Month: July 2006

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Israel in Lebanon: is there a way out? IAN WILLIAMS, UN Correspondent for The Nation, says the UN could help – but first George Bush has to tell Israel to stop. An analogy: imagine if, when the IRA engaged in terrorists attacks on the British, the Brits shelled and strafed Dublin, bombed Dublin’s airport, and knocked out roads, power stations, and cell phone transmissions across Ireland.

Also: On a mission to build a peaceful, pot-friendly Shangri-La in rural Michigan, Tom Crosslin and his lover Rollie Rohm founded Rainbow Farm, a campground and concert venue. The farm quickly became the center of marijuana activism in Michigan, drawing thousands of hippies, blue-collar libertarians and militiamen to its annual hemp festivals. Eventually local authorities began an all-out campaign to shut the place down. Faced with mandatory jail terms and the loss of the farm, Tom and Rollie burned Rainbow Farm to the ground in 2001 – and the next day the FBI and the state police shot and killed them. DEAN KUIPERS of LA CityBeat tells that story – his terrific new book is Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke.

PLUS: Once upon a time you dressed so fine: on the 40th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” — GREIL MARCUS talks about the “explosion of vision and humor that forever changed pop music.” His book Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads is out now in paperback.
Playlist: Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone” — Highway 61 Revisited
Jimi Hendrix, “Like a Rolling Stone” — Jimi Plays Monterey
Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone” — Live 1966
(originally broadcast 4/13/05)

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Israel has killed over 300 Lebanese, most of them civilians, while Hezbollah rockets have killed 30 Israelis, 15 of them civilians. In Gaza, one Israeli soldier has died from his own army’s fire, while Israel has killed 103 Palestinians. Israel claims this disproportionate violence will destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, but in the past popular outrage over Israeli attacks on civilians has strengthened Israel’s enemies. (photo credit: LA Times: Beirut on 7/16)
We’ll have analysis from three angles:

AMY WILENTZ on the Israelis — she was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, and she’s a contributing editor of The Nation. She wrote a prize-winning novel about Palestinians and Israelis, Martyr’s Crossing.

HAROLD MEYERSON on Bush’s response: “The world’s sole remaining superpower has been super-absent from any role in mediating and mitigating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — partly because until recently the president didn’t believe in diplomacy, partly because he believed that the key to regional stability was deposing Saddam Hussein.” Harold writes for The Guardian in London, the LA Weekly, the American Prospect, and the Washington Post, where his piece “The Guns of July” appears today.

ADAM SHATZ on Hezbollah: Adam interviewed the head of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, at his headquarters in Beirut in 2003. Adam is literary editor of The Nation; his article “In Search of Hezbollah” appeared in the New York Review. He’s also editor of the book Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Israel and Zionism.

NEW: READ ADAM SHATZ ON “NASRALLAH”S GAME” at THENATION.COM

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Democrats want to “wave the white flag of surrender” in Iraq: that’s what President Bush says. Vice President Cheney accuses the Democrats of “defeatism” in the global war on terror. And now Republicans are planning to use the war to win at the polls in November. TOM HAYDEN talks about on the politics of the war – and what the peace movement can do in the upcoming elections.
Tom has been working on “An Exit Strategy for Iraq”.

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Plus: TIMOTHY LEARY: “While he may have been the leading spokesmodel for LSD, Leary remained to the end an old-fashioned booze hound, as well as a snake-oil peddler of the most traditional American sort. Had he been born a decade or two earlier, he would probably have been offering to cure arthritis through the application of the electric belt.” That’s what LUC SANTE says — he is the author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, and he teaches writing at Bard. His piece about Timothy Leary was the cover story in the New York Times Book Review.

Also: A story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict told through the experiences of two families with claims to the same stone house in the town of Ramla. The book is The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, and the author is SANDY TOLAN – he’s written for the New York Times Magazine and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. HE’s also produced dozens of radio documentaries for NPR and PRI. He teaches international reporting at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and he writes for the PBS Frontline web site.