Month: August 2013
Show Details for the week of August 26th, 2013
On this week’s show we look at the Confidential Memo at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis with Greg Palast and how the Egyptian media is covering events in Egypt with Noha Radwan
More about our guests:
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires and Ballot Bandits , Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and the highly acclaimed Vultures’ Picnic, named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review. Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast directed the U.S. government’s largest racketeering case in history–winning a $4.3 billion jury award. He also conducted the investigation of fraud charges in the Exxon Valdez grounding. Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Palast set off on a five-continent undercover investigation of BP and the oil industry for British television’s top current affairs program, Dispatches.
Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast directed the U.S. government’s largest racketeering case in history–winning a $4.3 billion jury award. He also conducted the investigation of fraud charges in the Exxon Valdez grounding. Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Palast set off on a five-continent undercover investigation of BP and the oil industry for British television’s top current affairs program, Dispatches.
Website: http://www.gregpalast.com/
Noha Radwan
Noha Radwan is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature Ph.D., UC Berkeley.
Prof. Radwan’s interests include modern Middle Eastern literature in Arabic and Hebrew and postcolonial literature in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Her Book manuscript about modern Egyptian poetry in the colloquial language, Shi’r al-‘ammiyya and Modernism in Arabic Poetry, is currently under review.
Quote:
“Egypt is going through one of the bleakest moments of its modern history. Despite the paucity of accurate reporting on the attacks against the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-ins on Wednesday, there is enough evidence that these attacks must be condemned in the strongest of words. Although [ousted president Mohammed] Morsi’s supporters are not exactly non-violent it is clear the police is using a barbaric amount of excessive force. Yet the tragedy runs deeper. Wednesday was not only a dreadful day of killing and violence. It was the tragic and shameful culmination of a long process of polarizing the Egyptian masses between full support for the rule of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and uncompromising opposition to it. For the past three weeks media sources on the ground, whether they are the governmental or the independent channels (On TV, CBC [Capital Broadcasting Center] and al-Nahar) or the Qatari al-Jazeera have been working the public into nothing short of a mass hysteria. The state media labels the Islamists ‘terrorists’ while the Islamists denigrate all support for the current regime as ‘fascism’. Every media source in Egypt is lying, spreading hearsay, and dismissing reports that do not serve their agendas. The result is a frenzied and divided population that is proving uncharacteristically callous to the bloodshed among one group or the other. There is no doubt that it would have been better for President Morsi to have been voted out and not ousted by the military, but it is debatable whether there was a potential for this option. It is also debatable whether his failures during his year in office are enough excuse for the Egyptian ‘liberals’ and ‘revolutionaries’ to strike an alliance with the military, an alliance that was inconceivable to them a little more than one year ago.”
Show Details for the week of August 19th, 2013
On this week’s show we take a closer look at two topics mentioned during the news headlines segment last week. One was the statement from Lavabit owner Ladar Levison when he hinted at some of the reasons behind the shut down of the Secure Email service. The other topic is the ruling on NY state’s and ‘Stop and Frisk’ program. Our guests are Kade Crockford and Shahid Buttar.
More about this week’s guests:
Kade Rockford
Kade Crockford is director of the technology for liberty project at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where she edits and writes for the Privacy Matters blog
Quote: “That a privacy-centric email service would shut down instead of disclose information about one of its users, as appears to be the case with Lavabit, speaks incredibly highly of the company, and reminds us that even in the face of a seemingly all powerful surveillance state, each of us can bravely refuse to submit. The incident also shines a bright light on a pernicious tool of government surveillance — the National Security Letter — that violates the spirit of every democratic value and the Bill of Rights itself. That Lavabit cannot speak clearly about what actually happened here is chilling. If the United States government is seeking to alienate technologists and people who care about their privacy, it is doing a great job.”
Shahid Buttar
Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC). This is the BORDC’s focus on defending civil liberties, constitutional rights, and rule of law principles threatened within the United States by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He is a constitutional lawyer, grassroots organizer, independent columnist, musician, and poet.
Before joining BORDC in 2009, Shahid directed a national program to combat racial and religious profiling, after serving for three years as associate director of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy. He previously pursued public interest litigation (advancing marriage equality for same sex couples and campaign finance reform) in private practice at Heller Ehrman LLP, after receiving his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he served as executive editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and a teaching assistant for Constitutional Law. He graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with a BA in political science and creative writing in 2000, ten years after beginning college at the University of Chicago and after a six-year career in financial services to pay for school.
Shahid’s comments have been featured by news outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, al-Jazeera, FOX News, Agence-France Presse, Huffington Post, Truthout, Democracy Now!, and many others, including dozens of radio stations around the country. He frequently addresses public audiences, such as elected bodies, colleges, and law schools, including Stanford, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Chicago, the University of Texas at Austin, and Georgetown.
In addition to his work leading BORDC, Shahid also serves on the advisory bodies of the Rights Working Group, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, and South Asian Americans Leading Together.
Shahid also supports populist constitutionalism as a independent columnist (writing for outlets including Huffington Post and Truthout, as well as the People’s Blog for the Constitution) community organizer, and hip-hop and electronica MC. In his creative capacities as a poet and musician, Shahid has performed around the world, co-founded several grassroots art and culture groups around the country, facilitated workshops for young people and emerging artists, and released his debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, in 2008. Shahid’s music, many of his articles, and an expanded bio are available at his website.
Show Details for the week of August 12th, 2013
This remarkable feature documentary is our premium for this Pledge Drive. Please call 713-526-5738 during the show and make a donation of $120 for your copy
Incredible Interviews With:
Cornel West, Angela Davis, Alice Walker
Tariq Ali, Michelle Alexander, Amy Goodman,
Dick Gregory, Dave Zirin, “Hurricane” Carter
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The acclaimed feature documentary Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary, which tells the revolutionary story of one of this country’s most vibrant and vital journalists, has successfully toured the country theatrically for four months. We know the life and work of Abu-Jamal speaks to the values of our listeners and this film delivers both an intimate portrait of a remarkable man, while contextualizing the relevance of his life and work in terms of constitutional freedoms and the power of revolutionary dissent.
“Fascinating and persuasive. Vittoria creates a context that suggests how easily innocents could be railroaded. The result is not unlike Oliver Stone’s rewrite of U.S. history.” — John Hartl, Seattle Times
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— Alex Simon, Huffington Post
Producer/Director Stephen Vittoria is the creative and intellectual force behind Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary and Manufacturing Guilt.
A film like Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary doesn’t come around often. Take this opportunity to give away a premium to your audience that will have them inspired and excited to donate.
“Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary” Trailer
“A remarkable and necessary film… an invaluable and moving portrayal… as Alice Walker puts it, the ability ‘to maintain one’s humanity in the face of injustice.” –– Lee Wengraf, Socialist Worker.
The Monitor 