Live from the Left Coast: a program from Ian Masters which features a longer, more in-depth interview with a special guest on a topic of current interest, followed by a series of listener phone calls.

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Podcast now available:


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December 18th , 2005

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Amanda Ripley on Time magazine's Person(s) of the Year: Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono. Ms. Ripley is a staff writer for Time magazine, who has been a part of that magazine's Person of the Year issue..

Philip Giraldi on how George Bush, Dick Cheney Don Rumsfeld and the neocons "forged a case for war." Mr. Giraldi was, for 17 years, a CIA operations officer specializing in counter-terrorism, who served in Europe and the Middle East. He now works in the private sector doing security consulting and he writes a column in the American Conservative on international security issues. Giraldi has a recent article in the American Conservative, entitled "Forging the Case for War," in which he looks into the Niger forgeries, which were used by George W. Bush and the neocons as a justification to invade Iraq.

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December 11th , 2005

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James Fallows on the failure to create an "Iraqi army" and the general state of affairs in Iraq. Mr. Fallows is The Atlantic Monthly's National Correspondent, and has worked for the magazine for more than twenty years. His books include Breaking the news: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, Looking at the Sun, More Like Us and National Defense, which won the American Book Award for non-fiction. His article about the consequences of victory in Iraq, The Fifty First State?, won the 2003 National Magazine Award. Mr. Fallows has been an editor for the Washington Monthly and Texas Monthly magazines, and a columnist for the Industry Standard. He writes frequently for Slate and the New York Review of Books and is chairman of the board of the New America Foundation. He has worked on a software-design team at Microsoft and as chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. Jim Fallows has a major new article in The Alantic Monthly, "Why Iraq has No Army," which has attracted considerable attention and controversy.

We present Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, which was delivered last week on December 7. This is a powerful and profound statement by a man moved now, in serious illness, to speak words withheld, and which indicts policies of the United States and Great Britain, most primarily American foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq. In language which soars with artistry, poetry and rage, Pinter expresses utter contempt for those who would engage in torture and inflict misery in the name of freedom and democracy. He calls for a politics that is engaged with "fierce intellect" to reclaim "the dignity of man." The brief announcement of the Swedish Academy on Pinter's award was: "The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2005 is awarded to the English writer Harold Pinter "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."' In the ceremony, the 75-year-old playwright's work was described as "seductively accessible and frighteningly mysterious" at the ceremony in Sweden. Pinter was unable to attend the event in Stockholm because he has been recovering from cancer of the oesophagus and his doctors did not let him travel. But, there was still rapturous applause for the man who has written a plethora of plays including The Room, The Birthday Party and The Caretaker. A spokesman from the Academy said: "In its choice of a Nobel Laureate, the Swedish Academy recognises only the creative power of a single individual regardless of nation, sex and literary genre. "However British you may appear in the eyes of many, your international and inter-human impact in the field of drama has been uniquely strong and inspiring for half a century. "If someone thinks your prize is late in coming we may reply that at any given moment somewhere in the world your plays are re-interpreted by new generations of directors and actors." The award, presented by the King of Sweden, was accepted on the playwright's behalf by his publisher Stephen Page. After hearing of his award Pinter promptly announced he would not be writing any more plays. The writer used the opportunity of his Nobel Prize lecture to present this powerful critique of US and British foreign policy in a passionate voice, unmuted by his ill health and throat cancer. Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video December 7, 2005, in Borssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. The audio of his speech has been edited in consideration of time for this broadcast.

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December 4th , 2005

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Roger Morris on the state of the Bush administration, with three years remaining in the second term. Mr. Morris served on the senior staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award-winning investigative journalist and historian, he is the author of several books, including "Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician." He is currently completing a history of U.S. policy and covert intervention in Southwest Asia.

Zaki Chehab on the Iraqi insurgency--who are they, what are their motives, can the US talk to them and what will they do if the US leaves Iraq. Mr. Chehab is an author, journalist and political editor of London-based Al Hayat and of the Arabic TV channel LBC. Zaki Chehab is one of the Arab world's leading journalists and has covered conflicts in the Middle East for more than 25 years. He is the author of the just-published "Inside the Resistance: the Iraq Insurgency and the Future of the Middle East."


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November 20th , 2005

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Evan Wright on the on-the-ground realities in Iraq. Mr. Wright accompanied the invasion of Iraq as an "embedded" reporter for Rolling Stone, riding into that country on March 20, 2003, with a platoon of First Reconnaissance Battalion Marines-the Marine Corps' special operations unit whose motto is "Swift, Silent, Deadly." These highly trained and highly motivated First Recon Marines were the leading unit of the American-led invasion force. Wright wrote about that experience in a three-part series in Rolling Stone that was hailed for its evocative, accurate war reporting. The book "Generation Kill" is a greatly expanded version of that series, matches its accomplishment.

interviewed with

George Gittoes is an artist, documentary filmmaker and unembedded journalist who has traveled extensively through Iraq and elsewhere, documenting conflict as an "unembedded" journalist. He shot considerable footage in Iraq for Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 911."


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November 13th , 2005

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Richard Clarke on the use of the pre-war intelligence, his assessment of the Iraq situation, and his sense of the actual jeopardy this nation is in vis-a-vis a terrorist attack. Richard Clarke began his federal service in 1973 in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the Reagan administration, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. In the first Bush administration, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs and then a member of the National Security Council staff. He served for eight years as a special assistant to President Clinton and was National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism for both President Clinton and President George W. Bush. From 2001 to 2003, he was the Special Adviser to the President for Cyberspace Security, and chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. He is now chairman of Good Harbor Consulting. Besides Against All Enemies, he is the author of the much-discussed "Ten Years Later," a future history of the war on terror published in The Atlantic Monthly. His is the author of the just-published novel "The Scorpion's Gate." Former Senator Gary Hart has said of Clarke and his book: "Some of us have learned to listen when Richard A. Clarke has something to say. As the long-time White House counterterrorism chief, he warned the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century in 1999 that terrorists were coming. We listened, but when we passed the warning on to President Bush, he did not. Now Clarke comes with a novel that, even if you swallow only a portion of it, will keep you awake at night. It's basically about turmoil in the Middle East, threatening to lead to World War III between the United States and China involving -- guess what? -- oil."

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November 6th , 2005

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John Nichols on the "real president" Dick Cheney and on the complicity of the media in advancing the Bush/GOP agenda. John Nichols is The Nation's Washington correspondent and an editor at the Capital Times. He is the author of Dick, the Man Who is President, It's the Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan. Robert McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois. Dr. McChesney is the author of the award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy (The New Press, 2000) and, with John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs. Together, they have written a new book: "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections and Destroy Democracy." "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both." -James Madison, 1822

Robert Greenwald on his new film, "Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price." Mr. Greenwald has produced and directed a number of films which have garnered 25 Emmy nominations, four cable ACE Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award, the Robert Wood Johnson Award, and eight Awards of Excellence from the Film Advisory Board. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute. Greenwald is the recipient of awards and honors for his political work by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the L.A. chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; Physicians for Social Responsibility; and the Office of the Americas. His previous film "Outfoxed" helped change the way the public perceives Rupert Murdoch's cable channel less as "news" and more as Republican propaganda. His new film is "Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price," which is premiering this week.

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October 30th , 2005

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October 23rd , 2005

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Joe Conason on how the Republican party is focused on the elimination of the public sector, of which Social Security is the crown jewel. Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the investigative editor for The American Prospect magazine. His books Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, and The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, with Gene Lyons, were both national bestsellers. His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including Harpers, The Guardian, The Nation, and The New Republic. He also appears frequently on television and radio and is a regular Friday guest on Air Americaís The Al Franken Show. His new book is "Raw Deal: How the Bush Republicans plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal." This book contains a forward by Al Franken and a preface by James Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of the great president Franklyn Delano Roosevelt.

Robert Dreyfuss on US involvement in promoting fundamentalist Islam for its short-term strategic goals, a policy that resulted in long-term problems. Robert Dreyfuss writes extensively on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and national security for The Nation, The American Prospect, and Rolling Stone, and is a frequent commentator on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC. His new book is Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, which is the gripping story of Americaís misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. Among all the books about Islam, this is the first comprehensive inquiry into this critical issue: How and why did the United States encourage and finance the spread of radical political Islam? (Full interview.)

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October 16th , 2005

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David Morris -- one of the two activist "stars" in the powerful documentary "McLibel." The film "McLibel" tells the true story of Dave Morris, a postman, and Helen Steel, a gardener--two British activists who opposed the corporate policies of the McDonald's fast-food restaurants. They were sued by McDonalds for their critical leafleting and demonstrations, but refused to back down or apologize. They fought, representing themselves in courr in the longest trial in English legal history, with adversarial libel laws, against one of the largest corporations in the world and its unlimited resources. After years of effort, they two activists prevailed, resulting in what has since been described as "the biggest corporate PR disaster in history." Every aspect of the corporation's business was cross-examined: from junk food and McJobs, to animal cruelty, environmental damage and the company's advertising to children. Outside the courtroom, Dave brought up his young son alone and Helen supported herself working nights in a bar. McDonald's tried every trick in the book against them. Legal maneuvers. A visit from Ronald McDonald. Top U.S.executives flying to London for secret settlement negotiations. Even spies. Seven years later, in February 2005, the marathon legal battle finally concluded in the European Court of Human Rights. And the result took everyone by surprise - especially the British Government. Filmed over ten years by no-budget Director Franny Armstrong (Drowned Out), McLibel features reenactments of key courtroom scenes directed by Ken Loach. David Morris and Helen Steel's efforts depicted in McLibel was not about hamburgers, per se. It was about the power multinational corporations wield over our everyday lives and two unlikely heroes who are changing McWorld. David and Helen just celebrated the 20-year anniversary of their anti-corporate activism, which is documented in McLibel.

Peter Irons on the misuse of presidential power to take America to war (expanded interview). Dr. Irons is an emeritus Professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of numerous books, including A People's History of the Supreme Court, and editor and narrator of May It Please the Court. His writings have earned him an uprecedented five Silver Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association. His new book, War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution, is a very important explanation of how the United States Presidency has been able to take the US to war without consent of the legislature, a repeated practice which has lead to the current Iraq war, described recently by General William Odom as the worst foreign policy disaster in American History, the full consequences of which are yet to be known. An insightful analysis and rousing history, War Powers examines a fundamental question in the development of the American empire: What constraints does the Constitution place on our territorial expansion, military intervention, occupation of foreign countries, and on the power the president may exercise over American foreign policy? Worried about the dangers of unchecked executive power, the Founding Fathers deliberately assigned Congress the sole authority to make war. But the last time Congress declared war was on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Since then, every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush has used military force in pursuit of imperial objectives, while Congress and the Supreme Court have virtually abdicated their responsibilities to check presidential power. In vivid detail, Peter Irons recounts this story of subversion from above, tracing presidents' increasing willingness to ignore congressional authority and even suspend civil liberties. Drawing on congressional hearings, Supreme Court opinions, law-review commentary, media reports, and scholarly accounts, legal historian Irons takes us up to the recent preemptive invasion of Iraq, offering a necessary account of our most pressing contemporary constitutional crisis.

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October 9th , 2005

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Dr. Jacob Hacker on the state of American democracy, the rise of the GOP and why the Democratic party is falling further and further behind. Dr. Hacker is the Peter Strauss Family Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Resident Fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He is also a Fellow at the New America Foundation, a participant in the American Political Science Association's Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. He is the author of two previous books: The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security, which was co-winner of the 1997 Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration; and The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in the American Prospect; Boston Globe; the New York Times; the Nation; the Los Angeles Times; the Boston Globe; the Washington Post and in many other publications.

INTERVIEWED WITH

Dr. Paul Pierson is professor of political science, holding the Avice Saint Chair in Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Before taking this position in 2004, he was professor of government at Harvard University, where he taught from 1988 to 2004. Pierson's first book, Dismantling the Welfare State? won the American Political Science Association's Kammerer Prize for the best book published on American national politics and policy in 1994. He has been the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, and a Russell Sage Foundation Fellowship. Together, they have written an important new book, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. Their website for the book is www.hackerpierson.com.

William Arkin on the increasing trend in the Bush presidency to see the military as the answer to every question or problem. Mr. Arkin is the author of "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World." He is also NBC News military analyst and consultant. He has been a columnist for The Los Angeles Times, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic Education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, U.S. Air Force, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Arkin's work as a military analyst for NBC News has spanned Desert Fox in Iraq in 1998, the 1999 Yugoslav war, the events of September 11, and current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.


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October 2nd , 2005

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September 18th, 2005

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Anthony Shadid on the lives of Iraqis as America continues its occupation of their country--what does Mr. Bush's "war on terror" look like to the average Iraqi, how do they regard the US and where is all of this going. Mr. Shadid has reported from throughout the Middle East for a decade, first as Cairo correspondent for The Associated Press and then for The Boston Globe, where he drew attention for reports from the West Bank and other fronts. His first book, Legacy of the Prophet, drew praise from the late Edward Said. At The Washington Post his stories have often appeared on page one. For his work in Baghdad he has received the Overseas Press Club Award (his second), the Michael Kelly Award, and last April was given the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He currently lives in Baghdad and Washington, D.C.. His new book is "Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War."


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September 11th, 2005

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Mary Anne Weaver on how bin Laden eluded capture (the US "outsourced" his capture, paying money to Afghan militias who spirited bin Laden out of harm's way). Mary Anne Weaver is the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Guggenheim Fellow for 2004-2005. She is the author of Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan and A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam. A veteran foreign correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, she was an Alicia Patterson Fellow for 2001, and has won many wards for her journalism. A specialist in South Asian and Middle Eastern affairs, she has reported from some thirty countries over the last twenty years, based in New Delhi, Cairo, Athens, and Bangkok. Mary Anne Weaver has an article published in today's New York Times magazine, entitled "Lost in Tora Bora," about haow Osama Bin Laden eluded capture then and continues to today.

James K. Galbraith and Michael Intriligator on the poor federal response to hurricane Katrina, a response made almost inevitable by Bush's conversion of FEMA to a patronage "turkey farm" and his policy of privatizing govermental agencies into becoming ineffeectual. Galbraith and Intriligator are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the New York-based Economists for Peace and Security. Dr. James K. Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School.Galbraith serves as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. Dr. Michael Intriligator is a Professor Emeritus at UCLA Jointly with Political Science Department and the Department of Policy Studies, School of Public Policy and Social Research.


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September 4th, 2005

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Congresswoman Diane Watson on the New Orleans disaster. Congresswoman Watson is a lifetime resident of the 33rd California Congressional District, which she now represents in Congress. She previously served in the California State State Senate, from 1978 to 1998. In 1998 she became the US Ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesial, a diplomatic post she held until becoming a member of United States Congress in 2001. She currently serves on the International Relations and Government Reform Committees.

Bill Fletcher on the New Orleans disaster. Mr. Fletcher is the President and Chief Executive Officer of TransAfrica Forum, which is a black global justice organization. Mr. Fletcher was formerly the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center/National Labor College of the AFL-CIO. Prior to his service at the Meany Center, Bill served as Education Director, and later, Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. He has many other posts in labor unions beyond these. Bill Fletcher is a graduate of Harvard University and has authored numerous articles published in a variety of books, newspapers and magazines. He is also the co-author of the pictorial booklet: The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941.

Bruce Shapiro on the death of William Rehnquist and the future of the Supreme Court. is an investigative reporter and political analyst who has written extensively on civil rights, human rights, the death penalty and the Supreme Court for Salon.com, the New York Times, Harpers, the Guardian of London, The Nation and other publications. He teaches investigative journalism at Yale University and, as field director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, he is a leader in efforts to reform news reporting on violence. His most recent book is Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America. He also writes for The Nation magazine's Supreme Court Watch and has a couple of articles on the Court and nominee in the August 1 issue, including one entitled "The Stakes in the John Roberts Nomination."

(interviewed with)

Erwin Chemerinsky on the death of William Rehnquist and who might replace him. Dr. Chemberinsky joined the Duke Law faculty July 1, 2004. Between 1983 and 2004, he was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, where he was the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He graduated with honors from Northwestern University (B.S., 1975), and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1978). He was a trial attorney at the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and an attorney at Dobrovir, Oakes, and Gebhardt, in Washington, D.C. He has taught at DePaul, Duke, Loyola of Los Angeles, and UCLA Law Schools. He is the author of four books: Federal Jurisdiction (Aspen Law & Business 4th ed. 2003) (a one volume treatise on federal courts); Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies (Aspen Law & Business 2d ed. 2002) (a one volume treatise on constitutional law); Constitutional Law (Aspen Law & Business 2001) (a casebook); Interpreting the Constitution (Praeger 1987). Also, he is the author of over 100 law review articles that have appeared in journals such as the Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Yale Law Journal. Recent articles include, "The Constitution and Punishment," forthcoming Stanford Law Review (2004); "Entrenchment of Ordinary Legislation: A Response to Professors Posner and Vermeule," 91 California Law Review 1773 (2003) (with John Roberts); "The Rhetoric of Constitutional Law," 100 Michigan Law Review 2008 (2002); and "Against Sovereign Immunity," 53 Stanford Law Review 1201 (2001). He also writes a regular column on the Supreme Court for California Lawyer, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and Trial Magazine, and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and other magazines. He was elected by the voters in April 1997 to serve a two year term as a member of the Elected Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission. He served as Chair of the Commission, which proposed a new Charter for the City which was adopted by the voters in June 1999. Also, he served as a member of the Governor's Task Force on Diversity in 1999-2000. In September 2000, he released a report on the Los Angeles Police Department and the Rampart Scandal, which was prepared at the request of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. In 2004, he was named by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn to chair a blue ribbon commission on contracting by the city government. He has been included in the Daily Journal's list of the 100 most influential lawyers in California every year from 1998-2003. He has received many awards for his community service and for his contributions to judicial education.


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August 28th, 2005

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Robert Merry on the dangerous foreign policy the US has undertaken and what the consequences arising from it might be. Mr. Merry is the Publisher & President of the Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered national politics, Congress, and the White House. He is the author of Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop - Guardians of the American Century. His recent book, "Sands of Empire : Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition" is his examination of the origins of the so-called "neocon" ideology which holds that the world must be led by America. He explores the origins of these beliefs and how they have come to dominate America's international relations. Merry unpacks the internal contradictions inherent in the idea that Western civilization and American democracy should set the standard for other countries. He asserts that America's unquestioned devotion to the pax Americana neoconservative worldview is blinding us to critical cultural variations, which may well lead to disastrous consequences. He offers historical perspective on geopolitical events that have led to our current situation and asks the ultimate question: could the U.S. go the way of Rome, overextending itself to the point of self-destruction?

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August 21st, 2005

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Benjamin Ferencz on war, peace, crime and justice. Benjamin Ferencz is a towering presence in American and international jurisprudence, and in world history. In 1946 Benjamin Ferencz became the Chief Prosecutor for the United States in what the Associated Press called "the biggest murder trial in world history"--the Nuremberg War Crimes trials of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, which was responsible for World War II and the systematized murder of millions of human beings. Prior to the trials, Mr. Ferencz was sent with about fifty researchers to Berlin to scour Nazi offices and archives. In their hands lay overwhelming evidence of Nazi genocide by German doctors, lawyers, judges, generals, industrialists, and others who played leading roles in organizing or perpetrating Nazi brutalities. Without pity or remorse, the SS murder squads killed every Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on. Gypsies, homosexuals, communist functionaries, and Soviet intellectuals suffered the same fate. It was tabulated from these documents that over a million persons were deliberately murdered by special Nazi "action groups." Following his successful prosecution of the Nazis, Mr. Ferencz, a graduate of Harvard Law School, devoted himself to private practice and writing about world peace and international justice. He is the author Defining International Aggression-The Search for World Peace, the two-volume An International Criminal Court-A Step Toward World Peace, A Common Sense Guide to World Peace and the best-seller PlanetHood. Mr. Ferencz has worked to advance the International Criminal Court, seeing it as essential to world peace. Now, at the age of 86, Benjamin Ferencz is speaking out about the state of our democracy, our ideals and values as a nation, about the war in Iraq, about the administration and policies of President George W. Bush and about the shared future of humanity on this planet.


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August 14th, 2005

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Reza Aslan on a "civil war" within Islam which will impact the future of one of the world's great religions, and the more than a billion people who are of the faith. Reza Aslan has studied religions at Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was also visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. His work has appeared in USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as a number of academic journals. Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles and New Orleans.

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August 7th, 2005

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Larry Diamond on the catastrophic failure of Bush in Iraq, on how opportunity was lost and how the situation now represents an awesome quagmire for all involoved. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor by courtesy of political science and sociology at Stanford University. He has also been the co-editor of the widely respected Journal of Democracy since its founding in 1990. From January to April of 2004, he served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. He is the author of the recent "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."

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July 31st, 2005

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Roger Morris on the growing Plame scandal and what he believe to be Condaleeza Rice's "central involvement" in it. Roger Morris served on the senior staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award-winning investigative journalist and historian, he is the author of several books, including "Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician." He is currently completing a history of U.S. policy and covert intervention in Southwest Asia. His recent article at Counterpunch, "The source beyond Rove: Condolezza Rice at the center of the Plame scandal" has attracted considerable attention.


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July 24th, 2005

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Marci Hamilton on two subjects -- the separation of church and state and the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Professor Hamilton holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and is an internationally recognized expert on constitutional and copyright law, who has frequently advised Congress and state legislatures. She has been a visiting scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Center of Theological Inquiry, and Emory University School of Law. Professor Hamilton is an acknowledged expert specializing in church/state relations and is involved in cutting edge First Amendment litigation. Marci Hamilton clerked for Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court and Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her new book is God vs. The Gavel: Religion vs. the Rule of Law, in which she describes the very surprising degree to which religion has been granted "special rights" under law, putting it, in many cases, above and beyond the law to an alarming extent.


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July 17th, 2005

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Congresswoman Diane Watson on the many issues, ranging from war to jobs, to media, to foreign affairs which she is dealing with in the United States Congress. Congresswoman Diane E. Watson, born in Los Angeles, is a lifetime resident of the 33rd California Congressional District, which she now represents in the United States Congress. After graduating from Dorsey High School, Congresswoman Watson attended Los Angeles City College and matriculated at UCLA where she received her B.A. in Education. She also holds an M.A. in School Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles, and a PhD in Educational Administration from the Claremont Graduate School. Her lifetime commitment to education stems from her involvement in the Los Angeles public schools where she worked as an elementary school teacher and school psychologist. In 1978, she was elected to the California State Senate and chaired, from 1981 to 1998, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. She also served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. During her tenure in the California State Senate, Congresswoman Watson became a statewide and national advocate for health care, consumer protection, women, and children. In 1998, Congresswoman Watson served as the United States Ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia until 2001 when she was sworn in as a Member of Congress after the death of Congressman Julian Dixon, who held the seat for 22 years. In January 2003, Congresswoman Watson was sworn in as a member of the 108th Congress. Congresswoman Watson currently serves on the International Relations and Government Reform Committees.

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July 10th, 2005

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Paul Craig Roberts provides a genuine conservative critique (Dr. Roberts was
President Reagan's former Assistant Treasury Secretary) of the Bush administration, both in terms of foreign (war) policy and in domestic (economic) policy. Dr. Roberts is a John M. Olin Fellow and the Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. During the Reagan administration, he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for economic policy and played a major role in the Economic Recovery Act of 1981. He also writes a monthly economics column for Investors Business Daily . In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993, he was ranked as one of
the top seven journalists by the Forbes Media Guide . He was distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon chair in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1981 to 1982, he served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. In 1987, the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor. Dr. Roberts' latest book, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, is The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (2000, Prima Publishing). The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, also co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in October 1995. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. His book, The Supply-Side Revolution, was published by Harvard University Press in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." He is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990, and Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista Di Politica Economica, and Zeitschrift Fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, Harper's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Investor's Business Daily, London Times, Financial Times, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, IL Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation and The Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on over 30 occasions.


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July 3rd, 2005
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David Rothkopf on President Bush's foreign policy and the role of the National Security Council and Department of State in crafting and implementing policy. Mr. Rothkopf is the author of the new book "Running the World: the inside story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power." He is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as deputy under secretary of commerce during the Clinton Administration, as Chairman and CEO of Intellibridge Corporation, a provider of international analysis to the national security community, and as managing director of Kissinger Associates. A well-known commentator for leading newspapers and magazines, he has taught international relations at Columbia University; written, co-authored or edited five other books on international and information age themes; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the President's Advisory Council of the U.S. Institute of Peace.


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June 5th, 2005

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Lou DuBose on Tom DeLay, Bush and the GOP.  Mr. DuBose is an investigative journalist and the author of the recently-published "The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money and the Rise of the Republican Congress."   He is the co-author, with Molly Ivins, of Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America and Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush. He was the editor of the Texas Observer for eleven years.    He has, in the last week, published a breakthrough investigative work, "The Pimping of the President: Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist billing clients for face-time with GW Bush,"  in the Texas Observer.

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May 29th , 2005

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Hussein Ibish on Islam in the modern world--how Islamic traditions and progressive political ideals can be brought together.  Dr. Hussein Ibish is one of the founders of the Progressive Muslim Union and the former Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation's largest Arab-American membership organization. He is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, and has written for many other papers. Ibish is author of "At the Constitution's Edge: Arab Americans and Civil Liberties in the United States" in the collection States of Confinement (St. Martin's Press, 2000), Legitimizing Occupation: Cordesman, CSIS and the New Intifada (ADC.org, 2000) and "Anti-Arab Bias in American Policy and Discourse" in Race in 21st Century America (Michigan State University Press, 2001). He is also the author, along with Ali Abunimah, of The Palestinian Right of Return (ADC, 2001) and "The Media and the New Intifada" in The New Intifada (Verso, 2001). Mr. Ibish serves as Vice-President of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF). He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. About the PMU: The vast constituency of Muslims who are committed to progressive social stances have not yet developed sufficient platforms from which to advocate their views. All too often, they have found themselves spoken for and defined by others. PMU has been formed in recognition of the urgent need for greater and more coordinated articulation of the pluralistic and compassionate sentiments of vast sections of thecommunity. PMU seeks to expand the range of spiritual, social, intellectual, and political choices for North American Muslims, and to challenge the narrow set of "normative" Muslim ideas and behavior expected of all of us both within and beyond the North American Muslim community.  We stand for the idea that to be a Muslim is not simply to follow an unquestioned corpus of laws, or to subscribe to a narrow reading of the faith, but rather is an act of self-identification with a great spiritual, philosophical and civilizational tradition. We embrace the simple proposition that you are a Muslim if you say you are a Muslim -- for whatever reason or set of reasons -- and that no one is entitled to question or undermine this identity. We embrace the vast diversity of expressions of Islamic devotion as integral to the traditions of the faith, which historically has been among the most pluralistic of the major religions.  A respectful but serious and self-critical interrogation of sources and interpretations within Islamic traditions is a key aspect of our agenda. Pursuing a progressive North American Muslim agenda on many issues, such as gender equality, means examining the ways Islam has functioned as a social text in order to distinguish the universal and egalitarian values of the faith from oppressive or dysfunctional cultural practices with which, both inside and outside of our community, it is all too often confused.  PMU also recognizes that some people identify themselves as Muslims because of social commitments, but whose religious sentiments may be limited. By embracing such people as part our constituency, PMU is recognizing that a commitment to humanist values does not make anyone less a part of the community or less an heir to the rich legacy of Islamic civilization and cultures. The Qur'an teaches us that God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in their hearts. Here is our proclamation that we are examining our own hearts, our own lives, and our own communities to conform to the highest Islamic ideals of justice and compassion.

http://www.pmuna.org/

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May 22nd , 2005

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Dr. Robert Jensen on media, media reform, activism and politics in the United States.  Dr. Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas at Austin faculty in 1992.  Prior to his academic career, he worked as a professional journalist for a decade.  Jensen is the author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002); co-author with Gail Dines and Ann Russo of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge, 1998); and co-editor with David S. Allen of Freeing the First Amendment: Critical Perspectives on Freedom of Expression (New York University Press, 1995).  In addition to teaching and research, Jensen writes for popular media, both alternative and mainstream. His opinion and analytic pieces on such subjects as foreign policy, politics, and race have appeared in papers around the country.


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May 15th , 2005

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"The Prison Angel" Co-authors Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, joined by Mother Antonia (the "prison angel")
 
Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, a husband and wife team, report from Mexico for The Washington Post. They won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for stories about the lack of the rule of law in Mexico and the horrific conditions in the Mexican criminal justice system. Formerly the Post's correspondents in Tokyo, they also won a George Polk Award in 1998 for their reporting about the Asian financial crisis, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Overseas Press Club of America.   They have recently been appointed to head the London bureau of the Washington Post.  Twice divorced and with seven adult children, the former Mary Clarke brought a full lifetime of perspective to her work, attracting the attention of Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, who blessed her mission. Despite her own poor health, Mother Antonia visits lepers, buries the dead who are unidentified, offers spiritual counseling to brutal prison guards, and squelches a riot when prisoners are overcome by their horrific living conditions.  Ian discusses this amazing story with Mother Antonia herself, along with authors Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan--and takes listener calls.


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May 8th , 2005

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Dr. Juan Cole on the real state of affairs in Iraq, which is not being reporting in American media.  Dr. Juan Cole is considered to be one of our leading scholars of contemporary Iraq and the Middle East and is a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of Sacred Space and Holy War (London: IB Tauris, 2002), which examines the Iraqi Shiites. His JuanCole.com weblog is considered obligatory reading by many for its keen analysis.  He has a new piece on Salon.com, entitled "The Melting Pot of Blood," which details the sectarian strife and boiling insurgency which seem increasingly likely to derail the fig-leaf "democracy" Bush has spun up as justification for the American investment of blood and treasure in the occupation of Iraq.


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May 1st , 2005

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Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on the increasingly dire state of the US economy, which, as he states, "is not oriented towards the middle-class--even less the working class; it serves the top level of income earners."  He criticizes the Bush management of the US economy.  Dr. Sachs also discusses his plan to end dire poverty world-wide and the unwarranted attack to which the United Nations has been subjected to in the American press.  Dr. Jeffrey Sachs is the author of the just published "The End of Poverty," which sets forth Dr. Sach's plan to end "extreme poverty" worldwide, which he cites as the cause of 20,000 deaths per day.  Jeffrey Sachs is Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Sachs is internationally renowned for advising governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa on economic reforms and for his work with international agencies to promote poverty reduction, disease control, and debt reduction of poor countries. He was recently named among the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time Magazine. He is author of hundreds of scholarly articles and many books. Sachs was recently elected into the Institute of Medicine and is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years at Harvard University, most recently as Director of the Center for International Development. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University.

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April 24th, 2005

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Chris Hedges on war, religion and politics.  Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the author of "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" and "What every Person Needs to Know about War."  He has covered war and conflict for close to twenty years.  He has a piece in this months issue of Harpers magazine on the Christian right.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute.  Mr. Hedges grew up in the church.  His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother, who was college professor, graduated from the seminary.  He has a Masters of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School. His soon to be released book is entitled "Losing Moses on the Freeway: the Ten Commandments in America."  The book he is working on now is a major effort about the Christian right and politics; its working title is "American Fascism."  War is a Force that Gives us Meaning" is now out in paperback and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. 


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April 17th, 2005

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Gloria Tottin on the future of the Democratic party and how progressives can organize and act to take the party back. Tottin speaks to Ian Masters about how candidates "who are not afraid to stand up and speak out" must be recruited and supported. Famed UC Berkeley linguist Dr. George Lakoff joins the program by telephone to discuss how progressive messages must be crafted to counter the right-wing's "Mighty Wurlitzer" of media outlets, talking heads and broadly placed chattering class. Gloria Tottin is the Executive Director of Progressive Majority, dedicated to "a future worth fighting for," a future in which progressive values define a society based on civilized principles of rights, justice, fairness and reason. www.progressivemajority.org

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April 10th, 2005

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Dr. Michael Shermer on how superstitition and pseudo-science holds sway over the minds of so many Americans in the advanced technological world of the 21st century.  Dr. Shermer is a columnist for Scientific American and the author of the bestselling Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, and The Science of Good and Evil.  He is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and the founder and director of the international Skeptics Society.  His new book is "Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown."


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April 3rd, 2005

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Congressman David Bonior on American politics, the legacy of Pope John Paul II, and with a special focus on labor.  David Bonior is the Chair of American Rights at Work ( www.americanrightsatwork.com ).  He also serves as University Professor of Labor Studies at Wayne State University; and on the boards of Public Citizen and Community Central Bank in Mount Clemens, MI.  Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, he served the people of Macomb and St. Clair Counties for 26 years-the longest tenure of any Congressman from this district.  When he retired at the end of 2002, he had held the position of Democratic Whip, the second ranking Democrat in the House, for ten years.  His tenure in Congress was marked by a passion for social and economic justice.  Bonior earned a reputation as a strong voice for working families and as a leader on the environment, fair trade, jobs and human and civil rights. Bonior is the author of two books: The Vietnam Veteran: A History of Neglect and Walking to Mackinac.


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March 27th, 2005

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Kurt Eichenwald on the collapse of Enron, a criminal scandal of immense scale, which wasn't merely financial, but was political--reaching to the very highest levels of Republican power and to President Bush himself.  Ian looks into Enron, what happened, who the players were, how much was lost, how much damage was done and why there has been so little accountability.  We'll also ask why George Bush has been able to escape his connection to Enron, a connection which would have surely sunk a Democratic President.  KURT EICHENWALD is the author of the New York Times Best Seller, "A Conspiracy of Fools.  Eichenwald has written for the New York Times for more than seventeen years. He is a  two-time winner of the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism and a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, he has been selected repeatedly for the TJFR Business News Reporter as one of the nation's most influential financial journalists. His last book, The Informant, is currently in development as a major motion picture. He lives in Dallas with his wife and three children. 
 
From an award-winning New York Times reporter comes the full, mind-boggling story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the spectacular scandal that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever . . .
It was the corporate collapse that appeared to come out of nowhere. In late 2001, the Enron Corporation--a darling of the financial world, a company whose executives were friends of presidents and the powerful--imploded virtually overnight, leaving vast wreckage in its wake and sparking a criminal investigation that would last for years. But for all that has been written about the Enron debacle, no one has yet to re-create the full drama of what has already become a near-mythic American tale. Until now. With Conspracy of Fools, Kurt Eichenwald transforms the unbelievable story of the Enron scandal into a rip-roaring narrative of epic proportions, one that is sure to delight readers of thrillers and business books alike, achieving for this new decade what books like Barbarians at the Gate and A Civil Action accomplished in the 1990’s.

Written in the roller-coaster style of a novel, the compelling narrative takes readers behind every closed door--from the Oval Office to the executive suites, from the highest reaches of the Justice Department to the homes and bedrooms of the top officers. It is a tale of global reach--from Houston to Washington, from Bombay to London, from Munich to Sao Paolo--laying out the unbelievable scenes that twisted together to create this shocking true story.

Eichenwald reveals never-disclosed details of a story that features a cast including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul O’Neill, Harvey Pitt, Colin Powell, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alan Greenspan, Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. With its you-are-there glimpse into the secretive worlds of corporate power, Conspiracy of Fools is an all-true financial and political thriller of cinematic proportions.

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March 20th, 2005

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Lewis Lapham on his new book: "Gag Rule: On the Supression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy."  In this book, Lapham argues that in the midst of this country’s “War on Terror”; we face a crisis of democracy as serious as any in our history—the right to speak out against the powers that be, and to have our voices heard. This, asserts Lapham—marks not only the end of true, meaningful dissent but the renunciation of our most important civil liberty: the freedom to disagree.  Lapham also talks about the dangerous tearing down of the wall of separation of church and state, as the madness and ignorance of religious fundamentalism more and more overwhelms reason in the United States.  In 1971, Mr. Lapham became editor of Harper’s Magazine, having worked for the San Francisco Examiner and New York Herald Tribune. His book, Fortune’s Child, prompted the New York Times to liken him to H.L. Mencken, and Tom Wolfe to compare him to Montaigne. His other books include Money and Class in America, Imperial Masquerade, The Wish for Kings, Hotel America, and Waiting for the Barbarians. He received the 1995 National Magazine Award for his Harper’s column, “Notebook,” and his articles have appeared in Life, Commentary, Vanity Fair, National Review, Yale Literary Magazine, Elle, Fortune, Forbes, American Spectator, Channels, The New York Times, Maclean’s, London Observer, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Lapham is the host and author of the PBS series, “America’s Century,’ and he was host of the weekly PBS series, “Bookmark.”

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March 13th, 2005

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Ian Williams on the appointment of John Bolton as the United States Ambassador to the UN. Williams has been watching Bolton for 15 years. He says that this appointment means that Bush and Rice's recent European fence-mending was "a joke." The appointment, he says, "is like putting King Herod in charge of Unicef." He said, "Bolton is to diplomacy what Jack the Ripper is to surgery." Williams is a veteran journalist and The Nation's UN correspondent. He is the author of The UN for Beginners, The Alms Trade and the recent "Deserter: George W. Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past." William's next book is and his next, "Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776," due in August 2005.

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March 6th, 2005

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Max Blumenthal talks about his experiences in covering a recent convention of religious broadcasters.  Max is a freelance investigative journalist currently based in Los Angeles.  His work has appeared in Salon, Alternet, The American Prospect.  His forthcoming cover feature for The Nation concerns the rise of black conservatives.  His current article, "Air Jesus: with the Evangelical Air Force" describes his experiences attending the recent National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim appears at MediaTransparency.org. 


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February 27 th, 2005

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John Nichols on Hunter Thompson, the neocons, the Bush presidency and the media.  John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. Formerly a writer and editor for The Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspapers, he is now editorial page editor for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author, with Bob McChesney, of It's the Media, Stupid (Seven Stories),  Jews for Buchanan, on the 2000 presidential election, "Dick, the Man who is President" and the most recent "Against the Beast: an Anti-Imperialist Reader."

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February 6th, 2005

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Marc Weisbrot is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and co-author, with Dean Baker, of "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (University of Chicago Press). Weisbrot said last week: "In his State of the Union speech, President Bush declared: 'Thirteen years from now, in 2018, Social Security will be paying out more than it takes in.' ... What President Bush is saying is that in 2018, Social Security will have to pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. About $16 billion more, according to his (Social Security Trustees) estimates. What he did not say is that the Social Security Trust Fund in 2018 will have more than $3.6 trillion in assets, as well as $206 billion in interest income that year. (All numbers are expressed in today's dollars.) So even if Social Security cruises along on auto-pilot for the next 13 years, 2018 will arrive and depart quietly and without notice. In 2018 a small fraction of Social Security's interest income will be used to pay benefits."


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January 30th, 2005

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James Wolcott on the lapdog press corp which goes through the motions of a real media, but does little to nothing to challenge the administration on matters of critical importance to the American people--things you would expect from a functional news media.  Beyond their failure to challenge and investigate, many American journalists working the the corporate media act as stenographers to power and have been used as tools of the President and the GOP to deliver overt falsehoods which disinform their listeners and viewers.  Judith Miller, of the New York Times, for instance, became a vehicle of the neocons to make the American people believe that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.  James Wolcott is a media and culture critic with Vanity Fair magazine.  His new book is Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutuants." 
He had previously written for Esquire, Harper's and New York Magazine.  He edits the weblog www.jameswolcott.com .  
 
More from James Wolcott:  "I left college after my sophomore year and moved from Maryland to New York City, where I pestered the Village Voice for a job and began writing short reviews for them. In time, I became their television critic, also writing about the then-emerging punk scene (I wrote some of the earliest reviews of Television, Talking Heads, the Ramones) and covering Jimmy Carter in New Hampshire. From the Voice, I branched out into reviewing for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic, and doing a monthly books column for Esquire. Upon leaving the Voice, I joined Harper's under its new editor Michael Kinsley, where I wrote a monthly column. When Kinsley left after an editorial shakeup, I eventually made my way to Vanity Fair, where I've been writing since the early Eighties, with an interlude at The New Yorker under editor Tina Brown. At Vanity Fair, I was the recipient of the National Magazine Award in the Reviews and Criticism category in 2003.  I'm the author of two books, a novel called The Catsitters, and the nonfiction Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants, about the looting of news in the Bush era. I'm also a contributor to the new anthology Committed, and have done the foreword to a forthcoming book by and about fashion designer Geoffrey Beene. I live in Manhattan with my wife Laura Jacobs, a novelist, dance critic, and writer for Vanity Fair."


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January 23rd, 2005

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Susan Jacoby on the essential secular nature of the United States, how the wall of separation of church and state is crucial to the nation's success, how fundamentalism rising in the US is not something that started in the 1980's--it goes back at least seventy years to the Scopes "monkey" trial.  Dr. Jacoby is an award-winning independent scholar and writer and is the author of seven books, including Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and her just-published Freethinkers. She began her career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has contributed articles to numerous publications, including The New York Times , The Nation, AARP Bulletin, Vogue, Newsday, and TomPaine.com.  Susan Jacoby has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations, as well as the National  Endowment for the Humanities. In 2001-2002, she was a fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.


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January 16th, 2005

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Melissa Boyle Mahle on the state of American intelligence, prospects in the Middle East and her experiences as one the top Arab specialists in the CIA, speaking Arabic fluently and having done five tours in the region. In her new book, Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA From Iran-Contra to 9/11," she recounts both positives and negatives during her tenure in the Agency. She says that recently retired Director George Tenant was in denial regarding the total failure of the CIA with respect to 9/11, adding that he "played it safe and played politics, failing to take the actions necessary to wage a real war on terrorism." Masters and Mahle take on these subjects and more in this fascinating exchange.


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January 9th, 2005

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Clayton Swisher on his book "The Truth About Camp David : The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process" and the Palestinian elections.  In this important interview, Swisher exposes the popular attitudes about the failure of the peace process, which blame Arafat and the Palestinians and the Syrians, as false, and instead finds fault with the Clinton administration and Israeli leadership.  Reviews of Swisher's book have been very positive.  Charles Enderlin, author of Shattered Dreams and Jerusalem Bureau chief of France 2 television said "Any future mediator will have to read this account before the start of any final-status negotiations."  William B. Quandt, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia, author of Peace Process said "A carefully researched account that challenges conventional interpretations of the Camp David summit of 2000."  Akiva Eldar said "...A fascinating book, an invasive, incisive and merciless probe of the guts of the Clinton administration."  Swisher is a former marine reservist and federal criminal investigator, who was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and Georgetown University, and is currently studying Law & Economics part-time at George Mason University. Swisher works as an associate for a Middle East consulting firm in Washington, D.C. where he resides.  Based on the riveting, eyewitness accounts of more than forty direct participants involved in the latest rounds of Arab-Israeli negotiations, including the Camp David 2000 summit, former federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist Clayton E. Swisher provides a compelling counter-narrative to the commonly accepted history. The Truth About Camp David details the tragic inner workings of the Clinton Administration's negotiating mayhem, their eleventh hour blunders and miscalculations, and their concluding decision to end the Oslo process with blame and disengagement. It is not only a fascinating historical look at Middle East politics on the brink of disaster, but a revelatory portrait of how all-too-human American political considerations helped facilitate the present crisis.

“One of the most important books on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and perhaps the most important book on the peace process.”  Kathlen Christison, former CIA intelligence analyst.


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December 26th, 2004

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Denis Halliday on the controversy surrounding the UN Oil-for-Food program.  Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Denis J. Halliday, a national of Ireland, to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and he served as such until end September 1998. During this period, the Security Council Resolution 986 “Oil for Food” Programme, introduced in 1996/97 to assist the people of Iraq under the Economic Sanctions imposed and sustained by the Security Council, was more than doubled in terms of oil revenues allowed. This enabled the introduction of a multi-sectoral approach, albeit modest, to the problems of resolving malnutrition and child mortality. Mr Halliday resigned from the post in Iraq and from the United Nations as a whole effective 31 October 1998 after serving the Organisation since mid 1964 - some 34 years. Prior to that, and from mid 1994, Mr Halliday served as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management of the United Nations, based in its New York Headquarters. During this period, he introduced on behalf of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly a strategy for the better management, performance and development of some 15,000 United Nations staff world-wide. Before taking up the Human Resources Management function in mid 1994, following a brief assignment in Thailand as UNDP Regional Representative, Mr Halliday had been Director, Division of Personnel, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from late 1989 into early 1994. He took over that post after being Chef de Cabinet, Office of the Administrator, of the UNDP for some two years. Mr Halliday has spent most of his long career with the United Nations in development and humanitarian assistance-related posts both in New York and overseas, primarily in South-East Asia. Following a year in Kenya as a Quaker volunteer 1962-63, Mr Halliday joined the United Nations in 1964 serving in Teheran, Iran as a junior professional officer in the forerunner of UNDP - the United Nations Technical Assistance Board and Special Fund. From 1966 to 1972, he served in the Asia Bureau of UNDP Headquarters in New York and then transferred to Malaysia in 1972. In Malaysia, covering programmes in that country plus Singapore and Brunei, he served until 1877 as Deputy Regional Representative. In Indonesia, he continued at the Deputy level for two years until 1979, when he was asked to reopen and head up as Resident Representative the UNDP office in Samoa covering that country, the Cook Islands, the Tokelau Islands and Niue in the South Pacific. In 1981, Mr Halliday was asked to return to New York to serve in the Asia and Pacific Bureau where he was involved in setting up the first round table meetings of UNDP for Asia. In 1985, he took up the post of Deputy Director, Division of Personnel before becoming Chef de Cabinet in 1987.


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December 19th, 2004

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Michael Drosnin on the real Howard Hughes, a story of American wealth and power. Mr. Drosnin is a reporter, formerly at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Citizen Hughes. In this fascinating discussion, Drosnin paints a picture of Hughes, not seen in Scorcese's new biopic, as a bigger-than-life "American original," who was in some sense a genius, but also as truly machiavellian, loony and bizarre in his later years.


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December 12th, 2004

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David Sirota is a fellow at the Center for American Progress and writer for the American Prospect.  David's new article "The Democrat's Da Vinci Code" weighs in on the debate beginning to rage within the Democratic Party on the direction that the party should take.  While some believe that the party should go right to gain favor in the red states, Sirota believes that the Democrats must assert core liberal progressive values, that their future can and should only lie in a platform which is distinct from the Republicans, serves the poor, the working and middle classes, protects the environment and promotes world peace and cooperation--all the values that the Democratic party has stood for historically and is supposed to represent.  Paralleling Sirota's views, MoveOn.org last week made a stinging indictment of the Democratic party leadership saying they were taking the party away from the "professional consulting class of election losers" who have mislead the party away from its roots for quite some time.


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December 5th, 2004

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Youssef Ibrahim was, for 24 years a Senior Middle-East foreign correspondent and reporter with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.  He is currently a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations based in New York and Managing Director of Strategic Investment Group.  He is a consultant specializing in "risk analysis." In this hour-long discussion, Mr. Ibrahim describes current conditions in Iraq, the "war on terror," the neocons and their surprising elevation to more power in the Bush administration, after creating an historic foreign policy disaster, the future of oil, what he recommends for Iraq and what Bush is likely to do there.


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November 28th, 2004

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Ron Suskind, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000. He is the author of "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill."  Ron Suskind had a very important and insightful piece published in the New York Times in October, entitled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush."  Ian and Mr. Suskind look into the Bush decision making process, who are the important players, what changes are being made in the administration and what we can expect from the Bush presidency in the next four years. Ron Suskind also writes for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and other national publications, appears frequently as a correspondent on PBS and network news. He is the also the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed A Hope in the Unseen and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.

Roger Morris on the Bush presidency, which he describes as "the closest we have ever been to a dicator in America.  Mr. Morris served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Johnson and Nixon.  He is now an investigative journalist and historian. He is at work in Seattle on a book on the history of US policies in the Middle East.


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November 21st, 2004

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Michael Sheuer "Anonymous" Twenty-two year veteran CIA analyst, who was, until his recent resignation, their top expert on bin Laden.  He is the author, as "Anonymous," of the best-seller "Imperial Hubris," which is a powerful critical assessment on the failure of this country to seriously deal with the formidable realites we face as a nation and which we too often deny and evade.  We'll talk to Mr. Sherer about what is happening at the CIA, in an apparent purge leaving only Bush yes-men, the "war on terror" that appears to play directly into bin Laden's hands and a US global strategy, driven by neocon ideologues, which seems destined to failure.


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November 14th, 2004

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John Buchanan on the Republican use of religion as a "front" for right-wing politics.  Buchanan is an ordained Baptist minister and served churches in Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington, DC. He represented Birmingham, Alabama, as a Republican in the Congress for sixteen years. As a senior member of the House Education and Labor Committee, he was instrumental in the writing and passage of Title IX. A member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, and to the U. N. Human Rights Commission. After leaving Congress, he chaired for ten years the civil liberties organization, People For the American Way. He served as chairman of the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education and worked on behalf of civic education with the Bicentennial Commission and the National Education Goals 2000 Panel. He serves on the Board of Advisors, National Council of Churches; National Council of the U. N. Association of the U.S.; National Board of Advisors, Center for Civic Education. His numerous awards include the Common Cause Public Service Achievement Award. He is currently consultant to the Biotechnology Industry Organization.


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November 7th, 2004

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October 31st, 2004

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October 10th, 2004

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Esther Kaplan  on her thesis that the fundamentalist religious right in the United States has become, in its intolerance, its belief in its own infallibility and its lock-step authoritarian drive to acquire and hold political power, a threat to American democracy.  Kaplan is a radio and print journalist and a community activist. She was acting senior editor at The Nation, and has written for The Village Voice, Out, and The Nation. Her new book, "With God on their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House" is a comprehensive account of just how far this country has been taken to serve a religious fundamentalist ideology which has little to do with what's best for the American people, and everything to do with fulfilling an irrational "faith-based" extremist agenda, which goes to explain how and why America is in such a mess.


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October 3rd, 2004

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Chris Hedges on the use of war for political purposes and how war can infect a nation with a "force" that is addictive, non-rational and, in the final analysis, destructive for all.  Chris Hedges has been a foreign and war correspondent for over fifteen years. On staff at The New York Times, he has previously worked for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and National Public Radio. He is currently teaching at Princeton University.  He is the author of the powerful, "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning" and the cautionary "What Every Person Should Know About War."  He holds a master of divinity from Harvard University. As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”  Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning has been described as "a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary. "  Can we stop the "force" that war engenders in a people?


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September 26th, 2004

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David Neiwert on how American conservatism has greatly diverged from the "conservative movement."  The conservative moment, he asserts, has taken on aspects of "pseudo-fascism," with a consequent danger for American Democracy.  David Neiwert is a freelance journalist and author based in Seattle and a fourth-generation Northwest native. A veteran reporter and editor, his work has appeared in The Washington Post, MSNBC, Salon.com, the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, and numerous regional publications. His reportage on domestic terrorism for MSNBC won a National Press Club Award in 2000 for distinguished online journalism. He is the author of In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest and Capricious Earth: The Rise and Fall of a Japanese-American Community. His latest book is "Death on the Fourth of July: the Story of a Killing, a Trial and Hate Crime in America."  He also edits the acclaimed Weblog Orcinus ( http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ ).   Read his excellent postings, and check out the special long-form articles featured in down the left-hand side of the blog, including the superb "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism."


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September 19th, 2004

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Patrick Buchanan on the hijacking of the Bush administration and US foreign policy by the neoconservatives.  Buchanan is one of America's leading conservative voices.  He was a senior advisor to three American presidents, ran twice for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and was the Reform Party's presidential candidate in 2000. He is he author of seven books, including the bestsellers, Right from the Beginning, A Republic, Not An Empire and The Death of the West (St. Martin's Press, 2002).  He is a syndicated columnist and a founding member of three of America's foremost public affairs shows, NBC's The McLaughlin Group, and CNN's The Capitol Gang and Crossfire. His new book is "Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan revolution and hijacked the Bush presidency."


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September 6th, 2004

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Michael Lind on the GOP convention, the Kerry campaign, the press and the strategic political dynamics that will impact the November election -- probably the most significant election in the last fifty years. What must John Kerry do to win? What are Bush's plusses and minuses? Lind and Masters discuss the issues. Michael Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Director of its American Strategy Project. With Ted Halstead, he is the author of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics (Doubleday, 2001). He is also the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (New America Books/Basic, 2003). Mr. Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harperís Magazine, and The New Republic. From 1991-94 he was executive editor of The National Interest. He has also been a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Prospect, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and other leading publications, and has appeared on Crossfire, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Mr. Lindís first three books of political journalism and history, The Next American Nation (1995), Up From Conservatism (1996), and Vietnam (1999) were all selected as New York Times Notable Books. He has also published several volumes of fiction and poetry, including The Alamo (1997), which the Los Angeles Times named as one of the Best Books of the year. Lindís next book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of Americaís Greatest President, which will be published by Doubleday in 2004.


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August 22nd, 2004

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Sam Harris has a interesting thesis. He says religion is bad for you, that wars are fought over religion, that religion holds us back from scientific advancement and that religion really is an anachronism in the modern world. Why then does it hold such sway over the affairs of men and nations? Ian and Harris discuss this provocative and controversial topic. Sam Harris has a degree in Philosophy from Stanford and is currently a PhD candidate in Neuropsychology.  He has done research into spirituality in Nepal and India and he is the author of a new book, "The End of Faith: religion, terror and the future of reason."  Mr. Harris also had an Op-Ed in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times entitled "Holy Terror


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August 15th, 2004

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Paul Loeb on how we can remain positive and moving forward politically, socially and personally in the face of so much negativity, bad news and loss. Loeb and Ian talk about the critical value of optomism in todays world. Paul Loeb has written on social involvement for The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Utne Reader, Redbook, Parents magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Salon, the Village Voice, National Catholic Reporter, and the International Herald Tribune. He's been interviewed  on CNN, NPR, PBS, C-SPAN, NBC TV, the BBC, American Urban Radio,  and national German, Canadian and Australian radio. He's lectured on over 300 college campuses and at numerous national conferences. In addition to Soul of a Citizen,  he's the author of Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on the American Campus (Rutgers University Press, 1994), of Nuclear Culture, and of Hope in Hard Times. Loeb is also an affiliate scholar at Seattle's Center for Ethical Leadership. His new anthology on political hope, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, is being published now by Basic Books.
 
Some comments on THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE:

"Paul Loeb brings hope for a better world in a time when we so urgently need
it."--Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity

"For anyone worn down by four years of Bushism, The Impossible Will Take a
Little While is a bracing double cappuccino." --Barbara Ehrenreich

"An indispensable anthology of hope and inspiration. It's impossible to feel
pessimistic after basking in the collective wisdom of the likes of Nelson
Mandela, Václav Havel, Marian Wright Edelman, Alice Walker, Tony Kushner,
and Cornel West. This book is also Exhibit A in how the political and the
personal can come together to change the world. Put away your Prozac and
pick up The Impossible Will Take a Little While." --Arianna Huffington

"An extremely important effort." --John Kenneth Galbraith

"This inspiring collection from some of our greatest activists is such a
song of hope in these difficult times." --Bonnie Raitt

"An intelligent, impressive compendium of ideas and feelings that, if
implemented, will lead to a far more civilized society."--Peter Matthiessen

"As I read these stories, I'm reminded yet again of the incredible power
individuals have when we come together. Thank you for this book of inspiring
writing." -Joan Blades, cofounder of MoveOn.org

"Reading this hymnbook of hope, one's heart cannot help but sing. I am moved
and inspired by this magnificent book's rich stories and insights. They
water the fragile, precious seed of hope, from which everything we love
grows." --Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life

"Paul Loeb's new book is just what the doctor ordered for these depressing
times: a massive infusion of hope, written in the clearest and most
inspiring prose. Do your soul a favor and read this book."
--Kevin Danaher, cofounder of Global Exchange

"A feast of inspiration to help people keep working for justice."
--Ben Cohen, TrueMajority.org founder & cofounder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream

"Paul Loeb takes voices from our human experience and turns them into a
powerful chorus of hope."--Bill Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society

"This book embodies a new spirit of responsibility for the planet and those
who inhabit it. We begin to sense what it might mean to treat the world as a
sacred gift." --Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, former national president of Pax
Christi

"After reading these indomitable stories, I was filled with new vigor. A
forceful testimonial to hope's unique power." --Denis Hayes, chairman of
Earth Day Network

"Everyone who believes in our humanity and the ideal of justice for all, but
feels despair about the direction the world has taken since 9/11, will find
their faith in our ability to serve the common good restored by Paul Loeb's
symphony of powerful voices."
--Charles Johnson, National Book Award winner, author of Middle Passage