Month: January 2006

AMOS OZ, the great Israeli novelist and peace activist, talks about the Hamas victory – and what it means for those who seek an end to the Israeli occupation. Amos Oz’s new book is How to Cure a Fanatic.

READ JON WIENER’s Q&A WITH AMOS OZ at TheNation.com

Plus: our post-mortem on Bush’s State of the Union address with HAROLD MEYERSON, who will comment on the surprising news that we are “winning” in Iraq — as well as Bush’s statement that “we can only preserve freedom with a renewed commitment to spying on Americans.” Harold writes for the LA Weekly, the American Prospect, and the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: The politics of country music: Chris Willman explains why, during the 2004 election, the entertainers campaigning for Bush were almost exclusively the country stars, and how the rightward drift of country music has parallelled the transformation of the once-Democratic south into the heart of the Republican mainstream. We’ll also talk about the great exceptions, from Willy Nelson to the Dixie Chicks. Chris Willman is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly; his book Rednecks & Bluenecks is out now frrm The New Press.

Web extra: The dilemma of the mainstream journalist: “How does one report the facts when the facts themselves are biased?” asks Rob Corddry on The Daily Show. “Facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda,” he says – maybe that’s why it’s so hard to find them.

Paradise is lost: Remembering New Orleans
For two decades ANDREI CODRESCU has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. Andrei is a refugee born in Transylvania who found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; and where, in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps. Alas, as we now know, Paradise is lost. His new book is New Orleans, Mon Amour — an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

ALSO:
For a brief moment, the country tried genuine interracial democracy — in the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Historian ERIC FONER explains; his new book is Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.

PLUS:
It was thirty years ago today: the legendary “Born to Run” album is back, remastered. ANTHONY deCURTIS of Rolling Stone will comment on the album where Bruce Springsteen left behind his adolescent definitions of love and freedom. Anthony’s most recent book is In Other Words : Artists Talk About Life and Work.

PLAYLIST: “Tenth Avenue Freezeout”; “Thunder Road”; “Backstreets”; “Born to Run.”

“it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us. . . .”

More Stuff to read: Jon Wiener on “UCLA’S DIRTY THIRTY” from The Nation

THE MYSTERIES OF MICHAEL JACKSON: Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the New York Times, talks about the weirdness and the alleged criminality, the great music and the dancing, and the rise and fall of the one-time king of pop. Her new book is On Michael Jackson.
Margo will be speaking Sunday Jan 22 at 5pm at the UCLA Hammer Museum -Wilshire & Westwood.

Also: our Washington update with DAVID CORN, on the CIA’s recent attack on the Pakistani village — an attempt to kill al Qaeda’s No. 2 man – but instead it killed a dozen civilians. “No one pays for this. No one is punished.” David is Washington editor of The Nation, and author of The Lies of George W. Bush.

Plus: how a small group of people eliminated slavery in the British Empire: it took them 50 years, but they never gave up.
Adam Hochschild will explain: His book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves is out now in paperback.

MORE STUFF TO READ: “Bush on Bin Laden’s Satellite Phone: Wrong Again” by Jon Wiener — TruthDig.com

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS INTERVIEW HERE
The man who stopped the My Lai massacre, Hugh Thompson, died on Jan 6, 2006.
He was a military helicopter pilot who put his helicopter down between the soldiers and villagers, ordering his men to shoot their fellow Americans if they attacked the civilians. “There was no way I could turn my back on them,” he later said of the victims. We’  interviewed him in February 2000.

also on this show on KPFK Wed. 1/11: SAM ALITO is sort of like ROBERT BORK: he has a long and full record of challenging liberal positions on presidential power, abortion, civil rights and control of corporations. More than any nomination in memory, his threatens to finally transform the court. ROBERT SCHEER will explain: he writes a syndicated column and edits TruthDig.com.

Plus: Israeli Prime Minister ARIEL SHARON’s massive stroke has caused an earthquake in the political landscape there – he had dominated Israeli politics for two decades and had been expected to win the next elections. But does the sudden end of his politicl career make any difference to the Palestinians? AMY WILENTZ will comment: she was Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, and wrote an award-winning novel, Martyr’s Crossing, about Palestinians and Israelis.

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SHOW

AMOS OZ, the great Israeli peace activist and novelist, will talk about the future of the Mideast, and about his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness – it’s a fantastic book about growing up in Jerusalem in the forties and fifties, and it’s out now in paperback. (archive edition, originally broadcast 12/04)

ALSO: Jack Abramoff and the Mideast: JUAN COLE notes that Abramoff took money from Indian tribes — and gave it to right-wing Israelis establishing illegal settlements on Palestinian Land. Juan is professor of history at Michigan, president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, and he writes the famous “Informed Comment” blog.

PLUS: Spying on Americans – we’ll have an update from DAVID COLE of the Center for Constitutional Rights and The Nation magazine — he says Bush acted in direct violation of a criminal law. David’s new book is Terrorism and the Constitution, and he wrote recently in The Nation about the many ways President Bush has abused the power of his office.

Also: FRANK WILKINSON died Monday — he fought HUAC for 25 years, and went to jail for nine months in 1961 for refusing to anwer the question “Are you now or have you ever been?” He’s also a hero of Freedom of Information — his FOIA lawsuit led to the release of his FBI file, 132,000 documents, the largest on any individual ever released under the FOIA. Frank’s story was featured on Ry Cooder’s recent CD “Chavez Ravine” — we’ll listen to Ry sing his song about Frank, “Don’t Call Me Red.”
READ the New York Times obituary on Frank Wilkinson (it’s pretty good).