The Roots of War Series
How Federal Spending Priorities Make Us Less Secure
A talk by Jo Comerford at Greenfield Community College, 4/23/2010
Jo provides evidence that our growing military spending is starving “Main Street” services,including schools, libraries, police and fire departments, and health and human services. She addresses, specifically, how the costs of the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq contribute to our recession-ridden economy and describes what citizens can do to move the government toward a peace economy.
Jo Comerford is Executive Director of the National Priorities Project, a project which provides real-time data on war and national defense spending and the trade offs in local social welfare, education and renewable energy which result. She is former Director of the Food Bank of western Massachusetts and a board member of the War Resisters League.
The Roots of War Series
The Global Struggle for Resources
A talk by Michael Klare at Greenfield Community College, 2/18/2010
Geopolitics scholar and teacher
Michael Klare addresses how 21st century wars will be driven by competition over access to scarce and valuable natural resources due, on the one hand, to rising world affluence, population growth and the rise of China as a major industrial economy and, on the other hand, to the depletion of the world’s resources. Because we lack effective mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputes over contested resources, he forecasts that conflict is a likely outcome of such disputes.
The Roots of War Series
A talk by Norman Solomon at Greenfield Community College, 10/27/2009
The
Roots of War Speaker Series was launched on October 27, 2009 with a talk by
Norman Solomon, an incisive critic of mainstream media’s support for war (from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan) even when the majority of the American public have turned against it.
ACTIVE NONVIOLENCE: What Is It? And Why Does It Matter?
A talk by Randy Kehler at Traprock, 9/30/2009
Longtime peace activist, community organizer, Traprock co-founder and inspiration for Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, our own Randy Kehler talked about his personal understanding of, and life-long commitment to, ‘active nonviolence’ as a means of resolving conflicts at all levels and creating a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. He also spoke to the relevance of ‘active nonviolence’ in relation to the social, environmental, and economic crises we are currently facing.
Click here for the mp3 file. 58 minutes.
Radio interview of Pat Hynes on her Primer on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Traprock board member Pat Hynes was interviewed for an hour on KHSU about her Primer, which is available here on our Traprock website and here on OpEdNews.com. Listen to the interview here.
Traprock Center Film Library
The Traprock Center has a lending library of more than 300 films on a broad range of topics which include historical, recent and current armed conflicts, liberation struggles, Cuba, the politics of US foreign policy and US militarism, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, civil disobedience and conscientious objection, the environment, the media, social justice, future of food, issues of oil and water and more. These films can be viewed on our TV at Traprock or borrowed for up to two weeks. We encourage activists, educators and everyone wanting to better understand the world we live in to use this great resource. The library is open most weekday afternoons and some evenings. Other times can be arranged by calling the Traprock office at 413-773-7427.
You can view the holdings as Adobe .pdf files or as Word .doc files. The Adobe files are far smaller. Both can be searched.
Films sorted by Title - Adobe pdf file or Word file.
Films sorted by Subject - Adobe pdf file or Word file.
Former Traprock website
The earlier Traprock website has been archived and is available here.
Charlie Jenks, creator of the earlier website, now runs PeaceJournal.org,
a "Multimedia blog and resource center for a better world."
