Doug Allen has served on the faculty in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Maine since 1974. He is a scholar of the phenomenology of religion, and has written and spoken extensively on the application of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy to today’s struggles of violence, war, and peace.

Most recently Doug is the author of the new volume just out from Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, Mahatma Gandhi, a new perspective on Gandhi, which allows us to rethink our basic values and priorities. Please download a flyer for the book with an order form HERE, or visit press.uchicago.edu for more information.

Doug is a founding member of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

Doug spoke October 6, 2011 at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus in Orono as part of the Fall 2011 Socialist and Marxist Studies Thursday series. The main part of the full title of Doug’s talk, Bring Our War $$ Home: 9/11, the Afghanistan War, and the Killing of Osama Bin Laden comes from a project developed in Maine last year by Bruce Gagnon of space4peace.org, the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine and many others. It has broadly been adopted by diverse groups, from Code Pink to the U.S. Conference of mayors. For more information, please visit bringourwardollarshome.org.

Thank you to John Greenman for recording the program.

In November 2009, Mike gave a well-attended talk at the Memorial Union on the U Maine campus entitled Environmental Justice: Sharing the Burdens of Climate Change. Video of that talk has been available HERE.

In this post I am including from the archives an mp3 audio version of the talk and providing THIS LINK (.doc format) to Mike’s original text that was the basis for the talk & newly published chapter. Also, slides used in the talk are of this date still accessible HERE (pdf).

Long before Wikileaks sources provided the confirming documents, independent journalist Dahr Jamail was reporting on the horror of the U.S. war on Iraq, telling the truth about the terror and carnage to anyone who would listen. On September 28, 2006 at 12:30 pm, Dahr Jamail spoke in a crowded room at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine Orono campus. It is this four-year-old podcast I am re-posting here. You should be able to recognize from Dahr’s talk exactly the picture of U.S.-occupation-generated human tragedy and death squad killing now detailed from within by the newly-released material.

An editorial today in the Guardian of London reads,

Many attempts were made to justify the invasion of Iraq, but one of the most frequently and cynically used was that, irrespective of the absence of weapons of mass destruction, putting an end to the barbarities of Saddam Hussein’s regime was a moral imperative. Well, now there is chapter and verse, from ringside seats, on the systematic use of torture by the Iraqi government that the US installed in Saddam’s place. The worst practices of Saddam’s regime did not apparently die with him, and whereas numerous logs show members of the coalition making genuine attempts to stop torture in Iraqi custody, it is clear their efforts were both patchy and half-hearted. In the worst incidents, one can only reasonably conclude that one set of torturers and thugs has been replaced by another.

From the original post:

Dahr Jamail is a rare human being. When he saw that there was a colossal tradgedy unfolding in Iraq, the extent of which barely being reported, he decided to go to work and take on the job of reporting from Iraq himself. Local artist Robert Shetterly has included Dahr Jamail in his stunning exhibit on Americans Who Tell the Truth.

It was a pleasure to meet Dahr Jamail. Please keep his website, http://dahrjamailiraq.com/, on your list of regular reads. It has essential information you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Please download and listen to this extraordinary podcast.

http://www.moomilkco.com./

Welcome WERU listeners who heard the Thanksgiving Day special featuring Aaron Bell and Carly DelSignore of Tide Mill Farm in Edmunds. You may listen here or download the program for your iPod or other audio listening device using the link below (yep, for free).

For more information on Tide Mill Farm, please visit HERE.

MOOMilk is beginning to become available. Click HERE for the MOOMilk page. The most up-to-date information probably is on FaceBook.

This video is a slightly edited 68-minute version of the Thursday November 19, 2009 luncheon talk, Sharing the Burdens of Climate Change, by Professor Mike Howard of the University of Maine Department of Philosophy. [This post will be updated shortly to include the document files for Mike's handout.]

This post is the audio podcast featuring the second of two appearances by David Swanson in the Bangor-Orono area on Thursday November 5, 2009.

David Swanson is author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, among the current top-ten Amazon best-sellers. He is founder of After Downing Street, a non-partisan coalition seeking to hold members of the Bush Administration accountable for crimes and abuses of power. David Swanson is introduced by U Maine Professor of History, Alex Grab.

The audio includes the complete 7pm event at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine on Park Street in Bangor. Play it here using the Flash player button or use the download link to save an mp3 file. Full-program video also is available for this event by clicking the above image. An audio-only podcast of the David Swanson noontime talk on Undoing the Imperial Presidency given at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus in Orono is available HERE in the previous post.

Please see the links below right for iTunes and RSS site feeds. And please leave us a comment with your reaction to these remarkable programs. Thank you to David Swanson for being on top of his game during our stop on his grueling tour.

UNDOING THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY

David Swanson is author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, among the current top-ten Amazon best-sellers. He is founder of After Downing Street, a non-partisan coalition seeking to hold members of the Bush Administration accountable for crimes and abuses of power.

This audio podcast features one of two appearances by David Swanson in the Bangor-Orono area on Thursday November 5, 2009. It is the talk given at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus as part of the Thursday series sponsored by Marxist and Socialist Studies and the Maine Peace Action Committee.

David Swanson is introduced by U Maine Professor of History, Alex Grab.

Update Saturday 11/7: Audio and video of David Swanson’s 7pm program at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine in Bangor has posted at those links.

Doug Allen has served on the faculty in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Maine since 1974. He is a scholar of the phenomenology of religion, and has written and spoken extensively on the application of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy to today’s struggles of violence, war, and peace. Doug is a founding member of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.

Doug spoke October 1, 2009 at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus in Orono during the Fall 2009 Socialist and Marxist Studies Thursday series. The program runs about 75 minutes.

Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is America’s largest grassroots Jewish organization dedicated to promoting a negotiated two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This means promoting a U.S. foreign policy which supports Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states in making the difficult compromises that are needed for a negotiated solution.

Diane Balser is,

the former Executive Director of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom …. She is currently a professor of Women’s Studies at Boston University. From 1983-1994, Balser founded, built and directed the Women’s Legislative Network of Massachusetts and served as the lobbyist in the State House for the network’s sister organization, the Women’s Lobby.

Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is conducting a campaign to support the Obama Administration called “We’ve Got Your Back as You Stand with Israel, Mr. President.” Diane Balser discusses this effort in it’s full context in the talk.

A companion program broadcast earlier this summer and is archived at WERU, HERE:

Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian now living in the U.S., speaking in Bangor, Maine on 6/24/09 on the topic of Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace.

For more information about the local chapter of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, contact Barbara Kates at bkates50@hotmail.com or 207-947-6858.

WLBZ/WCSH television provided statewide coverage, story HERE. The Bangor Daily News also has a story up on the web, HERE.

Locally the Maine People’s Alliance (MPA) and labor-oriented Food AND Medicine supported this event. The related national organizing effort is under the flag of Health Care for America Now, a broad coalition of labor, economic justice, and other social change groups that promotes “10 principles for reform that have been endorsed by President Obama and more than 190 members of Congress.”

This is the list of speakers in order of first appearance:

• Don Todd, activist from Etna, Maine
• Dr. Elizabeth Weiss, Bangor physician
• Leslie Mansfield, Bangor business owner
• Dr. Benjamin Schaefer, Bangor cardiologist
• Alice Knapp, Esq., Attorney in Richmond

His talk covers material that also appears in his article for the new Spring 2009 issue of the Maine Peace Action Committee Newsletter, “Is Nonviolence Relevant when Dealing with Terrorism?” Welcome to visitors coming here to find the podcast mentioned in the Newsletter.

This podcast features a talk University of Maine graduate Sarah Bigney gave on Thursday September 25, 2008:

“The Two Fair Trade Movements: Bridging the Divide Between Buying Coffee and Repealing NAFTA”

Sarah Bigney is organizer at the Maine Fair Trade Campaign, a statewide coalition of 50 organizations for building a just, sustainable, and democratic economy. (Check out their site for information on current campaigns, including the one to oppose the Panama Free Trade Agreement.)

This talk was part of the Fall 2008 Thursday controversy series sponsored by the Marxist-Socialist Studies Interdisciplinary Minor, and co-sponsored by the Maine Peace Action Committee (MPAC) and Campus Activities and Events, with support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University.

Additional photos (described in the talk) are posted below the fold.

(These will be updated with more descriptions if they become available.)

Roediger is introduced by Professor Nathan Godfried of the Department of History at the University of Maine.

Today’s talk focuses on Professor Roediger’s study of the life and work of his late friend and colleague, the labor activist and historian for the Industrial Workers of the World, Fred Thompson. Thompson died in 1987.

I found the discussion of Thompson’s years as a professor at Work People’s College in Duluth, Minnesota personally quite interesting. This was a labor school founded by radical Finns and operated for about fifty years from the 1920s to 1970.