunities that provide useful diagnoses and solutions.
The first is a radio interview on Wisconsin Public Radio with John Dean, who some of you may remember as the lawyer who was counsel to President Richard Nixon. Dean went on to testify about his knowledge of the Watergate coverup, which eventually contributed to Nixon's impeachment. He has written a new book, Conservatives Without Conscience. You can listen to an interesting interview about this book here:
http://www.wpr.org, then go to Kathleen Dunn, July 14, 2006. I haven't read the book, but the interview is worthwhile by itself. Dean says the Republican Party, and much of our discourse, has been taken over by authoritarian conservatives, bullies by any other name. I'd argue that these kinds of dominating people are present in all too many settings. Meryl Streep, in the movie The Devil Wore Prada, gives one other current example of authoritarianism. We need to learn to recognize such authoritarian behavior in our own communities, and learn alternatives to such immature, uncivilized behavior.
Enter the second great listen on my list, which is Marshall Rosenberg's interview on new dimentions radio http://www.newdimensions.org. For a limited time, you can listen to this interview for free, so hurry! Marshall Rosenberg is the author of Speak Peace in a World of Conflict. A Ph.D. psychologist, he has spent 40 years traveling the globe, teaching different people the principles of nonviolent communication. If ever there was a skill that each of us could learn to change the world, this is it.
If war, conflict, global warming, and higher prices at the gas pump haven't already convinced you of the need to begin a massive program on renewable energy, then you need to listen to the interview with Dr. Albert Bartlett, on the Global Public Media site http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/... ). Bartlett is a retired physics professor, living in Boulder. He examines the arithmetic of steady growth, applied to population, oil and coal. I already believe that we are close to peak oil, but I never realized how little leverage new discoveries could give us, and how finite coal supplies were as well. Listen to this interview to educate yourself, then educate other people. We need to get going on this NOW.