Month: December 2005

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Two takes on the year in review:
REBECCA SOLNIT says it was “a bad year for Goliath” – but not necessarily a good one for David. “Thirteen months ago,” she writes at TomDispatch.com, “when Bush was reelected, the despondent around me seemed to think that our future was graven in stone. But in the best and worst of ways, in this wild, wild year that ends so differently than it began, it has turned out to be written in water.” Her book Hope in the Dark is out now from Nation Books in a new edition.

ALSO: JOHN NICHOLS picks “the most valuable progressives of 2005.” John’s new book is Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy–he writes The Online Beat blog at TheNation.com.

And JEFF CHANG talks about hip-hop politics. In his new book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, Jeff shows how hip-hop was “forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica,” and how it has been “a generation-defining global movement.”
PLAYLIST: Africa Bambaataa, “Don’t Stop – Planet Rock” (1982); Public Enemy, “Fight the Power” (1988); India Arie, “Video” (2001); Kanye West, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” (2005).

A FINAL NOTE: Radio Nation’s last broadcast with host Marc Cooper on KPFK 90.7 FM will be this Friday 7-8am – the program will move to Air America radio, where the Laura Flanders show will become “Radio Nation with Laura Flanders” – heard in L.A. on KTLK 1150am Sunday nights from 8-11pm. Cooper started Radio Nation at KPFK in 1996, and the show is currently heard on more than 100 public and community stations. Cooper’s recent guests on Radio Nation have included Seymour Hersh, Gore Vidal, and Barbara Boxer, as well as Nation writers like David Corn and Victor Navasky. (Recently Marc has been guest hosting “Left Right and Center” on KCRW 89.9 FM.) So it’s time to say thank you to one of the greatest interviewers working in radio today — he gave me my start in show business, as a guest host on Radio Nation.

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Spying on Americans: George Bush says it’s a good thing – and he also thinks the president has the power to do it. DAVID COLE disagrees – he teaches law at Georgetown and his new book is Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security. His new article in The Nation looks at the many ways President Bush has abused the power of his office.

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Also: gay cowboys and straight cowboys: JOHN POWERS will explain the difference — a talk about Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” and Tommy Lee Jones’s “Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.” John writes the “On” column for the LA Weekly, he’s a commentator on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.”
His book Sore Winners: American Idols, Patriotic Shoppers, and Other Strange Species in George Bush’s America is out now in paperback.

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And we”ll have our Washington political update with HAROLD MEYERSON. Harold is political editor of the LA Weekly, editor at large of the American Prospect, and op-ed page columnist for the Washington Post.

Plus: YOUR MINNESOTA MOMENT: neighbors of a state prison in suburban Minneapolis say they do NOT want a 12-foot security fence built – they say the prisoners make good neighbors.

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Dec. 8 is the 25th anniversary of the killing of JOHN LENNON. We’ll commemorate that anniversary by listening to some rare audio from the Pacifica Radio Archives documenting Lennon’s engagement with the anti-war movement of the sixties: ABBIE HOFFMAN talking about John Lennon in a 1981 interview, PETE SEEGER rembering how he lead half a million people singing “Give Peace a Chance” at the Washington Monument in 1969, Lennon’s own voice from the bed-in in Amsterdam in 1968 and the Free John Sinclair concert in 1971 – and, throughout the hour, some of our favorite Lennon music.
Playlist: “Instant Karma!,” “Come Together,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” “John Sinclair,” “Stand by Me,” “Oh Yoko.”

Also: KPFK SPORTS! Today: a look at the Oakland Raiders fan empire with JIM MILLER and KELLY MAYHEW, authors of the new book Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire.

Plus: What’s next in California politics: SHEILA KUEHL, state senator from Santa Monica, with comment and analysis.

Today’s news update: Twenty-five years after John Lennon’s murder, the FBI has declared it will appeal a recent federal court decision ordering release of the last ten pages of the Lennon FBI file. The FBI says it would not release files about Lennon on the grounds that they contain information provided by a foreign government under a promise of confidentiality.
More info: www.LennonFBIfiles.com.