Show Details for February 25th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

       –  FSRN headlines editor SHANNON YOUNG on biodiversity in Oaxaca

        – Former counter-terrorism expert LARRY JOHNSON on Iran, Libby

       — Middle East expert PHYLLIS BENNIS on current events there

 

SHANNON YOUNG on biodiversity in Oaxaca

Coffee grown in the shade of a tropical rain forest in Oaxaca increases the value of the forest and ensures its integrity.

 

Shannon Young lives in Oaxaca and anchors the Free Speech Radio News headlines five days a week. She is a former Monitor co-host and KPFT staffer, and has been our reporter on the ground in Mexico for several years.  Most recently, she has been updating us on the citizen uprising in Oaxaca, which began in May 2006.

Today she will talk with Monitor Host Mark Bebawi about biodiversity and GMO farming from the perspective of the effects it has on the locals in Oaxaca, which is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions.

Former counter-terrorism expert LARRY JOHNSON on Iran, Libby trial

Mark Bebawi will discuss with Larry Johnson the issue of US-Iran relations, as well as the Libby trial.

Johnson knew Valerie Plame Wilson because they served at the CIA at the same time.  The trial of Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, has been sent to the jury for deliberation.
Larry Johnson worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism.  He is called on frequently for his expertise in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.  He has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN and the BBC. He was employed as a Fox News Contributor during 2002.
BLOG:  http://noquarter.typepad.com

 

Middle East expert PHYLLIS BENNIS on current events there

Phyllis Bennis was in Houston speaking at a number of locations this week.  Former KPFT News Director Renee Feltz recorded one of the speeches, and has prepared this segment.

Phyllis Bennis has been a writer, analyst and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years.  She has been speaking out against the US attack on Iraq since before it began. She is a fellow at the Washington, D.C. think tank, Institute for Policy Studies.  She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

While working as a journalist at the United Nations during the run-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, she began working on the topic of U.S. domination of the UN, and stayed involved in work on Iraq sanctions and disarmament, and later U.S. war and occupation in Iraq. In 1999 she led the first US congressional staff delegation to Iraq to investigate the impact of US-led sanctions on the civilian population. Later, she later joined former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, who resigned his position as Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq to protest the impact of sanctions, in a speaking tour. In 2001 she helped found and currently co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Since 2002 she has played an active role in the growing global peace movement.

Bennis is the author of several books on Palestine, Iraq and the New World Order, including Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis; From Stones to Statehood: The Palestinian Uprising; Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order; and Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader.  Her most recent work is Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, available in hard copy from IPS, text on-line at the website of www.endtheoccupation.org. 

 

Bennis is frequently published in the Baltimore Sun, Middle East International, Middle East Report (MERIP), TomPaine.com, and many other publications, and appears regularly on a number of media.

 

WEBSITE:
Institute for Policy Studies   http://www.ips-dc.org

Mentioned on air – U.S., Britain Place Last in Children Survey

“The measure of a good city is one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can safely go anywhere. If a city is good for children, it will be good for everybody else.” – Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia

U.S., Britain Place Last in Children Survey
UNICEF ranks the well-being of youngsters in 21 developed countries
By Maggie Farley

February 15, 2007
LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-children15feb15,1,3580625.story

Show details for February 18th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

— Intell expert JAMES BAMFORD on NSA’s top-secret Echelon

— Filmmaker DANNY SCHECHTER on the debt game

Author and journalist James Bamford is one of the leading experts on the US intelligence agencies. Mark Bebawi will discuss Echelon with him. Echelon is a top secret worldwide intelligence and analysis network. Bamford’s 1982 best seller “The Puzzle Palace” was the first book to describe the inner workings of the National Security Agency. His subsequent books “Body of Secrets” (2001) and “A Pretext for War” (2004) have received widespread acclaim. He was formerly Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight.

Filmmaker DANNY SCHECHTER on the debt game

Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson welcomes media critic, investigative journalist and filmmaker Danny Schechter back to the Monitor.
Danny will focus on the situation of American debt, individual and federal. We’ll also look at the US economic situation relative to the massive American debt China is holding.
His latest film, released this past June, is “In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts.”
Danny Schechter is a television producer and independent filmmaker who often writes and speaks about media issues. He is the executive editor and blogger-in-chief of Mediachannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues network. Schechter is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company now in its 18th year and a former CNN and ABC News producer.
His work has been honored by Emmy awards, the Iris award, the George Polk Award, the Major Armstrong Award and the National Association of Black Journalists, among other recognitions.
Schechter is the author of, among other titles, “The More You Watch, The Less You Know” (Seven Stories Press) and “News Dissector: Passions, Pieces, and Polemics” (Electron Press).

ARTICLE:
The U.S. and China: Is a Trade War Coming? by Danny Schechter

AlterNet, December 13, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/story/45433/

WEBSITE:
http://www.newsdissector.org

BLOG:
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/index.php

FILM: IN DEBT WE TRUST
www.Indebtwetrust.com

Danny Schechter would like to bring his film “In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts”
to Houston.  If anyone is interested in facilitating that, please contact him at danny@mediachannel.org

Some of the latest ‘news’ seems familiar…

Mentioned on air – CNN/Payolla – Link from Crooks and Liars

On his radio show, Ed Schultz interviewed Lloyd Chapman, President of American Small Business League. Chapman accused CNN and Lou Dobbs of scrubbing a story produced months ago about the Bush administration giving away billions of dollars in loans to Lockheed Martin and Boeing that were meant to go to small businesses. He suggested that perhaps the reason the story was quashed had to do with these companies purchasing advertising on CNN even though they provide products and services that are unavailable to the public.  Audio of the interview available here.

Apparently this has been going on for years. Who would believe that a news outlet would decide not to run a story that is clearly in the public interest in exchange for some ad dollars?

Don’t forget, the Republicans refused to sign the minimum wage hike without breaks for small businesses (.pdf), because they were just so concerned for them. Stories like this only magnify the hypocrisy of the “Republic” Party and their claptrap about supporting small business.

Show Details for February 11th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

       –  MARY FRANCIS reports on the Lt. Watada trial, which ended in mistrial

        – KERT DAVIES of Greenpeace on how global warming threatens polar bears

       — JOHN GIDEON of Voters Unite discussing the latest electronic voting machine security breach 

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MARY FRANCIS reports on the Lt. Watada trial, which ended in mistrial

Army Lt. Ehren Watada faced court-martial last week for three charges, one for missing movement to Iraq with his unit in June, and two for “conduct unbecoming an Officer” related to his public comments criticizing the Bush administration and the war.  Watada had offered to serve in Afghanistan, or to resign, but the military refused. 

The trial ended abruptly in a mistrial.  Legal experts disagree on whether the military can legally retry him due to double jeopardy, but the Army says it will try.

Lt. Watada, from Hawaii, is the first commissioned US officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. He claimed those orders were unlawful because the war is illegal and he would be an accomplice to war crimes if he followed them. 

“It is my duty as a commissioned officer in the United States army to speak out against grave injustices. My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution. Not to those who issue unlawful orders. I stand before you today because it is my job to serve and protect American soldiers and innocent Iraqis who have no voice. It is my conclusion that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong, but also a breach of American law,” said Ehren Watada in June.

“Today, I speak with you about a radical idea,” Watada has said. “That to stop an illegal and unjust war, soldiers can choose to stop fighting it… If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the constitution extols — if they stood up and threw their weapons down — no president could ever initiate a war of choice again.” ["More Subpoenas Come Down in Watada Case," Aaron Glantz, Electronic Iraq, 9 January 2007, SAN FRANCISCO http://electroniciraq.net/news/2805.shtml ]

We will speak with a citizen who attended the trial in Fort Lewis, Washington.  Mary Francis is a former NPR commentator who lives in Oklahoma, but was traveling in Washington State last week.  A retired teacher, she taught for 10 years in Alaska, 2 years on the Navaho reservation.  Occasionally, she teaches subjects such as Chinese calligraphy and about the First Amendment. She is also an election reform activist and a bird watcher.

ARTICLE:
“Mistrial Declared for War Resister Lt. Watada”
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Posted on February 8, 2007, Printed on February 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47808/

 

KERT DAVIES of Greenpeace on how global warming threatens polar bears

Kert Davis is research director for Greenpeace USA.  He will join Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi to discuss global warming, specifically as it affects polar bears. The discussion will broaden to the issue global warming and the US government’s response.

 

WEBSITE:
Greenpeace USA   http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
Recent press release from Greenpeace – http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/press/releases/melting-ice-fast-eroding-anima

 

<> ~ 6:40 pm CST –  JOHN GIDEON reports on the latest voting machine hack – Sequoia

photo from BradBlog.com

The security of a Sequoia electronic voting machine has been breached by a Princeton student … in 7 seconds.  Princeton Prof. Andrew Appel has been examining the machines, and just made a preliminary report last week.  Prof. Appel has been on the faculty of Princeton for over 20 years, specializing in computer science. 

 

John Gideon returns to The Monitor to discuss with co-host Pokey Anderson this breaking news about the third-largest maker of voting machines in the country. 

 

Previously, we had Princeton Prof. Ed Felten on the Monitor discussing how his team could take liberties with a Diebold DRE – also defeating the machine’s lock in seconds, and able to completely take control of a machine’s vote-counting, without leaving any telltale traces of rigging.

 

We have previously dubbed John Gideon “Mr. Encyclopedia” of the election reform movement.  He reviews thousands of articles to write the Daily Voting News, a clipping service for activists, election officials, and others interested in voting reform.  He also writes for BradBlog.com, and heads up Voters Unite, a national non-partisan organization dedicated to fair and accurate elections.  Active in election integrity for four years, John has testified before both Houses of the Washington State Legislature and has lobbied state Representatives and Senators. He is Vietnam Vet (Navy), and lives in Bremerton, WA.

 

WEBSITE:
Voters Unite!  www.votersunite.org

 

ARTICLES:

“We can take a version of Sequoia’s software program and modify it to do something different — like appear to count votes, but really move them from one candidate to another. And it can be programmed to do that only on Tuesdays in November, and at any other time. You can’t detect it,” Princeton’s Professor of Computer Science Andrew Appel explains in New Jersey’s Star-Ledger today. 

Sequoia Touch-screen Voting Machines Hacked,
Found Vulnerable to Vote-flipping by Princeton University!
by John Gideon, with additional reporting by Brad Friedman
February 10, 2007
The BRAD BLOG
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4141

 

E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections:
A sampling of problems across the nation
by VotersUnite.Org, VoteTrustUSA, and Voter Action
January 2007
http://www.votersunite.org/info/E-VotingIn2006Mid-Term.pdf

Show Details for February 4th, 2007

 

Molly Ivins

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KPFT’s internet streaming and archives are now working!

Today’s Guests:

        – JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation discussing the National Conference on Media Reform, news, and Molly Ivins.  

        — RONNIE DUGGER, founding editor of The Texas Observer, remembering Molly.

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JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation on Media Reform, current news, and Molly Ivins

We welcome John Nichols back to The Monitor.  John was just at the National Conference on Media Reform, held in Memphis.  In addition, we’ll dissect some of the news of the day.  And, we’ll remember Molly Ivins.  Nichols wrote one of the pithier remembrances of Molly (see below) this week.

John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers. Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues.

Nichols is the author of the new book The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism (The New Press).  (Articles of impeachment have been brought sixty-two times in American history.)  We’ve interviewed him previously about his fascinating book, Against the Beast: An Anti-Imperialist Reader.

With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It’s the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation’s media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.

ARTICLE:
Remembering Molly Ivins, by John Nichols
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070219/molly_ivins
also posted at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020107J.shtml

QUOTE (from the above article):
If anyone anywhere was picking a fight with the powerful, [Molly] was writing them up with
the same passionate language she employed when her friend the great Texas liberal Billie Carr

passed on in 2002. Ivins recalled Carr “was there for the workers
and the unions, she was there for the African-Americans, she was there for the Hispanics,

she was there for the women, she was there for the gays. And
this wasn’t all high-minded, oh, we-should-all-be-kinder-to-one-another. This was tough, down, gritty,
political trench warfare; money against people. She bullied her way to the table of power, and then

she used that place to get everybody else there, too. If you ain’t ready to sweat, and

you ain’t smart enough to deal, you can’t play in her league.”

 

“Compromising Compromises the Senate”
February 3, 2007

The Nation
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0203-29.htm

 

BOOKS by John Nichols:
The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism

Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
by John Nichols, Robert W. McChesney, Tim Robbins, and Tom Tomorrow

Against the Beast: An Anti-Imperialist Reader

Dick: The Man Who is President (Dick Cheney)

 

 

RONNIE DUGGER, founding editor of The Texas Observer, remembering Molly

 

Ronnie Dugger is a legendary Texas journalist.  We’ll talk about Molly Ivins, and media.

 

In one sense, Molly Ivins followed in Ronnie’s footsteps.  Ultimately, of course, Molly blazed her own unique path.

Ronnie Dugger was the founding editor of The Texas Observer and co-founder of the Alliance for Democracy.  He has written biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, as well as other books, and hundreds of articles for Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Progressive and other periodicals.

In his article a year ago, “Impeach or Indict Bush and Cheney,” he states that “The Constitution is silent on whether a seated President and Vice President can be indicted, while in office, for crimes committed while they have held those offices.”

He foresaw the coming train wreck of electronic voting over a decade before others, writing in 1988 of the dangers of electronic voting machines. A former long-time Texas resident, Ronnie Dugger now researches and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ARTICLES:
“Impeach or Indict Bush and Cheney”
The Texas Observer
January 27, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/48/17293

 

“How They Could Steal the Election This Time”
August 16, 2004 issue
The Nation, Cover Story
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

 

“Annals of Democracy — Counting Votes”
November 7, 1988 issue
The New Yorker
http://www.votefraud.org/ronnie_dugger_dangers_computerized_voting.htm