Terrence McNally podcast

Aired 07/15/08

In late summer1989 I spent a week living among and interviewing the fishermen and citizens of Cordova, Alaska. Once they'd realized that federal, state and corporate entities were moving too slowly to save their fisheries, many of them had moved heroically to import and place booms around the most vulnerable areas.

Fishing was destroyed for that year so many of them were employed by Exxon in that summer's massive cleanup efforts. Though the luckiest among them earned the newly coined designation - “spillionaires,” the natural, social, and economic fabric of Cordova and Prince William Sound have never been the same.

Last month, 19 years after the spill -- and two days after climate change scientist James Hansen told Congress that ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel CEOs "should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature" for their role in delaying the global response to climate change -- the Supreme Court reduced a $2.5 billion punitive judgment against Exxon for the Valdez disaster to $500 million. Exxon made more than $40 billion in profits last year.

RIKI OTT and I took a look at the long sad aftermath of the oil spill -- with an eye toward the broader context of corporate power versus nature and humanity. OTT believes this is the civil rights movement of our day.


RIKI OTT Marine biologist, former commercial salmon "fisherma'am" and Author of SOUND TRUTH AND CORPORATE MYTHS: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill;

NOT ONE DROP: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

http://www.soundtruth.info/

Robert Scheer, Editor-in-chief of the web magazine http://www.truthdig.com and the author of seven books, the “left” of KCRW's nationally syndicated Left, Right, and Center, a weekly columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a contributing editor to The Nation.

His latest book is "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."

THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER serves as an update to the World War I-era book WAR IS A RACKET. The former expands on the latter's theme of money, not security, as the reason for both military action and peacetime military spending. (You can read WAR IS A RACKET for free on-line with a web search of the title.)

A sensible response to box cutters and poorly-constructed cockpit doors should cost taxpayers less than billions of dollars for F-22 Raptor fighter planes. Yet as THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER details, the Bush Administration and Congress used the September 11, 2001, hijackings as an excuse to place orders for those and many other expensive, unnecessary killing machines beneath the Christmas trees of their weapons manufacturer campaign contributors. Oh, and don't forget jobs. As if it were a contest to see if people will accept the stupidest rationale for spending tax dollars on overpriced, needless weapons, public officials cite jobs, THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER recounts. Imagine the community improvement were the government to spend all that money on hospitals, schools or infrastructure instead of unnecessary military stuff - while creating as many and probably a lot more paychecks. Perhaps school children should lobby Congress during their recess. Nearly 100 years since World War I, war still proves the greatest racket.

Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, is a leading thinker on technology and Internet policy. He is the founder of Creative Commons and author of "Code, The Future of Ideas, and Free Culture."

You can learn more at http://change-congress.org

Change Congress is a movement to build support for basic reform in how our government functions. Using our tools, both candidates and citizens can pledge their support for basic changes to reduce the distorting influence of money in Washington. Our community will link candidates committed to a reform with volunteers and contributors who support it.

Our Principles

Change Congress is a national movement to end corruption in America's congress. We're organizing citizens to push candidates to make four simple commitments:

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs Congresspeople should be beholden to citizens, not special interests. By committing not to accept money from lobbyists or PACs, candidates give us confidence that their votes won't be swayed by big money. This pledge was most prominently advanced by Senator Edwards in his Presidential campaign. To read more, click here.

2. Vote to end earmarks. Earmarks allow congresspeople to explicitly decide who should get the money our government spends. Because of the earmark economy, money that is supposed to go to our schools, our soldiers, and our citizens is instead diverted to political donors and pork-barrel projects like the "Bridge to Nowhere". We can't clean up Congress until we end this blatant system of corruption. Republicans have recently pushed prominently for changes such as these. A pledge to support ending earmarks means a Member will vote for proposals that will permanently abolish earmarks. Importantly, it does not mean that while the system of earmarks remains, the Member will choose to forego earmarks for his or her district. Until the system is changed, that choice is left up to the Member.

3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we would all benefit from a cleaner Congress if more of its proceedings, and the proceedings of its members, were public. This pledge calls for changes in the law and rules of Congress to get all members to be more public about meetings and contacts, including changing the rules so lawmakers post weekly updates of their campaign contributions, meetings with registered lobbyists, their latest earmark requests, and significant changes in their personal wealth.
`
4. Support publicly-financed campaigns. It's not enough to just push particular candidates to stay out of the system of corruption; we have to reform the system itself. Publicly- financed campaigns will stop the cycle of campaign finance reform loopholes and ensure that big money stays out of Congress forever. Public financing has been supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

Aired 07/01/08

Stuart Kauffman is the Director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary and Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute.

His newest book: REINVENTING THE SACRED:
A NEW VIEW OF SCIENCE, REASON, AND RELIGION

With economic and communications globalization, some form of a global civilization is beginning to emerge. Just as we confront the challenges of global warming and peak oil, and the likelihood of growing hunger and resource wars, our diverse cultures are being crushed together.

One response is a retreat into fundamentalisms, often religious, often hostile. Clearly there's an urgent need for new thinking. STUART KAUFFMAN says that's why he wrote Reinventing the Sacred.

Rooted in hard science, the book - and it's passionate author -- aims for nothing less than a revolution in how we see the world, reality, God, and our role in it all.

I think he's onto something.

SUSAN JACOBY – "THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON"

American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in mathematical literacy.

Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending on how the questions are asked, roughly 30-40 % of Americans believe in each.

A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey, and President George Bush says “the jury is still out.” in the summer of 2005 nearly two-thirds of Americans told pollsters that they believed creationism should be taught in schools alongside Darwinian evolution.
Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on "The Colbert Report." Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn't actually list the commandments.

This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so tragic or dangerous.

According to the Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland, among Bush supporters in the 2004 election, nearly 70% believed the U.S. had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda, a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion. We can assume they were similarly uninformed about who benefits from Bush tax cuts, and the success or meaning of No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, the Medicare prescription benefit, etc.?

I believe there has been a concerted effort on the part of political and cultural advocates to encourage misinformation and the ignoring of evidence. In addition, their labeling of “intelligent” and “informed” as “elite” and “effete” implies that ignorance is somehow both valuable and under attack. I also believe that to ignore evidence – scientific as well as simply factual -- is primitive, pathological, suicidal, and an unfit way to run the world.

Susan Jacoby has written a book about this -- THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON. A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Susan Jacoby, is the author of five books, including WILD JUSTICE, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. and FREETHINKERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SECULARISM. Her political blog, The Secularist’s Corner is on the Web site of The Washington Post.

http://www.susanjacoby.com

AHMED RASHID – DESCENT INTO CHAOS

In his new book, DESCENT INTO CHAOS, AHMED RASHID asks what has gone wrong since the invasion of Afghanistan.

This interview was recorded June 13th. This from an editorial in that morning’s New York Times: “There is enormous confusion about what happened Tuesday night on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Pakistani officials say that American air and artillery strikes killed 11 of their paramilitary troops, and some are angrily demanding an end to all military cooperation. The Bush administration says that American forces were firing in self-defense — against Taliban fighters crossing into Afghanistan — and made conflicting statements about whether any Pakistani troops had died.”

A center of global instability for many decades, this is just the latest example of why Pakistan may now be the most dangerous place on Earth.

Bordering Iran, Afghanistan and its perennial enemy, India, the nation straddles racial and religious fault lines, the impoverished majority Sunni population rubbing up against a minority of wealthy Shiites. The Islamic republic has spawned thousands of religious seminaries whose graduates have gone on to fight across South Asia, Chechnya and the Philippines, and most recently planned attacks in Madrid, London and Frankfurt, Germany. Almost every global terrorist plot carried out or prevented since 2004 has been traced to training, funding or material support from al-Qaeda based in Pakistan's northwest areas. To top things off, there is our allie’s unsecured nuclear weapons program and the nuke bazaar run for years by General Khan which supplied “rogue” states with nuclear technology and expertise. The US has spent over $10 billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001, about half for operations on our behalf against extremists, especially in Afghanistan.

Following the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the change in Pakistan's government and military structure, and the recent attempt on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the political climate is no more stable than it was seven years ago -- when AHMED RASHID introduced the English-speaking world to the region in his New York Times bestseller, TALIBAN (translated into 26 languages, English language sales over 1.5 million copies.)

AHMED RASHID is a Pakistani journalist, based in Lahore, who writes for "The Daily Telegraph (London)", "The Washington Post", "The International Herald Tribune", "The New York Review of Books", "BBC Online", and "The Nation". His books include JIHAD, TALIBAN, and THE RESURGENCE OF CENTRAL ASIA, and his newest, DESCENT INTO CHAOS. In January 2002 he established the ‘’Open Media Fund for Afghanistan’’ (OMFA), which gives cash grants to newly starting independent print media in Afghanistan.

Greenopia is your local guide to green living. Greenopia created a directory of eco-friendly retailers, services, and organizations and conducted extensive research on those Greenopia listed in the guide. Greenopia's guide is not a paid directory; companies cannot pay to be included and all listees are included because they met our strict standards of eco-friendliness. They have already been screened for their sustainability in the product or service arena and are now being compared with "the best of the best."

http://greenopia.com

Aired 05/27/08

What if there were a simple way to provide students with the books, technology, and supplies that they need to learn?

What if people from all walks of life could connect directly with public schools, learn about specific classroom needs, and choose how to help?

http://www.donorschoose.org makes this possible.

Julie has almost 10 years of work experience in advertising, marketing, non-profit finance, and general management. Prior to joining DonorsChoose.Org, she worked at Sempra Energy Utilities promoting low income customer assistance programs. Julie has also worked at the UCLA Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program, http://www.SeeitandStopit.org (an organization dedicated to ending teen dating violence), Peace Games, and Oscar Mayer, where she toured the country in a Wienermobile. She has a dual BA in Advertising and Psychology from Syracuse University and an MBA from UCLA.

Aired 05/28/08

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York.

Glenn is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books: "How Would a Patriot Act?" (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, and "A Tragic Legacy" (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy.

Glenn's third book, "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics", examines the manipulative electoral tactics used by the GOP and propagated by the establishment press.

Aired 05/28/08

Executive Director Josh Silver co-founded Free Press with Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols in 2002. He oversees all programs, campaigns, fundraising and special projects.

Josh previously served as campaign manager for the successful statewide ballot initiative for public funding of elections in Arizona and as the director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

He has served as the director of an international youth exchange program and as a development and management consultant. Josh publishes frequently on media, campaign finance and other public policy issues.

http://www.freepress.net/

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Our work focuses on the following core issues:

Media Consolidation is about the takeover of our country's media by a handful of massive corporations and the increasing control these firms exert over the flow of news and information we need to hold our leaders accountable. Through our StopBigMedia.com campaign, Free Press aims to block further media consolidation and to promote diverse, local ownership and the vibrant press that sustains our democracy.

The Future of the Internet is being decided right now. We're fighting to preserve the open Internet and make sure all Americans have affordable access to high-speed networks, free from discrimination or interference by would-be corporate gatekeepers.

Through SavetheInternet.com, a diverse coalition of millions of people who have banded together with thousands of organizations, small businesses and bloggers, Free Press is working to make sure the free and open Internet stays that way.

Public Media includes broadcasting networks like NPR and PBS, community and Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations that provide local coverage not available elsewhere, public access TV, and independent publications and Web sites.

Free Press supports a vibrant and sustainable public and noncommercial media sector that offers diverse fare and serves local communities. We're committed to finding long-term solutions that protect public media from the political whims of Washington and policies that create more opportunities for new voices to be heard.

Quality Journalism is essential to providing Americans with the information they need to understand what's happening in their communities, to hold elected leaders accountable, and to serve as a check on government and corporate power.

Free Press stands with working journalists who have been squeezed by runaway media consolidation; advocates for a vibrant independent press; and supports efforts to foster investigative reporting, substantive coverage of public affairs, and critical, high-quality journalism.

Media is one of the most pressing Civil Rights issues of our time. People of color, women, youth and other disenfranchised communities have long been shut out of our country's media. They own few of our media outlets, and aren't represented on the public airwaves. Free Press supports the struggle for media justice and works to strengthen laws to expand minority ownership, support new independent and ethnic media outlets, and close the digital divide.

Free Press is Building a Movement for better media in the United States. We want the American people -- not just big corporations and their high-priced lobbyists -- to have a say in crafting the policies that shape the media system. We're making the media a bona fide political issue that no politician can afford to ignore. Join us.

Aired 05/20/08
Anuradha Mittal (Oakland Institute) http://www.oaklandinstitute.org on the global food crisis.

World food prices rose 39% in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March -- an increase of 50% in two weeks alone -- while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.
Food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.

Obvious causes: increased demand from China and India, rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change.

But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices. In the last 30 years, the US, the World Bank and the IMF have imposed devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring them to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies and persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops, they have turned developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food into large food importers.

Robert Bryce is a journalist in Austin, Texas and the author of Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron (PublicAffairs, 2002; a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year) and Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate (PublicAffairs, 2004).

Bryce was a reporter for the Austin Chronicle for 12 years, and is now the managing editor of the Energy Tribune.

His most recent book is Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence" (PublicAffairs 2008), which the New York Times said he wrote “with all the gusto of a hunter clubbing baby seals.”

Aired 04/29/08 KEVIN PHILLIPS, Author," THE POLITICS OF RICH & POOR; AMERICAN THEOCRACY" And his newest - "BAD MONEY: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism."

KEVIN PHILLIPS describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets.

Guns Over Butter - Terry hosts "The Rachel Maddow Show"
(Hour 3-April 14)

JOSEPH STIGLITZ is University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000.

His book, Globalization and Its Discontents, was translated into 35 languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Other books include Fair Trade for All, Making Globalization Work, and his newest (with Linda Bilmes) THE $3 TRILLION WAR.

Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. According to the book, Americans will spend decades treating the physical and psychological wounds of Iraq veterans — and when the economic consequences of the invasion are taken into account, the costs are staggering.

http://www.josephstiglitz.com

DAHR JAMAIL: Book BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE:
DISPATCHES FROM AN UNEMBEDDED JOURNALIST IN OCCUPIED IRAQ

In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, DAHR JAMAIL an independent journalist from Anchorage, Alaska went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. His first book was recently published, BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE: DISPATCHES FROM AN UNEMBEDDED JOURNALIST IN OCCUPIED IRAQ

Robin Wright is an American journalist currently covering U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post, She has reported for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times, CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor, and has served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The International Herald Tribune.

Books: "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East” (2008)
"Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam" (revised in 2001)
“The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran” (2000)
"Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World" (co-author-1991)
"In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade" (1989)

www.robinwright.net

Robin Wright is an American journalist currently covering U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post, She has reported for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times, CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor, and has served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The International Herald Tribune.

Books: "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East” (2008)
"Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam" (revised in 2001)
“The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran” (2000)
"Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World" (co-author-1991)
"In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade" (1989)

www.robinwright.net

Author NINA HACHIGIAN, former Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at RAND, and member of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton.

Her new book: THE NEXT AMERICAN CENTURY: HOW THE U.S. CAN THRIVE AS OTHER POWERS RISE, argues that it's better for us when other nations grow wealthier. We need them on our side so that together we can solve global problems of peace, climate, health, and justice.

SAMANTHA POWER: Won Pulitzer Prize for A PROBLEM FROM HELL: AMERICA AND THE AGE OF GENOCIDE, Foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, her new book is CHASING THE FLAME -- life and death of UN human rights champion, Sergio Vieira de Mello

Her latest book, CHASING THE FLAME is a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top UN official in Iraq, who died in a truck bombing of the UN's Baghdad headquarters in August 2003. Twenty-one others were killed and dozens wounded in one of the deadliest attacks on the UN in its 58-year history. De Mello had served in the United Nations since 1969 in some of the world's most sensitive areas, including East Timor, Yugoslavia, Cambodia and Bangladesh.

Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

Pollan is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, a former executive editor for Harper's Magazine, and author of five books: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008) The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001), A Place of My Own (1997), and Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991)

Lester Brown (part 2 of interview) has been described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers." After working with the Department of Agriculture in international agricultural development, Brown helped establish the Overseas Development Council, then founded the Worldwatch Institute, which has played an important role in the public's understanding of trends in our global environment with its annual State of the World report and later the annual Vital Signs

In 2001, he left Worldwatch, founded Earth Policy Institute www.earth-policy.org, and published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. His other books include Who Will Feed China?; Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity, and his newest book PLAN B 3.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION.

PLAN B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

LESTER BROWN has been described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers." After working with the Department of Agriculture in international agricultural development, Brown helped establish the Overseas Development Council, then founded the Worldwatch Institute, which has played an important role in the public's understanding of trends in our global environment with its annual State of the World report and later the annual Vital Signs

In 2001, he left Worldwatch, founded Earth Policy Institute www.earth-policy.org, and published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. His other books include Who Will Feed China?; Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity, and his newest book PLAN B 3.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION.

PLAN B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

Steven Clemons is is the publisher of the popular political blog; www.thewashingtonnote.com, and a former staff member of Senator Jeff Bingaman.

Clemons is also Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, and the former director of the Japan Policy Research Institute. He characterizes himself as a "progressive realist."

Thomas Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, most famous for his involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Hayden serves as a member of the advisory board for the Progressive Democrats of America, an influential "grass roots" organization created to expand “progressive” political cooperation within the Democratic Party.

Enjoy the conversation as Terrence and Tom talk about the 2008 election, Barack Obama and Super Tuesday!

Laura Flanders is the host of "RadioNation" heard on Air America Radio and syndicated to non-commercial affiliates nationwide.

She is the author most recently, of Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable and Inspirational Political Change in America (Penguin, 2008) and BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an investigation into the women in George W. Bush's Cabinet. Publisher's Weekly called Flanders' New York Times best-seller, "fierce, funny and intelligent."

She wrote on Hillary Clinton in The Contenders (Seven Stories Press, 2007) and The W Effect: Sexual Politics in the Age of Bush, an essay collection compiled by Flanders, appeared in June, 2004 from the Feminist Press.

Before joining Air America when it launched in March 2004, Laura hosted the award-winning " Your Call," Monday-Friday, on public radio, KALW, 91.7 fm in San Francisco.

Flanders' TV appearances include "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and "Paula Zahn Now" as well as "The O'Reilly Factor," and "Hannity and Colmes," "Washington Journal," "Donahue," "Good Morning America" and the CBC news discussion program, "CounterSpin."

Her writing appears in The Nation, Alternet, Ms. Magazine, and elsewhere and her op-ed pieces have appeared in papers including The San Francisco Chronicle.

Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR's nationally-syndicated radio program.

Shie is also the author of Real Majority, Media Minority; the Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting (Common Courage Press, 1997) about which Susan Faludi wrote, "If only there were a hundred of her." Katha Pollitt called it "Funny, angry, factfilled and brilliant."

DAVID FREEMAN, 81, has spent his professional life at the forefront of energy policy. In WINNING OUR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE, he explains how the sun, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydrogen resources we have right now can be the fuels that solve energy issues and create a sustainable future for our planet. We have the renewable resources we need-now we simply need the awareness, passion, and drive from the people to make sure our politicians and business leaders respond. WINNING OUR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE provides action plans for showing us how to influence change.

Also ANTHONY LAPPÉ
Executive Editor, GUERILLA NEWS NETWORK
Co-author, SHOOTING WAR (graphic novel re Iraq War)
SHOOTING WAR with illustrations by Dan Goldman, follows the gonzo adventures of a New York blogger who becomes a media darling in 2011 after his footage of a bombing at a Williamsburg Starbucks gets picked up by the mainstream media. Looking to keep coverage of the ongoing Iraq quagmire edgy, a global news network hires him to bring a youth angle to the guerrilla war. Part satire, part dystopian nightmare, SHOOTING WAR is unflinching in its depiction of the hellish future toward which the Bush administration is corralling us.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS,
Nobel Peace Prizewinner, pioneer of micro-credit
author, BANKER TO THE POOR, and his newest,
CREATING A WORLD WITHOUT POVERTY

As founder of Grameen Bank, YUNUS pioneered microcredit, the innovative banking program that provides poor people--mainly women--with small loans they use to launch businesses and lift their families out of poverty.

In the past thirty years, microcredit has spread to every continent and benefited over 100 million families. But YUNUS remained unsatisfied. Much more could be done, he believed, if the dynamics of capitalism could be applied to humanity's greatest challenges.

Now, in CREATING A WORLD WITHOUT POVERTY, Yunus goes beyond microcredit to pioneer the idea of social business--a completely new way to use the creative vibrancy of business to tackle social problems from poverty and pollution to inadequate health care and lack of education.

GERALD CELENTE of The Trends Research Institute publishes TRENDS JOURNAL. A New Yorker, who calls himself a political agnostic, Celente gives everybody hell. I first booked him in January 05 and listener response has led me to make this an annual show.

CELENTE accurately forecast the Iraqi War quagmire, the last two recessions, the Dot-Com meltdown, and the 1987 world stock market crash. As far back as 1993 he predicted that a new Crusades would be raging at the dawn of the new millennium.

plus a brief commentary by TERESA O'NEILL

Terrence McNally takes calls and sums up the Iowa caucus - 2008.

Journalist and author LYNNE McTAGGART's research on THE FIELD included meetings with top frontier scientists in Russia, Germany, France, England, South American, Central America and the USA. During these meetings, she saw that what these scientists were working on seemed to overthrow the current laws of biology, chemistry and physics. Their theories and experiments also compounded into a new science, a new view of the world. Lynne concludes that her research paints a picture of an interconnected universe.

With THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT, McTAGGART asks a great question. Can our thoughts influence the world around us? Top scientists have teamed up with her to create the world's largest ever mind-over-matter experiment. Thousands of volunteers are testing this possibility in a series of web-based experiments, making it the largest mind-over-matter study in history.

plus a brief commentary by TERESA O'NEILL

JODIE EVANS, Co-founder, CODE PINK: Women for Peace
They're launching www.dontbuybushswar.org
on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, he asked the author of Walden, "Henry, what are doing in there?" Thoreau responded, "Ralph, what are you doing out there?"
Our statement is not against taxation or government. Many of us will continue to pay a portion of our taxes that support the vital functions of government. But we will hold in escrow or redirect the portion of our war taxes to humanitarian aid projects and projects such as those providing relief to survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

"The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard" is an engaging new short film that explains the "materials economy" in 20 fun-filled minutes. Yes, fun-filled.

Produced by Free Range Studios, which developed "The Meatrix" -- an animated short about factory farming that ranks among the cleverest uses of Internet technologies to deliver a politically progressive message -- The Story of Stuff features the wonderful Annie Leonard, amusing graphics, lots of humor, and a complicated analysis presented in an easy-to-understand conversational tone.

You can watch the whole thing at www.StoryofStuff.com
You'll have to watch the film to enjoy the humor -- there's no easy way to convey the playful cartooning with serious purpose. But I guarantee chuckles even for the most austere.

When no WMD could be been found in Iraq, several members of the Bush administration justified the imminent preemptive invasion because we could “not afford for the smoking gun come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Turns out Saddam had no bomb, probably no bomb program.

We've heard consistent fear-mongering from a Bush administration that appears eager to attack Iran. Bush himself recently linked Iran to WWIII! Now comes word from the National Intelligence Estimate that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The administration handles Musharraf with kid gloves as he asserts dictatorial powers to control a very volatile Pakistan, home of Doctor Khan's global atomic sales operation.

2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has high praise for JOSEPH CIRINCIONE'S BOMB SCARE. "At a time of challenges and uncertainties regarding the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, the book offers a comprehensive review of the history and theory of nuclear weapons, as well as of the policy options before us today in our common endeavor to address the most pressing threats; existing arsenals, the emergence of new nuclear-armed states, and nuclear terrorism.”

CHEF ANN COOPER is a renegade lunch lady who works to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms for students - one school lunch at a time.
She has transformed public school cafeterias in New York City, Harlem and Bridgehampton, NY, and now in Berkeley, CA, to teach more students why good food choices matter by putting innovative strategies to work and providing fresh, organic lunches to all students. __Currently, Chef Ann is the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), improving meals at 16 public schools with a population of over 9,000 students.
In her work with public schools, Chef Ann is at the forefront of the movement to transform the National School Lunch Program into one that places greater emphasis on the health of students than the financial health of a select few agribusiness corporations. Chef Ann's lunch menus emphasize regional, organic, fresh foods, and nutritional education, helping students build a connection between their personal health and where their food comes from.

Chef Ann's newest book, LUNCH LESSONS: CHANGING THE WAY WE FEED OUR CHILDREN, is overflowing with strategies for parents and school administrators to become engaged with issues around school food - from public policy to corporate interest. It includes successful case studies of school food reform, resources that can help make a difference and healthy, kid-friendly recipes that can be made at home, or by the thousands for a public school cafeteria.

ADRIAN LEVY and CATHERINE SCOTT-CLARK are award-winning investigative journalists who worked as staff writers and foreign correspondents for the Sunday Times of London for 7 years before joining the Guardian as senior correspondents. They are the authors of The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure and The Stone of Heaven: Unearthing the Secret History of Imperial Green Jade, and their newest, DECEPTION: Pakistan, the US, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons. They have reported from South Asia for more than a decade, and now live in London and in France.

Over 25,000 young people have died in America's gang wars since 1980 - a bit less than half the number of soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam. In cities across America current and former gang-members are like traumatized war veterans with no way home. Tom Hayden's book STREET WARS indicts the domestic law and order politics that dominate current policy and suffocate inner city youth.

It has been almost two years since Stanley Tookie Williams was executed after being denied clemency by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the wake of his death, Stanley Tookie Williams' memoir BLUE RAGE, BLACK REDEMPTION, will be re-released to shed additional light on Tookie's personal and public fight for redemption.

Part 1 of the book, entitled Blue Rage, chronicles Tookie's gang life as a co-founder of the Crips. During this time he committed hundreds of crimes and was eventually charged with the murder of four people. In 1981, Tookie was convicted and sent to Death Row for twenty years. Throughout his time in prison, he maintained his innocence for the crimes for which he was convicted. The second part of the book, Black Redemption, looks at the work Tookie completed and legacy he crafted behind bars-his books, awards, anti-gang initiatives, and Nobel Prize nominations.

PHIL DONAHUE pioneered the modern television talk show. DONAHUE ran for 29 years and used its time to explore and debate issues that mattered to its audiences. Despite being one of MSNBC's highest rated programs, Donahue's brief return to television was cancelled in February 2003. A leaked internal NBC memo statede that Donahue had to be fired because he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war”.

Now PHIL DONAHUE has collaborated with veteran documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro to give us an unsanitized account of one young man's evolution from enlisted soldier to anti-war veteran.

Tomas Young grew up in Kansas City and like many patriotic young men and women, he responded to a call to action after 9/11. After less than one week in Iraq, he received a bullet injury to the spine that paralyzed his body. The film cleverly inter-cuts two parallel stories: Tomas struggles to deal with the complexities of his injuries while we see the congressional deliberations granting President Bush authority to invade Iraq. The effect is a startlingly powerful juxtaposition of cause and effect and the personal consequences of misguided vision.

TOTAL DENIAL documents abuses of Burmese villagers caused by the Yadana pipeline. Milena Kaneva's “guide” during this journey is Ka Hsaw Wa, one of the leaders of the student movement for democracy in Burma in 1988, who hid in the jungle for more than seven years. Wanted by the police in both Burma and Thailand, Ka Hsaw Wa gathered the evidence of thousands of victims of human rights and environmental abuses.

In 1992, two Western oil companies - French TOTAL and UNOCAL, then based in California embark on a joint venture with the Burmese military regime, to build a gas pipeline. The Burmese army, hired by the companies to provide security for the project, forces many in the local population into slave labor. Burned villages, raped women, tortured and killed porters, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children hiding in the jungle is the picture of a silent genocide.

In 1995, with KATIE REDFORD, the co-founder of Earth Rights International, Ka Hsaw Wa brought the precedent-setting lawsuit to the U.S. courts.

TOTAL DENIAL was shot in Burma, Thailand, Europe, and the U.S. courts between 2000-2005. The identity of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and in the film are protected under the California state law. Their faces and voices are distorted for their security. The images shot in US courtrooms are exclusive.

Robert Reich was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration and now teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He delivers weekly commentaries on public radio's Marketplace, and he blogs at RobertReich.blogspot.com.

In his book Supercapitalism, economist Robert Reich looks at the divided mind of the consumer and citizen.

Bjørn Lomborg: Author - The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It
One of the world's 100 most influential people - Time Magazine, 2004
14th most influential academic in the world - Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine, 2005.

'Young Global Leader' - World Economic Forum 2005
Former director - Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute
Director - Copenhagen Consensus Center
Adjunct Professor - Copenhagen Business School

In 1996, Charles Ferguson sold the startup company he founded to Microsoft for $133 million.

He was 41, had $14 million worth of growing Microsoft stock in his pocket after paying off investors - and was thoroughly exhausted after barely sleeping the previous year.

Then for the next eight years, he wrestled with the question that relatively young entrepreneurs rarely consider until they hit it big.

In 2004, Ferguson told several journalist friends and some contacts in the film industry that he wanted to make a movie about the U.S. occupation.

Don't do it, was the unanimous reply. Do something easy for your first film. Make it local. Plus, Ferguson said he was told, there are 10 other filmmakers pursuing this idea. So he waited.

A year later, nobody was making this movie, George W. Bush had been re-elected and as Ferguson said, "There still was very little good discussion about the nature of the occupation, the nature of American policy in conducting the occupation in the media. And I thought, '... I'm going to make this movie.' "

Having cash in the bank gave him the power to do just that and fulfill his childhood dream of making a movie. He financed the film's entire $2 million budget.

Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker.

He is the founder and co-executive directions of Bioneers, a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth’s imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities.

He launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his producing partner and wife Nina Simons, Bioneers co-executive director.

The Conference attracts over 3,000 people each year to the national conference in San Rafael, California, and in 2007 it will be beamed by satellite simulcast to 22 localized Bioneers conferences across the US and Canada to another 10,000 attendees.

Rafe Esquith is an American teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School, the second-largest elementary school in the United States, located in Los Angeles, California.

A graduate of UCLA, Esquith began teaching in 1981. His teaching honors include the 1992 Disney National Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, a Sigma Beta Delta Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University, Oprah Winfrey’s $100,000 Use Your Life Award, Parents Magazine’s As You Grow Award, National Medal of Arts, and Esquith was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

Esquith's fifth-grade students consistently score in the top 5% to 10% of the country in standardized tests. Many of Esquith's students start class at 7:00 each morning, two hours before the rest of the school's students. Most of his students come from immigrant Central American and Korean families and are learning English as a second language. They volunteer to come early, work through recess and stay as late as 5:30 pm, and also come to class during vacations and holidays.

Each year the Hobart Shakespeareans, as Esquith’s students are known, perform one of the Shakespeare's plays. They have opened for the Royal Shakespeare Company, been hired by Sir Peter Hall to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and appeared at the Globe Theater in London.

Drew Westen is Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an M.A. in Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex (England), and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan, where he taught introductory psychology for several years.

In January 2006 a group of scientists led by Drew Westen announced at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Palm Springs, California the results of a study in which functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that self-described Democrats and Republicans responded to negative remarks about their political candidate of choice in systematically biased ways.

Specifically, when Republican test subjects were shown self-contradictory quotes by George W. Bush and when Democratic test subjects were shown self-contradictory quotes by John Kerry, both groups tended to explain away the apparent contradictions in a manner biased to favor their candidate of choice.

Similarly, areas of the brain responsible for reasoning (presumably the prefrontal cortex) did not respond during these conclusions while areas of the brain controlling emotions (presumably the amygdala and/or cingulate gyrus) showed increased activity as compared to the subject's responses to politically neutral statements associated with politically neutral people (such as Tom Hanks)

Subjects were then presented with information that exonerated their candidate of choice. When this occurred, areas of the brain involved in reward processing (presumably the orbitofrontal cortex and/or striatum/nucleus accumbens) showed increased activity.

As Dr. Westen said, "None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged... Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want... Everyone... may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts.'"