Month: June 2007

The KPFK Fund Drive continues!Today: the award-winning documentary “Iraq in Fragments” presents a stunning portrait of three worlds. We see the war in Baghdad through the eyes of an 11-year old boy, who has been apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; next, followers of Moqtada al-Sadr enforce Islamic law at the point of a gun; and finally a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence.American director James Longley’s film won Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Editing awards at Sundance in 2006.”This one demands to be seen,” said Kenneth Turan of the LA Times.It “mesmerizes with its insight and, rarer still, its beauty.”We’ll be featuring the film as a fund drive premium.
Watch the trailer for “Iraq in Fragments”

PLUS: DANNY SCHECHTER the News Dissector talks about the crisis of credit card debt – and the financial forces profiting from it. Danny is an Emmy-award winning TV news producer and documentary film maker, and executive editor of MediaChannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues network.
His new film, “In Debt We Trust,” is about the money we owe, and the bill that’s coming due.We’ll be featuring the DVD as a fund drive premium.

Do you want lies with that? Brutal working conditions, food poisoning, animal cruelty, low wages, plus sex and drugs in the packinghouse: all those stories are told in the film FAST FOOD NATION, out now on DVD, which will be our featured premium in the KPFK Fund Drive today. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called it “The most essential political film from an American director since Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’” The film stars Patricia Arquette, Greg Kinnear and Kris Kristofferson. ERIC SCHLOSSER wrote the book and co-wrote the screenplay for “Fast Food Nation”; he was also executive producer on the film, and we’ll be speaking with him about it.

Also: Hitchens v. Hedges, arguing about religion and politics. In Berkeley last month, Christopher Hitchens, author of the bestselling God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, debated Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Although Hedges denounces the Christian Right, he also praises the pious, while Hitchens, a supporter of the war in Iraq, argues that “human emancipation begins when this nonsense ends.” We’ll play highlights of the debate, and offer the books and a DVD of the debate as fund drive premiums.

More stuff to read: my interview with Christopher Hitchens, “Religion Poisons Everything,” at TruthDig.com

no show today — I’m out of town. It’s the 40th anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War –you can read my interview with Tom Segev about it at TheNation.com.