Month: June 2008

KPFK Wed. 6/25: Stupidity in America

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Politicians tell us how smart the American people are. But the evidence is overwhelming: American voters are ignorant, shortsighted and swayed by meaningless rhetoric. A Washington Post poll in 2003 found that 70 per cent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. A majority continued to believe this even after the 9/11 Commission reported that the claim was groundless. RICK SHENKMAN, author of the new book JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE? says we can blame the president and the media, but we also have to face the truth about the American voter. Rick teaches history at George Mason U. and founded the History News Network website.

Also: BARBARA EHRENREICH tried living on low-wage work — she tells that story in her classic book Nickel and Dimed, out now in a new paperback edition (originally broadcast May 22, 2003.

Plus: The ‘State Secrets Privilege’ allows the president and the executive branch to conceal conduct, withhold documents and block civil litigation in the same of national security. It didn’t always exist — it was created in 1953. BARRY SIEGEL, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has undercovered the facts that led the Supreme Court to create the privilege — a mysterious 1948 crash of an Air Force B-29 in Georgia, and the efforts of the families of the men who died in the crash to find out what happened. Barry�s new book is CLAIM OF PRIVILEGE: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets.

Jews and Muslims at UC Irvine: The Nation

Wed. June 18: I’m preempted on KPFK today for the fund drive . . . . but there is more stuff to read, at TheNation.com: my new piece “Warriors for Zion–in California”:

Columbia and Barnard aren’t the only campuses where right-wing Zionists have fought bitter campaigns in the name of defending Israel and Jewish students. The unlikely site of the latest battle, as intense and angry as anything in Manhattan, is the University of California, Irvine (UCI). I should know–I teach there.

While the campaigns at Columbia and Barnard failed to persuade those schools to deny tenure or otherwise penalize faculty members the right-wing Zionists found objectionable, at UCI the professor who occupies the chair in Jewish history, Daniel Schroeter, has decided to leave after being condemned for failing to support the right-wing Jews’ campaign. Thus that campaign has had its first big success–but instead of getting rid of a Palestinian professor, they’ve gotten rid of a Jewish one.
. . . continued at TheNation.com

City of Fear: Los Angeles 1935-1965 – The Nation

Wed. June 11: I’m preempted on KPFK today for the fund drive . . . . but there is more stuff to read, at TheNation.com: my review of The Shifting Grounds of Race by Scott Kurashige:

From 1920 to 1960, Los Angeles was the whitest and most Protestant city in the United States, and the American city with the smallest proportion of immigrants–just 8 percent in 1960. By the end of the twentieth century, it was a multiracial place: 3.7 million residents, with 30 percent white, 10 percent black, 10 percent Asian and almost half Latino. During “the white years” in LA history, you might think Asian immigrant groups and black migrants from the South lived in separate worlds. The truth is more complicated: sometimes they were pitted against each other, sometimes they fought–and sometimes they joined forces in left-wing campaigns for jobs, housing and political power. Those competitions and alliances are the subject of Scott Kurashige’s fascinating and important new book, The Shifting Grounds of Race.

. . . continued at TheNation.com (and in print in the June 11 issue).

KPFK Wed. 6/4: How Hillary Hurt Obama

Okay, the primaries are over. How much damage did Hillary do to the Democrats — and to Obama? “The Clintons have behaved execrably,” Bob Herbert writes in the NYTimes, “But weak-willed party leaders showed neither the courage nor the inclination to stop them from fracturing the party along gender and ethnic lines.” HAROLD MEYERSON will comment: he’s executive editor of The American Prospect and writes for the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times: AMY GOODMAN talks about grassroots activists who have taken politics out of the hands of politicians, ordinary citizens who have challenged injustice — and won. Amy of course is host of �Democracy Now� , which airs on KPFK and more than 600 radio and TV stations around the world and on Democracynow.org. Her new book, co-authored by her brother David Goodman, is Standing Up to the Madness.

We will be featuring Standing Up to the Madness today as a KPFK fund drive premium – Pledge Online.
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Plus: Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary “The 11th Hour” argues that we’ve arrived at the last moment when change is still possible, when our impact on the earth’s ecosystem is not yet fatal. We’ll talk about the film and listen to clips featuring Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, scientist Stephen Hawking, R. James Woolsey (former head of the CIA) and sustainable design experts.
We will be featuring “The 11th Hour” as a KPFK fund drive premium–pledge online.