Month: August 2008

Obama’s Limits: Interview with Andrew Bacevich–HuffPost

“We have presidential elections as a substitute for serious democratic politics” — that’s what Andrew Bacevich says. He’s been writing and teaching history and international relations at Boston University, after spending 23 years in the army and retiring as a colonel.

What would serious democratic politics look like? First of all, Bacevich says, we need a real debate about the idea of a global war on terror. Then we need a debate on what he calls our “empire of consumption.”

. . . continued at the Huffington Post

KPFK Wed. 8/17: Obama and the Limits of Power

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
ANDREW BACEVICH says even if Obama gets elected in November, he will disappoint us, and won’t be able to achieve his goals. That’s because the imperial presidency has eviscerated democracy; the endless wars have been a catastrophe for the body politic, and consumerism and debt are destroying the economy and the environment. Bacevich’s powerful and frightening new book is THE LIMITS OF POWER: The End of American Exceptionalism.

PLUS: RICK PERLSTEIN, author of NIXONLAND, talks about the tasks facing Obama: if he’s going to change anything in America, he will have to move quickly in the first days of his presidency – that’s the lesson of FDR and LBJ – it’s where the Clintons went wrong. Rick wrote about “The Liberal Shock Doctrine” in The American Prospect.

Also: Americans in Cuba on the eve of the Castro revolution – that’s the setting for RACHEL KUSHNER’s fascinating new novel TELEX FROM CUBA. For the Americans, plantation society in Oriente Province is a paradise – until the rebels come down from the hills.

More stuff to read: my review of Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew, from the LA Times.

 

KFPK Wed. 8/20: Taxi to the Dark Side

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
“Taxi to the Dark Side” is THE film of the year on the Bush Adminstration and torture – it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and tells the story of a taxi driver who committed no crime but was tortured and killed in Afghanistan. “Sooner or later we will need to understand what has happened in this country in the last seven years,” the New York Times reviewer declared, “and this documentary will be essential to that effort.” We’ll speak with ALEX GIBNEY who produced and directed the film.
We are proud to offer the DVD as a thank-you gift in the KPFK Summer Sign-Up for listeners who pledge $120 at kpfk.org or call 818-985-5735 during the show.
Watch the trailer for “Taxi to the Dark Side.”

Also: Why isn’t Obama doing better? the new LA Times poll has it at Obama 47 McCain 45, a statistical dead heat. We’ll ask JOHN NICHOLS, he’s Washington Correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com. (Note: Pollster.com does have Obama winning the electoral vote 264-180 with 94 in tossup states.)
Plus, Your Minnesota Moment: Why isn’t Al Franken doing better in his senate race against Republican Norm Coleman? Polls show Coleman 49, Franken 42, while Obama is ahead 48-43.

KPFK Wed. 8/13: Traffic Problems

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
How traffic works, and why we drive the way do: TOM VANDERBILT has been studying the most democratic place in America, where people of every race, class, religion, and age work together closely and successfully: in traffic. Tom answers questions like “Why does the other lane always move faster?” and “How much of bad traffic is caused by people looking for parking spaces?” Tom’s new book is TRAFFIC: Why We Drive the Way We Do. He also writes the blog “How We Drive.”

Plus: Randy Newman has “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” on his new CD, “Harps and Angels.”

Also: Myth and Mysogyny after 9-11 – that’s the subject of SUSAN FALUDI’s book The Terror Dream—out now in paperback. It’s a story about flight-suit superheroes, cowering “security moms,” Jessica-Lynchesque helpless “girls,” and Daniel Boone–wannabe politicians. Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of the best seller Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women.” (Originally broadcast 10-31-07)

KPFK Wed. 8/4: “Guilty” in Gitmo

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
The first military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay has come up with a predictable verdict of “guilty” for Osama bin Laden’s driver in the first US war crimes tribunal since WWII. But Salim Ahmed Hamdan was found “not guilty” of conspiracy. The ACLU has called the trial ‘an embarrassment.’ UCI’s new law school dean ERWIN CHEMERINSKY will comment.
.
Also: As host to the Olympics for the first time, China wants to be seen not as a country with a low-wage capitalist labor system and totalitarian restrictions on politial expression, and not as a central force for global warming and environmental devastation, but rather as a friendly world power. JEFFREY WASSERSTROM will comment; he teaches Chinese history at UC Irvine, is co-founder of The China Beat blog, and his latest blog at the Huffington Post, with Kate Merkel-Hess, is ‘Five Things We Wish George Bush Would Read Before his Olympic Trip to China.’

Plus: Medical Marijuana is transforming the pot industry, making pot the leading cash crop in America in 2006 – when 20 million pot plants brought in something like fourteen billion dollars. DAVID SAMUELS of The New Yorker will explain — he spent six months with a pot broker in Venice, in pot grow rooms, and in other places where medical marijuana is produced, traded, sold and consumed in California.