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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Click for -> Archived programs from 2004-2005

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December 31st, 2006

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Program Producer Louis Vandenberg hosts a 2006 retrospective, featuring:

Nir Rosen (June 18, 2006) on the true state of affairs in Iraq and the "war on terror." Rosen asserts among many startling truths that "al Qaeda does not exist, except as a marketing term . . . it is not a functioning entity." On the insurgency in Iraq, he says "the worst is yet to come" and that Zarqawi's demise will have no impact on the insurgency. Mr. Rosen is a freelance writer, photographer and film-maker who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere. He is a Fellow at the New America Foundation. His recently-published book on Iraq is "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq." He recently had an Op-Ed published in the Washington Post, "Iraq is the Republic of Fear."

Ron Suskind (June 25, 2006) on his new book, which depicts a White House run by Vice President Cheney and Bush as a puppet playing a role. Mr. Suskind was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000. He is the author of a number of books, including "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill." He also had a very important piece published in the New York Times, entitled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush." His new book, which has been recieved with wide acclaim, is "The One Per Cent Doctrine."

Sidney Blumenthal (November 2, 2006) on the Bush administration and the political stakes in the November 7 election. Mr. Blumenthal is a former assistant and Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security, and a regular columnist for the Guardian of London and Salon.com. He has been a staff writer for the New Yorker, the Washington Post and other major publications. His has authored a number of books including, most recently, "The Clinton Wars," a national best-seller. His new book, just published by Princeton University Press, is "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime."

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December 24th, 2006

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Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly on his book "Satan, a Biography." Dr. Kelly is Emerit Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at UCLA and the author of many books and articles on Medieval and Renaissance Literature and History; Biblical Studies; Ecclesiastical History and Theology.

interviewed with

Damon Linker worked in the center of the theoconservative movement as an editor of its flagship journal, First Things. That experience gave him resolve to write a critical history of the movement, and the result is a new book is "The Theocons: secular America under seige." In this book, he describes the inner workings of the "theoconservative" movement--a group of mostly Catholic intellectuals who view American society in sometimes apocalyptic terms, their ultimate goal being "the end of secular politics" in America."

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December 17th, 2006

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Ziyad Asali, M.D. on the current state of affairs in the interminable occupation of Palestine by Israel and it's dramatic regional consequences. Dr. Asali is the President and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, a 501(c) 3 non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC. Dr. Asali is a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC's President from 2001-2003. He served as the President of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993-1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995-2003. Dr. Asali is the author of several publications that include: "From Crusades to Zionism" (1993) "Zionist Studies of the Crusades" (1992) "Expedition to Jerusalem" (1990). Dr. Asali was born in Jerusalem, where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He received an M.D. from the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School in 1967. He completed his residency in Salt Lake City, Utah, and then practiced medicine in Jerusalem before returning to the US in 1973. Dr. Asali was the Medical Director and Chairman of the Board at the Christian County Medical Clinic in Taylorville, Illinois and he served as Chairman of the Board of Physicians Health Association of Illinois before he retired in 2000. He is a Diplomat of the Board of Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Mezier Behrooz on Iran's political dynamic, it's nuclear intentions and on the neocon ideologues driving a belligerent US policy regarding this nation of 75 million. Dr. Behrooz is a professor of Middle Eastern History at California State University, San Francisco. His most recent book is "Rebels with a cause: the failure of the Left in Iran."

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December 10th, 2006

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Nena Krushcheva on Russian President Vladimir Putin and how Russia is today under his leadership, in light of the recent murder of a Putin critic in London. Ms. Krushcheva teaches international affairs at New School University's World Policy Institute, specializing in Russia and US - Russian relations. She is the granddaughter of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushcheva has made numerous media appearances and written articles and op-ed pieces for both American and European publications, including The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Times, The Nation, The Times of London, Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Moscow), Obshchaya Gazeta (Moscow), Novoe Russkoe Slovo, Der Standard (Austria), NRC Handelsbuad (Netherlands), Die Zeit (Germany), and IntellectualCapital.com. Her book in progress is entitled From Tsarina to Tovarishch: Russian First Ladies.Who Are They?.

Kevin McKiernan on Iraq and the Kurds, in light of recent developments and the Baker-Hamilton report. Kevin McKiernan has been a foreign correspondent for more than thirty years and he has reported from Central America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His articles and photographs have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Time and other publications. He lectures frequently at universities and he has appeared as a guest on a number of television programs, including the CBS Evening News and the NBC Today Show. He recently covered the Iraq war, for ABC News, for extended periods in both Kurdish and Arab areas. Prior to that, he co-produced Spirit of Crazy Horse for PBS Frontline and he wrote and directed Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, the award-winning PBS documentary. His book, THE KURDS: A People in Search of Their Homeland was released by St. Martin s Press in 2006.

Elizabeth de la Vega on the occasion of "Impeachment Day" and the subject of holding President Bush accountable. Ms. De La Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in the Nation Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon. She is author of the new book "U.S. v. George W. Bush et. al."

Philip Coyle on the recent Bush initiative to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. Philip Coyle is a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information. He is a recognized expert on U.S. and worldwide military research, development and testing, on operational military matters, and on national security policy and defense spending, including defense acquisition reform and defense procurement. Coyle also has extensive background in missile defense, in military space systems, and in high-technology weapons, such as high power lasers and other directed-energy weapons. From his many years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Coyle also has considerable experience in nuclear weapons research, development, and testing, and nuclear weapons effects, including EMP.

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December 3rd, 2006

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Nir Rosen on the unfolding events in the Middle East and where they are leading. Mr. Rosen is a leading journalist who has written extensively on the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Rosen spent more than a year in post-war Iraq reporting on the American occupation, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of post-war Iraqi religious and political movements, and inter-ethnic and sectarian relations. He also focused his reporting and research on the origins and development of islamist resistance, insurgence, and terror organizations. While in Afghanistan, Mr. Rosen covered the elections and studied the differences between the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Rosen has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper s and The New Republic. His book on Iraq is "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq." He has a recent piece in the Boston Review, entitled "Anatomy of a Civil War."

Roger Morris on Bush's Middle-East catastrophe. Mr. Morris is an award-winning historian and investigative journalist who served on the National Security Council Staff under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. He is the author of the forthcoming Shadows of the Eagle, a history of American policy and covert interventions in the Middle East and South Asia, to be published early next year by Alfred Knopf. Morris' other books include Partners in Power: the Clintons and Their America and with Sally Denton The Money and the Power: the Making of Las Vegas. He serves as a Senior Fellow of the Green Institute, which features his ongoing work on American politics, on the Institute's world affairs web site, www.eGP360.net.

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November 26th 2006

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Peter Lance on the untold story of bin Laden's agent in the US prior to 9/11, and the intelligence and security failures on the part of US officials, including federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy Award winning investigative reporter. Author of 1000 Years for Revenge, Cover Up, and the novel First Degree Burn, he is a former correspondent for ABC News and has covered hundreds of stories worldwide for 20/20, Nightline, and World News Tonight. Among his other awards are the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Prize and the Sevellon Brown Award from the Associated Press Managing Editors association. His just-published book is "Triple Cross: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI -- and Why Patrick Fitzgeral Failed to Stop Him."

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November 19th 2006

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Larry Johnson on a variety of topics, including the Bush administration, Rumsfeld, Iraq, Iran, etc. Mr. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. During his distinguished career, he received training in paramilitary operations, worked in the Directorate of Operations, served in the CIA's Operation's Center, and established himself as a prolific analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. In his final year with the CIA he received two Exceptional Performance Awards. His indespensible blog is "No Quarter."

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November 12th 2006

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Israeli Palestinian panel

This is a for-radio discussion by panel participants in advance of the Israeli Palestinian Confederation will hold its second symposium at the Beverly Hills Library on November 12 ,2006.

The panelists will debate whether a Confederation provides a workable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The symposium promises to be lively and intellectually challanging.

The participants in the symposium are:

Moderator: Ian Masters Host Background Briefing.

Professor Benjamin R.Barber University of Maryland and author of "Jihad V McWorld "

Uri Dromi Director of Israel Democracy Institute, Israel Air Force (Ret).

Professor Norman G.Finkelstein De Paul University .Author of "Image and Reality of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict"

Professor Mark LeVine U.C.Irvine. Author of "Why They Don't Hate Us."

Edward L.Peck Former U.S Ambassador to Iraq,

Attorney Sami Mashney Palestinian born American Publisher of Arab Calendar.



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November 5th 2006

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David Dill is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Prof. Dill has been working actively on policy issues in voting technology since 2003. He is the author of the "Resolution on Electronic Voting", which calls for a voter-verifiable audit trail on all voting equipment, and which has been endorsed by thousands of people, including many of the top computer scientists in the U.S. He has served on the California Secretary of State's Ad Hoc Task Force on Touch-Screen voting, the Citizens DRE Oversight Board of the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, and on the IEEE P1583 Voting Equipment Standards Committee. He has testified on electronic voting before the U.S. Senate and the Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III. He is the founder of the Verified Voting Foundation and VerifiedVoting.org and is on the board of those organizations. In 2004, he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Pioneer Award" for "for spearheading and nurturing the popular movement for integrity and transparency in modern elections."

Bob Epstein on the importance of California's Proposition 87. Dr. Epstein is an entrepreneur and engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a co-founder of four information technology companies: Sybase, GetActive Software, Zight, and Britton-Lee. Bob currently splits his professional time between his roles as co-founder of Environmental Entrepreneurs, Chairman of the Board at GetActive Software, Director New Resource Bank, Director Cleantech Capital Group, board member of the Merola Opera Program, and Trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Bob s community activities are focused on the environment, public education and opera.

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Note: no Live From the Left Coast program for October 15th, 2006

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October 8th 2006

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Dr. Helen Caldicott on the downside of nuclear power. Dr. Caldicott has devoted the last 35 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. Dr Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School and later taught at Harvard. She co-founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Dr Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, most recently the Lannan Foundation's 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom, 19 honorary doctoral degrees, and was personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Linus Pauling - himself a Nobel Laureate. The Smithsonian Institute has named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. Her new book is "Nuclear Power is not the Answer." Booklist says, Never one to mince words, renowned physician and activist Caldicott presents exhaustive evidence to refute the now resurgent claim that nuclear power is the solution to global warming. Eschewing hyperbole and speculation, Caldicott diligently presents the facts about the grave problems attendant on nuclear power.

Lt. General William Odom on his strong belief that the United States must extricate itself from Iraq as soon as possible. General Odom is U.S. Army (Ret.), and is currently a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. General Odom was one of, if not the first, members of the US military establishment to oppose Bush's invasion of Iraq, describing it as "the greatest strategic disaster in American history."

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October 1st 2006

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James Moore on the Bush presidency and where it has taken this country. Mr. Moore is the coauthor, with Wayne Slater, of the bestselling Bush s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential and the author of Bush s War for Reelection. He has been closely covering the rise of Karl Rove and George W. Bush to the pinnicale of power they occupy today. An Emmy Award winning television news correspondent, he has traveled extensively with every presidential campaign since 1976. His new book, with Wayne Slater, is "The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power," described by Joseph Wilson as "a gripping sotry of the hijacking of the Republican party by Karl Rove, his allies from the radical right, and his corrupt cronies from K Street. A must read for any student of the history of our times."


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September 24th 2006

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Rajiv Chandrasekaran on the amazing, if not astounding, story of US forces in Baghdad's "green zone." Chandrasekaran documents the surreality of a lavish life in the secure zone, while chaos reigns outside. The waste, the wanton greed, the incompetence is all described. Mr. Chandrasekarn is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1994. He previously served the Post as a bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia, and as a correspondent covering the war in Afghanistan. He recently completed a term as journalist-in-residence at the International Reporting Project at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. His new book is "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," described as "as extraordinary vivid and compelling anatomy of a fiasco."

T. Christian Miller into further depth on the corrupt and incompetent "rebuilding" of Iraq. Mr. Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In ten years as a professional journalist and foreign correspondent, Miller has covered four wars, a presidential campaign and reported from more than two dozen countries. He has won numerous accolades for his work in both the U.S. and abroad, including the Livingston Award for international reporting, one of the most competitive and prestigious reporting prizes in American journalism. Miller was the only journalist in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to covering the Iraqi reconstruction. In nearly two years of following the money trail, Miller's groundbreaking work has been followed by the expulsion of a top Pentagon official, the cancellation of a major arms contract and the initiation of several investigations. Miller s recently published book, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq has won widespread critical acclaim. The Washington Post called it one of the indispensable books on Iraq. Prior to coming to Washington, Miller was a foreign correspondent based in Bogot , Colombia where he covered that nation's guerrilla conflict and its connection to Washington's war on drugs. In 2000, Miller covered the presidential campaign of George W. Bush.


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September 17th 2006

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Robert Dreyfuss on his thesis that the "war on terror is a fraud. Mr. Dreyfuss was described as one of America's leading investigative journalists by the Columbia Journalism Review. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer for Mother Jones and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His articles have also appeared in The New Republic, Newsday, Worth, The Texas Observer, and many more. He is frequently cited for ground-breaking stories about the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy, including the first significant profile of Ahmed Chalabi, the first analysis of the war between the Pentagon and the CIA over policy toward Iraq, which included the first important account of the Pentagon s Office of Special Plans, the first detailed accounts of neoconservative war plans for the broader Middle East, and the most complete account of the work of the Office of Special Plans in manufacturing misleading or false intelligence about Iraq, entitled The Lie Factory. His most recent book is "Devil's Game: How the US unleashed fundamentalist Islam." He has a new new article, just published in the new issue of Rolling Stone, "The Phony War," in which he makes a case, based on numerous interviews, that Bush's war on terror is a fraud, propagated for domestic politics. His website is www.robertdreyfuss.com.

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September 10th 2006

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Amy Wilentz on the social and political currents she sees in becoming a Californian "in the age of Schwarzenegger." Ms. Wilentz is a Nation contributing editor and the author of the award-winning The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. Her novel Martyrs' Crossing won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize. She has won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for nonfiction and the Whiting Writers Award, and was a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1990. In addition to The Nation, her work has appeared in a number of publications, including The New Republic, and The New York Times. She was the Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker from 1995 to 1997. Her new book is " Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger."


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September 3rd, 2006

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Robert Young Pelton on the widespread us of military contracts by the Bush administration. Mr. Pelton is a journalist, filmmaker, and explorer. He is the author of The World's Most Dangerous Places, Come Back Alive, The Adventurist, and Three Worlds Gone Mad. Pelton has worked for National Geographic, Discovery, 60 Minutes, the ABC Investigative Division, and CNN. He is also a contributing editor and columnist for National Geographic Adventure. His new book is "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror," described as a look into an even darker side of the war on terror: the mercenary military contractors who make up the "coalition of the billing."

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August 27th, 2006

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Sarah Chayes on the fall of the Taliban, the present and the future of Afghanistan. From 1997 to 2002, Sarah Chayes served as an overseas correspondent for NPR, reporting from Paris and the Balkans, as well as covering conflicts in Algeria. When war broke out in Afghanistan in 2001, NPR sent her to report from Quetta, Pakistan, and then from inside Afghanistan, based in the southern city of Kandahar, as the Taliban fell. In 2002, she left NPR to take a position running a nongovernmental aid organization, Afghans for Civil Society, founded by Qayum Karzai. Now she has launched her own artisanal agribusiness, called Arghand, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies, by buying their products and producing soaps and other scented products from them for export. Her work as a correspondent for NPR during the Kosovo crisis earned her, together with other members of the NPR team, the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards. Her new book is "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban."

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August 20th, 2006

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John Dean on the transformation of the Republican party, since the era of Barry Goldwater, into an authoritarian "leader-driven" construct. Before becoming Counsel to the President of the United States in July 1970 at age thirty-one, John Dean was Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the Associate Director of a law reform commission, and Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for a thousand days. He did his undergraduate studies at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science. He received a graduate fellowship from American University to study government and the presidency, before entering Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD in 1965.

John has long written on the subjects of law, government, and politics, and he recounted his days in the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He has authored 7 books in total, including "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush." His latest is "Conservatives Without Conscience."

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August 13th, 2006

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Senator Byron Dorgan on trade practices which Senator Dorgan regards as a disaster for America. Senator Dorgan has served for 24 years in the US congress. He spent twelve years in the US House of Representatives and served on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and is now serving his third term in the Senate. Elected to the Senate in 1992, he has been a member of the Democratic leadership for 10 years. He has served as the Assistant Democrat Floow Leader and is currently the Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee. He has become on of America's leading voices calling for a change in the economic and trade policies that have resulted in shipping American jobs overseas, undercutting our farmers and workers, and creating a mountain of trade debt that threatens our country's future. His new book is "Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics are Selling Out America." Bill Moyers has said of the book, and its author, "Conventional wisdom has failed--a flat world is not a healthy world. Senator Dorgan reminds us that politics can still produce prophets who see the world for what it is and for what it can be."

Joe Trento on the Bush administraiton, the politicization of intelligence agencies and the failure to have real security in airline travel. Mr. Trento has spent more than 35 years as an investigative journalist, working with both print and broadcast outlets and writing extensively on national security issues. Before joining the National Security News Service in 1991, Trento worked for CNN's Special Assignment Unit, the Wilmington News Journal, and prominent journalist Jack Anderson. Trento has received six Pulitzer nominations and is the author of seven books, including The Secret History of the CIA, and his most recent, "Prelude to Terror: the rise of the Bush Dynasty, the rogue CIA and the Compromising of American Intelligence." His forthcoming book, authored with Suan Trento, is "Unsafe at Any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating 9/11, and the Shocking Truth about Aviation Security Today," to be published this October.


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August 6th, 2006

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Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten on the national dominance of the Republican party currently, and their plan to continue holding power indefinitely. Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter covering the White House and the executive branch for the Los Angeles Times and had a front-page article out yesterday on California lobbyists. He previously reported for the Wall Street Journal. and Peter Wallsten covers the White House for the Los Angeles Times and he had a page one article on Friday regarding public attitudes towards Israel and what the US role should be in the present conflict. Their new book is "One Party Country: the Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century," which Roger Simon as described as "Hamburger and Wallsten pull back the curtain and reveal the Republican battle-plan to take over American politics. With compelling detail and scrupulous fairness, the two uncover many of the machinations that have been below the radar screen until now."


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July 30th, 2006

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Lawrence Pintak on the the differences between Arab and US media in their reporting on the Middle East, and the consequent difference of perception. Mr. Pintak is a veteran of 30 years in journalism and communications consulting on four continents who now writes and lectures on America's relationship with the Muslim world and the role of the media in shaping global perceptions. He is director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo and publisher and senior editor of the Journal of Transnational Broadcasting Studies. Pintak covered the Lebanon conflict, the Iran-Iraq War and the birth of modern radical Islamist terrorism as CBS News Middle East correspondent in the 1980s and was based in Indonesia in the 1990s, where he reported on the overthrow of Indonesian President Suharto for The San Francisco Chronicle and ABC News. He won two Overseas Press Club awards for his Middle East coverage, was twice nominated for Emmys and has contributed to many of the world's leading news organizations. He is the author of Seeds of Hate: How America's Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad. His most recent book is "Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas.

interviewed with

Youssef Ibrahim is currently the Managing Director of Strategic Energy Investment Group based in Dubai. Previously, Mr. Ibrahim served for 18 years as senior regional Middle East correspondent for the NEW YORK TIMES and for 6 years as Energy Editor for the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and was a Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs at the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS. Af He formed SEIG in Dubai in 2003 to advise companies of a wide range of issues from political risks to business opportunities. He writes opinion editorial pieces for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, and United Press International of geopolitical affairs of the Greater Middle East and the USA. He has published over 4000 articles since 1979 and one book, a 354 page geopolitical profile of Egypt.


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July 23rd, 2006

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Julia Sweig on the alarming turn against the US worldwide. Will this be the "anti-American century?" Dr.Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director of Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her previous book, Inside the Cuban Revolution, won the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar. Her just-published book is "Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century," which is a masterly and caustic examination of America's role in fostering anti-Americanism over the last fifty years.

Calvin Trillin in a humorous take on the Bush administration. Mr. Trillin became The Nation s deadline poet in 1990, has also written verse on the events of the day for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and National Public Radio. He says he believes in an inclusive political system that prohibits from public office only those whose names have awkward meter or are difficult to rhyme. His previous books include,"The Tummy Trilogy," "Travels With Alice" and "Obliviously on He Sails: the Bush Administration in Rhyme." His new book is "A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme."


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July 16th, 2006

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John Ackerman on Mexico. Dr. Ackerman is a professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico City, who has been closely monitoring events in Mexico in the aftermath of the hotly contested presidential election. He also had a piece recently published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Lopen-Obrador.

Roger Morris on U.S. politics and the Middle East, with particular attention to the Israel/Lebanon crisis. 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.


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July 9th, 2006

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Dr. Gregory Nunberg on the success of the right and failure of the left in their use of language in the political arena. Dr. Nunberg is an adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and a consulting professor in the Stanford Department of Linguistics. He is also chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Since 1989, he has done a language feature on NPR's "Fresh Air," and his commentaries on language and politics are regularly seen in the Sunday New York Times and other publications. A winner of the Linguistic Society of America's Language and the Public Interest Award, he is also the author of The Way We Talk Now, Going Nucular and his latest, Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show .

Senator Mike Gravel on his campaign for President of the United States. Senator Gravel was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Alaska for two terms, from 1969 to 1981. He is primarily known for having put into the public record a large portion of the Pentagon Papers by entering 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Senate subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, in 1971. He is currently a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

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July 2nd, 2006

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David Sirota on how the Democratic party can revitalize itself and become more effective in actually winning. Mr. Sirota is a veteran campaign strategist, political operative and writer, who is widely known for his tenacious focus on working class economic issues that are often ignored by America's political elites. Newsweek wrote of him, Sirota is "intense, driven, even obsessive [as he] fills the gap left by a timid Democratic establishment." Mr. Sirota has served as press secretary to Bernard Sanders, the longest-serving independent in congressional history, as the chief spokesman for Democrats on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, and was one of the first employees of the Center for American Progress, a national progressive think tank, where he became Director of Strategic Communications, creating the organization's main daily publication, The Progress Report, which the National Review called "the most aggressive, most energetic opposition research in politics." Sirota was also the principal author of Moveon.org's Misleader (www.misleader.org), a daily publication that had 200,000 subscribers in the lead up to the 2004 presidential election. During the fall of 2004, Sirota returned to Montana to serve as a senior strategist to Brian Schweitzer in his successful run for governor. Schweitzer became the first Democrat elected to the governorship of Montana in 16 years. Sirota is currently a senior editor at In These Times magazine, and is the author of a regular section in The Nation entitled "Permanent Minority vs. Toward the Majority." And he is a regular contributor to The American Prospect, the full-time blogger for Working Assets, and a twice-weekly guest on The Al Franken Show. His work has been published in, among others, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Charlotte Observer, Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Washington Monthly. His new book is "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back."

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June 25th, 2006

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James Carroll on the military-industrial complex as having corrupted American democracy. Mr. Carroll was born in Chicago and raised in Washington, D.C., where his father was an Air Force general and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He attended Georgetown University before entering St. Paul's College, the Paulist Fathers' seminary, where he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees. Carroll has been a civil rights worker, an antiwar activist, and a community organizer in Washington and New York. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974. During that time, he studied poetry with George Starbuck and published books on religious subjects and a book of poems. He was also a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter (1972-1975) and was named Best Columnist by the Catholic Press Association. For his writing on religion and politics he received the first Thomas Merton Award. His new book is "House of War: the Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power."
Antonia Juhasz on the projection of American power internationally via economic means. Ms. Juhasz is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization. She is a Project Censored Award recipient and co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 2 nd Ed. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, and the Johannesburg Star. Her new book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.


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June 18th, 2006

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Bob Baer reveals a number of surprising truths in this important interview, regarding the run-up to 9/11, the failure of the "war on terror" and the nature of the real threats that America faces. Mr. Baerspent twenty years running agents from inside the CIA s Directorate of Operations, from 1976 to 1997, operating against Hizballah, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, and was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker). He is the author of "Sleeping with the Devil" and his memoir See No Evil was a New York Times bestseller which inspired the movie Syriana starring George Clooney. His new book is "Blow the House Down: a novel," which was a "fictionalization" of a non-fiction book, which the CIA had refused permission to publish.


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June 11th, 2006

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Dr. John Koza on bypassing the electoral college in the election of the president of the United States. Dr. Koza is a consulting professor in the Biomedical Informatics Program in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University at Stanford University. He is the originator of the innovative to elect the president by direct popular vote, bypassing the electoral college. Dr. Koza's plan is described in the book, "Every Vote Equal: A state-based plan for electing the President by National Popular Vote," which can be read and downloaded at www.every-vote-equal.com. Dr. Koza received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972. He published a board game involving electoral college strategy in 1966. From 1973 through 1987, he was co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Scientific Games Inc. where he co-invented the rub-off instant lottery ticket used by state lotteries. In the 1980s, he and attorney Barry Fadem (see above) were active in promoting adoption of lotteries by various states through the citizen-initiative process and legislative action. He has taught a course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University since 1988.

Mariaelena Hinacapie on immigration as a "wedge issue." What is the immigration controversy really about? Ms. Hinacapie is director of programs at the National Immigrant Labor Center. Ms. Hincapi manages the employment, public benefits, and immigration work of the organization. She also specializes in protecting and advancing the rights of immigrant workers. She writes articles and policy analyses, provides technical assistance, and presents trainings to legal and social service providers, labor unions, and community-based organizations. In addition, she litigates law reform and impact cases dealing with the intersection of immigration and employment/labor law. Before joining NILC, she worked for the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco's Employment Law Center, where she founded the center's Immigrant Workers Rights Project. Ms. Hincapi holds a Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law.


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June 4th, 2006

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Dr. Max Neiman on the "state of the State of California" politically. Dr. Neiman is currently Director of the Governance and Public Finance Program at the Public Policy Institute of California, based in San Francisco, which he joined in 2005. Before that he was a professor at the University of California, Riverside in the Political Science Department. His most recent book is titled DEFENDING GOVERNMENT, and he is currently working on a project focusing on "California's Policy Constraints." He has authored many scholarly articles, and he earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin.

Debra Bowen on her candidacy for Secretary of State. Senator Bowen has been a California State Senator of the 28th State Senate District since 1998, and is a candidate for California Secretary of State in 2006. Bowen's Senate district includes all or portions of the cities of Carson, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, Venice, and Wilmington. A Democrat, Bowen currently chairs the California Senate's Committee on Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments. She also sits on the Energy, Utilities & Communications and Rules committees. Due to term limits, her service in the Senate will end in December 2006. Previously, Bowen was a member of the California State Assembly, representing the 53rd Assembly District from 1992-1998.

Marci Winograd on her candidacy for the House of Representative. Ms. Winograd is a Democratic candidate challenging sitting Congresswoman Jane Harmon, for the nomination in the 36th district here in southern California. Marci is President of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and a National Board Certified teacher and literacy expert. Winograd opposes Congresswoman Jane Harman's support of the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, new nuclear weapons development, secret detentions and the suspension of due process, and illegal government wiretapping of private American citizens. ---


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May 28th, 2006

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Independent unembedded war correspondents on Iraq today:

Aaron Glantz is a correspondent for Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) and the Inter Press News Service. He is the author of How America Lost Iraq. Before producing for FSRN, Aaron Glantz served as Sacramento reporter for Pacifica's Berkeley station, KPFA, where he began his career in journalism. He has visited Iraq twice during US occupation - for a month immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein and a second time - for three months - from February to May 2004. His series of reports from Iraq, exclusively for Pacifica.org, called Pacifica Reports From Iraq. His radio documentary, "Iraq: One Year of Occupation and Resistance," can be accessed online at www.fsrn.org.

interviewed with

Dahr Jamail is an independent, unembedded reporter now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the Independent. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

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May 21st, 2006

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Larry Johnson on the restructuring of the CIA, the use of intel in the Bush administration, and the political fall-out of the defense contracting scandal. Mr. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department s Office of Counter Terrorism and is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.

Milton Virost on how the Bush administration's problematic policies regarding the Middle East is part of a larger colonial and imperial syndrome which has been practiced for hundreds of years, and what the West must do to bring peace to the region. Mr. Viorst has covered the Middle East as a journalist and scholar since the 1960s. He was The New Yorker s Middle East correspondent, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He has written six books on the Middle East. His latest is "Storm from the East: the struggle between the Arab world and the Christian West."

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May 14th , 2006

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Jim Marcinkowski on the developments concerning the CIA, their political dimensions, and the pending appointment of former NSA chief, General Michael Hayden. Mr. Marcinkowski is candidate for United States Congress in Michigan. He was formerly a case officer in the CIA s Directorate of Operations. Jim served as an operations officer in Washington, D.C. and Central America. It was in the CIA where Jim first met Valerie Plame, a classmate whose identity as an undercover CIA officer would later be exposed by the Bush White House. Receiving an Exceptional Performance Award upon leaving the CIA, Jim joined the Prosecutor s Office in Oakland County, Michigan where as an Executive Staff Attorney, he established the first special prosecution unit for domestic violence. www.marcinkowskiforcongress.com

Lila Azam Zanganeh on the reality of Iran: the people, the Mullahs, the President. What would the consequence of an American attack on Iran be? Ms. Azam Zanganeh is a contributor to Le Monde, and the editor of the recently published anthology My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, which will be published by Beacon next spring. She is currently at work on a book about Vladimir Nabokov.


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May 7th , 2006

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Antonia Juhasz on the hidden agenda of corporate economic hegemony, practiced worldwide by the Bush administration. Ms. Juhasz is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization. She is a Project Censored Award recipient and co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 2 nd Ed. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, and the Johannesburg Star. Her new book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.


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April 30th , 2006

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Chris Hedges on war, politics, culture, and the aftermath of war. Mr. Hedges is a veteran war correspondent, who also writes about religion and politics. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know about War. He has worked for various publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and the Dallas Morning News. He was part of the New York Times team that shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for global terrorism coverage. He published his most recent book, Losing Moses on the Freeway, in June 2005. He is working on a new book on right-wing religion in America. Hedges has written extensively about his experiences on the front lines of war. He has reported about his experiences in Sarajevo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the Middle East and other places from around the world.In a 2003 Commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Ill., Hedges raised the intense ire of audience members when he spoke out against the current war in Iraq. Many regard Hedges as a "philosopher of the experience of war." According to Hedges, the experience of being in a war zone, where there is very little distinction between life and death, fills a person with a sense of "meaning" and brings him to a "high" that cannot be experienced so strongly any other way, producing a kind of addiction.

interviewed with--

Yvonne Latty is a Professor of Journalism at New York University and the author of the recent In Conflict: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss and the Fight to Stay Alive and the critically acclaimed We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, from World War II to the War in Iraq. She worked for the Philadelphia Daily News for 13 years where she was an award winning reporter specializing in urban issues. Professor Latty was featured in the History Channel s Documentary Honor Deferred and has lectured nationally. Born and raised in New York City, she earned a BFA in Film/Television and later an MA in Journalism from New York University.

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April 23rd , 2006

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Barry Werth on the pivotal time after the resignation of President Nixon during which Cheney and Rumsfeld established themselves in power. Mr. Werth is the author of the books, "The Billion-Dollar Molecule," "Damages" and "The Scarlet Professor," which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His new book is "31 Days," which takes readers inside the White House during the tumultuous days following Nixon s resignation and the swearing-in of America s accidental president, Gerald Ford. In Ford's rush to fill a leadership vacuum, a transition team was assembled that included Donald Rumsfeld (then Nixon s ambassador to NATO) and his former deputy, Dick Cheney. This is the first detailed account of the ruthless maneuvering that led to the rise of a new power cadre within the Republican party, and ultimately to the Neocons--the architects of the unprecedented multiple disasters which now afflict this nation.

Ray McGovern in discussion on leaks and the firing of a senior CIA official related to Dana Priest's (of the Washington Post) Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the secret prison "gulag" operated by the CIA. Mr. McGovern is a 27-year career CIA analyst, whose work spanned administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush, for whom he provided Presidential Daily Briefings. Mr. McGovern is one of the founders of VIPS--Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which now includes 54 former professionals from CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of State s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Army Intelligence, the FBI, and the National Security Agency. He also works with "Tell the Word," the publishing arm of Ecumenical Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., devoted to publishing truth to power, which is consistent with the passage carved into the marble entrance to CIA Headquarters: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free the ethic mandating that CIA analysts were to tell it like it is without fear or favor.

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April 16th , 2006

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Dr. Garry Wills on the true meaning of the words of Jesus. Dr. Wills is one of America's most distinguished historians and critics. He is the author of numerous books, including Saint Augustine, Papal Sin, Why I am a Catholic and the Pulitzer Prize winning Lincoln at Gettysburg. He has won many other awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is currently Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University. His new book is What Jesus Meant. In this special discussion for Easter, we'll look at Will's fresh reading of the Gospels, in which he brings forward what Jesus plainly had to say against power, the wealthy and religion itself. Jesus, Wills reminds us, came from the lower class, the working class and he spoke to and for that class.

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April 9th , 2006

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Wayne White on the revelations that President Bush is considering the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq. Mr. White is an Adjunct Scholar at Washington s Middle East Institute. He most recently served as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (NESA). White also served as principal Iraq analyst and head of INR/NESA s Iraq team from 2003 to 2005. He was Chief of INR s Maghreb, Arabian Penninsula, Iran and Iraq division and State Department representative to NATO Middle East working groups from 1990 to 2002. Five times he received the State Department s Superior Honor Award, and three time s the Department s Meritorious Honor Award. In 1986, he was named INR s first Analyst of the Year, and, in 2004 received the Secretary s Career Achievement Award from Secretary Powell. Mr. White also has received the National Intelligence Certificate of Distinction for service during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, in 2000 the National Intelligence Medal for Outstanding Achievement, a 2004 citation from the National Intelligence Council for his work on the Iraq crisis, and was a 2002 National Intelligence Fellow.

Iranian artist and activist panel

The multilingual Lila Azam Zanganeh (French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Russian) was born, quite by accident, in Paris to Iranian parents. She is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure, where she studied literature and philosophy, and holds a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She initially moved to the United States in 1998 to teach literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University. She is, since 2002, a contributor to Le Monde and has been published in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, The Nation and La Repubblica. In 2005, she edited her first collection of narrative essays, "My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes", published this spring by Beacon Press. She is currently at work on a book about Vladimir Nabokov.

Poet and translator Sholeh Wolpe was born in Iran but spent most of her teen years in the Caribbean and Europe, ending up in the U.S. where she studied Radio-TV-Film at George Washington University in Washington DC. She obtained an MA in the same field from Northwestern University and later, an MHS in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. In 1984 she moved to California where she produced documentaries for the health field. She has widely traveled through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and speaks several languages. Sholeh Wolp is the director and host of Poetry at the Loft, a successful poetry venue in Redlands. Her recent book of poetry is The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press 2005), and her poetry, essays and translations have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Strange Times My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade 2005).

Jordan Elgrably is an editor, journalist (Le Monde, El Pais, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Alternet) and founding artistic director of Levantine Cultural Center. His work has appeared in several anthologies and he frequently writes on culture, identity and the Middle East.

Roya Hakakian has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes and on A& E's "Travels With Harry", and ABC Documentary Specials with the late Peter Jennings, Discovery and The Learning Channel. Commissioned by UNICEF, Roya's most recent film, Armed and Innocent, on the subject of the involvement of underage children in wars around the world, was an official entry in the documentary category at several festivals, and a nominee for best short documentary at the Hollywood Film Festival. Roya was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and the 2003 Dewitt / Wallace Reader's Digest Fellowship in writing. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She speaks on the subject of the Middle East and human rights and has appeared on CSPAN-Book TV, CNN International, CBS Early Show, and Now with Bill Moyers. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No (Crown) was Barnes & Noble?s Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine's Must Reads of the Summer, Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year, and Elle Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2004.


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April 2nd , 2006

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Gershom Gorenberg on the role the settler movement plays in Israeli politics. Mr. Gorenberg is an internationally acclaimed author and journalist based in Israel. His book The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount was described by the Washington Post as "a clear-eyed and compelling account of the messianists, would-be prophets, and adventurers who have fixed their sights on Jerusalem's holy places." His previous book, "Shalom, Friend: the Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" is considered to be a definitive biography of the fallen Israeli leader, who was slain by Israeli settler extremist. His new book is "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements. Publishers' weekley said of this book: "An essential guide to understanding Israel's own contribution to its current tragic pass." And Booklist says, "this is a timely, vital and riveting analysis of how the current territorial and ethnic Gordian knot developed."

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March 26th , 2006

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Ned Lamont on challenging the Democratic party establishment. Mr. Lamont is a Democratic candidate who is offering a very serious challenge to Senator Joe Leiberman for the nomination in the Connecticut Senatorial primary. Mr. Lamont is a businessman who founded his company, Lamont Digital Systems, in 1984 and is a graduate of both Harvard and the Yale School of Management. He is also former newspaper editor. In addition to running his successful business, Ned has been involved in many community activities. He spent eight years in local government, chaired the state investment advisory council, and served on the many civic boards. He also runs a business training program for Bridgeport High School students, and has worked to involve parents and communities in the educational process. Central to Mr. Lamont's motivation for running is his opposition to Bush's war in Iraq, separation of Church and state issues exemplified by the Terri Schiavo case and a "culture of corruption" in the Washington beltway

INTERVIEWED WITH

Marci Winograd is a Democratic candidate offering serious challenge to sitting Congresswoman Jane Harmon, for the nomination in the 36th district here in southern California. Marci is President of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and a National Board Certified teacher and literacy expert. She has been an education consultant and professional developer for the state of California, as well as the federally-funded GEAR UP program, which gears up struggling middle schoolers for college. She traveled with a People-To-People teacher delegation to China during the spy-plane stare-down, and worked to promote dialogue between teachers in China and educators in the United States. Ms. Winograd worked with Assemblyman Paul Koretz to draft a resolution calling for a moratorium on depleted uranium weapons systems and helped establish the California Election Protection Network, a grassroots organization that successfully lobbied for State Senator Debra Bowen's bill requiring a paper trail for electronic voting recounts. In her position as Media Reform Chair of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Winograd hosts "They Say/We Say" -- a public access television show which highlights the plight of returning veterans and underscores the importance of citizen activism. Winograd opposes Congresswoman Jane Harman's support of the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, new nuclear weapons development, secret detentions and the suspension of due process, and illegal government wiretapping of private American citizens.


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March 19th , 2006

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Kevin Phillips on the rise of right-wing fundamentalist religion and its empowerment in a President who derives his core support from and holds the views of. Phillips points out that there is considerable evidence that President Bush embraces a delusion of being divinely guided and inspired, and that history shows us that such delusion are not uncommon and are always dangerous, if not disastrous. Mr. Phillips is a former Republican strategist in the Nixon White House, has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. He is currently a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio and also writes for Harpers Magazine and Time. He has written twelve books, including The New York Times bestsellers The Politics of Rich and Poor and Wealth and Democracy. His highly anticipated new book is "American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury."

Max Blumenthal on the Jack Abramoff scandal connection to well-known figures of the Religio-Political industrial complex. Mr. Blumenthal is an award-winning journalistic, acclaimed for his investigative work. He is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow for the Nation Institute and a Research fellow at Media Matters. His work appears regularly appeared in Alternet, The American Prospect, Washington Monthly. He covers topics ranging from the religious right to border issues to academic freedom. His forthcoming feature for TheNation.com concerns border issues and white nationalists.


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February 12th , 2006

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Dr. Khaled Abou el Fadl on the international tension, rioting and dischord sown by the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons in a a Danish newspaper. Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is a highly accomplished Islamic jurist and scholar. He is a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he teaches Islamic law, Immigration, Human Rights and International and National Security Law. Dr. Abou El Fadl previously taught Islamic law at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, Yale Law School and Princeton University. He holds degrees from Yale University (B.A.), University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D.) and Princeton University (M.A./Ph.D.). He received formal training in Islamic jurisprudence in Egypt and Kuwait. He serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch and was a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Dr. Abou El Fadl is a prolific author who writes extensively on universal themes of morality and humanity. He is the author of seven books and over fifty articles on Islamic law and Islam, including: Islam and the Challenge of Democracy and The Place of Tolerance in Islam and Speaking in God's Name: Islamic law, Authority and Women (Oneworld Press, Oxford, 2001). His most recent book is "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists," which was described by the Washington Post as "an uncommonly rich, learned and easily accessible framework for understanding the current theological struggle within Islam. " and by the AP as "the most dramatic manifesto from an American Muslim since the September 11 attacks."

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February 5th , 2006

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Eugene Linden on global warming. Linden writes about science, technology, the environment and humanity's relationship with nature in books, articles, and essays. He has been published in the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, and others. Linden has consulted with the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations Development Program. In 2001 he was named as one of four recipients of the first Poynter Fellowship at Yale University to be awarded for environmental journalism. His important new book is The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations.

Dr. John Brown on the Iraq war and US foreign policy. John Brown is a former Foreign Service officer who resigned, after more than 20 years, in 2003 from the State Department over the war in Iraq. Dr. Brown received his Ph.D. in Russian History from Princeton University in 1977 and then worked at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington. Dr. Brown is a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, where he has taught courses about public diplomacy, and a consultant for the Library of Congress's "Open World" exchange program with the Russian Federation. He is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, providing it with a "Public Diplomacy Press Review" that is posted on its homepage. Brown is a member of the Public Diplomacy Council affiliated with George Washington University. Recent articles of his have appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Moscow Times, and American Diplomacy. He has an interesting new article, published in The Nation, entitled "Our Indian Wars Are Not Over Yet: Ten Ways to Interpret the War on Terror as a Frontier Conflict."


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January 29th , 2006

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Ann Wright on the war in Iraq. Ms. Wright spent 26 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and was a diplomat in the State Department for 15 years before resigning in March 2003, protesting the then-impending invasion of Iraq. She wrote in her letter of resignation: "I strongly believe that going to war now will make the world more dangerous, not safer." She asked today: "Is the president interested in real dialogue with people who disagree with him?" A career diplomat in the Foreign Service and a colonel in the Army Reserves resigned on the day the U.S. launched the Iraq War. In her letter of resignation, Wright told then-Secretary of State Colin Powell: "I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them." Resigned, March 19, 2003. She is in the Los Angeles area participating in some notable events. Last night she participated in a "Panel Discussion of Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq," which featured Scott Ritter, Stephen Zunes, among others. This afternoon, she will be featured in the "Out of Iraq Forum" from 2 to 5pm at The Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

(interviewed with)

Dr. Michael Intrilligator is a professor of economics, political science and public policy at UCLA and Vice Chairman of the New York-based Economists for Peace and Security. He serves as a Senior Fellow for Gorbachev Foundation of North America and a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the well known Handbook of Economics Series.


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January 22nd , 2006

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David Neiwert on the legacy of the Japanese-American internment camps and what meaning this tragic incident holds for us today in a post-9/11 America. Mr. Neiwert is one of America's leading journalists on the subject of race, culture and politics in America. Based in Seattle, David Neiwert is the author of the recently published Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community. His previous books include Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, which told the dramatic story of a hate crime perpetrated against Vietnamese immigrats and the ensuing trial, and In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, which covered the rise of patriot/militia/supremacist extremism in that area of the US. His reportage for MSNBC.com on domestic terrorism and right-wing extremism won the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism in 200. His features and articles can be found at Salon.com, the Washington Post, MSNBC and many other publications. In both 2202 and 2004, his weblog, the highly acclaimed Orcinus ( http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ ), won the Koufax Award, the most prestigious award for on-line weblogs.

Neiwert's new book, Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community, tells the deeply moving story of the creation and destruction of Bellevue, Washington, a Japanese immigrant town renowned for its carefully nurtured strawberry farms. Combining compelling storytelling, in-depth interviews, and newly uncovered documents, Neiwert weaves together the community's gentle, industrious and inspiring founding, the coming of war, the tragedy of internment and the racist schemes that prevented the formerly interned American citizens from reclaiming their hard-earned land, and their beloved strawberry farms, after the war.


On Saturday January 21, Mr. Neiwert spoke at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Later today, he will be autographing Strawberry Days at the Kino Kuniya Bookstore in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, from 3 to 5pm. Tonight, he will speak at 7pm at the Unitarian Church in downtown Riverside, corner of Lemon and Mission Inn Avenue. Mr. Neiwert will speak tomorrow at UC Riverside in the Fine Arts Bldg Performance Lab Theatre at 12noon. And at 3pm Monday, he will speak at San Bernardino's Valley College in the Library auditorium.


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January 15th , 2006

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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 America?fs misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. Dreyfuss has an article in the December issue of Rolling Stone, entitled "Getting Out of Iraq." New articles at TomPaine.com and The American Conservative discuss the neocon push for war on Syria and Iran, even after the Iraq catastrophe has become manifest.

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January 8th , 2006

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James Moore on the abuse by the Bush political operation, of the national security apparatus to harass and intimidate political opponents. James Moore is an Emmy Award-winning TV news correspondent with more than a quarter century of print and broadcast experience. Moore is also the author-along with Wayne Slater-of the New York Times bestseller "Bush's Brain: how Karl Rove made George W. Bush presidential," a book which has been made into a documentary film, which has been widely seen on dvd. He has traveled extensively on every Presidential campaign since 1976. His reports have appeared on CNN, NBC, and CBS. His professional honors include: an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners' Foundation. His most recent book is "Bush's War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People." In an article published last week in The Huffington Post, James Moore described how he has been placed on the "NO FLY Terrorist Watch List," which has hampered his travel.

James Bamford on the recent revelation that without the FISA court's approval, Bush has ordered the NSA to spy on American citizens. James Bamford is the author of the bestseller The Puzzle Palace: inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, which is considered by many to be the definitive book on the National Security Agency: the NSA, which has recently been revealed to have conducted illegal spying on Americans by order of President Bush. More recently his book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, was a best-seller. His latest is a major feature for Rolling Stone's December issue: "The Man Who Sold the War," which profiles the neocon public-relations stronghold The Rendon Group and the man behind it, a former McGovern-era war protester. We'll talk to him about the threat to civil liberties posed by President Bush's apparently illegal order and the tremendous capacity of technology, improperly used, to invade and ultimately control our lives.

Hubert Sauper on his excellent new documentary film, which he directed, "Darwin's Nightmare." Mr. Sauper was born in a small village of Tyrol, Austrian Alps. He lived in Great Britain, Italy, the USA, and since ten years in France. He studied film directing in Vienna (Univ. of Performing Arts) and in Paris (Univ. de Paris VIII.) and graduated B.A.(Mag. art) Hubert teaches film classes in Europe and USA. The last two documentaries he wrote and directed were awarded twelve international film prizes.