Thanks for sharing your ideas this month. We’ve posted the second part of our July suggestion roundup.
We’re still working on a number of shows that relate to the crisis on the Middle East, and we’ve been reading your discussions as we prepare for these shows. We are also trying to follow other stories. What are you reading on blogs or in the news that you think might be a good show topic? We’re already working on a Uganda show, which was among a few suggestions by Ethan Zuckerman.
Have at it, and as always check out Katherine’s suggestion guide.
Jonathan Schell has a fabulous piece in The Nation this week. Critics of the United States often contend our government is behaving more autocratically as a result of having too much power. The comparison they make is often to Rome, and the transition from republic to empire under Ceasar. Schell contends that the abuses we have seen at home over the last fifty years – from McCarthyism to domestic spying – are actually a result of being fairly impotent in realizing our imperial aspirations overseas: from China, to Korea, Vietnam, and now the Middle East. So, is our problem that we are too powerful, that we are quite limited in our powers, or some weird combination of both?
Tonight on OpenSource!
Now that we’re in August, let me be the first to suggest a show on science and religion featuring Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, and Pullman’s extraordinary trilogy “His Dark Materials.”
I would also like to hear a show on Alexander Hamilton–the smartest, sexiest, most patriotic, and most badass founding father of them all.
And a general comment about the mix of shows: I love the political discussions as much as the next person, but please don’t neglect culture.
I’d like to second bryongw‘s request that you not neglect culture shows.
That said, I’ve got a political-type show topic to suggest: When Castro dies and, eventually, whenever and however it happens, Cuban exiles are able to return to Cuba, what effect is that generations-long separation going to have on their national culture and psyche?
There are parallels: I know Germany’s had some reunion pains as East and West re-integrate into one country. And there are other countries to look at: Korea has been separated for half a century, Taiwan and China for even longer.
What happens when long-separated groups are brought back together? How long will this resonate through their culture?
If you do another show about poetry or writing in the blogosphere, here are two good communities to profile: Poetry Thursday and Sunday Scribblings.
I’d like to hear a show on the roles of Condalesa Rice and John Bolton in getting a ceasefire and lasting peace in the middle east. Rice seems to have tried to work directly with the politicians in the region, while John Bolton works through the UN. They seem to have very different styles and I wonder if they are in tune. Surely if the American’s are the key to brokering a solution the approach to the politicians on the ground and to the Un must be coordinated and forecful
Learning from History.
We’ve all heard about the current political climate (those with money have access) and economic climate (the uber-rich with masses of poor).
It still seems to me that no one is putting everything together. The USA’s socio-political-economic climate looks hauntingly like it did in the 1920′s. Or so it seems on the surface.
Are there any historians who can analize our current situation in this full context, and provide a soft landing path out?
I would be interested in a historians view of current conflicts, as well. There is a clear history of what has and has not worked in all of today’s current events.
Will we ever learn from our past?
Or are we doomed to “Groundhog Day” by those in power.
pmassari Says:
“…. and the transition from republic to empire under ……”
perhaps with Michael Hardt (Duke)
and Antonio Negri….co-authors of “Empire” (HU Press, 2001)
I’d like to suggest your covering Rep. John Conyers, Jr.’s report called “The Constitution in Crisis” [ http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/iraqrept2.html ] (released last Friday August 4th). Rep. Conyers, as you know, is the senior ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
And not only would I love to hear you cover that: I’d also like to hear your take on the so-far conspicuous ignoring [documented here: http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/08/06/if-a-report-falls-in-a-forest/ ] that this hard-hitting document has received from the mainstream media.
As you did, Chris, I lived through Watergate — and I even got to play a small technological bit-part in the investigation and resolution of issues around the “Watergate tapes.” And I can say with utter certainty that virtually any one of the egregious transgressions that the current resident of the White House has committed would, if he had lived there in the 1970′s and had dared to do them and had they had been discovered then, have resulted in his instant impeachment and removal from office.
What has happened to us that we tolerate such an assault on our liberties, and that our media seem intent on burying the evidence? To quote the above URL:
“Regardless, this is a well-documented, thoroughly-researched report from congressional Democrats about the Bush administration possibly violating over two dozen federal laws and regulations — some of them multiple times. And yet, nothing in the AP; nothing in any of the major dailies; nothing on ABC, CBS, or NBC. Not one word.
… (M)any of us frequently feel like congressional Democrats need to be aggressive and go on the offensive more, but let’s not forget, even when they do, much (of) the media blows off what Dems have to say.”
I believe that true patriots must resist the blandishments of these enemies of freedom — that because of their “War on Terra” we must give up our freedom. I further believe that it is the patriotic duty of people in the broadcast (and podcast) media, as well as the blogosphere, not to blow this Congressional report off, but to “catapult” it into the national consciousness and to KEEP it there. And now that you have skin in those games… imho this means you, Chris/Open Source!
You can help!
Perhaps you’ve already addressed this topic, but I’m reading Karen Armstrong’s “Holy War”.
Jews believe that God promised a specific land area to the tribes of Israel. They left this holy land due to famine (hmm, where’s God then?) and emigrated to Egypt. Canaanites moved into the land for centuries. When the Jews wanted to return they believe God instructed them to annihilate the Canaanites. No room for peaceful co-existence. The first Holy War.
Then the Muslims, feeling persecuted by the Meccans believe God instructed them to annihilate the Meccans – after they tried to turn the other cheek for some time. Another Holy War.
Then the Christians belived that the Muslim infidels should be annihilated. Voila! Crusades. Another Holy War.
In each of these cases, the God of their religion first extolled peace. The directive to annihilate the Canaanites came after the dispensing of the Ten Commandments – including Thou Shalt Not Kill. I guess after 40 years in the Sinai desert, they needed a new direction. Muhammed reported that God told him to offer peace to his enemies in the early portion of his revelations that became the Koran. I guess after enough persecution, you need a different message. Pope Urban urged the Knights of Europe to stop killing one another and unite to go after the Muslims. That’s one way to unite people into your service.
None of these groups believes in peaceful co-existence. At least the fundamentalist factions. How do you get them to look back at their religions prior to the call for Holy Wars and to understand that these calls are antithetical to the teachings of the God they proclaim to believe in. How do you get people to stop playing the role of the “victim who must rise up and conquer?”
I’m not talking about a discussion of history or who’s right or wrong. I’m wondering about how to effect a psychological change on such a large scale. The US and Israel are nuclear powers and yet they still cry, “Victim!” Muslims control a vast amount of the oil fields on the planet and have gained economic power beyond belief, yet they are still victims. Why does everybody like to be the victim? And why do they feel ok using their victim status as justification for dehumanizing hate? Is this human nature? Or just Judeo/Christian/Muslim nature? How do you manifest a big slap in the face with the directive to grow up and take responsibility?
To Henry, Allison, and others: Whatever happened to the “Morality: God-given or evolved” subject and show. I just read the entire thread (348 entries before my entry today) but nobody has posted since mid-July even though the thread was VERY active before then. Does this mean that the subject is dead, that the thread has been killed, OR that the show itself is now in the final planning and scheduling stages and nobody wants to continue the “warm up”? Or, did I miss something? Thanks. And sorry (again) for the interruption.
Hug: When ROS retires a show thread unaired, one of the staff writes an update explaining why the show died. ‘Morality’ has no such update.
The ‘Morality’ thread is still open for comments here: http://www.radioopensource.org/morality-god-given-or-evolved (and it’s one of my favorites, so I’m glad—even if it NEVER airs).
My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that the (record) number of shows teeming in the ‘Warming Up’ rectangle has temporarily dipped ‘Morality’ beneath the horizon. For example, a few weeks ago ‘The Birthday Party’ thread vanished for a few days too, only to reemerge again as its relevance (the health of Castro) began to percolate among the ROS staff, nudging toward a tentative airing time. (Yeah, I’m REALLY grasping at straws here. This must be what it’s like to dream up conspiracy theories.)
Anyway, let’s see if ‘Morality’ reemerges to its customary bottom slot in ‘Warming Up’ after ‘The Birthday Party’ is thrown on Wednesday the 9th.
In the meantime, I’ve already begun mentally drafting a reply to your Post #349 in that thread (thanks for contributing!).
Apologies for the screwed up bold code in the post above. (I should know better by now.)
I’d enjoy hearing more about China and other far-east countries. Here’s an interesting blog post I ran across today: http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2006/08/soy-sauce-factory.html
New Orleans food/restaurants leading the recovery.
You hear so much about the food here in New Orleans, but the reality is that it’s difficult for New Orleans to compete with New York and San Francisco in the realm of inventiveness, whimsy, and other pretentious categories… That being said, not many cities would find their food/restaurant industry leading the recovery after being dealt such a hand as the levee failure.
The food culture here is definitely unique. There is the obvious history of the mixture of cultures developing one of the nation’s truly unique cuisines (Creole). There is an unpretentious celebration of its culinary history, daily, weekly (red beans), seasonally (Creole tomatoes, shrimp, crawfish, oysters, strawberries), and the fact that an infectious interest in its cuisine seems to pervade every New Orleanian, not just foodies.
Restaurants are not just places for special occasions, or places that are reserved for special night out, but are necessary to the existence of this city. A show examining this would definitely be interesting, and would provide a new look at the forgotten, struggling Crescent City.
Guests: Lolis Eric Elie, Lea Chase, John Besh, Brett Anderson (Times Picayune), John T Edge (southern foodways alliance), Willie Mae Seaton, Jason Perlow (egullet, off the broiler), Pableaux Johnson…
We are still sorting out the feminist revolution and one bit of fallout is the creation of the divrced father as an under class. Taxed at a rate of more than 60%, forced to rent his children, assumed to be a deadbeat or at least a ‘visitor’ with his children, our society has relegated men to second class status.
Sanford Braver has written excellent books Debunking the sense that it’s women and children that do all the suffering….and responsible fathers/men are bearing the burden.
There are several topics that I don’t recall as objects of discussion on “Open Source.” These include the following:
1. The Intended and Unintended Effects of Surveillance Technologies/Ubiquitous Computing on Everyday Life.
As RFIDs, cameras, routine transactional data (that becomes the grist for Axicom, Choicepoint and their many brethren) GPS tracking, biometrics and the rest are aggressively integrated into daily life, how do they reshape daily life and consciousness? How do these technological changes affect (and perhaps ultimately reconfigure) notions of privacy, identity, speech, and security and insecurity? A good guest for this show would be Adam Greenfield, author of “Everyware.” You could pair Greenfield off with local Katherine Albrecht, who has written a book called “Spychips.” (See my Spring syllabus on the topic at http://dion.dennis.home.comcast.net/index.html – The class number is 496).
2. Bringing the Definitions and Tactics of the Drug War to the Definition of Intellectual Property Crime: The proposed “super-DMCA,” the “Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006″ backed by the Bush Administration, advocated by Attorney General Gonzales, and authored by Lamar Smith (R-TX) proposes to bring the criminal and asset forfeiture provisions of the Drug War to bear on the general public, by defining new crimes, and then enforcing these definitions. To my mind, and in the context of the FLOSS movement, the genealogies and possible outcomes of such laws (and the organized opposition to such laws and policies) are worth exploring, particularly in comparison to historical changes in drug laws;
3. The Emerging “Un-modern:” With the waning of postmodernism, arguably, with the rise of a specific “unmodern” socio-cultural configuration, we are at the moment that could be called the “technological unmodern.”
Canadian cultural critic Arthur Kroker puts it this way: “have actually folded back on themselves, quickly reversing modernist codes of economic secularism and political pluralism.�
Kroker identifies this as the “New Protestant Ethic;” a revivification of Calvinism in the current technological and Imperial context.
In pondering this, I’ve discussed (in a piece to be published in 2007) that current Euro-American neo-liberalism resembles, in significant aspects, a mid-18th Century Germanic governance discourse and practice known as Cameralism. Here’s a short segment of the conclusion of that article:
___________________
The question remains as to what ideological and material political assemblage might plausibly govern national and global systems, in this transitional period between the postmodern and the technologically networked un-modern. The de facto emergence of a neo-Polizeiwissenschaft points, ultimately, to notions of social order that can be plausibly called neo-Cameralist. For it is Neo-Cameralism that fuses late 18th Century administrative rationalism with social, economic, religious and political values consistent with this early 21st Century Empire. While the prerogatives of the CEO replace that of the Divine Right of Kings, in the ideology of governance, in practice, however, the distance between the archetypal “benevolent despot� and the contemporary “unitary executive� is startlingly short. Neo-Cameralism is a repetition with a difference, a reverse folding, a networked iteration. In the midst of this transition, the virtual is fusing with the material, and the scope and goals of policing are broadly redefined, outstripping the mid-and-late 20th Century categories.
_______________
All of this is in response to your email:
My information is below:
Dion Dennis
01852 (Lowell)
I’m an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State College.
For a music show: why not Leo Kottke? A long career, wonderfully weird stories to tell, and incredible chops.
I second the motion for a Leo Kottke show. I would love to hear him interviewed.
I think open source should buck the trend on consecutive war podcasts + anything that gets heavy media coverage. The war gets tons coverage on NPR every hour of the day! I’m sure there is other newsworthy topics out there. Like what makes a topic newsworthy.
I feel ashamed for the US as we hover over Castro like a greedy heir waiting for grandpa to kick the bucket. I’m among the many who do not trust the US’s plans for bringing “democracy” to Cuba but I expect that we’ll get away with it in the end.
Who is going to referee the feeding frenzy following Castro’s death when it does happen?
I agree with Dr. Dan’s comment about wanting to hear more about John Conyer’s report ASAP! And along with that I’d add this also:
Planning an Impeachment Blog Action
Starting at noon ET on September 1, 2006, and lasting 24 hours, websites and blogs all across the internet are being asked to replace their front pages with the single word “Impeach” in simple white text on a black background. Here’s an example: http://impeachnet.net
Visitors to those sites and blogs will be able to click and link to the sites’ usual front pages. But first they will see a word that, standing alone, is as powerful as any word right now: it is banned by our political and media leadership but more popular among citizens and activists than perhaps any other. It is both shocking and welcome. For 24 hours, web surfers and blog readers will see that word first when they visit their favorite sites. In this way, we hope to get the public talking about the one tool guaranteed by the Founders to restore our Constitutional Democracy. Please encourage your favorite websites to take part in this action. If you plan to take part, please let us know here:
http://www.impeachnet.net/blog/contact
Thanks – I’m always a little smarter for having listened to your show >;-)
jazwoman
jazwoman, thanks for the supportive comment to the Conyers Report suggestion.
Wow, you make me want to start my own blog — just so I can support http://impeachnet.net !
But of course, it’ll be the participating blogs with the huge established readerships that’ll make the real impact. All the best to them (and to you, as an assumed participant if not its originator)!
(I sincerely hope that http://radioopensource.org/ ‘s front page will be on-board on 9/1/2006. I, for one, do not believe that the “we must remain impartial, at least on the surface” defense will wash. Not anymore. Not when we are clearly being led by the lawless into disaster.)
Hummmm… I wonder how much of a splash http://impeachnet.net will (be allowed to) make in our mainstream media?
I would like to see a story on how liberals in academia have trashed the first amendment by imposing draconian speech codes (which are usually politicalymotivated) on college campuses. These along with other forms of intolerance and censorship have turned campuses into places where a free exchange of ideas and thought are no longer allowed. If you dont beleive me just ask Larry Summers.
We are also seeing conservative groups being denied the use of lecture halls for guest speakers they wish to bring in, Many times they are unable to get equal acsess to money for speakers. An act that is not only amoral but illegal.
We have seen conservative news papers stolen and burned by liberal groups. Many students have been given poor grades by liberal profesors for having the audacity to express a different point of view then the one that is deemed the only correct view. The list goes on and on. There is no doubt that todays college campus is the most restrictive and regressive environment that one can find in this country .
The first amendment is our most important right. That is why our founding fathers put it first. Without it all of our other rights and freedoms come into peril.This issue should concern everyone,not just conservatives.
The best person to address this issue is ACLU lawyer Harvey Silverglate
who happens to be pretty liberal in his politics. This issue is probably the main reason I turned from liberal to libertarion. After spending so much time on a college campus I realized how intolerant and oppressive the left can be. There mindset is akin to the religous fanatics of far right.
In closing all of the above suggestions seem very interesting. You have many thought provoking subjects to choose from. Thanks for letting someone with a different point of view have his say.
Thanks for the Cuba and terrorism discussions. It might be constructive to talk about why Cuba is probably the least violent place on earth — it’s not just because it has an so-called autocratic leader. I know they lock dissenters up, but so would we if we found Americans receiving funds from a foreign government to overthrow ours — especially if it was the one that had imposed a 45 year strangulating embargo.
When I was in the Soviet Union just before its collapse, my host told me that she wanted communism to end, but she didn’t want the cooperative side of life to disappear, the way they helped each other through the winters, sharing food, pooling money for coats, etc. She and all the other pensioners are in a much worse condition now.
Missing from both evenings was any mention of an alternative form of government, not the cruel, divisive US capitalism we’re trying to foist on other countries, not Soviet-style communism, but one that meets human needs as Cuba has tried to do, while allowing for the freedoms the Constitition once provided before the Bush Admin. hacked it to pieces. And since a majority of Americans has said they are willing to lose some freedoms in order to feel safer, how does that relate to a society like Cuba that curtails certain individual freedoms for what they consider to be the greater benefit and protection of the majority?
Henry, This further to my suggestion of a show about corporate mercenarism:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/scahill
In ‘The War for Iran: Juan Cole’s “Thought Experimentâ€?’ aired August 8th, 2006, you mention Richard Heinberg’s article, Middle East at a crossroads, Energy Bulletin, 8/4/06. Richard Heinberg is most well informed on Peak Oil and the need for society to cut its dependence to avoid perpetual resource wars. Richard is coming to Boston the week of October 23rd for three events in order:
Earthlands workshop on the 24th
Association for the Study of Peak Oil national conference on the 26th & 27th (www.aspo-usa.org)
EF Schumacher Lectures on the 28th
It would be really good to have him on your radio show to talk about his work, including his recent book “The Oil Depletion Protocol”.
Naturally, the staged photos coming out of Lebanon, would make a wonderful segment. There have been so many questionable images and events, and since bloggers have been the driving force behind exposing some of the more blatant ones, this would make it ideal.
I suspect you’ll find this interesting:
The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time
Book Description
The Bush Agenda is the first book to expose the Bush Administration’s radical economic agenda for global domination, a plan more extreme, unilateral and audacious than any of his predecessors, a plan that has created the greatest level of violent opposition to America and Americans in recent history.
The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time explores the Bush Administration’s plan to invade the world through a corporate globalization agenda, first in Iraq, then the Middle East with the proposed U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area, and ultimately as a cornerstone to the global Bush Doctrine of Pax Americana. What is Bush’s “free trade?â€? It’s an economic model that argues that by removing restrictions on multinational corporations, these companies will be freed to become engines of economic growth in countries around the world, but in fact bring vast wealth of a small number of global elites while entire populations suffer dislocation, poverty and violence, creating a perfect Petri dish for breeding terrorists. The instruments for this takeover include such corporations as Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, ChevronTexaco, Halliburton, and many others.
This book addresses the history of U.S. economic relations throughout the world over the past 25 years, the key role of U.S. corporations, and the larger Bush economic agenda and what the potential impact of this agenda will be on the United States and the world. It concludes with specific alternatives to guide the U.S. on a more peaceful and sustainable course in the future. Using Naomi Klein’s No Logo and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation as models, The Bush Agenda is based on hard analytic fact and presented so that it will not only be persuasive, but highly engaging and entertaining to a broad audience.
About the Author
Antonia Juhasz is a leading expert on international trade and finance policy with a master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. She has served as a congressional aide and as the project director of the International Forum on Globalization. She is currently a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. An award-winning writer, her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald, and she has appeared on CBS News, CNN, Hannity & Colmes, Washington Journal, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. She lives in San Francisco.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0060846879-0
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060846879/103-2529961-0019026?v=glance&n=283155
She was the guest of the first hour of Friday’s KUOW’s Weekday http://www.kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp (August 11th, 2006)
Here’s the blurb:
The Bush Agenda and Iraq
It’s been over 3 years since the war started in Iraq, but the reasons for the conflict are still in dispute. Is there hope for democracy and freedom? Is it about oil? Is it about corporate profits and U.S. imperialism?
Guests:
Antonia Juhasz is a leading expert on international trade and finance policy. She worked as a congressional aide and as project director of the International Forum on Globalization. Currently, she is a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. In addition to numerous TV and radio appearances, her writing has appeared in dozens of publications including the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald. Her most recent book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.
I would like to suggest a show: The subject of Tracy Kidders’ book “Mountains Beyond Mountains” Paul Farmer and his Partners In Health project. I’m now reading Farmers’ “Pathologies Of Power” (Health, Human Rights and the new War on the Poor). I would have loved to hear him speak to the Castro/Cuba question the other night on the birthday show – Chris did ok sticking up for Castro on the Aids issue but the Farmer has been to the “concentration camps”
for Aids patients and would have had a field day with that comment. He does indeed admire their efforts. Obviously, Haiti is his main concern. He goes in
great detail about how the US has undermined that poor nation.
He talks about Liberation Theology – a show idea right there: I found it facinating and sad to see Pope JP2 wag his finger at Catholic clerics in Nicaragua, scolding them for working with the Sandanistas. JP2 fought hard against Eruopean communism but saw only a threat in Central America.
Haiti: American assisted coup against only democratically elected president – Aristide(a student of Lib. Theology as is Farmer)? What is going on here(US) when it comes to a small impoverished nation like Haiti? A long consistant history of undermining their progress – racism? capitalist greed? all of the above?
US political influence thru National Endowment For Democracy and International
Republican Institute – follow the money……….
A classic neo-liberal dam project that benefits who? Not the multitudes who depended on the furtile land that is now barren or flooded.
Any number of show ideas – I can’t imagine bringing in Farmer(does he ever stop moving) for an hour. The other Partners: Ophilia Dahl, Jim Kim – all worth hearing from. Tracy Kidder himself – a good source obviously. Latest from Kidder is that it is far too dangerous for Farmer to even be in his own adopted land and
has a home in Miami to be as close as possible.
How doew OS feel about an hour devoted to the controversial thesis proposed by David Ray Griffin, a theologian at Claremont college?He builds a compelling,well-documented,and sober case that the U. S. govt. masterminded Sept.11th. he states possible motivations, and offers technical information that purports to discredit the official9/11 comission’s report. Furthermore, with convincing evidence, he questions the alleged independence of the commission itself. And makes the case that CHeney in his bunker was given hourly reports on the progress of an incoming plane to D. C. that day. whether he’s crsdible of not is something we can only decide by hearing him present his case. He should appear on the program. thank you.
In your best Monty Python faux-Cockney: “I goht an’ eye-deah!”
How about Chris interviews Jill Carroll?
(Jill’s from my hometown, Ann Arbor, MI, but I’m more interested in her take on the ‘New, democratic Iraq’ created by our sweet little neocons. And I reckon she has a…uh…unique perspective.)
“Fauxtography”
As a follow-up to “the Optics of War” and as a program that champions the populism and weight of the blogosphere, how about a show featuring Chris Johnson of Little Green Footballs and the blogosphere’s exposé of dishonest journalism by individuals such as freelance photographers like Reuters’ Adnan Hajj. To what extent can such individuals single-handedly subvert the hearts and minds of the public and unfairly win the War of Ideas by the manipulation of images? What is the public reaction to this information? Has the damage been done, or is the public questioning its own gullibility? Is the scandal being covered enough? How is the international media reacting? Is it undergoing a paradigm shift? It would be great to have someone like Jay Rosen of PressThink and/or other media analysts, and perhaps media representatives from AP, Reuters, and/or Al Jazeera.
It’s been a week-plus since my earlier suggestion of August 7th, 2006 at 8:33 am. However, in my checking thru the first couple of pages of “hits” at
http://tinyurl.com/ld7ec
this morning, I can only find one “main-stream media” report on The Conyers Report: Jack Cafferty’s opinion piece on CNN (vide the left-wing blog http://tinyurl.com/z45pf — the only place on the web that I’ve found that shows the video) and that was back on August 2nd!! There’s been no other “main-stream” coverage save that, and Cafferty’s piece was only commentary/op-ed on CNN. The rest of the Google hits that I’ve seen are cheers and jeers from clearly left- or right-wing sources.
The rest is silence.
During this past week there’s been a good deal happening in the world of course; some of it, I would contend, intentionally fomented to “take our eye off the ball.” (E.g., perhaps the crushing coverage of the “London Plot” — and the presumptuous grandstanding of the Bush Administration at the expense of MI5 — served both to provide political cover for Joe Lieberman’s defeat and to obfuscate the (imho) devastating impact of the Conyers Report.)
Why is that “great ignoring” taking place? I think this is worthy of attention and (hopefully) of the beginnings of remedy.
I am deathly tired of walking around this Elephant In The Room of American Politics. I am looking for someone to rake up its muck.
SWING
I may be force fitting a connection where there isn’t one … but I wonder if
The Rise and Fall of America has anything to do with The Rise and Fall of SWING?
Observation:
1939 = WWII = Beginning of Swing/Charlie Parker/Frank Sinatra = America Rises dramatically as a world power
And then-
1998 The last Swinger,Sinatra dies/End of Swing = Rise of idiot President BUSH II = America Falls dramatically as a world power.
Frank Sinatra died in 1998, only 2 years before the rise of George Bush – and maybe America’s Swinging Heart died with him.
Did the Red States ever understand SWING? (By the way, did Roman Empire ever SWING?)
That uniquely American sound – SWING – and its soaring optimism has apparently left the building.
Just a thought.
I’d like to suggest two stories, inspired by the recent show about the CT primary. The first: how the question of security will impact the coming elections. It was touched on briefly, but I feel it is an issue important enough to warrant more exploration.
It was noted how Lieberman (as well as the President) received a bump in the polls from the events in London, suggesting that Americans still associate Republicans and conservative Democrats like Lieberman—the status quo—with strong security. I’d further suggest that this is a political issue, an eminently exploitable fear, that trumps all others, including Iraq, for the average American.
In the wake of the London plot, there has also been an uptick in the number of pols and pundits (from 9/11 Commission members to senators, journalists and think tankers) calling for a realistic examination of and response to the current state of American domestic security, as it relates to Iraq (the money question)and otherwise. There are contentions that there is much that could, and perhaps should, be done with regard to domestic anti-terrorism measures that isn’t being done; and condemnations of politicization, as with the distribution of domestic anti-terror funding.
These arguments have been raised before, but seemed to get a little more press post-London, perhaps further signifying the deterioration of support from the political community for the current administration. Whether the public (the average voter, not the blogoshphere) will pick up this thread when faced with the question of terrorism and the Bush camp’s heavy-handed, even righteous, god-fearing flogging of the issue remains unclear to me.
I’m wondering how these issues factor into the coming elections? How can each side capitalize, so to speak, on security—and why are Americans so responsive, or vulnerable to, the politics of fear?
———————-
The second idea has to do with politics’ fascination with polling. Pollsters, such as the fellow on the CT show, seem to think they’ve got scientific proof in hand, but so much of a poll’s effectiveness in terms of predicting actual behavior, has to do with asking the right questions in the right way. And, asking ALL the questions necessary to get a proper grasp of the issue. Changes in the communications landscape, like more and more people using a cell phone (not the usual purview of the poll-taker) as their only phone have an effect, too.
How accurate are political pollsters? It seems (to me—a personal, perhaps incorrect observation) like the last couple of major Democratic campaigns have functioned like a bad TV or film marketing department: instead of formulating a strong narrative with good actors and an appealing presentation, such departments nervously or arrogantly cobble together material based on past numbers, new numbers from focus groups, test screenings, committees of “experts�, etc., all in an effort to quantify what is, essentially, (in my opinion) unquantifiable. The results of this process are usually remarkable only for their unfocused mediocrity.
Are polls effective in close elections? Do polls make good policy? Most of all, do polls make good politicians (i.e., electable, and truly effective ones)?
I’ve been thinking about this one for a while, and I’d like to suggest a show called “The Higher Education Question” I’m fortunate enough to have a job that many people say they would love (but in reality wouldn’t last a minute), and that is as a professional sailor. But as my years go on and the ports go by, I yearn more and more to get back into circulation and start doing something that I am passionate about: I want to go to graduate school for economics. I plan to enroll in the fall of 07 and have been loosely kicking the tires of a few places, but in reality I need to get the game started. I know I speak for a lot of people with this one: my undergrad performance does me no justice. I like to consider myself well-read and motivated, and directed in a definite direction (but not set on a narrow course). This isn’t a college-after-high-school decision, but an adult and carefully considered one. Believe me, being a pro sailor has its ups (great pay, benefits, and travel). It would be easy to sit back and ride it out. But I’d always wonder what it…
So the question is, what is the right path? What school, what subject, what professors, what prerequisites, what reading list, what’s it going to cost? Who can I talk to? Who can I trust? What?
Shaman’s show idea is a cool juxtaposition. I don’t know what people Chris could glom to discuss the rise & fall of Swing along with the rise and fall of the Pax Americana, but hell, I’d listen to the show not just to hear the musing, but also to hear whatever music gets played!
More about corporate mercenarism:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/08/17/roberts/
ROS has often been ‘ahead of the curve’ on its choice of show topics. One recent example (of many) was the show, months ago, on Presidential Signing Statements that the mainstream media only caught interest in a few weeks ago. So, I don’t think it premature to suggest – ahead of the curve – a show with Sam Harris, whose Letter to Christian Nation is scheduled for release and distribution on September 19th. http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0307265773-0
Book him for a show before the rest of the herd-like media!
A couple of links were forwarded to me this morning by a friend that I thought would be really intriguing to explore on Open Source. They deal with the feasibility of a liquid bomb plot like the one thwarted recently. While I don’t have the knowledge of science to suggest a guest who could tackle the issue, I think it would certainly be timely to look generally at why the War on Terror always seems to be fighting the last war (ie, 9/11, ban box cutters and nail clippers; Richard Reid, search shoes; etc.). Perhaps a collaboration between terrorism/security experts and scientists would be intriguing.
Here are the two pieces that piqued my interest:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/
I was going to wait until closer to Veterans Day to suggest this show. The topic is the mental health of combat veterans. But the linked article from today’s (August 18) NY Times prompts me to intially drop it into the hopper now. The article may provide a source for the kind of honest difference of opinion that makes radio lively.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/health/policy/18psych.html?ex=1156564800&en=1856a426ad245b05&ei=5070
I urge you to check out Jonathan Shay’s book Odysseus in America. Using the Odyssey as a template, he describes the traumas of “coming home” from war. While he doesn’t shy away from damning the shameful inattention paid to troubled vets, he also offers solutions gleaned from his practice as a psychiatrist.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009PZZTC/sr=8-1/qid=1155900611/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5012537-1729758?ie=UTF8
I could envision a show which featured vets speaking for themselves and/or blog posts from support groups. Of course, for “balance” there is the research cited above and representatives of the VA.
With over 1.2 million veterans already returned home from the mess in Iraq, I suspect this is a topic which will have resonance for some time to come.
Let’s let Ellington out of the box. We’ve had a couple of shows about him but haven’t let him free to be our guide to the sweep and meaning of jazz and the American experience in the 20th century.
There are countless opportunities for us to zoom in on Duke’s life to learn about ourselves; each period is worthy of a show:
Ellington was born in Washington, around the time President Wilson was signing Jim Crow into law.
He first became a notable figure in Harlem around the time of the Harlem Rennaissance and the heyday of race records.
He kept growing and succeeding as the Depression switched off the Harlem Renaissance and killed 90% of the record industry in the early 30′s.
He was one of the early pioneers of jazz on radio, and in the movies.
He had a lull as commercial swing took off in 1935, and re-emerged in the late 30′s, as swing was growing commercially stale, to have a multi-year burst of creative output that hasn’t been equalled, culminating in Black, Brown, and Beige.
When jazz moved suddenly from big bands to split into the bop and vocalist camps, Duke kept doing what he did best. Very few other big bands did.
During the 50′s, Duke was followed by the FBI as a potential communist sympathizer, and Duke received criticism (along with Louis Armstrong) for not being sufficiently involved in the civil rights movement.
The Newport concert happened around the time of the birth of rock and roll.
Ellington is a tour guide, or Zelig figure, an entire American Experience series in himself.
So here’s the big idea: how about a monthly series using Ellington as an entree into this range of topics?
After the killing of tens of thousands of dogs in China by strangulation or beating, I am trying to eliminate products made in China from my life as much as possible. Tossing the cheap plastic housewares was easy. The rubber starts to hit the road with more expensive items, like my bicycle and my iPod (indispensible: it’s how I listen to Chris’s show!), which will have to be replaced over time. Shoes pose an additional problem: after going vegan a year ago, I now have a closet full of footwear made from all man-made materials, all made in China. It seems I will have to return to leather to get shoes that are not from China.
I would like to see a show on how we make compromises and tradeoffs when forced to choose between two evils, or when a complete boycott is not possible. What do we do without, rather than support something we abhor? When do we set our principles aside for the sake of convenience, or just to keep our sanity in a complex world? Suggested guest: Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and author of Making Kind Choices. PETA recently canceled an order for $300,000 from China in response to the dog slaughter mentioned above.
Tipping Point
With over 2600 Americans killed in Iraq, we are but a few months away from a terrible milestone. Around the end of the year, the number of Americans killed in Iraq will exceed the number killed on September 11.
When will the consciousness of this tragic milestone impact the opinions of the American public? As we go to the polls in November, how will the looming milestone affect the vote? Will this propel the Democratic Party into control of Congress?
Will 3000 American dead become the tipping point for the was in Iraq, like the Tet offensive in Vietnam.
President Bush promised to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. Will this promise seem especially hollow when the American death toll rises above 3000? And is it time to count up the dead among coalition troops, UN personnel, NGO’s, and reporters? And why don’t we have an official count of Iraqi dead, both civian and military?
Have we contained terrorism, or have we spread the fires of anti-Western jihadism? Have we promoted the emergence of freedom and democracy, or have we destroyed the promise?m
Will Iraq be our second Vietnam?
We need to have a discussion of the tipping point for Iraq.
Show ideas:
How about let’s revisit Alvin Toffler’s – Future Shock?
How close was he? What were the futurists afraid of and mostly, Are we there yet?
It seems there is deep uncertainty about our times – and our institutions. Is expanding technology and the relentless whirlwind of advances including the desire to digitally quantify everything and make everything possible – AT ONCE. What level of awareness are we approaching? Or hoping for?
The invention of the TV SEASON DVD BOX SET and THE END OF TELEVISION!?
This is deep!
What a new and exciting artistic genre in our midst. ’24′ ‘lost’ ‘sopranos’!
Who watches TV anymore when you can wait for the whole season and watch all episodes in succession without waiting for weeks or months at a time between shows. It amounts to a new art form – I think. All without advertising to clutter it up thus the bit about the end of TV.
The paradox of Two Holy Grails
one in science the other in religion
BOTH surfacing all around us!
Religious fundamentalism spreading at breakneck speed worldwide as Christians talk up the Rapture and Muslims looking for jihadi suicide virgins and Pagans thriving everywhere. Meanwhile what is going on in Confusionism, Judaism, Hinduism – are there any parallels in those cultures?
ALL of this at just the moment in history when Science is reaching an apex of knowledge of all things including a Theory of Everything – String Theory, Evolutionary biology, understanding global climate, fate of the universe, et al!
AND THE BIG QUESTION IS – COULD one BE FUELING THE OTHER?
hmmm?
Cancer.
Recently a cancer researcher of 28 years
wrote a book deeply questioning the
basic paradigm behind today’s research.
5-year survival rates keep looking better and better
only due to be better detection methods.
“Lead Time Bias”, he calls it.
Little progress is being made on the disease itself.
Cancer research is stuck in a “kill paradigm”
based on the microbial model, he argues.
Funding pushes research towards this direction
creating an industrial medical complex (of sorts)
of drug companies, academia, and the federal government.
I don’t know much about the in and outs of research funding.
But I have been working with oncology patients and it isn’t pretty.
I’d love to hear a show about this…
“Treating Cancer: where are we?” – is a show I’d like to hear.
Title:
The War on Cancer: Anatomy of a Failure.
Guy B Faguet
Springer Publishing.
1402036183
Cloud seeding – The World recently aired a show about China’s drought and efforts to increase rain through technology. If we can intensify rainfall, can we also weaken the intensity of storms? Is there any truth to the rumors of “weather weapons” or technology strategically used to create environmental catastrophy? Could cloud-seeding and re-forestation be used to alleviate hunger and scarcity of resources?
The word ‘Christendom’, now out of regular circulation, is defined thusly:
“Christendom, in the widest sense, refers to Christianity as a territorial phenomenon: those countries where most people are Christians, or nominal Christians, are part of Christendom…� by wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christendom
Although currently out of favor as a meaningful concept, it has an analogue that is not out of favor in the contemporary world:
“Umma (Arabic: أمة‎) is an Arabic word meaning community or nation. It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of Islamic states or (in the context of pan-arabism) the whole Arab nation. In the context of Islam, the word umma (often spelled ummah) is used to mean the community of the believers (ummat al-mu’minin), and thus the whole Islamic world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummah
As I listen to all your shows on the Middle East and its hard-to-avoid undercurrent of Islamism, I sense that this concept of ‘umma’ is vastly more significant than we Westerners currently grasp. It motivates Islamism in ways ignorant listeners like me can only guess at.
It isn’t limited to the Middle East, either. Last night the BBC, while airing a story on the folied plot to destroy airliners interviewed, Navid Ahktar, a British specialist on European Islam. ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Navid+Akhtar&btnG=Search ) In the story (“UK Terrorism Case� @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour/ ) Ahktar described the increasing isolation of British Muslims in what he called a ‘Digital Ghetto’ wherein all the TV’s are tuned not to any of the BBC’s offerings, but to TV Pakistan and other Islamic-like channels. In this Digital Ghetto, Ahktar said, the isolated become fully alienated, and enough so to become jihadis.
As I listened, the phrase ‘Ummah in exile’ formed in my thoughts.
Luckily, I found a book this morning related to my thought:
Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah
by Olivier Roy
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis:
A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world (e.g. Hamas of Palestine and Hezbullah of Lebanon) and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary ummah, or Muslim community, not embedded in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful, like Tabligh Jamaat and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. Neofundamentalism, he argues, is both a product and an agent of globalization.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-0231134991-1
So how about an enlightening ROS hour examining the Ummah?
I don’t know a tenth as much about it as I’d like.
The show might be called something like ‘The Global Ummah’, and feature Navid Ahktar and Oliver Roy?
PS to the Ummah suggestion:
First, this sentence should have read:
“So how about an enlightening ROS hour examining the history and importance of the concept called Ummah?”
Second, if you like this idea, let me know via email and I’ll search for historians who can speak to the history of the concept. Karen Armstrong could do it, but I’d rather, for objectivity (or for the perception of objectivity), the historian be of Muslim or Arab descent instead of European Christian.
After watching the first part of his HBO documentary last night, I have to vote for getting Spike Lee on the mic to talk about New Orleans and the making of his film.
I remember watching news footage before, during, and right after the storm with my usual combination of empathy and detachment: detachment because I’m a journalist and I always was the news with an eye toward the questions being asked, how the story has been framed and phrased, what is not being explained, etc., and empathy because I’m human. But around the fourth day of the aftermath, I was standing at the sink watching yet another report and I surprised myself by just bursting into tears. Two days later I volunteered for a Johns Hopkins support team that was to deploy to Mississippi to run a field hospital. I was picked for the team, but after getting our deployment orders, so to speak, we were held up by NIH repeatedly, then finally told to stand down because NIH had rightly determined that they had overestimated the need for our sort of facility. Watching Lee’s documentary, I sorry I never got the chance to help, beyond sending money to the Red Cross.
Another frightening aspect of the Patriot Act:
There is a movement (National Animal Identification System= NAIS) afoot in the government to force farmers, large and small (but not alike) and animal owners in general to register their animals in case government agents decide they need to come and destroy those animals in the event of a suspected disease outbreak–even if the animals in question have never come into contact with the disease. You would have no recourse. Note that this may also affect pet owners. Among the requirements are notification to the government whenever you move your animal(s) off your property: for fairs, horseshows, sale, etc. Every time. Non-compliance can earn you fines of up to $1000 per day. More information about NAIS and the counter-movement, NoNAIS, can be found at http://NoNAIS.org/handout. I hope the whole thing will be moot in 2 years… but if not, we need to prevent this outrageous intrusion facilitated by the Patriot Act. And people need to know about it. NAIS, like so many other “programs” in this administration depends on fear excited in the public, but I feel quite a different emotion (several, actually).
Is there a pop culture in the Middle East? Should there be? Is there one burgeoning underground and if so, does it look like ours?
The following article is causing a lot of buzz in the blog world:
http://www.samuslims.com/node/85
I guess my question is, can we attack Iran with Brittany bombs and MTV missiles and thereby redirect the angst of young Arabs away from fundamentalism, towards a kind of cathartic indulgence of pop. Or by pushing pop culture their way, are we simply engaging in another form of imperialism?
An article in today’s Ha’Aretz notes that Germany has agreed to sell Israel two submarines, and mentions that “Israel’s navy already has three Dolphin-class vessels delivered by HDW in 1999 and 2000, which are capable of carrying nuclear missiles.” — Given Israel’s naval blockade of Lebanon, is it time to have a show about the Israeli NAVY, including its capability to lauch nukes against Iran?
What about a show called ‘The Memory Slot’ (phrase courtesy of Orwell’s 1984)… It would, as John Stewart frequently does, document egregious examples of people ‘creating/rewriting history’ (including recent history). I think Orwell was onto something, given the ever-growing incidence of politicians saying ‘I never said that…’ and then having someone post video of the same person saying PRECISELY that. Then, perhaps some folks speaking on how easily most people seem to deny their own memories and accept the rewrite! (Then again, maybe I’m just imagining rewriting has happened or simply lacking in faith in our leaders… hmmm).
Prelude: I’m listening to the August 14th show about Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman. And as a voting Democrat in Connecticut I’m paying alot of attention to the argument between Matt, John, and Mary Catherine Ham about the presence or lack of a Democratic party message. I’m particularly interested in our parties policy regarding what we should do about the war. Unfortunately I agree with John and Mary Catherine . For all of his bluster about how wrong the argument is, that the Democrats don’t have a message and policy on the war, Matt could have stopped the entire argument by simply stating what the Democratic message is. Chris pointed out that the Democrats would have a lot of power over the commission of this war if they had control of the congress. As a voter I am willing to hand them that power, but not if the Democrats are unwilling to present some idea of what they are going to do with it.
Show Idea: Can we find someone from the Democratic party who’s willing to tell us what the parties message is?
A bit early, but… in nine months it will be as long from 9/11/2001 to May 2007 as it was from the invasion of Poland to the end of World War II…. Looking ahead to May 2007, why not plan for a show ‘Compare the Wars’: WWII v. The War On Terror. — (Incidentally, forget about using December 7th, 1941 as the starting date for WWII. By that measure it lasted ‘only’ 1,248 days; that benchmark in the War on Terror came and went quite a while ago!)
Semi-related to the show of historical analogies, what about learning from current “best practices”?
The Best of Sustainability
Scientists around the world (Political, Social, Economic, Climate, etc) have quite surely examined all models of their respective fields. Given the current presidential “policy” of not listening to anyone’s impartial suggestions, perhaps it would be useful to examine what’s working in the world around us.
The GOP touts it’s “family values” – where in the world are families most cohesive?
Biofuels are all the rage of big energy commercials in the US – what countries have the smallest environmental foot print per capita? or, which countries are most energy independent? or, which have the most sustainable use of natural resources?
In light of the Abramoff scandal and big money politics – where in the world is the “most equal” democracy?
All the buzz is around the miracle of the 401k (the biggest pyramid scam dreamed up if you ask me) – has anyone figured out the best way to plan for a “secure” retirement (either on a macro- or micro-scale)?
With the very wide economic disparity in the US (the worst, in fact) – how does the most equal economic system (Denmark) work?
The currently “warming up” show about Japan’s economic “miracle” touches upon this thread in the realm of macro economics.
http://www.radioopensource.org/the-japanese-miracle-again/
I’m sure there are other topics which could be investigated in this way.
—————————
On the bigger picture of all of this, given the whitehouse rejection of guidence, what are the hopes for future governmental expert guidance?
And what is the hope of the nation in general listening to the advice gained through science?
—————————
And, I like the show on the Conyer report.
I just came across the site http://www.grassroots.com – it appears to be a marketing company based in “viral” promotion (just tech-speak for “word of mouth”?).
How much of what we see on the Internet is “serendipitous”? And as the PR firms understand the model, what are the potentials for abuse?
How is “viral marketing” playing to be a great equalizer for political campaigns curently forced to big budgets (happily supplied by special interest groups). Does this cure us of the lobbyist?
Or do we just sit around watching guys on treadmills?
Hrodger Says: I would like to suggest a show on the Separation of Church and State Article of the US Constitution. It grieves me that the bishops of the church who abetted the crime of pedophilia were not taken to task for their conduct in this scandal. I ask the question,” Does this article exempt anyone from the penalties, in civil law, atached to the commision of a felony? Why were the bishops who abaetted this crime not charged.
The recent show on The Value of a Life was one of the best. You guys do a fantastic job (usually) of tackling the ethical dimensions of public life. The revelation that Gunther Grass served in the SS along with Elizabeth’s Schwratzkopf’s death have brought the issue of complicity with criminal regimes into view once again. What is the responsibility of the ethical citizen?
And, let’s face it, citizens of many lands must ask this question today as we look into the mirror.
A column by John Berger on Gunther Grass (August 24) prompted my suggestion, but there has been plenty of commentary from varying perspectives. What we need now is ROS to “pull it all together.”
rickrust:
“Treating Cancer: where are we?â€? – is a show I’d like to hear.
Me too.
Great idea.
I’m new, so apologies if this has been covered recently. As the housing developments move in around my farm; as the atmosphere changes; as fish populations (and other species) dwindle; as millions of years of oil disappears “overnight”, I’m feeling very crowded. I know Paul Ehrlich and his Population Bomb have received a lot of criticism over the years but if his predictions were off by 20, 30, 40 years, is that really significant in the larger picture of earth’s evolution? At a time when many people are arguing that you can’t even discard embryos, have we humans finally reached the limits of growth?
rickrust’s suggestion that you do a show about cancer excellent. My guess is that one degree of separation — or none — separates most listeners from the disease. The Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda had an apt phrase describing our relation to it: the cancer lottery…I’m tempted to suggest that personal testimonials be left out of it, both on what I hope will be the eventual show and the eventual thread, by way of emphasizing the ubiquity of the disease. We all have our terrible stories, how could we not. The very word strikes an increasingly (why?) well-founded fear. Best perhaps to focus on what is being done, what is not being done (why?), and what is to be done.
I would like to suggest a show on the "new environmentalist" and
how these type of people are changing the West. Here in Wyoming we are experiencing
an oil and gas boom of enormous proportions. This boom has created strange bed
fellows. Very socially and fiscally conservative people are aligning their efforts
with traditional "environmentalists" in order to fight the giveaway
of public lands to oil and gas developers. There is an interesting article from
the Casper Star Tribune here
that explains this very clearly. I think any of the people interviewed
for the article would be great show guests. I have a lot of personal contacts
that may also be helpful.
There is a parallel article in The Nation here.
This article talks about the environmental movement on a national scale, but
it echos many of the same issues Wyoming is facing.
I have linked to some photos that help explain the magnitude of what is going
on: here
and here
and here
and here
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS & THOMAS BARNETT FOR THE HOUR. PLEASE.
Hitchens & Barnett: Enlighten & move the dialogue forward.
How about a serious discussion about religious law in Islam, Judaism and Catholicism, specifically sharia, halachah, and canon law. These legal systems, parallel to the civil system, are fascinating! Few are aware of the Jewish concept of rodef, for instance. Religious law has a lot of ramifications in such areas as medical ethics, divorce, family law, etc. Some of America’s most contentious issues involve differences in religious legal views (e.g. Judaic law v. Catholic canon law on divorce or abortion). Also, the fact that American fundamentalist Protestants do NOT have religious courts might explain their consistent efforts to make the civil court system into an enforcer of their norms (e.g. bans on gambling, etc.). I suspect a four-way conversation with a mufti, canon lawyer, Rabbinic scholar, and a fundamentalist lawyer would be fascinating!
The recent show on Duke Ellington at Newport had me thinking about the joy in music, and as the Duke said about what constitutes good music, “If it sounds good, it is good.” I know that quote from years of listening to [repeats of] one of the best shows ever broadcast on pubic radio – Schickele Mix. Which leads me to my request that you consider a show about music appreciation and music education, centered on an interview with Peter Schickele, composer, music educator, host of that old cancelled show, and the person responsible for unleashing P.D.Q. Bach on the world. He’s over 70 now, and more people should be exposed to his wit and wisdom (not to mention his horrible puns) on the joy of music.
I’d like to recommend a show on civil liberties in the age of terror with Judge Posner:
Here is a podcast with the judge:
http://politicscentral.com/2006/08/28/the_glenn_and_helen_show_judge.php
“With the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks coming up, we thought we’d talk to law professor and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, whose latest book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency looks at terrorism, the Constitution, and issues of surveillance, civil liberties, and history. One quote: “Civil libertarians are in a state of denial.â€?
Surveillance-themed music by The Nevers.
Play (46:11) or download (33.3 MB) The Glenn and Helen Show: Richard Posner ”
Judge Posner would make an excellent guest on radiopensource.
Hey guys,
Great work!
I ama graduate student coming from Iran to Canada. I happened to watch the stupid Glenn Beck show on CNN for the past few days and I am going nuts about commments of this man, especially his comments about Iran. If you can set up a show with him and somebody opposed to him (like Chomsky) it would be great.
Hitchens/Barnett
I am interested in there being a show examining America’s diplomacy. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has open a window to debate with President Bush about the acquisition of nuclear power. How come it wasn’t the other way around? Isn’t America supposed to be the leading light for democracy wherein there is an exchange of ideas? A critical dialogue of the issues? Why are we not opening more diplomatic avenues around the world in general? Has there been a decline or increase in diplomatic solutions? Is America the “Great Oppressor?” And if so how much longer will the rest of the world stand being oppressed because diplomatic measures were not enacted?
More info on CORPORATE MERCENARISM:
http://www.slate.com/id/2148608/
I would like to hear Open Source contact someone from the LEAP organization. This is an organization of police and ex-DEA agents who fed up with the war on drug and its colateral damage. Norm Stamper is one of the more out speaken members and he has just recently written a book about his experiences as a progressive law enforcement officer.
Here is a show suggestion “apatheid in Iran:”
There is a stunning op ed piece in the NY Times dealing with Iran. It is clear from the article that Iran has instituted apartheid policies by law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/opinion/02hakakian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
“Reading the Holocaust Cartoons in Tehran”
By ROYA HAKAKIAN
“Iranian Jews remain obscure to non-Iranian Jews, too. Sometimes they are shocked when I say that my generation was on the streets chanting “Death to the shah!â€? But 1979 was a blissful, egalitarian moment when young people shed everything that defined them as anything but Iranian.
Four years later, the regime did its best to instate policies and practices hostile to religious minorities. Water fountains and toilets at my high school were segregated, some marked with signs that read “For Muslims Only.â€? But by and large, Iranians were not receptive to such bigotry. We crisscrossed among the stalls until the signs became meaningless.”
In spite of ROYA HAKAKIAN denials it seems clear that these policies are law. Her life as an exile belies the almost cheerie tone of the article.
I suggest a show devoted to the intersection of two topics:
1. The recent backlash against string theory
2. The physics blogosphere and academic ethics
Without going into detail, let me give a capsule summary.
1. As the educated layperson is probably aware, string theory has been promoted as a potential “theory of everything” over the past 20 or so years. Many of the world’s most brilliant minds have devoted their efforts to investigating this theory. Yet, after all the time and effort invested, there is still not a single testable prediction that the theory has been shown to make–although, to be fair, some indications of possible predictions have been suggested (e.g., supersymmetry [which is not exact, though, and so is not a fully-fledged prediction] gravity in braneworld scenarios). On the other hand, the current wisdom holds that string theory has a vast number of possible solutions, and therefore may not actually be able to predict anything in detail.
2. A mathematical physicist/blogger at Columbia (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/) has just published a book critical of string theory based on a pessimistic view of the prospects suggested by my point 1). Another physicist at the Perimeter Institute has also just published a critical book about string theory. Meanwhile, a prominent physicist/blogger at Harvard (http://motls.blogspot.com) has engaged in what some claim to be unethical attacks on the authors and their work in the blogosphere. Whereas in years past scientific debates were settled at conferences (and to a lesser extent, in journals), it now appears that the blogosphere is playing a role.
The highly charged and public nature of the ongoing controversy make the stakes high: scientifically interested laypeople are paying attention, and undoubtedly funding agencies are too. Does this example suggest fundamental changes in the way that public science will be funded and conducted? Will the blogosphere undermine publically funded science or strengthen it? The issues involved are fascinating and especially well-suited to discussion on Open Source.
Naguib Mahfouz please. A tribute, an exploration, a history through which he influenced and was influenced by colonialism, globalism, orientalism and Islam and about how he fell out with the extremists. You propably know more of him than I do but here is an old Nation article from 2001 by Edward Said (sadly missed) reprinted at Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mahfouz.html
This next 2 months both political parties will be competing to prove to us how safe they can make us by varying means. According to Peter Beinhart Democrats should bring the old “cold war Democrat” out of storage and put that style into the mix.
“Small government” fans (sic) in the current Republican crowd decided that what was lacking in the incidents of 2001 was a big enough beurocracy in order to prevent another such act. (along with attacks on privacy and habeas corpus and expanded military expenditure)
John Mueller, of Ohio State has an interesting comment in the current Foreign Affairs monthly that everyone has overlooked the idea that we might not be as vulnerable to attack as we want to believe.
I sometimes marvel that people in the country with the most weapons shutter behind security fences, security alarms, and security moms for fear that some mysterious stranger is out to get us, either foreign or domestic. We are so scared of each other that it is easy to project that on the world at large.
Perhaps there are more rational things to use our resources for than this continual “war.”
It seems that the U.S. government (and much of the American public) are convinced there are defenses against a variety of things: terrorism, bird-flu, illegal immigrants, etc… The idea that a fixed object can be successfully defended against mobile attackers has never worked. But the belief in such ultimate solutions springs up again and again … so what about a show: “Defenses, from the Maginot Line to the Great Wall — Why Do They Always Fail”….
With elections nearing, and considering your admirable skills at blending multiple guests into an informative 52 minutes, here’s three authors who might combine nicely (and relevantly) before November:
Dan Wakefield, whose The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate is a favorite of my Jesus-admiring sister:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-1560257458-0
Ray Suarez (who we all already know), author of:
The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America — http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0060829974-2
Becky Garrison, Master of Divinity (and Social Work), Senior Contributing Editor for the Wittenburg Door, and author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church—
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-0787983136-1
(Ad it doesn’t hurt any that Becky is obviously something we damn near never get on ROS: a female guest.)
Yeah, I know I’m your site’s resident (and most voluble) nontheist, and that all these folks are, unlike me, believers, but each of them is well worth exposing to your listeners. Especially considering the politicization of Christianity (and religion in general) these days in the good ol’ USA.
In light of these facts:
1. a significant portion of the US population believe we haven’t learned the full truth of what happened on 911 and our government is hiding something. Majorities in many countries believe this.
2. many family members of the victims of 911 don’t trust the “official” story and want a truely independent investigation
3. many scholars, former government officials and foreign government officials say the “official” story is a lie
4. there are several well written and researched books are out there asking good questions about the events of 911 and a zillion web sites and blogs
5. The two guys who headed the 911 commission say in their recently released book that they know they were lied to by the Air Force
6. The Bush administration has a proven record of serious problems with telling the truth
7. No one has been held accountable or responsible for any failings or mistakes
8. several candidates running for congress this term are “911-truthers”
9. The whole basis of the endless “War on Terror” is the 911 mythology
10 it is the 5th anniversary of 911 . . . . . . .
Do I need to provide links for all these assertions? I can of course, but I bet you’re already aware of everything I’ve said. How much longer are you going to keep your heads buried in the sand? You really don’t think there is anything worth investigating here?
When the next attack comes and Bush and company use it as the excuse to nuke Iran and declare martial law you’re going to regret your inaction. How sure are you that that won’t happen? Isn’t saying nothing playing Russian roulette with our future?
The whole 911-truth movement can not be dismissed because some kooks say there were no planes or “the Jews did it” or what ever. Spend an hour or two here: http://www.911blogger.com/
Why don’t you get David Ray Griffin on the show? Or that University of New Hampshire professor, I think Woodward is his name. Or Barrett. Or Bob Bowman. Or Steven Jones. Or Ray McGovern Or Barrie Zwicker???? I bet you’ve heard of them all (and others) but they never get mentioned on “open”source.
They should be.
A no brainer “I.F.Stone” and in theage of the Internet. Also,what happened to Bob Woodward. Can he write the modern version of “The Selling of the President 2004″ Or do I date myself?
Mohammad Khatami is visiting you right around the corner at Harvard. CNN interviewed him. Why not Open Source? You guys would do such an exceptionally smart and far more interesting broadcast.
More on CORPORATE MERCENARISM:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1868920,00.html
You might build a show around these fighting words:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html
THE CASE FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH AND CHENEY.
(Apologies if someone has already suggested this.)
Research and interest in the therapeutic and personally transformationative use of psychedelic and entheogenic chemicals has significanly increased recently. After listening to “Fear Factor”, I would suggest that an equal and opposite social force is emerging contextually as “hope”, and that the interest in these substances reflects this.
1) The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has successfully assisted in the development of studies now underway in these areas: Psilocybin in the treatment of cancer related anxiety, MDMA in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and in an End-of-Life situations, and LSD in the Treatment of Cluster Headaches. These studies are happening at such institutions as Harvard, UCLA, and internationally.
2) A recent Johns Hopkins Study recently looked at the use of psilocybin in the induction of life changing spiritual experiences…This is a link to a press release from Johns Hopkins…
http://bpru.med.jhu.edu/LTR(RG)SoC.pdf#search=%22psilocybin%20Johns%20Hopkins%22
…and an excellent commentary from SanFrancisco chronicle columnist Mark Morford…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/08/04/notes080406.DTL
3) The US Supreme Court found that religious expression in the form of using Ayahuasca ( profoundly potent South American plant brew) as sacrment was protected for a Arizona syncratic reliogious group.
4) Burning Man is at its very core a social experiment in culture and source of inspiration for its participants. The theme for 2006 was Hope and Fear: The Future.
Before I sign off, suggested guests may include Daniel Pinchbeck, Author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey in Contemporary Shaminism, Rick Doblin, PhD., the founder and Director of MAPS, and Erik Davis, a journalist that has written extensively on the topic with extraordinary clarity.
Thank you for the consideration of this topic and the excellent quality of the show!
Michael D. Fratkin, MD
( aka Gatito)
Internal Medicine
Hospice and Palliative Medicine
Arcata, California
I’d love to hear a show called perhaps “They Can’t be That Dumb,” dedicatd to exploring alternative theories about the true aims of the Anglo-American attack and occupation of Iraq.
Throughout the march to war and its ugly aftermath, it has been difficult to believe that the governments of America and Britain could have miscalculated so badly and so obviously. Alternative, unadvertised strategies, I thought, could be at work. Among these possible explanations are pure and simple bloody retribution, collective punisment, and terror against a big Arab state to deter opposition to Anglo-American aims in the region, or a more calcualted effort to ultimately divide Shiite and Sunni and align Sunni states and movements with the U.S. in a broader war against Shiite Iran. This latter alternative strategy would make the curent chaos in Iraq look less like the product of bungling than the purposeful trigger for a decisive regional conflict. (This may serve as a reasonable conjecture, but it too suffered a setback as the quick and surprising anti-Hizbullah statements from Sunni Arab governments in the aftermath of Israel’s Lebanon attack this summer were roundly denounced and dismissed in the Arab world – and not heard again since.
In short, this show would be dedicated to the leading “better explanation” for the latest Anglo-American efforts in the Mideast. Or “How Future Historical Analysis Might turn Better for Bush/Blair.
PAT-riot (patriot, emhazising first syllable.)
[Is there a suggestion page for September?]
My suggestions aren’t necessarily related to very specific events in the news or rising rumors in the blogosphere. (Sorry, no hook!) My points have more to do with recurring themes which could be expanded. These are made to sound like criticisms in the hope of provoking some broader reflection.
My Suggestions:
1) Islam and non-Arabs, especially in different parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. The show often talks about Muslims in West or South Asia (the “Easts”). But the Muslim world extends much beyond those heavily-mediatized regions.
2) Globalization beyond Occidentalism. The show makes frequent reference to the concept of Globalization, often equating it with the spread of a few elements of “Western” (actually, Anglo-American) culture around the world. This could be opened up in order to include global contacts beyond Europe and North America.
3) Post-Nationalism. The “democratic” model most often discussed on the show is based on a neo-Herderian notion of the Nation-State. We could take bets about whether or not tomorrow’s world will maintain the “Nation-State” as a valid concept. In fact, some might say that it’s not currently a valid concept to describe the actual world in which we interact. This could lead to an analysis (deconstruction, even) of patriotism in the United States of America in the broad context of extra-national alliances (regional or otherwise).
4) Music as a social process. The show’s musical episodes regularly focus on music as a commodity, to be consumed by an enthusiastic public. Yet music is a much deeper social phenomenon than that. Apart from recorded music and formal performance, there is such a thing as music in daily life.
Thanks!
In general, there could be more coverage of issues under the radar of U.S.- and U.K.-based media.
An Iranian-American (Anousheh Ansari, of the Ansari X-Prize family) is due to be the first female space tourist, and first female muslim in space on Monday, Sept 18th.
Given the current state of affairs, I’m surprised that there’s nothing in the mainstream media about it.
http://www.anoushehansari.com/
If suspense and intrigue make good radio, Afghanistan could be the hook, and they could be the payoff! The “Afghanistan Five Years Later” show grazed the subject when Christopher Lydon asked, “Before the Taliban, where did the world’s heroin supply come from?†Because both English and French speaking empires have such long and sordid histories with regard to heroin production, this should be the starting point- not afterthought- of understanding american actions in Afghanistan. Money laundering, white collar corruption, financial lobbying, and support for terrorism are all potential hooks for the same subject and of course Alfred McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin” would be the starting point!
Further to the CANCER suggestion:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060915/hl_afp/moroccowhohealth_060915213017
My co-worker reminding us all to laugh moments before she passed away reminds me that ROS has lacked levity to some degree. Many of the shows have had funny moments but not enough have been centered on the funny.
How about an ironic show, in the style of the Onion and Daily Show yet with an open source twist. You could challenge us bloggers to post to that show an ironic ways.
Another idea for levity would be a show that examined how stand up comedians are handling the major issues of the day. Not daily show comedians but the down and gritty stand-ups that grace the small stages of Chinese restaurants and VFW’s all across this country. I’d like to know how the comedy differs in Wako Texas from Sacramento California or Nashua New Hampshire. How do the audience’s reactions differ?
In light of the recent fracas over the Pope’s speech at Regensburg, you could do a program on the role/agenda of the Papacy in the current post-9/11 conflict. As we all know, John Paul II played a significant role in the last decade of the Cold War, and I imagine that the current Papcy has considered what goals it should pursue in the current conflict. What are those goals and how does this speech reflect (or not) the agenda of the current leadership?
For the text of Benedict XVI’s speech, follow this link: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html
I’d like a discussion about the coming recession. Not about when it will come, but what will happen when it does (and it will, of course, eventually). The recent housing/mortgage bubble has left the country more vulnerable to a downturn than it has been in the recent past. Other changes to the economic landscape include tightened personal bankruptcy laws, ever more job outsourcing, shrinking pensions, higher health care costs, a minimum wage in continual decline in real terms… It seems that the next recession will bite harder than many might expect because the underlying economic supports have eroded in recent years.
“Experts” estimate that half of the worlds 5,000-6,000 languages will go extinct in the next century or two. I would like to hear the current discussion on the topic of language extinction and revival. How natural is it for a language to go extinct? What role does globalization play in the extinction and endangerment of languages? And, what role does language play in unification movements? Are languages binding agents or separating agents?