Month: July 2007

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First they said the war was justified to get rid of WMD in Iraq. Then they said war was justified to bring democracy to Iraq. Now they are saying war is justified to prevent genocide in Iraq. We’ll ask JUAN COLE what he thinks – he writes the indispensable “Informed Comment” blog on the war in Iraq and teaches Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. His new book is Napoleon’s Egypt:Invading the Middle East.

Also: Should corporations be bottling and selling our drinking water? The more the public accepts bottled water, the more it accepts that corporations, not local governments, should provide people with a shared common resource like water. That’s what GIGI KELLETT says—she’s director of the “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign of Corporate Accountability International.

Plus: our Washington political update with HAROLD MEYERSON. We’ll talk about Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and of course the opposition party. Harold is he’s executive editor of the American Prospect and op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

More stuff to read: in my new piece at TheNation.com, “President Rudy,” I ask Kevin Baker whether Giuliani would be a better president than Bush.

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The words “health care” and “comedy” aren’t usually found in the same sentence, but in MICHAEL MOORE‘s new movie ‘SiCKO,’ they go together hand in (rubber) glove. We’ll speak with KENNETH TURAN – he’s film critic for the LA Times – and he calls “SiCKO” Moore’s “most important, most impressive, most provocative film.”
Watch the trailer for “SiCKO”

Also: Bush’s new “ban” on torture: We have learned that when President Bush says, “We don’t torture,” it’s important to read the fine print. DAVID COLE explains – he’s a law professor at Georgetown University and contributor to Salon.com, The New York Review and The Nation.

Plus: RUDY GIULIANI is the leading Republican candidate for the 2008 race. President Giuliani would be “a fate worse than Bush” – that’s what KEVIN BAKER says – he wrote the cover story in the new issue of Harper’s.

More stuff to read: my interview with Carl Bernstein on Hillary’s politics from 1968 to 2008 – it’s at TruthDig.com.

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Is Hillary a closet leftist and radical feminist? Has she been targeted by a vast right-wing conspiracy? Or will she do whatever it takes to win? We’ll talk with CARL BERNSTEIN about Hillary’s 1960s; why she left Washington for Arkansas in 1974; why her 1993 health care plan ended in disaster; and why so many people don’t like her. Carl Bernstein of course is the Watergate Pulitzer Prize-winner; his new book is A WOMAN IN CHARGE: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Plus: KATHA POLLITT says Alexander Cockburn is wrong when he argues that the anti-war movement is weak because it fails to show “international political solidarity” with “Iraqi resistance fighters.” Katha writes the blog “And Another Thing” at TheNation.com and the “Subject to Debate” column in The Nation magazine.

Also: BIG COAL. If you think of coal as a relic of 19^th century industrialization, you’re wrong. Coal today supplies more than half of the electricity in the US today. George Bush calls coal our “economic destiny” – because we’ve got so much of it, and it’s so cheap. But as JEFF GODDELL explains, Coal-fired power plants in the US are responsible for nearly 40 percent of the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and air pollution from coal plants has killed more than half a million Americans in the last 20 years. Jeff’s book is Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.

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Since its founding in 1947, the CIA has consistently failed at its primary mission: to understand the world. Instead, it has been turned into a secret police force. TIM WEINER of the New York Times has spent 20 years studying the Agency, “an incapable and incoherent service whose deepest secret is its own weakness and ineptitude” —most evident on 9-11. Tim is a Puliter-Prize winning reporter who broke more than 100 page-one stories on the CIA. His new book is LEGACY OF ASHES: THE HISTORY OF THE CIA.

Plus: THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: Nazi Germany and the Jews. UCLA Historian SAUL FRIEDLANDER discusses the cooperation of “bystanders” and the victims’ initial blindness towards their fate and then their willingness to follow orders. He also draws extensively on individual voices – perpetrators, collaborators, victims. Saul Friedlander wrote a magnificent memoir, When Memory Comes, about his boyhood in Nazi-occupied France.

Also: CHINA’S BRAVE NEW WORLD: JEFFREY WASSERSTROM explains what’s happening in the world’s most rapidly changing society by looking at its fast-food palaces, coffee shops, and bootleg video parlors – and asks why the Communist Party is still in power, and why, if tens of thousands of protests happen in China each year, the regime remains strong. Jeff teaches history at UC Irvine and has written for The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, and the LA Times op-ed page.