Suggest a Show: March 2006

In House | brendan, March 27th, 2006

Immigration seems to be occupying us now, trying to figure out how to approach it. Israeli elections coming up, our obsession with Belarus has yet to abate and last night on C-Span Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska, was at a chamber of commerce dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire.

As always, leave show suggestions as comments in the thread below. As always, take a look at Katherine’s short guide to suggesting shows.

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198 Responses to “Suggest a Show: March 2006”

1. Nikos Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 2:51 pm

   More Dan Dennett, please.
   This time, instead of booking other experts, how about a call-in from your listeners? (I’ll refrain from participation since I mostly understand the book already.)
   You could use the blog to screen the questions – thus obviating any time wasted debated unverifiable issues like “God’s existence�.
   The ‘God in Our Genes?’ thread, even if you took out all of my dozens of posts, ought to be enough of an indicator that there’s plenty more healthy juice to be squeezed from the Breaking The Spell fruits.

   And please, please, please give us a longer ‘Warm Up’ next time!

   After all, how many other topics are more compelling or historically vital than religion’s role in human culture?

2. Nikos Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 2:52 pm

   Hey, thanks for the new Suggestion thread!

   Have billionaire conservatives developed an effectively insurmountable public-relations advantage for the Republican Party? http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2005Q4/battletanks ; http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0313-27.htm ; http://www.prwatch.org/node/4335

   Why do some polls consistently show that Americans favor progressive policy options, yet Republicans win one national election after another?

   Conservative writer David Brock authored The Real Anita Hill in 1993, which launched his ascendancy as a Republican star of the political publicity-machine intelligentsia. On the heels of this success, Brock had a hand in many other right-wing ‘examinations’ of Democrats and ‘liberals’ – notably the Clintons – attacks, whether in book or magazine article form, that he himself has since disavowed, discredited, and characterized as unjustified ‘smears’.

   His book Blinded By The Right: The Conscience Of An Ex-Conservative was a 2002 best-seller, but his newest book,
   The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media And How It Corrupts Democracy (Three Rivers Press; 2004-5; http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0307236897-2)) is worthy on its own of an hour of ROS.

   Here’s why:
   Presenting an exhaustive historical survey beginning in the Goldwater era, Brock details the right’s conscious development of its media cooption strategy. This strategy, we learn early on, was predicated in no small part by corporate funding of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and three kindred institutions that have come to dominate the country’s political dialogue. Such ‘charities’ (for tax-write-off purposes!) typically serve not only as tutors for industry lobbyists, but as the sophisticated propagandists necessary to develop the deceptive sorts of language-frames that, for example, posit cherry-picked half-facts counter-intuitively suggesting that increased educational spending in fact decreases the efficacy of educators’ efforts, and labels increased air pollution ‘Clean Skies’, etc., (ad nauseum). Brock points out that Heritage (which stars in this section) has employed such propagandist luminaries as David Frum, whose writings include the appalling: “Is Contemporary Liberalism a Type of Mental Illness?�
   Brock leads the reader through the years to the contemporary state of the art, wherein conservative and Republican strategists concoct smears, distortions, and outright lies, and then disseminate the product as ‘talking points’ to their flacks of right-wing radio and Fox News. Then, day by day, week after week, and month by month, these smears gain faux ‘credibility’ through endless repetition, and enough so to slime their way onto the pages of putatively legitimate news organizations like The New York Times and the rest of the presumed mainstream press.
   375 pages of the book supply the exhaustive study of published documents, articles, and books necessary to back the premise Brock makes in his 16 page Introduction.

   From the Introduction:
   “…Democrats ignore these attacks at their peril: Not only do such attacks confirm the preconceptions of Republicans but they shape the thinking of undecided voters and even of Democrats. One of the most frightening experiences I have had in recent years in talking to rank-and-file Democrats is the extent to which they internalize right-wing propaganda. To add insult to injury, too many Democrats have a tendency to blame the victims of these smears—their own leaders—rather than addressing the root of the problem. For instance, when Senator Daschle made the factual statement that ‘failed’ diplomacy had led to the war with Iraq, right-wing media accused him of siding with Saddam Hussein. The ensuing controversy caused many Democrats to think Daschle had put his foot into his mouth.� (Pg.7)

   On page 10, Brock quotes neoconservative writer and Weekly Standard contributor Matt Labash in an interview:
   “While these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media like to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective… It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket.�

   Brock’s conclusion: “…is that right-wing media is a massive fraud, victimizing its own audience and corrupting the broader political dialogue with the tacit permission of established media authorities who should, and probably do, know better.
   “Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. The conscious effort of the right wing to misinform the American citizenry—to collapse the distinction between journalism and propaganda—is thus an assault on democracy itself.� (Pgs.10-11)

   “Every day, professional news organizations, primarily in the prestige print press, report facts, across a broad range of subjects, that are essential to an informed view of politics and policy. More often than not, these stories die on the page and never reach most Americans, owing to right-wing command of the new media ‘echo chamber’.� (Pg.12)

   See many additional and extended excerpts @: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html

   The book’s scholarship is decidedly muscular, but Brock’s dispassionate writing is smooth and supple enough to engage instead of drone and bore. Its extensively sourced 391 pages offer a surprisingly swift read. (And the sources come via endnotes, not footnotes, which nicely speeds the read.) Unlike the disappointing and unconvincing Economic Hit Man, Brock’s exposé is a study of thousands of published articles, books, and other accounts, rather than an unverifiable slate of conspiracy accusations.
   As a former Republican propagandist, he knows better than to accuse the machine of its deceits without overwhelming supporting evidence.

   See ‘ideologically neutral’ review @: http://www.freepress.net/news/4529
   And review @: http://www.literacyconnections.com/0_1400048753.html
   See David Brock interview @: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/18977/

   As an objective public media forum, Radio Open Source seems an ideal on-air program –especially as supplemented by its unique blog forum – to examine the machinations of this putatively democracy-deluding ‘little racket’ – particularly since we are already within the calendar year of a potentially republic-shaping national election.
   Considering this, late April or May might be a fine time to air such a show – although a nice long ‘Warm-Up’ in the ROS bullpen would well serve the public interest too.

   See also the many links and articles at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock

   Incidentally, the tight Republican Party-Fox News nexus detailed by Brock often occupies the attentions of the sharp-eyed watchdogs at NPR’s On The Media.
   Example: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_070904_outfoxed.html
   Either of OTM’s two regular reporters might make an interesting counterpoint for Brock. Were he to exaggerate any of his claims (an unlikely prospect), I’d trust them to call him on it, since they study this stuff for their own show’s explicitly narrow focus.

   Geoffrey Nunberg might also make a good guest considering his forthcoming: TALKING RIGHT – How the Right Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show
   http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=1586483862

   (Lastly, while waiting for the March Suggestion thread to open, I distilled Wikipedia’s article on the book from this show-suggestion and book review. So, no ‘fair use’ worries, because I wrote both this and that [although it’s changed quite a bit since I contributed it]).

3. avecfrites Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 5:06 pm

   Ethel Waters once said: “Mel Torme is the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man.” Count Basie agreed: “The way Mel sings, he should have been black.”

   I’ve recently been enjoying the 2005-released CD of Mel’s early Bethlehem best, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AP2YZ4/sr=8-1/qid=1143497135/ref=sr_1_1/102-1452302-3092964?%5Fencoding=UTF8

   Frank Sinatra WISHES he could sing “The Way You Look Tonight” like Mel did here.
   Let’s talk about Mel!

4. LLL Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 6:40 pm

   The Dan Dennett interview was a disaster, which is…okay. But to do his ideas justice wouldn’t it be appropriate to have him back on? Chris Lydon, you’re a great interviewer. You’re good enough, smart enough, and doggonnit listeners like you.

   I’m a regular listener. (A UMass grad, btw.) Since moving to Japan I have listened to CL on OnPoint, on CL’s previous audioblog, and many ROS shows. However, I only started participating here last night after hearing the God in Our Genes show.

   Some problems with past show, thoughts for next round:

   First, there was the title of the show that Dennett objected to: Is God in Our Genes? It’s understandable that ROS would go where most recent reviewers (including NYT) have gone, following the meme/gene analogy too closely. Jeff G, who blogs at the Mormon Doctrine blog would have titled the show, “Why is religion the way that it is?”
   http://mormondoctrine.blogspot.com/2006/02/breaking-which-spell-whats-going-on.html
   (How about having him on as a guest?)

   Second, though I like and appreciate where Dennett is going even he admits again and again that his field of memetics is in its infancy. They haven’t even come up with conventions to operationalize what constitutes a meme. So, rather than taking “Breaking The Spell” as a full on theory, you could view it with the humility that Dennett himself views it - as a very long heuristic paper (something to get ya thinking, something to suggest years of inquiry to follow). The following is from Todd who blogs on “Blogging with a hammer”:

   “While there are some interesting possibilities here, there are also some serious problems with this metaphor; unfortunately, many evolutionary biologists have seized hold of this metaphor and are making fundamentally flawed arguments. Here is a perfect example of where scientists of different orders need to take each other’s research seriously. Cultural Anthropology and Sociology have been studying the formation of cultures and their changes over time for 150 years. But to read Dennett, it’s as if none of that work exists. Dennett speaks of religious ‘memes’ as acting independent of their ‘host organisms’ in order to ensure their survival; cultural bledning is explained as these memes adapting to new conditions to survive. My two preliminary objects are 1) that cultures do not exist apart from or independent of human bodies or experience, and 2) cultures do not brachiate or evolve in a manner parallel to how organisms evolve. On the first objection, human cultures are embodied; they arise out of the experiences of embodied individuals in transaction with their environment, physical and social. Some aspects of culture are designed in such a way to shape perception and prevent their transformation; but the problem with Dennett’s interpretation is that cultures do transform. Human beings ‘trip’ over things in their environment constantly, which forces them to a) change their environment, b) change their belief, or c) a combination of the two.”
   http://toddshammer.blogspot.com/2006/03/evolution-of-god.html

   Why not have Tod on as well?

   Anyway, with the high number of posts on the God in Our Genes thread (and the amount of confusion that still lingers around the topic) isn’t a second round with Dan Dennett a must-do? I’m with Nikos all the way.

5. LLL Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 7:14 pm

   Another idea: How about inviting Cornel West on to have a conversation with Daniel Dennett? Topic, “Why is American Protestantism The Way It Is?” (I like this idea because ANY conversation between Prof. West and ANYONE is bound to go well.)

6. Brendan Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 7:22 pm

   Hey guys, I’m guessing that it’s unlikely that we’ll go back to Dennett any time soon. This isn’t because of any lack of affection for him and his ideas, but for broadcast and distribution purposes it’s difficult to spend too much time with any one person. We’ve had people on more than once in the past, but usually after four or more months and to visit a completely new idea.

   Don’t mean to rain on your parade, but those, sadly, are the rules of radio.

7. Winston Dodson Says:
   March 27th, 2006 at 8:50 pm

   I aslo vote for a show on globalization where GM is discussed, and on the discussion board prearing for that show I will supply source articles that show that there are actually more Americans making cars in the US that 10 years ago (they just don’t work at US car manufacturers, they work at Japanese and German ones in Southern “Red State” - this might be one answer to Nikos’ question above re: Republican successes in politics) and that it is widely felt that there will NO one working in Western European car factories in 20 years.

   I just got a chance to listen to the show with Philips and think that his “beliefs” in the concepts of Peak Oil and the “US reliance on fianance” a bit quaint - isn’t peak oil a widely discredited modern formlation of Malthusianism?

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus - “One famous recent example of this is Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted, in the late 1960s, that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation crisis in the 1970s, and that by 1980 life expectancy in the United States would be only 42 years. Other famous examples are the 1972 book The Limits to Growth from the self-styled Club of Rome”

   So, in contrast to this I present a few recent set of facts that I propose to be discussed.

   Why U.S. Business Is Winning

   Newspapers bring us the dark stories about American business. The Enron trial serves up tales of lies and looting. The General Motors restructuring dramatizes the death of traditional U.S. manufacturing.

   Despite all the nostalgia for the era when GM dominated the world’s car industry, the heyday of American business may actually be now.

   The dawn of this heyday came in 1995. In the two preceding decades, the productivity of American workers had grown more slowly than that of Japanese and European competitors. But in the decade since 1995, U.S. labor productivity growth has outstripped foreign rivals’. Meanwhile U.S. firms’ return on equity — that is, the efficiency with which they manage the capital entrusted to them — has pulled away from that of Japan, France and Germany, according to data provided by Standard & Poor’s Compustat.

   But today the United States provides most of the business role models, from Starbucks to Procter & Gamble, from Apple to Cisco. The (British) Financial Times publishes an annual list of the world’s most respected companies. In 2004 and again in 2005, no fewer than 12 of the top 15 slots were occupied by American firms.

   This duo organized a survey of 732 medium-sized American and European companies and measured their management procedures against benchmarks of best practice. The result: American firms, including the subsidiaries of American firms in Europe, are simply better managed than European rivals. In fact, superior American management accounts for more than half of the productivity gap between American and European firms.

   So the shift from manufacturing to services; the gallop of globalization; and the rise of information technology that flattens corporate hierarchies: All these forces come together to create an American moment. But you could be forgiven for missing this, because other forces spoil what ought to be a celebration. In the midst of this American moment, hatred of President Bush has simultaneously created an anti-American moment. And in the midst of American prosperity, rising inequality has prevented American workers from sharing in the success of American firms.

   Enough with the globo-gab

   Transnationalism may be on the way out — and not a moment too soon

   Based on current trends, by mid-century, America, India and China will each be producing roughly 25 per cent of world GDP, with Europe down to 10 per cent.

   http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/article.jsp?content=20060327_123641_123641

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600878.html

8. bicyclemark Says:
   March 28th, 2006 at 5:26 am

   How about a Nepal show. A king that comes to power after the rest of the family is shot dead. He dissolves the parliament and becomes the only law of the land. Rebels probably have more power than he does and the entire country is in a political twilight zone. Bring on the Nepalese bloggers and maybe some of the scholarly types as well.

   I’ll probably do this show on my own podcast this month… but I always like to hear how you do it.

9. loki Says:
   March 28th, 2006 at 3:13 pm

   I am still interested in the question “will music Resurrect New Orleans” How can a city with soul be recreating. I now we have had many show about the Big Easy. I would like ton listenh to the musicians,the poets and the writers.

10. Chuck Schamel Says:
    March 28th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    I don’t know if it’d be worth a whole show, but is it just me wondering about the “coincidence” of similarity of names between the Pres’ new chief of staff (Josh Bolton) and the US’s “ambassador” to the UN (John Bolton)?

11. cheesechowmain Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 2:27 am

    Prof. Michael Parenti. My favorite books:
    The Assassination of Julius Caesar: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565847970/qid=1143616575/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/104-9662136-9421545?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

    History as Mystery: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872863573/qid=1143616575/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/104-9662136-9421545?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

12. cheesechowmain Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 2:28 am

    Walter Truett Anderson (PoMo I can grok)
    The Truth about the Truth:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874778018/qid=1143616813/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/104-9662136-9421545?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

    Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062500171/qid=1143616813/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-9662136-9421545?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

13. cheesechowmain Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 2:33 am

    Michael Kimmelman
    The Accidental Masterpiece : On the Art of Life and Vice Versa:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594200556/qid=1141688859/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5186899-8707304?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

    Articles:
    http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MICHAEL%20KIMMELMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MICHAEL%20KIMMELMAN&inline=nyt-per

    BTW, I forgot to include this. Here’s Walter T. Anderson’s web page:
    http://www.waltanderson.info/

14. diemos3211 Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 6:32 am

    I would like to see a show about the state of American labor in general. A rundown on where wages are going, for what sectors, and how that might be impacted by having to pay for our own health care via those ridiculous HSAs, what sort of jobs are available, how many people get laid off, does business really need to be quite so streamlined, what sort of hours are we working these days, etc.

    Then I would like to hear from maybe Barbara Ehrenreich, someone from organized labor, and perhaps a professor involved in theorizing about management practices to comment on what is happening to all of us working folks and (assuming that what is happening to us is bad) what we can do about it.

15. diemos3211 Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 6:38 am

    Second idea is that I would like to hear a show all about intellectual property and patent law (soooooo exciting, I know). In particular I would like to hear a show focused on how IP and patents are affecting high tech innovation rather than the music and film industries, which are admitedly more titillating (what’s more titillating than something involving pirates, honestly?) but IMHO ultimately of vastly less importance to our society.

    It might even be somewhat topical considering that the Supreme Court is supposed to be ruling on something like 4 patent law cases this year.

16. diemos3211 Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 6:43 am

    Last one, I promise.

    If you could possibly get David Foster Wallace on the show, that would be great. I find his takes on American society to be deeply insightful, his latest collection of essays gave me many of those moments where you read something and find that the author has perfectly articulated something that you’ve felt and been trying to get out in a coherent form for months or years.

17. mr.dana Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 6:53 pm

    In light of your recent post concerning God, I would like to hear a show about Spinoza and current thoughts regarding his word and its importance to today’s world. There is also in important political thread in his work for modern audiences. recently in the world of Israeli history, many intellectuals are looking at his impact on israeli politicans such as Ben Gurion. There must be similar studies for american statesman (kissinger?).

18. Herbert M. Bryant Jr. Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 8:16 pm

    Interview Prof. Cornel West, about anything he wishes to talk about, but I’d especially like to hear him speak concerning the role of religion in American life and politics.

    For example: How do his religious views differ from those of Pres. Bush? What’s the liberal tradition of Christianity in the USA? (Comments on George W. Bush’s religioius views are always of current news interest.)

    Perhaps a panel on Pres. Bush, the 21st Century, and political associations of organized Christian churches in America would be of most interest. What about the new century’s potential for a veritable ‘Armageddon’?

    Last year, Dr. Cornel West spoke at the University of South Florida and drew a huge crowd.

    Links:

    http://www.CornelWest.com
    http://www.pragmatism.org/library/west/
    http://usfnews.usf.edu/page.cfm?link=article&aid=868

19. Nikos Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 1:21 am

    Okay, ROS pals, since you’re willing to play the ‘public radio rules’ card to deny Dan Dennett’s revolutionary book the accurate exposition it’s due, how about Bobby Henderson and his Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
    http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0812976568-0

    At least it’s funny.
    Throw us a bone, for cryin’ out loud.
    Or give Dennett his just due.

20. Nikos Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 1:48 am

    PS, and don’t think your loyal listeners haven’t noticed that Sheri Turkle has broken your vaunted ‘public radio rules’ by two appearances in five weeks.
    Look, your editorial bias in favor of theism has come through loud and clear, and it’s your party, but Dennett’s book is ultimately more humanist and potentially more beneficial than anyone seems to want to give it credit for.
    Have someone on staff read the thing from cover to cover (this time), and then look at the ocean of misunderstanding on the blog (including my own inadequate attempts to ‘speak for Dennett’), and then tell us honestly if you gave the subject anything close to justice.

21. Nikos Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 3:32 am

    Fun with equations:
    miprs + mr&bb = mi/wi

    What’s it mean?
    miprs = most innovative public radio show
    mr&bb = most revolutionary & beneficial book
    mi/wi = misinformation/wrong impression

    How could it have gone so wrong?

    Whether or not you ever deign to admit it, you guys owe Dan Dennett a corrective second hour.
    You can hide behind the unquestionable bounty that this blog provides us dissenters (and we are truly grateful for the forum!), but any of us who’ve actually read the whole of Dennett’s book can surmise the editorial disinterest in which you held it.
    It is, of course, your party. But if I were Dennett, I’d not be terribly happy with your obvious lack of preparation for the show featuring his remarkable brain-child.

    Still stubborn? Fine, I’m a bonehead myself. (And how!)
    Then give us Bobby Henderson. Maybe Sheri Turkle can provide another angle for that show too!

22. Brendan Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 9:00 am

    Nikos: Let it go. Surely you must understand that Sherry Turkle had a lot to offer on two completely different subjects. What you’re suggesting is that we do two shows on the exact same subject. While you may enjoy another, fuller treatment that does Dennett’s book justice, don’t you think it’d be a bit of a disservice to everyone else who listens to this show? Don’t you think it’d be a bit self-indulgent of us to say “Sorry guys, didn’t quite nail that one; here, the same hour again in your iPod, only this time it’s better.”

    We often feel, during our post-show wrapups, that we didn’t quite get it right; this is part of the cycle of a daily deadline. It’s not pride or arrogance that keeps us from going back and fixing it with a new show; it’s self-preservation and a sense of obligation to the listener. There are no mulligans in radio, Nikos.

23. Nikos Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 2:25 pm

    Brendan, consider it ‘let go’.
    Besides, I’ll consider my agitation-in-four-parts in this thread worthwhile if only one person somewhere out there suspects that perhaps Dennett’s book offers more wisdom than was evident in the show, and therefore reads it. Dennett’s suggestion that religions can be improved by scrutiny and subsequent reform will require a sea-change in conventional wisdom
    Every individual trickle of water will contribute to such a sea change. Think Rosa Parks.
    The Saudi feminist Wajida Al-Huwaider calls for a religious self-examination akin to Dennett’s. http://www.metransparent.com/texts/arab_feminists_on_women_s_rights.htm

    Any agitation that stirs people away from the complacent patterns of thought that sanction the ongoing repression of fellow human beings is worth it.
    Even if it ticks off the ROS blog-master.
    Thanks for the platform.

24. Nikos Says:
    March 30th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    This isn’t a show suggestion but possibly something better:
    How about a new category akin to the “Outsourced� – A ROS “Book Club� thread or grouping threads with a permanent home on the left side of the page under ‘Recently Aired’ and ‘Series’?
    The usual dynamic of the bloggers is to drift away from a show thread within a couple of days after the show’s air-date. This isn’t likely to change, perhaps, but a ‘Book Club’ would allow us to compare notes and share nuggets from the many authors you feature well beyond the aired show’s typical ‘shelf life’.
    Obviously, I’m thinking of Dennett, but this same dynamic applies to most other authors too. The Kevin Phillips thread has already effectively fossilized.
    As has Elizabeth Kolbert’s ‘Global Warming’ thread, which featured her Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
    http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=29928&cgi=product&isbn=1596911255

    Thanks once again for the forum.

25. Winston Dodson Says:
    March 31st, 2006 at 8:33 am

    Another suggestion for a show on media. I guess when it begins to “trickle up” into the MSM maybe then the subject is ripe for discussion. But in the article below by Kinsley, I can’t find that he ever makes any distinction bewteen ALL journalism and opinion journalism and I do think that he makes a great case that any claim to the idea that “journalism is like a scientific search for truth” is naive.

    The Twilight of Objectivity
    How opinion journalism could change the face of the news.

    Objectivity—the faith professed by American journalism and by its critics—is less an ideal than a conceit. It’s not that all journalists are secretly biased, or even that perfect objectivity is an admirable but unachievable goal. In fact, most reporters work hard to be objective and the best come very close. The trouble is that objectivity is a muddled concept. Many of the world’s most highly opinionated people believe with a passion that it is wrong for reporters to have any opinions at all about what they cover. These critics are people who could shed their own skins more easily than they could shed their opinions. But they expect it of journalists. It can’t be done. Journalists who claim to have developed no opinions about what they cover are either lying or deeply incurious and unreflective about the world around them. In either case, they might be happier in another line of work.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2139042/

26. miranda Says:
    March 31st, 2006 at 11:55 am

    This’d be for april, which is, of course, national poetry month. Instead of the tried and true, how about the “poet that died in the gutter?” (Dylan quotation). Me? Oh, well, I ain’t dead yet but I have an end stage emphysema sentence hanging over my head. But MORE important I can deliver the goods. I can even deliver what’s great. I’m a first class poet. First water, top drawer. The real deal in this doggerel hounded world. But enough bark. Here’s my bite:

    Dialogue in Bloody Desert

    Is it my fault that my skin is the color
    Of my own desert land?
    Is it my fault I’ve been angry
    For a thousand years?
    Oh I am an orphan, I am a widow
    And I am on fire
    And my house is on fire
    And my town is on fire
    And my land is on fire
    And the world is on fire
    But allah is cool as grapes on a golden plate
    And I will be with him
    In paradise perfectly.

    I. I am American.
    It ain’t my fault that I’m perfect.
    I come here where things are all
    Dirty and broken and sick
    Cause they brought me here
    From America to do the job
    Americans must do to and for you.
    But it ain’t our fault that we’re
    Americans and you ain’t.
    You’ll never be perfect but
    I know about free will and
    You can stop being poor,
    Ignorant and emotional
    Any old time you choose.
    You know about Jesus and paystubs
    And kmart, floss for your teeth
    And big wheels for the kids.
    And all you need is seven
    Elevens on every corner,
    A few jr colleges, tv
    Shows that make sense.
    And you never will be perfect
    But jesus would fix you a little
    If you would just go to church.

    I am here in my own ancient land,
    In my ancient days, ancient robes,
    When the singer calls the prayers,
    And for five thousand years my fathers
    Studied the numbers and letters and
    Pages and stories and systems that held
    The spheres in golden light in these
    Sand and glass walled schools that swelled
    Like pride beside the roads that flow like
    Lava in vulcan-like days in the daily
    Catastrophe of sun in summer.
    Well there in the texts
    And in the hands’ grips
    And gentle prints of finger tips
    Too many to read–
    Recorded on the skin and in the sinew
    Of old, old artifacts that were the bric
    A brac upon the shelf when man was born,
    There in the dust on dust on dust on dust
    Chronicles many a war like cash register receipt
    Is scratched and scribbled, ticked askance.
    And in the poetry that scrolls forever down
    The poetic throat of the people who birth
    Golden poets with lapis lazuli hands, tongues
    Crimson and hearts made of all the tribes’
    Tears torn perfectly from the disappointment
    Which is this world, which is this life– in this poetry
    The agony of war is blueprinted as if buildings
    Fell upon the poet’s page, and, also, carved out
    By surgical gouges like medical texts are passages
    Of pains and dismemberings. And there are the
    Flowers, weddings, begettings shot to ashes, blood,
    And the bitter soup in the bowel and brain
    That smells like tastes like spills like spells like
    Revenge

    Now tell me fool.
    My babies you murdered.
    Wives husbands friends parents
    Sibling cousins aunts uncles are dead.
    My institutions have been killed,
    And my buildings buried. My days
    Are slaughtered along with sleep
    And dream and the steadiness of
    Hand and heart I thought was me,
    Nor that vague whiff of happiness lives.
    I don’t even remember the ease of skin
    And loin in the breeze against fabric
    That once may have been mine.
    My skin is boiled my bones crumpled
    My blood is some alien traif.

    Now what do you think I think.
    Hatred is not so dark an ink
    As is what writes your perfect answer
    Upon a perfect page of a sunny America day.
    Sometime.

    Man. Says the American boy.
    What makes you think so?
    I can’t even get back there myself!

    Miranda Joan Howe
    copyright december 2005
    all rights reserved

    And I’ve a lifetime of work like it though each piece is its own calculus, as are real poems. I’ve a thousand pieces from over thirty-two years since I was twentyfour. So come on use me. Wanna send five copies to my mother. When I was young my mentors told me I was so very good that I wouldn’t be renowned except posthumously. When I was young I thought, how romantic. But I’d like my stuff known now. And I’d like my mother to live to see it.
    miranda

27. miranda howe Says:
    April 1st, 2006 at 11:01 am

    So I’m terribly gauche I know to sing these songs of myself, but have this much talent, be fifty-six with an unlaunched career of anykind and bear a death sentence and see how modest you’d be. There’s no TIME, you see for Ben Franklen’s tactic of modesty or WWhitman’s tact of anonymous boosting. And I detract from noone, boast for many, but right here say LOOK! LOOK AT THIS POETRY! LOOK! LOOK AT ME! MIRANDA JOAN HOWE! Think on this beauty and wit and power! I’m an american poet! Alive. Here! Now!

    I’m here adding three works to give a broader sample and unless asked, I’ll do no more here. I’m not a freak or weak (Though, what if I were? Would I be less of a daughter of the land? less a woman of letters? OK. I am a freak. And you madam? You sir?)
    miranda

    I think what makes
    Me cry is that we
    Are still enslaved by
    The cruel stupidity
    That dries our rivers
    And stills the fluidity
    Of the air we breathe
    Which kills what we may be.

    I think what makes
    Me weep so mournfully
    When I hear the childish
    Sneer so vengefully
    Is how deep and broad
    The gap between camaraderie
    And Plato’s dark cave
    Of fear, hate and slavery.

    I think what makes
    My tears the tears of slavery
    Are the slaps and sayings
    Of childhood’s chained savagery
    That congeal and conceal
    A child’s free born ability
    To look to hear and then to feel
    That everyone needs love to be free.

    What makes me grieve
    So mournfully
    Is what when healed
    Makes me sing so joyously
    And I believe in dreams
    And I believe in earthly glory
    I believe that freedom
    Is the world’s one true story.

    copyright 2006,
    Miranda Joan Howe
    all rights reserved

    Bitter Chariot; No Direction Home

    I’m bone tired of my own ghost
    Haunting me down like I myself
    Am my own best heaven.
    What have I done or failed to do
    Or both done and not in perfect
    Syncopated sociopathic
    Auto conspiracy thus singling
    Myself out for multiple manifestation
    And mirrorings on such a slender strand
    Of unilateral living,
    On such a bare base of being?
    What context? What crime?
    What school of victims?
    It will drown me eventually
    But long since I’ve
    Navigated this misleading ocean,
    This misty ocean of mystery and misery.

    I was Magnificent.

    The sheets of sweat
    On my beautiful skin
    Reflected distant fires
    And ancient and future oil
    Paintings as though god
    Had taken up a hobby.

    It was in reflected light from
    My own self that I learned to read
    The books gods study and so I stopped
    Mid all to hear the lectures of
    The ages and the leaves as springs
    Brought them always new, mad and ancient.

    Though children, the day, the weathers,
    The politics, the romances, the monies
    Changing, clanging, thudding out of wallets,
    Vacuum pockets, slots, envelopes, windows,
    Stacks, packs, cracks, presses, couches,
    Roulette wheels, gutters, mints and through the
    Spectra of purses from thrift to spenddrift,
    And through all the birthdays and other emergencies
    Scheduled or un, through holidays and hollowdays–
    Though all these things and verbs twine me about
    To tie me and try me and come and look into my eyes
    As if I from I divided my from me and I might look at
    My life while my life looks resentfully at me
    And thus I might divine and thus be my own god.
    No pardon, no gold watch, no dotage, no way out.

    But I had stopped to listen.
    Therefore was I deaf to bright
    Sunny now whose tricks break
    Profusely like an ocean
    Of waves just on the beach
    All over me which was my
    Skin and senses altogether
    My innards and out skin…
    Time penetrating me as all else.

    Best I do know do remember
    The private glory like when my
    Babies were brand-new there was
    In those first stainglass hours,
    A sweet powdered touch to them.
    Even atheist mothers know this
    Is the residue of angels’ wings
    Who’d late been working near.

    Well I’ve had a lovely time but
    Too it’s been a hideous sojourn.
    I do not want to come again.
    I do not want to ride victorious
    Astride the flaming blood red chariot
    Of karma back into the light of day
    And the hunt of night and proceed
    To ruin myself run myself down
    Run myself over after I play
    The little scene swathed in the
    Bathetic bandages again as babies
    Do and pretending I haven’t seen
    The tilt of the horizon, the hitch
    And hooks of the Sun and the Moon,
    The paint box and plastic clay of
    Seasons and countrysides.

    And when still a child but
    Best bragged brave babydoll
    Barge in on the big folk–
    YES! Riding my fine self out onto
    The breast of the marketplace
    And dance upon that stage and wail
    And whimper my teenage sentiments
    Like a terrorist demanding till
    Civilization gives me sex money
    And property and my share of
    The daily poison– the old dirty soap
    Opera and political tragic comedy.

    No. I’d rather not come again.
    I’d rather withstand the white light
    And love and be loved eternally
    Than yearn for one more perfect summer day
    Which comes and goes like winter snow.

    copyright 2005
    Miranda Joan Howe
    all rights reserved

    Dancing Lessons

    Walt Whitman went out to Californee
    Verses on his brain, paper on his knee
    Spelling poems and spilling poetry
    From metaphor sea to simile.

    Rasputin and his hyper thyroid spin
    Rushed the czar with bizarre Russian tantrums,
    While Edison was muy big medicine
    Who, in courtly age of angst, wooed angstroms.

    Proletarians John Brown and Joe Hill
    Were each a union men, both of them.
    By God Moses unified his people
    For all that got to see God’s garment’s hem.

    Will Shakespeare kicked it at Los Alamos
    Splitting infinite sanskrit, less vedic
    J. Robert Oppenheimer saw that ghost
    Said “Upstart goose! Get thee to a medic!”

    Mother Goose’s sneezes were Freud-like guilt,
    Allergic to feathers, drunk on cough pills.
    Slept like a gosling under the plush quilt,
    Wrote reams of child’s rhymes with flow’ry Jung quills

    Wm. Carlos Wms. healed verse for us
    But Dylan Thomas stole him some plumes
    Waxed eloquent like a burnt Icarus
    Imbibing flight, height and light that consumes

    Abe Lincoln had with him a battling wife
    An uncivilized war and slaves to free.
    Abe was good, Lincoln great through war and strife,
    Only man filled up the presidency.

    Dear, if you stumble, sweetness, if you fall,
    When you hear music but can’t dance at all
    Remember that the world is one big ball
    Sometimes you’re the flower sometimes you’re the wall.

    Miranda Joan Howe
    copyright 2005
    all rights reserved

28. atlantabraves Says:
    April 3rd, 2006 at 4:45 pm

    It is very unusual for the dean of a law school to speak out about politics, particularly to strongly criticize both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, that’s exactly what Massachusetts School of Law Dean Lawrence R. Velvel has done this week. And he believes he is articulating a point of view shared by many American citizens.

    Dean Velvel asks this question in his latest blog posting:

    “What should now be done if, like so many Americans, one is unhappy with the warmongering, the extreme rightward thrust in both foreign and domestic affairs, and the rampant dishonesty which have come to extensively characterize much of American policies and politics, especially since the days of Nixon but also since the days of Johnson with regard to war and dishonesty?”

    Velvel has an answer:

    “In my judgment it is now necessary, as it was in the 1850s, to create a new political party. As when the Republican Party was created, the old parties are played out. As has been shown by Gulf II, they are incapable of doing the right thing. They are too beholden to big money — money is virtually all that our politicians care about. The pols, far too often, are people who have spent or want to spend their whole lives and careers, or at least 20 to 40 years of them, in politics, with all the kowtowing, hypocrisy, venality and evil that this causes. They have gotten too used to the ethically crooked, morally criminal ways of our system, cannot even envision serious change in the political and electoral system, and even regard the possibility of serious change as not only naive, but also as semi-treasonous. They do not represent the millions of us — one suspects the tens of millions of us — who want serious change. If there is to be serious change, it will not come from either of the two existing political parties, who for all their claimed differences are, at rock bottom, tweedle dum and tweedle dee as someone once said (George Wallace? Ross Perot?). Rather, it must come from those of us who are disgusted with the situation, and are idealistic and hopeful enough to think that, at least in the long term, something can be done to improve things. Those of us who share these characteristics must form a new political party to agitate for, to press for, change as fast as possible but certainly in the long run.”

    Any interest in a program about an internet-based new political party?

    Kirby F. Smith
    smith@mslaw.edu

29. Lisa Williams Says:
    April 4th, 2006 at 8:31 am

    The SAT scandal!

    – 4000 students got erroneous scores on their SAT — some as many as 200 points lower
    – Educational Testing Services, which administers the test, sat on the errors until *after* some students had applied to college. Scores have a major impact on where those kids got accepted.
    – ETS is still not admitting how many errors there were, or how much the errors were; it’s not clear that they’re contacting students, or if students have to contact them and request a “hand count” which costs $50
    – It’s not the first time it’s happened
    – ETS is now basically a monopoly
    – There’s no governmental or regulatory oversight
    – ETS operates tax free and is a private company. No one knows how much money they rake in. Since they’re a monopoly, they simply raise testing fees.

30. Lisa Williams Says:
    April 4th, 2006 at 8:32 am

    Articles on the unfolding SAT scandal

31. scribe5 Says:
    April 8th, 2006 at 12:07 am

    I’d like to suggest a book show.

    Philip Roth will be publishing a new novella in the next few weeks. I suggest Chris do a show on the novel but also include bloggers as well as listeners views about the work.

    I remember hearing his interview with Saul Bellow when the latter author published Ravelstein. the theme of Everyman the new novella by Roth parallels that of Bellows.

    Perhaps both works can be incorporated into the show.

32. rfouche Says:
    April 8th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    Chris, you and Cassandra Wilson need to set with each other for an hour of serious music mojo, man! Do I need to ask if you have her new album, Thunderbird? Of course not — but just in case, surf over to the Blue Note website and find out why Time Magazine called her the Best Singer in America.

    Please promise me to have her on your show soon… you haven’t let me down yet!!

33. sidewalker Says:
    April 9th, 2006 at 3:00 am

    Now that communism is confined to 20th century history (OK, there is still North Korea), it seems like the time to rethink the winner of the clash of socio-economic systems. All over the globe, Capitalism reigns, but it does not do so uniformly. France is a good example with its riots against labour deregulation. Japan has always tried to provide, with government programmes and subsidies and a more communal corporate culture, a buffer against the Anglo-American model. Raw fish, indeed; but not raw capitalism. Chavez in Venezuelan has thrown down a socialist agenda as a challenge to transnational hegemony. Islam, too, in many ways is a rejection of the ideology of competitive individualism and the life mimics market mimics life cycle.

    So, ROS, what about a show on the future of Capitalism(s). Have we really reached the End of (economic) History?

34. Alex Brown Says:
    April 9th, 2006 at 2:51 pm

    Also see below:
    US Is Studying Military Strike Options on Iran •

    Go to Original

    The Iran Plans
    By Seymour M. Hersh
    The New Yorker

    17 April 20006 Issue

    Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?

    The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

    American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.

    There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

    A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

    One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

    The rationale for regime change was articulated in early March by Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and who has been a supporter of President Bush. “So long as Iran has an Islamic republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely,” Clawson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd. “The key issue, therefore, is: How long will the present Iranian regime last?”

    When I spoke to Clawson, he emphasized that “this Administration is putting a lot of effort into diplomacy.” However, he added, Iran had no choice other than to accede to America’s demands or face a military attack. Clawson said that he fears that Ahmadinejad “sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in. We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates.” Clawson said that he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as “industrial accidents.” But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, “given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec.”

    One military planner told me that White House criticisms of Iran and the high tempo of planning and clandestine activities amount to a campaign of “coercion” aimed at Iran. “You have to be ready to go, and we’ll see how they respond,” the officer said. “You have to really show a threat in order to get Ahmadinejad to back down.” He added, “People think Bush has been focussed on Saddam Hussein since 9/11,” but, “in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his focus all the way along, it was Iran.” (In response to detailed requests for comment, the White House said that it would not comment on military planning but added, “As the President has indicated, we are pursuing a diplomatic solution”; the Defense Department also said that Iran was being dealt with through “diplomatic channels” but wouldn’t elaborate on that; the CIA said that there were “inaccuracies” in this account but would not specify them.)

    “This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

    A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said. The danger, he said, was that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: “Hezbollah comes into play,” the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world’s most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. “And here comes Al Qaeda.”

    In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been “no formal briefings,” because “they’re reluctant to brief the minority. They’re doing the Senate, somewhat selectively.”

    The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

    Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions - rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing - since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

    Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit. He added:

    I don’t think a US military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. . . . We’d want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The US will have to use Special Operations units.

    One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.

    There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for “continuity of government” - for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the US knows about it remains classified. “The ‘tell’ ” - the giveaway - “was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,” the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that “only nukes” could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. “We see a similarity of design,” specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.

    A former high-level Defense Department official told me that, in his view, even limited bombing would allow the US to “go in there and do enough damage to slow down the nuclear infrastructure - it’s feasible.” The former defense official said, “The Iranians don’t have friends, and we can tell them that, if necessary, we’ll keep knocking back their infrastructure. The United States should act like we’re ready to go.” He added, “We don’t have to knock down all of their air defenses. Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles really work, and we can blow fixed things up. We can do things on the ground, too, but it’s difficult and very dangerous - put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and put them to sleep.”

    But those who are familiar with the Soviet bunker, according to the former senior intelligence official, “say ‘No way.’ You’ve got to know what’s underneath - to know which ventilator feeds people, or diesel generators, or which are false. And there’s a lot that we don’t know.” The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. ” ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

    He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout - we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out” - remove the nuclear option - “they’re shouted down.”

    The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran - without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

    The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

    The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

    The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the US arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

    The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. “The Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very well, and we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of the country,” he said. He warned, as did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”

    With or without the nuclear option, the list of targets may inevitably expand. One recently retired high-level Bush Administration official, who is also an expert on war planning, told me that he would have vigorously argued against an air attack on Iran, because “Iran is a much tougher target” than Iraq. But, he added, “If you’re going to do any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well improve your lie across the board. Maybe hit some training camps, and clear up a lot of other problems.”

    The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that “ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation. There are people who believe it’s the way to operate” - that the Administration can achieve its policy goals in Iran with a bombing campaign, an idea that has been supported by neoconservatives.

    If the order were to be given for an attack, the American combat troops now operating in Iran would be in position to mark the critical targets with laser beams, to insure bombing accuracy and to minimize civilian casualties. As of early winter, I was told by the government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops “are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,” the consultant said. One goal is to get “eyes on the ground” - quoting a line from “Othello,” he said, “Give me the ocular proof.” The broader aim, the consultant said, is to “encourage ethnic tensions” and undermine the regime.

    The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by CIA operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.

    ” ‘Force protection’ is the new buzzword,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon’s position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to congressional oversight. “The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran,” he said. “We need to have more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do everything we want.”

    The President’s deep distrust of Ahmadinejad has strengthened his determination to confront Iran. This view has been reinforced by allegations that Ahmadinejad, who joined a special-forces brigade of the Revolutionary Guards in 1986, may have been involved in terrorist activities in the late eighties. (There are gaps in Ahmadinejad’s official biography in this period.) Ahmadinejad has reportedly been connected to Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who has been implicated in the deadly bombings of the US Embassy and the US Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983. Mughniyeh was then the security chief of Hezbollah; he remains on the FBI’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

    Robert Baer, who was a CIA officer in the Middle East and elsewhere for two decades, told me that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government “are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and missiles - you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s no reason to back off.”

    Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous implications for the West. “Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution.” He said that, particularly in consideration of China’s emergence as a superpower, Iran’s attitude was “To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like.”

    Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is considered by many experts to be in a stronger position than Ahmadinejad. “Ahmadinejad is not in control,” one European diplomat told me. “Power is diffuse in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are among the key backers of the nuclear program, but, ultimately, I don’t think they are in charge of it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear program, and the Guards will not take action without his approval.”

    The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that “allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added, “The whole internal debate is on which way to go” - in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans - and forestall the American action. “God may smile on us, but I don’t think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the US Something bad is going to happen.”

    While almost no one disputes Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there is intense debate over how soon it could get the bomb, and what to do about that. Robert Gallucci, a former government expert on nonproliferation who is now the dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, told me, “Based on what I know, Iran could be eight to ten years away” from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Gallucci added, “If they had a covert nuclear program and we could prove it, and we could not stop it by negotiation, diplomacy, or the threat of sanctions, I’d be in favor of taking it out. But if you do it” - bomb Iran - “without being able to show there’s a secret program, you’re in trouble.”

    Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told the Knesset last December that “Iran is one to two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium. From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter.” In a conversation with me, a senior Israeli intelligence official talked about what he said was Iran’s duplicity: “There are two parallel nuclear programs” inside Iran - the program declared to the I.A.E.A. and a separate operation, run by the military and the Revolutionary Guards. Israeli officials have repeatedly made this argument, but Israel has not produced public evidence to support it. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me, “I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons program - I believe it, but I don’t know it.”

    In recent months, the Pakistani government has given the US new access to A. Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb. Khan, who is now living under house arrest in Islamabad, is accused of setting up a black market in nuclear materials; he made at least one clandestine visit to Tehran in the late nineteen-eighties. In the most recent interrogations, Khan has provided information on Iran’s weapons design and its time line for building a bomb. “The picture is of ‘unquestionable danger,’ ” the former senior intelligence official said. (The Pentagon adviser also confirmed that Khan has been “singing like a canary.”) The concern, the former senior official said, is that “Khan has credibility problems. He is suggestible, and he’s telling the neoconservatives what they want to hear” - or what might be useful to Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, who is under pressure to assist Washington in the war on terror.

    “I think Khan’s leading us on,” the former intelligence official said. “I don’t know anybody who says, ‘Here’s the smoking gun.’ But lights are beginning to blink. He’s feeding us information on the time line, and targeting information is coming in from our own sources - sensors and the covert teams. The CIA, which was so burned by Iraqi W.M.D., is going to the Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office saying, ‘It’s all new stuff.’ People in the Administration are saying, ‘We’ve got enough.’ ”

    The Administration’s case against Iran is compromised by its history of promoting false intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy Web site, entitled “Fool Me Twice,” Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote, “The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war.” He noted several parallels:

    The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The US Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism.

    Cirincione called some of the Administration’s claims about Iran “questionable” or lacking in evidence. When I spoke to him, he asked, “What do we know? What is the threat? The question is: How urgent is all this?” The answer, he said, “is in the intelligence community and the I.A.E.A.” (In August, the Washington Post reported that the most recent comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate predicted that Iran was a decade away from being a nuclear power.)

    Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. officials on what it said was new and alarming information about Iran’s weapons program which had been retrieved from an Iranian’s laptop. The new data included more than a thousand pages of technical drawings of weapons systems. The Washington Post reported that there were also designs for a small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment process. Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of stories in the Times and elsewhere. The stories were generally careful to note that the materials could have been fabricated, but also quoted senior American officials as saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline in the Times’ account read, “RELYING ON COMPUTER, US SEEKS TO PROVE IRAN’S NUCLEAR AIMS.”

    I was told in interviews with American and European intelligence officials, however, that the laptop was more suspect and less revelatory than it had been depicted. The Iranian who owned the laptop had initially been recruited by German and American intelligence operatives, working together. The Americans eventually lost interest in him. The Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is today. Some family members managed to leave Iran with his laptop and handed it over at a US embassy, apparently in Europe. It was a classic “walk-in.”

    A European intelligence official said, “There was some hesitation on our side” about what the materials really proved, “and we are still not convinced.” The drawings were not meticulous, as newspaper accounts suggested, “but had the character of sketches,” the European official said. “It was not a slam-dunk smoking gun.”

    The threat of American military action has created dismay at the headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency’s officials believe that Iran wants to be able to make a nuclear weapon, but “nobody has presented an inch of evidence of a parallel nuclear-weapons program in Iran,” the high-ranking diplomat told me. The I.A.E.A.’s best estimate is that the Iranians are five years away from building a nuclear bomb. “But, if the United States does anything militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter of Iranian national pride,” the diplomat said. “The whole issue is America’s risk assessment of Iran’s future intentions, and they don’t trust the regime. Iran is a menace to American policy.”

    In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting earlier this year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.’s director-general, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. Joseph’s message was blunt, one diplomat recalled: “We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that will undermine us. ”

    Joseph’s heavy-handedness was unnecessary, the diplomat said, since the I.A.E.A. already had been inclined to take a hard stand against Iran. “All of the inspectors are angry at being misled by the Iranians, and some think the Iranian leadership are nutcases - one hundred per cent totally certified nuts,” the diplomat said. He added that ElBaradei’s overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders “want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side” - in Washington. “At the end of the day, it will work only if the United States agrees to talk to the Iranians.”

    The central question - whether Iran will be able to proceed with its plans to enrich uranium - is now before the United Nations, with the Russians and the Chinese reluctant to impose sanctions on Tehran. A discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at this point, “there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It’s a dead end.”

    Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, “Why would the West take the risk of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We’re low-cost, and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its cards on the table.” A Western Ambassador in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House’s dismissal of the I.A.E.A. He said, “If you don’t believe that the I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system - if you don’t trust them - you can only bomb.”

    There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush Administration or among its European allies. “We’re quite frustrated with the director-general,” the European diplomat told me. “His basic approach has been to describe this as a dispute between two sides with equal weight. It’s not. We’re the good guys! ElBaradei has been pushing the idea of letting Iran have a small nuclear-enrichment program, which is ludicrous. It’s not his job to push ideas that pose a serious proliferation risk.”

    The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. “Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change,” a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, “The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don’t have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don’t want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable.”

    “The Brits think this is a very bad idea,” Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, told me, “but they’re really worried we’re going to do it.” The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in Washington but that, “short of a smoking gun, it’s going to be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.” He said that the British “are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with no compromise.”

    The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, given its record, had admitted to everything it was doing, but “to the best of our knowledge the Iranian capability is not at the point where they could successfully run centrifuges” to enrich uranium in quantity. One reason for pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran’s essential pragmatism. “The regime acts in its best interests,” he said. Iran’s leaders “take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and they want to call the American bluff,” believing that “the tougher they are the more likely the West will fold.” But, he said, “From what we’ve seen with Iran, they will appear superconfident until the moment they back off.”

    The diplomat went on, “You never reward bad behavior, and this is not the time to offer concessions. We need to find ways to impose sufficient costs to bring the regime to its senses. It’s going to be a close call, but I think if there is unity in opposition and the price imposed” - in sanctions - “is sufficient, they may back down. It’s too early to give up on the U.N. route.” He added, “If the diplomatic process doesn’t work, there is no military ’solution.’ There may be a military option, but the impact could be catastrophic.”

    Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush’s most dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he and his party have been racked by a series of financial scandals, and his popularity is at a low point. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said last year that military action against Iran was “inconceivable.” Blair has been more circumspect, saying publicly that one should never take options off the table.

    Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. “The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,” the European intelligence official told me. “He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.” An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the US “Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to US movies and books, and they love it,” he said. “If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.”

    Another European official told me that he was aware that many in Washington wanted action. “It’s always the same guys,” he said, with a resigned shrug. “There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short.”

    A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several officials that the White House’s interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel as a “serious threat. It’s a threat to world peace.” He added, “I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.”

    Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, would have to consider the following questions: “What will happen in the other Islamic countries? What ability does Iran have to reach us and touch us globally - that is, terrorism? Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure on Israel? What does the attack do to our already diminished international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the U.N. Security Council?”

    Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world’s oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the thirty-four-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that the US Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting mine- sweepers to work. “It’s impossible to block passage,” he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing out that the US has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.

    Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might be focussed on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. “They would be at risk,” he said, “and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world.”

    Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks “is consuming a lot of time” at US intelligence agencies. “The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years,” the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. “This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us.” (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, “Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.”)

    The adviser went on, “If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle.” The American, British, and other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, “the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.”

    “If you attack,” the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, “Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.”

    The diplomat went on, “There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking.” He added, “The window of opportunity is now.”

    Go to Original

    US Is Studying Military Strike Options on Iran
    By Peter Baker, Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks
    The Washington Post

    Sunday 09 April 2006

    Any mix of tact, threats alarms critics.

    The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to US officials and independent analysts.

    No attack appears likely in the short term, and many specialists inside and outside the US government harbor serious doubts about whether an armed response would be effective. But administration officials are preparing for it as a possible option and using the threat “to convince them this is more and more serious,” as a senior official put it.

    According to current and former officials, Pentagon and CIA planners have been exploring possible targets, such as the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. Although a land invasion is not contemplated, military officers are weighing alternatives ranging from a limited airstrike aimed at key nuclear sites, to a more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets.

    Preparations for confrontation with Iran underscore how the issue has vaulted to the front of President Bush’s agenda even as he struggles with a relentless war in next-door Iraq. Bush views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends, aides said, and the White House, in its new National Security Strategy, last month labeled Iran the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country.

    Many military officers and specialists, however, view the saber rattling with alarm. A strike at Iran, they warn, would at best just delay its nuclear program by a few years but could inflame international opinion against the United States, particularly in the Muslim world and especially within Iran, while making US troops in Iraq targets for retaliation.

    “My sense is that any talk of a strike is the diplomatic gambit to keep pressure on others that if they don’t help solve the problem, we will have to,” said Kori Schake, who worked on Bush’s National Security Council staff and teaches at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

    Others believe it is more than bluster. “The Bush team is looking at the viability of airstrikes simply because many think airstrikes are the only real option ahead,” said Kurt Campbell, a former Pentagon policy official.

    The intensified discussion of military scenarios comes as the United States is working with European allies on a diplomatic solution. After tough negotiations, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement last month urging Iran to re-suspend its uranium enrichment program. But Russia and China, both veto-wielding council members, forced out any mention of consequences and are strongly resisting any sanctions.

    US officials continue to pursue the diplomatic course but privately seem increasingly skeptical that it will succeed. The administration is also coming under pressure from Israel, which has warned the Bush team that Iran is closer to developing a nuclear bomb than Washington thinks and that a moment of decision is fast approaching.

    Bush and his team have calibrated their rhetoric to give the impression that the United States may yet resort to force. In January, the president termed a nuclear-armed Iran “a grave threat to the security of the world,” words that echoed language he used before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Vice President Cheney vowed “meaningful consequences” if Iran does not give up any nuclear aspirations, and U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton refined the formula to “tangible and painful consequences.”

    Although Bush insists he is focused on diplomacy for now, he volunteered at a public forum in Cleveland last month his readiness to use force if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to follow through on his statement that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

    “The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally, Israel,” Bush said. “That’s a threat, a serious threat. . . . I’ll make it clear again that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.”

    Bush has also been privately consulting with key senators about options on Iran as part of a broader goal of regime change, according to an account by Seymour M. Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.

    The US government has taken some preliminary steps that go beyond planning. The Washington Post has reported that the military has been secretly flying surveillance drones over Iran since 2004 using radar, video, still photography and air filters to detect traces of nuclear activity not accessible to satellites. Hersh reported that US combat troops have been ordered to enter Iran covertly to collect targeting data, but sources have not confirmed that to The Post.

    The British government has launched its own planning for a potential US strike, studying security arrangements for its embassy and consular offices, for British citizens and corporate interests in Iran and for ships in the region and British troops in Iraq. British officials indicate their government is unlikely to participate directly in any attacks.

    Israel is preparing, as well. The government recently leaked a contingency plan for attacking on its own if the United States does not, a plan involving airstrikes, commando teams, possibly missiles and even explosives-carrying dogs. Israel, which bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 to prevent it from being used to develop weapons, has built a replica of Natanz, according to Israeli media, but US strategists do not believe Israel has the capacity to accomplish the mission without nuclear weapons.

    Iran appears to be taking the threat seriously. The government, which maintains its nuclear activity is only for peaceful, civilian uses, has launched a program to reinforce key sites, such as Natanz and Isfahan, by building concrete ceilings, tunneling into mountains and camouflaging facilities. Iran lately has tested several missiles in a show of strength.

    Israel points to those missiles to press their case in Washington. Israeli officials traveled here recently to convey more urgency about Iran. Although US intelligence agencies estimate Iran is about a decade away from having a nuclear bomb, Israelis believe a critical breakthrough could occur within months. They told US officials that Iran is beginning to test a more elaborate cascade of centrifuges, indicating that it is further along than previously believed.

    “What the Israelis are saying is this year — unless they are pressured into abandoning the program — would be the year they will master the engineering problem,” a US official said. “That would be a turning point, but it wouldn’t mean they would have a bomb.”

    But various specialists and some military officials are resisting strikes.

    “The Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it because it is so constrained” in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist. A former defense official who stays in touch with colleagues added, “I don’t think anybody’s prepared to use the military option at this point.”

    As the administration weighs these issues, two main options are under consideration, according to one person with contacts among Air Force planners. The first would be a quick and limited strike against nuclear-related facilities accompanied by a threat to resume bombing if Iran responds with terrorist attacks in Iraq or elsewhere. The second calls for a more ambitious campaign of bombing and cruise missiles leveling targets well beyond nuclear facilities, such as Iranian intelligence headquarters, the Revolutionary Guard and some in the government.

    Any extended attack would require US forces to cripple Iran’s air defense system and air force, prepare defenses for US ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and move Navy ships to the Persian Gulf to protect shipping. US forces could launch warplanes from aircraft carriers, from the Diego Garcia island base in the Indian Ocean and, in the case of stealth bombers, from the United States. But if generals want land-based aircraft in the region, they face the uphill task of trying to persuade Turkey to allow use of the US air base at Incirlik.

    Planners also are debating whether launching attacks from Iraq or using Iraqi airspace would exacerbate the political cost in the Muslim world, which would see it as proof that the United States invaded Iraq to make it a base for military conquest of the region.

    Unlike the Israeli air attack on Osirak, a strike on Iran would prove more complex because Iran has spread its facilities across the country, guarded some of them with sophisticated antiaircraft batteries and shielded them underground.

    Pentagon planners are studying how to penetrate eight-foot-deep targets and are contemplating tactical nuclear devices. The Natanz facility consists of more than two dozen buildings, including two huge underground halls built with six-foot walls and supposedly protected by two concrete roofs with sand and rocks in between, according to Edward N. Luttwak, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    “The targeteers honestly keep coming back and saying it will require nuclear penetrator munitions to take out those tunnels,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst. “Could we do it with conventional munitions? Possibly. But it’s going to be very difficult to do.”

    Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert in targeting and war games who teaches at the National Defense University, recently gamed an Iran attack and identified 24 potential nuclear-related facilities, some below 50 feet of reinforced concrete and soil.

    At a conference in Berlin, Gardiner outlined a five-day operation that would require 400 “aim points,” or targets for individual weapons, at nuclear facilities, at least 75 of which would require penetrating weapons. He also presumed the Pentagon would hit two chemical production plants, medium-range ballistic missile launchers and 14 airfields with sheltered aircraft. Special Operations forces would be required, he said.

    Gardiner concluded that a military attack would not work, but said he believes the United States seems to be moving inexorably toward it. “The Bush administration is very close to being left with only the military option,” he said.

    Others forecast a more surgical strike aimed at knocking out a single “choke point” that would disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. “The process can be broken at any point,” a senior administration official said. “But part of the risk is: We don’t know if Natanz is the only enrichment facility. We could bomb it, take the political cost and still not set them back.”

    Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said a more likely target might be Isfahan, which he visited last year and which appeared lightly defended and above-ground. But he argued that any attack would only firm up Iranian resolve to develop weapons. “Whatever you do,” he said, “is almost certain to accelerate a nuclear bomb program rather than destroy it.”

35. avecfrites Says:
    April 9th, 2006 at 5:45 pm

    A post that long, Alex Brown, is too long, man. Just give us the link and a one sentence summary.

36. h wally Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 10:06 am

    In the latest issue of “rolling Stone” they have an article about the current condition of the gulf coast. The writer brings up some interesting points. I’d like to see a show about the changing “political landscape” in New Orleans and other areas along the gulf. They seem to have taken busing and turned it into a political tool for redistricting. They shipped the poorer, mostly black population, all over the country and effectively silenced them politically. It’s difficult enough to find a polling place in an area you’re familiar with, let alone register and relearn the process in a new area. Many of the areas these people left are being rezoned out of their hands. They’ve used flood restrictions to make it nearly impossible to rebuild single family housing. This whole thing reminds me of a term called “Greyhound Therapy” that was going around for a while. Some cities would simply buy one-way tickets on a Greyhound for the homeless or mentally ill roaming their streets and let someone else deal with the problem. You could probably do 100 more shows on the lack of progress all along the gulf and even Florida. Thanks Wally

37. Catherine Says:
    April 10th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

    If you are interviewing neo-cons, please start by reading their missoin statement.

    The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

    The Project for the New American Century intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America’s role in the world.

    William Kristol, Chairman

    http://www.newamericancentury.org/

38. babu Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 3:10 am

    I’d like to hear a show about the meaning of the statistical dead heat, candidates aside, in the popular vote for President. Or rather, as a nation, what are we actually so divided about ?

    The Dems and Republicans are symbols for something else much more fundamental.

39. Kevin Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 9:36 am

    Recently an episode of Democracy Now! aired with a story about video news releases, “news” stories that are funded by, and in some instances published by, corporations and government agencies, and then broadcast over local television news as if they were actually a result of research done by journalists at those local news stations. A link to the show is:

    http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20060406

    The show comes out after a study by the Center for Media and Democracy that tried to quantify the use of these “video news releases”

    http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

    The show went on to blast at the corporations, news and government agencies that have been involved in this and talked about various things that could be done to help the average news-watcher to be mislead from these reports.

    How about a show that features both sides to this story? It might be interesting to hear from the report authors or other interested parties, but what would be really nice would be to hear from both local news stations and the corporations that release these “video news releases” and hear their side of the story.

    I think that this is an interesting topic in that it may be showing the growing link between television news and advertising. Personally I think it is really discrediting to the news media to hear that they are becoming merely advertisers rather than journalists, but it would be very helpful to hear their side of the story.

40. Pendleton Frisk Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    I’ve been thinking about blogging and the blog as historical record. Do blogs disappear into space? Is anyone working on a comprehensive or semi-comprehensive blog archive? In 100 years will historians study the blogs of 2006 to assess the mood of our era?

41. RToes Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 3:49 pm

    Backyard Nazis

    Dave Neiwert is the man:

    http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/01/backyard-nazis.html
    http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/02/backyard-nazis.html

    Also:

    http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/06/late-night-fdl-transmitting-extremism/

    Hitler’s b’day is coming up, and so is a lot of activity of the NSM.

42. nother Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    ‘MANLINESS,’ BY HARVEY C. MANSFIELD
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19kirn.html?ex=1300424400&en=d908539ffb147633&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

    ROS Promotions Presents:
    A Guttersnipe production

    The Battle Royal for Manhood

    LYDON vs. MANSFIELD

    Taking place in the People’s Republic of Cambrige
    (No holds barred)

    No wagering please.

    If we do this show, we can get to the heart of the success of these fat elephants. The right has successfully portrayed the left as “girly men,� And I’m getting pissed off about it. They freak’n made a Purple Heart winner look like Ryan Seacrest. I watched Stephen Colbert give Mansfield some good sparring action, but now I want to see Chris deliver the knockout!

43. nother Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 5:02 pm

    I tried to center the above to make it look like a fight card.

    Maybe it should read:
    Guttersnipe Promotions Presents:
    A ROS production.

    Then again, maybe I have too much time on my hands. hmmm.

44. jzcronan Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 10:28 pm

    Re: immigration - it’s not the problem; it’s the symptom. Whether they are called illegal Immigrants or economic refugees they will keep coming because every year this country needs more and more cheap, dependable labor. Why? Because in order to remain healthy the US of A depends on an ever increasinng gross national product. In other words more and more people have to chase more and more goods and services. Ergo there is always room at the bottom. This would be fine except the country’s dimensions are not expanding to accommodate the burgeoning population - pollution, overcrowding, and social service problems ensue. In theory a steady state economic system could help this situation but the restrictions on capitalism are so severe eg. minimum and maximum income requirements! that they would never be accepted. Herman Daley first wrote about these ideas over 30 years ago in the book “Steady State Economics”. Perhaps his ideas have been refined and would be worth considering.

45. Potter Says:
    April 12th, 2006 at 6:04 am

    I just noticed “rethinking the levees” was tabled. I was moved by yesterday’s NYT articles on how slowmoving the clean-up has been, in particular the search for bodies. Some of the missing people, including children are showing up dead in houses that they are going through now.

    There are ongoing stories to tell. Perhaps this fits into the race and class series.

    So what’s with the levee’s? Anything serious going on? Any plans?

    From todays Wapo editorial about what the President could be doing about whether this Presidency can be saved:The Disappearing President

    He could give meaning to his statement of seven months ago, in an artfully staged speech from New Orleans: “We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.” That’s the last we heard of it; what if he decided to show it wasn’t just a sound bite to get him through hurricane season?

    Two hooks?

46. icantgoon Says:
    April 12th, 2006 at 8:30 am

    I’ll try this one again, and I wonder what ROS fans have to say about it.

    WHERE ARE THE WOMEN guests/voices?

    I believe the ratio is now running something like 15 male guests to every 1 female guest (with the exception of the ‘womanly’ Spring Cleaning show–two women! on one show! to talk about Organizing Closets!).

    Are we not fully half the population and possibly half your listeners? Is this 2006? Do we have to accept a pittance representation on every talk show, op-ed page, movie screen, political assembly, _________(fill in your own blank).

    Major story of the day in South Dakota abortion ban–no coverage? No hint of a show? Too female?

    What gives, ROS??

47. Mary Says:
    April 12th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

    Icantgoon, just so you know, there are more women than men in our shop. And it’s a shop run by a woman (that would be me). We’re conscious of the stats and the optics of putting women on the air, but we work VERY hard at producing the best radio show we can every night. That is, we’re looking for the best talkers and the most qualified experts, regardless of gender. We look for women all the time and put them on the air as much as we can, but our goal is a good radio show, not one balanced for gender.

    Tell us the names of women you’d like to hear on the air. Extra points if they’re bloggers and experts on nuclear non-proliferation, which was today’s challenge. The rolls of the universities, the think tanks, and people tackling the issues we’re all interested in just don’t include enough women. Why is that anyway?

48. nother Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 2:21 am

    Mary, I hope you will voice your voice more often; people like icantgoon will be less confused about what’s happening here.

    I realize you don’t want the staff to guide the blog, but I think it’s imperative that you all contribute to this ongoing conversation. The more you all contribute your personal voice/blog, the less we as listeners/bloggers, come across as simply fanatical fans spouting opinions. With the ‘Connection,� you challenged many of us, with ROS it seems that you want us to challenge you as well (at least that’s the daunting challenge I’ve taken on). I don’t want this to be about top-down or down-up, I simply want a conversation that challenges all of us – relentlessly - whoever the source.

    That is what I hope for from ROS in the future, the freedom of the staff to blog more often. I’m new to this blogging thing but I have taken it on (by your lead) as a new freedom of expression. But, the less all of you blog, the more I feel I am doing something a little abnormal (not that acting abnormal is abnormal for me). When a thread dies down, maybe one of you should lay down a thought, it might even incite more thoughts.

    I think I could be getting greedy here because it was one of the few times I got to hear your voice on this blog, Mary. Then again, this whole show is your voice - so maybe we should forget everything I have just said Anyways, thank you for continuing to challenge the idea of “public� in OUR airways. And I look forward to, in a serene state of mind, to the road you will lead us down in the days to come.

49. icantgoon Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 10:06 am

    Mary—I appreciate your response, though will continue to agitate. Will the status quo ever change unless people really push for this, try to make gender equity a reality or even a possibility? You state, “our goal is a good radio show, not one balanced for genderâ€?, as though these were mutually exclusive and impossible ideals. Why can’t your goal, albeit lofty and, indeed, a challenge, be a “good radio show balanced for genderâ€?? Could we then begin to creep along towards perhaps getting the M/F ratio from 15-1 down to, oh, 10-1? Why not, say, Karen Armstrong instead of Gary Wills? (Last night’s inclusion of Professor Farideh Farhi was most welcome.)

    Some more food for thought:

    http://www.wfpg.org/directory.htm

    http://www.shesource.org/breakingnews/

    http://wiis.georgetown.edu/media/

    http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2005/opinion.asp

    http://www.research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/links_intl.html

50. nother Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 11:24 am

    Wow, those stats from msmagazine were pretty startling.

    Icantgoon, my first reaction is, you seem to be barking up the wrong tree. When you consider the women that produce this show, like Mary, Robin, and Katherine, and then you consider the women that blog here, like Allison, Potter, and Peggysue, it’s hard to glean some unconscious gender agenda going on here.

    However, my second reaction is, a little agitation never hurt anyone.

    “It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.”
    Lord Byron

51. Mary Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

    Icantgooon, we call Karen Armstrong about once a month. She’s very difficult to schedule because of the time difference, for one thing. Know that we continue to try!

52. Potter Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

    I don’t think in tems of gender. The idea and the expression of it is more important to me. I was not conscious of any imbalance or maybe I don’t care. What can I say? Funny now that you mention it we did hear from a woman last night but I was noticing her opinion, not that she was a she.

53. nother Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 12:20 pm

    I have a good friend from Nepal who is torn up right now about the situation over there. He has friends dying in the streets. He tells me that the King is taking more control by taking away rights and chaos has ensued.

    So my question is why is it ok for India to have the bomb but not Iran.
    When I see pictures of police brutalizing children in the streets, I wonder if this is the democracy standard our administration has set, to be worthy of the bomb.

    Please look at the pictures on this blog:
    http://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/
    Also:
    http://www.rajeshkc.com/phalano/

    When I read the following rhetoric about “terrorists� my skin crawls. This rhetoric is a direct result of the overreaching use of the word “terrorists,� by our administration.

    “The government also announced it would launch a search of houses across Katmandu in search of terrorists who they say have infiltrated the pro-democracy protests.
    “The security forces are searching for these terrorist for which there will be a massive search of private homes,â€? a Home Ministry statement said, urging residents to cooperate.
    The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, called on King Gyanendra to restore democracy, declaring that 15 months of direct palace rule “has failed in every regard.�
    The above is from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12180799/

    http://www.blog.com.np/
    http://www.kathmandupost.com/

54. nother Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 12:25 pm

    http://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/2006/04/protests_12.html

    These are the pictures of the bloody kids that you can find on that first blog.

55. Nikos Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    Sorry to chime in, but I’d intended to thank ROS for the non-male ‘expert voice’ on last night’s Iran show, but was too dang tired. I did instantly notice Farideeh’s (sp?) non-maleness, and appreciated it. It was startling in no small part because women’s voices on the show are so rare. I didn’t want to come off as sarcastic, but wanted to sincerely express what a relief it was to hear voices from the other gender of the species.
    So, I’m jumping on icantgoon’s bandwagon — if s/he’ll have me.
    Yet I also appreicate the consistent excellence of ROS (nothwithstanding my abject misery over the way the Dennett show had no Warm Up, and its subsequent discourse). I guess that makes this an equal ‘thanks’ to Mary and icantgoon.

56. cheesechowmain Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

    I too would love to hear Karen Armstrong. She has a new book coming out, I believe this friday, so I assume there will be some book tour.

    The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
    by Karen Armstrong

    Elaine Pagels would also be an excellent guest regarding this topic.

    email address:
    http://www.princeton.edu/~religion/people.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Pagels

    Discussing spirituality and religious history seems very apropo these days. I hope there are future shows on this topic, and both Karen Armstrong and Prof. Pagels would be excellent guests.

57. cheesechowmain Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

    I believe Karen Armstrong’s book is already out. I had a misunderstanding about this. Now, I have to go get it!

58. JeffakBoston Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

    I think you should do a show on String Theory in physics. You might think this is an arcane topic for the general public, but aside from recent popularizations, such as Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” and Lisa Randall’s “Warped Passages”, there is a passionate debate brewing between those who believe it is the only viable theory that can provide a unification between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and those who believe that after years of research, it has proven itself to be absolutely useless. Two individuals who represent both extremes are LuboÅ¡ Motl (pro) and Peter Woit (con). Their blogs are, respectively:

    http://motls.blogspot.com/
    http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/

59. nother Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    I second Jeffakboston.

60. Potter Says:
    April 13th, 2006 at 6:03 pm

    I would like to clarify that I am very much for affirmative action regarding flex-time, child care, maternity leave and equal opportunity and wages in the workplace.

    I agree that Elaine Pagels and Karen Armstrong would make good guests. We are probably overdue for a female president for that matter. Those should not be chosen for their gender however.

61. Mary Says:
    April 14th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    JeffakBoston, glad you mentioned this. Chris had a cup of coffee with Lisa Randall a month or so ago. She’s eager to come on and Katherine has been working on this today in fact. She’s looking for an angle and this information will be helpful. Watch for her post and weigh in.

62. peggysue Says:
    April 14th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

    I am in agreement with icantgoon. Not that I don’t appreciate the male guests on the show but I’d like to hear more female voices on ROS. In fact I would like to hear a program devoted to women and language. Of course this could be done without sacrificing quality because there are plenty of high quality women speakers-artists-intellectuals. Gloria Steinem would be an excellent guest. As for nuclear proliferation issues Dr. Helen Caldicott is an obvious choice. The idea that gender balance would compromise show quality belies a failure to see beyond deep-rooted patriarchal prejudices.

    thank you icantgoon. I will continue to agitate too.
    as the artist Jenny Holzer put it regarding the patriarchy…
    YOUR 2000 YEARS ARE UP

63. peggysue Says:
    April 14th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    Here’s a few sources for female bloggers…

    What She Said
    http://the-goddess.org/whatshesaid/
    has a huge list of women’s political blogs. On it I found…

    Blog This! An Introduction to Blogs, Blogging, and the Feminist Blogosphere
    http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fc/fcblogs1.htm

    Here’s a link to discussion of gender in the blogosphere from CultureCat
    http://culturecat.net/node/637

    so there’s a start…
    (that was all from my first google hit - it isn’t hard to find)

64. peggysue Says:
    April 15th, 2006 at 11:36 am

    Mary: The rolls of the universities, the think tanks, and people tackling the issues we’re all interested in just don’t include enough women. Why is that anyway?

    I’m not sure about other disciplines but in the art world there was a now-famous article written in the 1970s, Why Are There No Great Women Artists?
    It turns out the answer is a complex combination of factors including: Since women were not allowed into the academies most female artists were daughters of male artists who taught them (even disguising their artistic daughters as boys to sneak them into the academies). Women if they did manage to succeed often used male pseudonyms because then the work would be valued. Many women were not able to begin a career until after their children were grown and then had little or no support. It hasn’t changed all that much today. Women are allowed into the art world but men are more likely to advance. Maybe you remember the Guerrilla Girls Poster, “Do Women Have to Get Naked to Get Into the Met Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.â€? When the artist Kathe Kollwitz achieved an important award the Kaiser said, “I beg you, gentlemen, a medal for a woman, that would really be going to far… Orders and medals of honor belong on the breasts of worthy men!â€? Kollwitz said, “I thought I was revolutionary and I realized I was evolutionary.â€?

    The academy remains a haven of patriarchy so I’m sure it is easier to find men who are proclaimed by other men to be experts in any given area. I’m asking ROS to take up the challenge of Kathe Kollwitz and EVOLVE.

65. peggysue Says:
    April 15th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    ROS - over in guttersnipe alley nother just cautioned me against seeming to question the integrity of ROS - I hope it does not seem as if I am. I see the fight for female equality as a long hard battle to just keep hacking away at. So here I am hacking away! Please know that I have the highest respect and admiration for what you do and am honored to be a part of it.

66. JeffakBoston Says:
    April 15th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    Mary, thanks for your reply. What I would really like to see, rather than another attempt to explain the latest take on String Theory and extra dimensions à la Lisa Randall, is an exploration of the controversy around String Theory, the Multiverse and the Anthropic Principle, all of which are closely related. There is an unusally heated debate going on between the proponents of various viewpoints that I think would be fun and enlighteing to explore. In addition to the links in my previous post, see this debate between Lee Smolin and Leonard Susskind:

    http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html

67. shunpiker Says:
    April 16th, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    I just saw David Hare’s play “Stuff Happens”, a vision of the build-up to the Iraq War as a kind of modern day “history play”, with Bush, Blair, Powell, Rumsfeld and the rest as characters — even Hans Blix and Dominique de Villepin. It’s an effective piece of theater and a surprisingly searching examination of the war and the American political reality. Apparently, the script is constantly undergoing revision as new information comes to light.

    I heard Hare interviewed on television prior to seeing the play. He’s well spoken, and I think Chris would enjoy talking with him. I know I’d enjoy listening to their conversation.

    Here’s the URL for the off-broadway production, which opened last month. Hare is in residence in New York for the duration:

    http://www.publictheater.org/view.php?mode=eventdisplay&eventid=489

68. peggysue Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 10:51 am

    and please don’t misunderstand me. The one time in my life I ever voted for a republican was to vote AGAINST Dixie Lee Ray. She became govenor of Washington State anyway. She was a woman and a democrat. (what’s not to like?) She was also very into nuclear power. We called her Dixie Lee Raydiation. I am not saying all women are good by virtue of their gender. What I’m saying is women are as good as men. And I understand this is a militant position to take.

    For example, I think if you did a program on ‘manliness’ (as suggested above), you might consider giving womanlyness equal time with someone like Eve Ensler, creator of the Vagina Monologues. She would make an interesting and well spoken guest.

69. babu Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 1:50 pm

    Very good points, peggysue.

    I like the way you’re tapping on the glass. We’vre gotten too polite to do it much these days.

    I think there is an aspect of women being subtley shut out of ‘player-dom’ worth chewing on. If it happens to you, you know the signs and stats. If it doesn’t, it’s opaque.

    It reminds me of the conversation about why there are no minorities in my environmental groups — that I should go looking for them….I don’t make that a priority and neither do men, etc.

70. Mary Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    Shunpiker, I just got off the phone with David Hare’s press agency which reported that he’s not doing any interviews at the moment. We’d wanted to talk to him in connection with a show on Donald Rumsfeld.

71. shunpiker Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    Thanks for looking into it, Mary! I hope he finds time for the show in the future.

72. peggysue Says:
    April 18th, 2006 at 8:25 pm

    Anne Lamott would be a funny/wise guest on christianity, activism or writing.

73. houstonDave Says:
    April 19th, 2006 at 10:44 am

    I’d like to see a show on the shadowy world of oil trading.

    The price of oil is skyrocketing because a small group of oil traders are making it happen. Who are these people? Who is behind them? Some of the giant oil companies PRODUCE oil (create supply) and CONSUME oil (furnish demand) — do they include these unnecessary middlemen?

    How do they justify an approximately $40-50 premium for geopolitical fear (terrorism, Iran, Nigeria)?

    The vast majority of factors that affect changes in the demand for gasoline are well-known. The summer driving season, the switchover in formulas and the growth of demand in China and India are easily predicted. Of course, there will be real disruptions by natural disasters, wars and problems with refineries and pipelines.

    The stated reasons for the current panic are phony or, at least, overblown. The oil market is behaving like it is being driven by a stampede of unsophisticated amateur investors, but I suspect the people involved in oil trading are very knowledgeable and very wealthy and very shrewd.

    If it can be exposed that a small group of people is manipulating the market for immediate gain, then they can be dealt with and the price of oil can return to a true free market level.

    In any case, I think a lot of people would like to learn the mechanics of a market that affects our daily lives so powerfully. Thank you.

74. pabelmont Says:
    April 19th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    some new stuff on ecology, environment, mankind’s impact on the climate, etc.
    [A]
    Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming?
    By Lee Dye
    ABC News

    Wednesday 19 April 2006

    argues that a lot of energy goes into growing meat (and catching fish)
    not to mention the flatulence of cattle (as a greenhouse matter), and energy use (these days) is largely a global-warming producer

    [B] “When the Rivers Run Dry”, book by Fred Pearce

    argues that different agricultural products require different amounts of water to grow, some of them require a HUGE amount of water to grow, and, Oh Yes!, water is getting scarce (as a growing human population with more water-expensive tastes suggests, well, its here and now), rivers and aquifers drying up from over-use, and no (public) hint that anyone’s thinking about it. [WARNING: Is this book for real? No footnotes!]

    Looks like a nice tie-in. Just add the population bomb.
    Cheers
    Peter Belmont
    pabelmont@verizon.net

75. babu Says:
    April 19th, 2006 at 11:05 pm

    How about a diologue among experts about the psychology - and some form of coercion, I assume — which must attend the massive rise of the suicide bombers.

    Taking your LIFE for political beliefs? What are we missing here?

76. whirlycott Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    Might be a good entry point into a discussion about Rove’s move to focus on the upcoming elections, the Democrat’s lack of “message” and the shape that a changed Democratic party may take:

    http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/blogs/eustonmanifesto/

77. Bobo Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 7:51 pm

    Katrina and New Orleans seven months later: What we aren’t seeing on CNN. Despite those prety pictures of Mardis Gras, the landscape outside of the downtown is downright apocalyptic. The government is doing nothing to help residents. Public infrastructure is non-existant, and the entire city is covered in toxic mold so that even if residents wanted to rebuild, they would fall victim to “Katrina Cough” within a few weeks. Who are the key players? What can be done? What is being done?
    http://www.commongroundrelief.org/

78. Nikos Says:
    April 21st, 2006 at 11:42 am

    I love what you’ve done with the righthand side of the web-page.
    Thanks!

79. Andy Vance Says:
    April 21st, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    Ok, here’s a meta-idea for a show. It’s quite current and it cuts to the heart of the Open Source mission statement, both as an approbation and a challenge.

    There’s a new book out by Yale’s Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks. Among other things (that’s an understatement), it takes up the notion that the “MSM” no longer serves society’s information needs, if it ever did, and that the Internet is poised to pick up the torch through “social production.”

    Indeed, in addition to Open Source, social production experiments are popping up like, well poppies. Here’s one of my personal favorites (the proprietor, Kent Bye, is also a great interview).

    The book’s drawn blurbs from such blogospheric heavies as Siva Vaidhyanathan, Jack Balkin and Larry Lessig, and Crooked Timber says it “fizzes with ideas,” and it really does. It also practices what it preaches: it’s freely available and open for input.

    After indulging myself in Benkler radiant optimism, I went looking for a cold bucket of water. I found a damning and brilliant indictment of the new Internet sociopolitical ideal by Berkeley’s Hubert Dreyfus. He deploys Kierkegaard’s unique critique of the Habermasian public sphere:

    Kierkegaard would surely argue that, while the Internet, like the Press, allows unconditional commitments, far from encouraging them, it tends to turn all of life into a risk-free game. So, although it does not prohibit such commitments, in the end, it inhibits them. Like a simulator the Net manages to capture everything but the risk. Our imaginations can be drawn in, as they are in playing games and watching movies, and no doubt game simulations sharpen our responses for non-game situations, but so far as games work by capturing our imaginations, they will fail to give us serious commitments. Imagined commitments hold us only when our imaginations are captivated by the simulations before our ears and eyes…

    The temptation is to live in a world of stimulating images and simulated commitment and thus to lead a simulated life. As Kierkegaard says of the present age, “It transforms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play.” And he adds that “[when] life’s existential tasks have lost the interest of reality; illusion cannot build a sanctuary for the divine growth of inwardness which ripens to decisions.”

    Ouch. I resemble that remark. I think it’s worth wrestling with.

80. peggysue Says:
    April 24th, 2006 at 1:32 am

    babu: re: suicide bombers.
    the film Paradise Now is out in DVD now. It might give you some insight.
    It won an academy award for best Forign Film.

81. Mary Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 2:18 pm

    houstonDave, we’re looking into your idea of exploring the shadowy world of oil trading.
    This piece from the NYT over the weekend was interesting:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23mouwad.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

    Andy, Yochai Benkler is on our radar screen. We’ll definitely be doing a show with him.

82. mcpublic Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    Topic: Congress, siding with cable and phone companies, threatens “net neutrality”

    This issue came to the public’s attention when Verizon’s CEO announced his intention to implement a “tiered internet” where big internet content providers would be blackmailed into paying for high-bandwidth service lest they be relegated to the “slow lane.”

    The internet has done wonders to globally level the playing field and foster innovation. Now Congress is threatening to upset the status quo by playing favorites, catering to “old economy” media companies and big communication interests, at the expense of “new economy” players like Apple, Google, eBay, and Amazon. In the end consumers and small content providers will bear the brunt of Federally sponsored favoratism.

83. Winston_new Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 10:26 pm

    How about a show re: the media the Internet and the Military?

    Six Generals Shot Down By The Internet

    April 25, 2006: The recent flap over six retired American generals publicly calling for the Secretary of Defense to resign, also brought out opinions, via the Internet, from lower ranking troops (active duty, reservists and retired.) The mass media ran with the six generals, but got shot down by the troops and their blogs, message board postings and emails. It wasn’t just a matter of the “troop media” being more powerful. No, what the troops had going for them was a more convincing reality. Unlike the six generals, many of the Internet troops were in Iraq, or had recently been there. Their opinions were not as eloquent as those of the generals, but they were also more convincing.

    http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20060425.aspx

84. Winston_new Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 10:36 pm

    America’s economic hegemony is safe
    By Gerard Baker
    BARRING some wholly unexpected statistical oddity, we will get another spectacular signal of the health of the American economy this Friday.

    The gross domestic product figures for the first quarter are expected to show that America’s output expanded at an annual rate of about 5 per cent in real terms in the three months to the end of March. In this age of exaggerated gloom about the condition of the world, with all its imbalances, inequalities and uncertainties, it is worth pausing for a moment simply to reflect on the scale of US economic success.

    *
    Given that the United States is a $12 trillion ($6,700 billion) economy, the new data mean that in the first quarter the US added to global output an amount that, if sustained at that pace for a year, would be about $600 billion — roughly the equivalent of adding one whole new Brazil or Australia to global economic activity every year, just from the incremental extra sweat and heave and click of 300 million Americans.

    Think of it another way. In an era in which China embodies the hopes and fears of much of the developed world, the US, with a growth rate of half that of China’s, is adding roughly twice as much in absolute terms to global output as is the Middle Kingdom, with its GDP (depending on how you measure it) of between $2 trillion and $4 trillion and its growth of about 10 per cent.

    Even when you account for the fact that US growth is not going to continue at 5 per cent, but will revert to its trend of more like 3.5 per cent per year, you are still talking about an economy adding more than $400 billion in inflation-adjusted terms every year (not quite Brazil or Australia, but significantly bigger than Switzerland or Belgium) .

    http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13129-2150167,00.html

85. Justin Martenstein Says:
    April 26th, 2006 at 11:48 am

    I’d love to see a show on the legacy of Jane Jacobs. How has she changed the world of architecture of urban planning? How much of her influence is in the rising green / sustainability movements?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

86. depop Says:
    April 26th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

    Hi - I want to thank you all for your informative & thought-provoking shows and continued creativity in finding ways to involve your listeners with our world events - without your forum, many of us might otherwise only be wishing we could talk or hear about issues instead of actually doing something to begin to make a difference. Communication is brought to a whole new level with your programs!

    I thought a show that would be ideal at this time would be about our presidential leadership and how much “in touch” with real life - and the day-to-day concerns that people in this country (and others if you wish) actually experience. Allow me to briefly explain myself: I am not taking a stand on party debates for this issue - regardless of what one may think about the Republicans & Democrats, and despite what one feels about this particular President, I have been generally and very concerned about how much the leader of this country (at any time) understands the public’s issues - especially after attaining the position of leadership: i.e., when was the last time the President (certainly this one in particular) ever had to purchase gas to get to work, and how would he know the severity of financial impact this is having on the pocketbooks of the average worker? When was the last time we had a President who came from an actual “blue-collar” background and could relate in reality, to issues of unemployment, rising costs of living, fuel increases, &/or the direct impact of war and all of its consequences to the families of those who are serving?

    I would like to know why it takes the american public to demand an inquiry into possible fuel price gouging instead of the President, who is surely informed if not by his own observation (especially when he fancies himself to be so “in-touch” with the American people), then by his staff’s awareness, to initiate action or an inquiry on our behalf. I suppose we could assume that unless we complain, nothing will get done…it just seems to me that it would be much more re-assuring to the public(and I might add, a direct and positive impact for the President) if he would pro-actively take an approach to addressing the issue instead of waiting to gauge the public’s response and his approval ratings before making any decisions at all - especially when it is somewhat questionable as to how much this particular President may benefit from investments &/or associations with that industry.

    I believe that the President of a country should be more personally aware of what the people experience on a daily basis before he assumes he is the best person to lead a country - he/she should know what people are looking for, and what their challenges are.

    What would it take for a President to become President without the distractions of party bickering and financial influences, and why is it so unusual to expect our President to understand the state of affairs for the average american - and by that, I most certainly do not include the “upper class” of society. I worry about the idea that there no longer seems to be a middle class - it seems that there is an increasing disparity between the classes and if not realistically acknowledged by those leading the country then what will happen to them? When will a President pursue the ideals they push for when running for the position of President, and why is it acceptable for those issues to be sidelined when we have such drastic differences in the quality of living - particularly now when rising costs are putting some very real families in the very real state of possible destitution?

    I hope you find some issues stated here worth addressing in this forum, and I thankyou in advance for your consideration and time reading the VERY long comment!

    Nicole

87. chrisspurgeon Says:
    April 26th, 2006 at 3:15 pm

    One of the most interesting talks I ever heard was one given by the Long Now Foundation (www.longnow.org) a couple of years ago with demographer Phillip Longman, talking about all of the problems and changes the *reduction* in world population over the next few hundred years will cause. Worried about illegal Mexicans streaming into the US? That problem is going to VANISH, just because of coming demographic changes in Mexico. Concerned about the rise in global fundementalism? If the population figures are right, you ain’t seen NOTHING yet. Interested in population trends in Brazil? You won’t believe the link there between birth rate and TV soap operas. All sorts of completely riveting stuff.

    You can listen to his talk, and all of the longnow seminar talks, at
    http://www.longnow.org/shop/free-downloads/seminars/

    There’s also a PDF of the talk at http://seminars.moose.cc/salt-0200408-longman/salt-0200408-longman.pdf

    Chris Spurgeon — LA

88. elevine Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 1:01 pm

    Nuclear Power: the changing green perspective

    I’ve twice suggested interviewing Stewart Brand because of his public change of mind on this subject. Now that a prominent GreenPeace’er has also changed his stance, perhaps you’ll consider this topic current and give it a shot.

    The old concerns about large central plants (powerline maintenance and protection, long-line power losses, security of facilities and wastes, the ethics of using very hot plants to boil water, social costs of centralization, etc.) appear to be giving way to climate change concerns.

    It’s a hot topic (whoops). The people are interesting talkers. Why not give it an airing?

    Gene Levine

89. The Chukmeister Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 1:09 pm

    As this program is connected very heavily to the internet, I would like to get a better understanding of the Net Neutrality Bill put out by Senator Wyden of Oregon. Today that bill was defeated mostly by the Repuplicans in the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

    Here are some sites that I found very interesting. Being a a new blogger and really enjoying the experience it scares me that this free space could be under the control of large companies.

    http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet?rk=_dw0Jkn1mBzvW

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1061

    http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=net+neutrality&btnG=Search+News

90. flow Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    A fomenting uprising? The bellwether sounds?

    Songs of Protest

    The Editors write that just as Bob Dylan moved an earlier generation, outspoken musicians from Green Day and the Dixie Chicks to Pink, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young are using song to call a nation to change.

91. flow Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

    let me try this again:

    Songs of Protest

    See The Nation Magazine Online (May 15, 2006 Issue)

92. flow Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 5:55 pm

    Neil Young Lets Loose a War Cry

93. Dave Hemp Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 1:31 am

    I would like to suggest a show with Noam Chompski. He has just come out with a very informative and factual book called Failed States. He has the information in his head that we all need to know. I’ve heard him a few times on Democracy now and would love to hear him on OS. Thanks

94. Dave Hemp Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 1:37 am

    another thing I never hear any talk show take on is the debate about Chem trails? Conspiracy or are we just paranoid? Weather wars too fit into this talk. The US has been sewed twice by other governments in the world court for diverting weather paterns. With the water problems we are sure to face it is worth a show. Moira Timms wrote a great book called Prophecies and Predictions withi several chapters about this subject.

95. sidewalker Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 3:17 am

    I did a search and could not find one show specifically on children, education or families. How about it ROS?

    I’d like to hear a show that looks at how today’s wired or digitalized and multi-mediated children process information and learn and what this means for educators and teaching.

    As an educator, who grew up with linear text and the broadcast learning paradigm, I am constantly challenged to find ways into minds that process information in a fundamentally different way and require a more interactive learning paradigm. The educational environments and teaching requirements and objectives still fit more with older styles of learning and students quickly turn off of these. Yet do interactive classrooms properly prepare young people for a world that requires report writing and theoretical knowledge as well as hypertextual literacy and networking skills?

    Let’s take the example of ROS. What educational backgrounds are required to join in the “conversations”? Will the youth of today be able to participate in a few years time? Or is there a growing gap in how native born and digital immigrants see, understand and experience the world?

    A specialist on brain development research might be one appropriate guest. And Don Tapscott, who wrote “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation” might also be someone interesting to have on.

    Minds, Brains, and Learning, Understanding the Psychological and Educational
    Relevance of Neuroscientific Research by James P. Byrnes, Guildford Press, 2001,
    ISBN: 1572306521

    Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation by Don Tapscott, McGraw-Hill,
    1997, ISBN: 0070633614

96. Mary Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 11:55 am

    Mcpublic, we’re looking into Net Neutrality and we’re glad to have the links from The Chukmeister. Suggestions for guests?

    Sidewalker, did you happen to hear the Sherry Turkle show on robots?

    elevine, Stewart Brand could be interesting on nuclear power.

    Winston, have you heard about a new film called
    The War Tapes? Five soldiers, in constant contact with the director through instant-message, made a movie in Iraq about their year-long deployment (and homecoming).

97. allison Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pm

    Has anyone ever looked at the “group” culture of this first young adult generation who have been in day care since early childhood?

    My daughter is 6 and in a group environment for the first time. She was not in day care before she entered Kindergarten. Every other studend in her class has been in a group setting for years. She has spent the entire year observing and trying to find her way into the “group” dynamic. The other children have clearly established their own social norms that they expect. Which, sadly, includes no hugging. My daughter is a purveyor of hugs. She is also a lover of one on one contact and building intimacy.

    I mentioned this to friend who works at a University. She responded by telling me that they are observing some of the first classes of students that were raised in day care. The school has noticed that the students don’t go on dates. They travel in groups only.

    My questions: Has the advent of day care from the age of 3 months as the societal norm led to the inability to be emotionally intimate? Is this ‘pack’ social practice a good thing? Is it balancing something that was out of balance? Is it a huge pendulum swing that will settle back to center? Is anyone noticing this phenomenon?

98. The Chukmeister Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    Tim Wu, a profesor at Columbia Law School, writer, etc, would be good to have on about Net Neutrality. He did a series of papers about it and “its relationship to Darwinian theories of innovation”.

    http://www.timwu.org/about.html

    http://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/full_time_fac?&main.find=W,

99. The Chukmeister Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 8:01 pm

    Susan Crawford, a assistant professor of law at Cardozo Law School, would be a good fit as well.

    http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/27/1917067.html

100. The Chukmeister Says:
     April 28th, 2006 at 8:02 pm

     This link is a bit better.

     http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/

101. The Chukmeister Says:
     April 28th, 2006 at 8:11 pm

     The afore mentioned are for net neutrality. I would get a rep from Comcast or Bell for the otherside of the arguement. I would try any Hardcore Libertarian that is knowledgeable in telecommunications aa well.

102. The Chukmeister Says:
     April 28th, 2006 at 8:15 pm

     I found some Hardcore Libertarians!

     Adam D. Thierer

     http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1365

     Christopher S. Yoo

     http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16312&CFID=4413463&CFTOKEN=71109979

103. jasonfg Says:
     April 28th, 2006 at 8:22 pm

     It may be time to seriously consider the the idea of Blue State independence. I do not intend to write an essay about this; however, I belive that both red and blue states are are ready if not for secession, at least ready for the discussion. I also cannot see most red states objecting. Most importantly, in the long term, it just seems to me that intelligent, productive, and mostly fiscally conservative northerners will not be content to be governed by ignorant, empire hungry, neo-facists. I doubt in my lifetime I will ever see a revolution but within a generation or two history shows that a country, now empire, like ours with the energy, fiscal, and cultural problems we are facing cannot exist indefinately.

104. Abby Says:
     April 30th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

     It’s a no-brainer, but hee goes: John Kenneth Galbraith. He died at 97. His vision of te world is so completely at odds with the views espoused by the Bush administration (and not just them) today. In The Affluent Society Galbraith contrasted America’s private wealth with public squalor. We could drive our cars, but the landscape was blighted by the utility wires. Today we live in a world where public is bad and private is good. The 1950’s capitalism that Galbraith criticized seems positively selfless and public-spirited compared to its contemporary variant.

     You should have had Richard Parker on to discuss his biography a while ago anyway. The man’s death merely provides an opportunity to reflet on his life, but we shouldn’t have needed his death to remind ourselves of the importance of his message.

105. sidewalker Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 5:10 am

     I agree Abby, there should be a show on Galbraith. I have suggested earlier a show on examining different types of capitalism and where we are headed and this would fit right in. The interesting thing is the public, even though portrayed as bad, has not been so much limited as it has switched affiliations. Now it is very active helping the private sphere further intrude upon the commons. What happened to the idea of public institutions for the people?

106. Rillion Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 7:44 am

     I haven’t been listening terribly long, so I apologize if this has been done already (and if it has, I would love to be pointed to it!): the Drug War, and what it is doing to America. This was inspired by a comment from the thread about life after prison, but I thought it deserves a show of its own. Specifically, the abuses to the civil rights of Americans which have happened in the name of a misguided and ineffectual battle. Regardless of how you feel about illegal drugs, events such as the two hour beating and torture of Eugene Siler in Knoxville, Tennessee should serve as a wake-up call. Five police officers entered his home and handcuffed him in a chair, punching him and threatening him to sign a consent form which would allow them to search his house for pills and marijuana. They threatened to kill him, to arrest his wife and take his son. They attached electrodes to his testicles and shocked him repeatedly. Then in the face of his complaints, they denied it…and would have gotten away with it, had his wife Jenny not started a tape recorder in the kitchen prior to being shoed out of the house.

     Those police officers have been convicted and sentenced to prison– the worst sentence being six years, which doesn’t strike me as much. But one has to ask, how many other incidents of this sort take place on a daily basis that we don’t know about? We never would have known about this one if not for a recording. And the whole encounter would not have been possible if not for the draconian war which justifies treating people like animals in order to save them from themselves.

107. junec Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 10:59 am

     I just wanted to say that I do agree, gender balance is a worthy goal. I would like to compliment ROS on the high quality of female guests that have been on the show lately. Thank You.

108. The Chukmeister Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 9:37 pm

     Jasonfg, I do not think that Red and Blue state independence will happen in the sense that they will be two separate countries. They are states that are next to each other that have very different views. What I see is the application of the 10th amendment. That is to say, the States will have more power than the Federal Government to do things not in the constitution. The people in that state will then chose what sort of a society they want to form. Those who do not like the state they are in leave to find a state that fits them more.

109. Jon Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 10:45 pm

     I would suggest that Sunday’s Boston Globe feature article by Charlie Savage, “Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President cites powers of his office,” would be an excellent topic for a show. Have Savage and/or others develop the story that Bush avoids vetoing congressional bills–and thereby avoids risking congressional overides. Instead, he signs bills, even praising those who fought for them, and then routinely publishes signing statements explicitly disavowing the need for the Prsident to abide by those very laws. A chilling story of a dictatorial mind-set that needs to be told to a national radio audience.

110. The Chukmeister Says:
     May 1st, 2006 at 11:28 pm

     “I’m the decider!”

     I thought this quote from President Bush was relevant to Jon’s post.

111. Potter Says:
     May 2nd, 2006 at 9:52 am

     Steve Colbert, the jester, one who speaks truth ( not truthiness) to power in his incredibly funny (and astonishingly frank) keynote speech at the gala White House press corps event the other day apparently has a very grateful crowd even though this was not mentioned in the news reports (not NBC, not the NYT) We did get the more acceptable Bush twin schtick.

     Of Colbert’s frankness and boldness, Bush, was not liking it.

     Colbert was “Gored” ( refer to the boycott of Gore’s speeches by the major media).

     See http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/05/01/colbert/

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/ignoring-colbert-part-tw_b_20130.html

     The video is here: http://www.thankyoustephencolbert.org/

     What a reaction on the internet!

     The point, and maybe a show is, that in an atmosphere where everyone in power is in lock-step only a jester is able get through in a moment of relaxation when the guard is down. Did Colbert get through though? There are a lot of folks out here who are at least happy about the attempt, futile though it may be.

112. David Says:
     May 2nd, 2006 at 10:59 am

     Jon: We’ve been talking about that Savage article for the last few days, but with your nudge our talk is getting more serious. Thanks.

     (And happy birthday again!)

113. dsaklad@gnu.org Says:
     May 3rd, 2006 at 10:38 am

     Here’s a thought experiment !…

     The strategy.

     Get tested together for a variety of sexually transmitted infections,
     including human immunodeficiency virus and share the results with
     your potential sex partner BEFORE having sex.

     Here’s a collaborative blog and a collaborative wiki about
     the strategy of let’s get tested together before we have sex…
     for STDs
     http://NotB4WeKnow.blogspot.com
     http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/not_b4_we_know

     Earlier edits at
     http://zork.net/dsaklad/notb4weknow

114. Abby Says:
     May 3rd, 2006 at 9:31 pm

     This isn’t a show suggestion. It’s a blog you should be reading: Billmon’s Whiskey Bar. The man is a blogging genius.

115. Mary Says:
     May 4th, 2006 at 11:11 am

     Abby, Chris tried to get Billmon for the Steven Colbert show. He wasn’t free but made contact with him and I’m sure he’ll make a ROS debut soon.

116. Nikos Says:
     May 4th, 2006 at 2:25 pm

     How about an hour with Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

     Day to Day, May 4, 2006 · Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a native of Somalia who emigrated to The Netherlands in the early 1990s, is no stranger to controversy among her fellow Muslims. Living in the West, she felt free to publicly criticize Islam’s treatment of women.

     But that freedom came at a price. In 2004, a short film Ali scripted called Submission was shown on Dutch television. In the film, naked women veiled with see-through shrouds painted with verses of the Quran kneel in prayer, telling their stories as if they are speaking to Allah.

     The film’s co-writer and director Theo Van Gogh was later stabbed to death by a Muslim radical. A letter pinned to the body with a dagger threatened Ali’s life. Since then, she has been under the constant protection of body guards.
     The danger hasn’t stopped her from remaining outspoken about her beliefs. Ali calls her new collection of essays, The Caged Virgin, an “Emancipation Proclamation” for women and Islam.
     http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5382547

     We, via our foreign policy, are complicit in this.
     Does it deserve an hour of ROS?

117. winston_dodson Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 12:56 am

     The UN s failing and you don’t have to have Bolton on the show to discuss the fact. Even the BBC admits it.

     The UN’s management crisis

     A most undiplomatic row is raging at the United Nations in New York. Developing countries have voted down proposals from Secretary General Kofi Annan to reform the UN’s management structure in the wake of the recent oil-for-food scandals… and the richer countries are threatening to retaliate.

     Management reform might sound bland but it has polarised the UN to a degree not seen since the 1970s.

     Kofi Annan’s mild-sounding proposals to allow him to hire and fire more staff and have greater control over the budget, have provoked a crisis here.

     But the US, Japan and the EU countries - who together contribute 82% of the UN’s budget - are adamant the changes are needed to make the organisation more efficient.

     Mounting tension

     UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan
     Mr Annan’s reforms were planned to restore credibility to an organisation battered by scandals

     In a moment of high drama, a letter from Kofi Annan himself was delivered to the committee, setting out a middle way.

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4972490.stm

118. Nikos Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 1:09 pm

     I hope some intrepid reporter can crack the suddenly emerging ‘Goss Code’. Porter Goss’s resignation after only a couple of years as CIA Czar is surely the proverbial ’smoke’ of a bigger ‘fire’.
     What are the secrets lurking behind the refusal of Bush or Goss to take questions at the resignation announcement today?
     Can anyone penetrate the walls of this American Kremlin for answers?

119. Rillion Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

     How about an hour with Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

     Seconded. Her book The Caged Virgin just came out, and I can’t wait to start my copy.

120. Rillion Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 3:43 pm

     Perhaps in the same show you could include Irshad Manji, lesbian Muslim and author of The Trouble With Islam Today.

121. winston_dodson Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 3:55 pm

     How about a show on the rising progressive movement of indivuals who actaully want to make a difference?

     Internationalist manifesto causes a stir

     The manifesto offers a way for “democrats and progressives” to navigate through the minefields of blanket anti-Americanism and anti-globalisation, to support democracy and oppose terrorism without having to join the ranks of American neo-conservatives.

     “It prefers those who vote in Iraq and Afghanistan to those who put bombs in mosques and schools and hospitals,” he has said.

     It is “for democracy”, it offers “no apology for tyranny”, it calls for the benefits of globalisation to be spread in “development for freedom”, it “opposes anti-Americanism”, wants a “two state solution” between Israel and Palestine, warns of anti-Semitism, and is “united against terror.”

     It condemns “terrorism inspired by Islamist ideology” as a “menace that has to be fought and not excused.”

     About the United States it says: “We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking.”

     Solidarity with Iraqis

     “As for the United States, we identified a way of thinking among some that whatever America does must be wrong. That is their starting assumption. We don’t see it that way.”

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4973584.stm

122. Jake Sterling Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

     I have heard a lot of information about Global Warming on this show and others. At this point, I would like to hear a serious discussion about ways to move toward reducing fossil fuel consumption coupled with some serious ideas about how a post-fossil fuel economy might work.

     The starting point might be a discussion of the relative merits of taxes on fossil fuels versus some kind of tradable “carbon credits.”

     Carbon credits are an excellent and efficient approach to conservation. In essence a country would set a limit on the amount of fossil fuels that could be used during a certain time period, say a year. The credits would go directly to the people and they could trade them, sell them, or save them. The oil companies couldn’t sell oil unless they bought up credits equal to the amount they would sell. As with a tax, this would drive the price of fossil fuel products up very quickly. And this would be especially true if citizens chose to use their carbon credits as a form of savings in anticipation of future, higher, prices of the carbon credits. But the increased price would be come back to the people, at least in part.

     The result would be that low-income people wouldn’t be left high and dry as they would with most other systems aimed at encouraging conservation. Also, the efficiency of the market would be harnessed in the interest of conservation. Effectively, the intellegence and creativity of every person and firm in the country would be redirected at the problem of conservation so that their credits could be used for other sorts of consumption.

     [see Colin Challen: We must think the unthinkable, and take voters with us, Independent.co.uk Online Edition: Home , March 28, 2006]

     We are hearing a lot about the not very edifying attempts of Congress to deal rising gas prices and global warming. Skip all that. Those guys don’t have a clue. I would like to hear more discussion of realistic and humane solutions. Isn’t there some saying like, “If the people lead, the leaders will follow?” If there isn’t, there should be.

123. podchef Says:
     May 5th, 2006 at 7:44 pm

     We’ve had a lot of panic over Avian Flu and BSE, or Mad Cow lately. The USDA is using these hot topic issues to drive a plan forward which will further errode the definition of private property, privacy and constitutional right. Furthermore, this plan, if achieved will raise the cost of food across the nation. The plan, The National Animal Identification System will impact every one of us, whether you own animals or not. This system purposes to tag and track every animal in the US–whether for food or pets. This impacts pet owners, 4-H kids, and small and mid-sized farmers. Individual cost per animal could be as high as $1340 per year.

     Millions have been spent on implimenting the NAIS and yet no one seems to know about it. It is supposed to be a voluntary program, yet the word “manditory” has been cropping up constantly. This is bloated government organisation at its worst–mandating a nation wide system based on fear, ramrodded down our throats via lies, deception and threats. The only people to benefit from the NAIS are the USDA, and their sponsors, the large meat packers and the manufacturers of RFID tags.

     We need to get this plan out into the open and expose the BS the government is slinging for what it is.

124. Potter Says:
     May 6th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

     I happened to be listening to the radio when I heard Madeleine Albright (Fresh Air with Terri Gross). Gosh she was good!. Anyway recently there was complaint here that we do not have enough women on the shows. How about a whole show devoted to Madeleine Albright? What a chance here if you can get her. She is on a book tour I think.

     I went to http://www.wws.princeton.edu/pcpia/webcasts.html ( scroll down a bit) to catch her address for the Princeton Woodrow Wilson series of lectures at the end of April. Her address was titled : “Promoting Democracy: Fourteen Points for the 21st Century”. Excellent!

125. nother Says:
     May 7th, 2006 at 12:12 am

     On his 150th birthday it is a good time to think about Sigmund Freud. We could think about what he would think about our current state of affairs. Great article in the Ny Times magazine about his political writings. Freud wrote: “We want a strong man with a simple doctrine that accounts for our sufferings, identifies our enemies, focuses our energies and gives us, more enduringly than wine or even love, a sense of being whole.â€?
     http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30wwln_lede.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=login

     In the Wall Street Journal the other day Harold Bloom wrote a great article about Freuds literary legacy. Bloom writes: “Yet 20th-century literature truly begins with Freud.�
     http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114679816691644646.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

     So let’s ask Dr. Freud the questions we want to ask him; let’s ask Harold Bloom to tell us what Freud might answer.

     Questions like:
     Does the Iraq war really boil down to the relationship between Bush Jr. and his parents?

     What would the good Dr. say to W if he was lying on his couch?

     How would Mr. Freud analyze America if America was a person? We are a little older now, are we getting a little full of ourselves and set in our ways. Has the compassionate messy idealism of our youth turned into the cranky paranoid arrogance that age can sometimes bring?

     Would the Dr. now be prescribing Zoloft to everyone and his sister?

     What did Sigmund Freud say to people when they said a Freudian slip? Did he say “that was my slip?�

126. joe briggs Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 8:04 am

     It has become common knowlege that we went to war with Iraq for the security of Isreal putting aside the U.S. greater interests. Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Swiatkowski bore witness to it first hand, retired in protests, and wrote several essays on the details and was interviewed by CSPAN’s Brian Lamb on Q&A. “The Isreali Lobby” stated it point blank and gave references. Even Patrick Buchannan’s “How the Right Went Wrong” laid it out back in 2002. Pro-Isreali/Zionist hardliners were positioned as civilian political appointees in charge of apolitical military and carreer civil-service policy researchers by Bush administration officials. These right-wingers arguably commited treason by hijacking US foriegn policy for the sole purpose coercing the US to fight a war so that Isreal would not have to. U.S. military officers have a sworn duty to protect and defend the constitution; and bringing the US into an illegal and unwarrented war certainly places the constitution at risk. So when senior Petagon military officers observed the treachory first-hand; they had a duty to act. But hereign lays the paradox: military officers must constitionally submit themselves to the control of democratically elected civilians. So, the question at hand, and the recommendation for the show, is, “How should the military have leagally handled the case of preventing democratically elected officials from commiting treason and entering the country into war without risking the appearance of a coup or revolution?”

127. carrollt Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 12:14 pm

     My favorite show that I’ve heard on ROS was “The Dream of Al-Andalus” (back in December). I caught it in California on the radio and it inspired me to track down ROS online (where I listed to it now by podcast). What that show had was a fascinating combination of history, arts, ideas, and contemporary reflection (the “hook”, if you will).

     What I would like to hear are additional shows on idealized places (be they cities, states, geographic regions) that are claimed in contemporary discourse or polemics. Al-Andalus was really an ideal location for reflection. For example, consider how the image of New York City is appropriated by all sorts of political, social and artistic groups. Or (perhaps closer to the original show) consider how the significance of the city (and history) of Jerusalem is likewise contested.

     Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy the shows on politics and on evolutionary theories, but what drew me in the first place to ROS was the promise of shows that are more in-depth and better informed than many other public radio chat shows (shows that all too often coincide often with the publication of new books). In itself, there is nothing wrong with discussions that are concurrent with the publications of new texts, but sometimes I feel that the ‘hot topic’ discussions produce more heat than light. The felt need for an opinion on the current issue can stand in the way of thoughtful reflection.

128. houstonDave Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

     First, joe briggs, if you could spell “Israel,” it might help you receive serious attention until the second or third sentence of your anti-Semitic spew. Israel has never received a single drop of oil from Iraq, so it doesn’t seem likely that preserving access to Iraq’s oil would benefit Israel at all. There are a lot of other countries that do have such motivation; I live in one.

     I’d like to reiterate my plea for a show about the world of oil trading. I saw the CEO of Conoco Phillips on “Good Morning, America” with Charlie Gibson. Gibson did try to stick it to him mildly, but the CEO kept up this sham that his company is simply a consumer of crude oil and is hurt by rising prices. The companies are also PRODUCERS of oil that benefit from rising prices, but Charlie Gibson failed to point that out. Your show will shed light on the practice of a company that recovers a raw material, sends it though some market, only to buy that material and refine it into products it sells.

     Thank you.

129. Nikos Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 1:58 pm

     Since it’s worth the wager of, oh, say, a kolsch, that you fine ROS staffers are working on a show dealing with the sudden CIA shake-up (or is it a shake-down?), you might like to talk to: James Carroll, son of a former DIA chief, and author of: House of War: The Pentagon, a History of Unbridled Power — http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0618187804-0
     And: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0618187804/104-8007502-0711140

     He was on the Left Coast public radio program To The Point on Monday, May 08, 2006 at: http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?tmplt_type=program&show_code=tp
     And I recommend giving it a listen not merely for Carroll but for the other guests too.

     This is right up your alley – I promise.

130. Nikos Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 2:00 pm

     Or, maybe I should make it readable, huh?

     Since it’s worth the wager of, oh, say, a kolsch, that you fine ROS staffers are working on a show dealing with the sudden CIA shake-up (or is it a shake-down?), you might like to talk to: James Carroll, son of a former DIA chief, and author of: House of War: The Pentagon, a History of Unbridled Power — http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-0618187804-0
     And: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0618187804/104-8007502-0711140

     He was on the Left Coast public radio program To The Point on Monday, May 08, 2006 at: http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?tmplt_type=program&show_code=tp
     And I recommend giving it a listen not merely for Carroll but for the other guests too.

     This is right up your alley – I promise.

131. Nikos Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

     Never mind. Sorry. I don’t know why I’m screwing up the italics and it isn’t worth figuring out.

132. Socrates Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 4:59 pm

     Paul Krugman in today’s NY Times invites us to rethink conspiracy theories (”Who’s Crazy now?”) Last week I participated in a program at Clark University dealing with the question of what really happened on 9/11. I strongly recommend that you invite David Ray Griffin and/or Steven E. Jones to address that issue. I am more interested in their questions than their answers, and I suspect many of your other regular listners will as well.

133. j Says:
     May 8th, 2006 at 5:37 pm

     “The Bush State of Exception”

     Mary or Katherine, consider giving this guy a call for a pre-interview:

     Professor Mark Danner. http://www.markdanner.com/

     Interviewer: An unidentified senior administration told Ron Suskind, “We’re an empire now and when we act we create our own reality.” Care to comment?

     Danner: I think that quote is immensely revealing. It underlines their policies in all kinds of areas, their belief that the overwhelming or preponderant power of the United States can simply change fact, can change truth….They don’t care about people who read the New York Times, for instance. I use that as a shorthand. They don’t care about people concerned with facts. They care about the broader arc of the story. We sit here constantly citing facts — that they’ve broken this or that law, that what they originally said turns out not to be true. None of this particularly interests them.

     You could hang a show generally on “Political Extra-Legality” on him. You could peg this easily to the Hayden nomination.

     Danner is a good talker, is a Berkeley prof and has been a New Yorker reporter / war correspondent. Chip probably has worked with him in some way at NYRB.

     More generally, I’m also interested in seeing these sorts of things tie together:

     - Domestic Wiretapping and bypassing the FICA Court (Danner)
     - Nomination of Active Duty General to lead CIA (Elisabeth Bumiller? Ron Suskind?)
     - Secret Prisons (Danner)
     - Bypassing Acts of Congress with “Signing Statements” (John Dean?)
     - Litigation as Political Strategy (Heather Gerken, HLS?)
     - CA Recall Elections
     - Bush v. Gore
     - Redestrciting
     - Signing bills that weren’t passed by Congress (blogger?)

     See also:

     http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/02/mark_danner-3.html

     http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/03/hearing_vowed_on_bushs_powers?mode=PF

     http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060113.html

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency

134. nother Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 2:11 am

     ROS is about the world right, the whole wide world, in all its shine and shame. Well there’s a big part of that world we haven’t traversed yet, sports. Sports are a huge part of the daily lives of soooo many people and I hope we will tap into that.

     My first suggestion is to take a swing at baseball. We could invite Leigh Montville who has a new book on Babe Ruth. Another good guest could be Frank Deford whose last book was “The Old Ball Game.� There is a new book on Roberto Clemente. There are alos great local Boston writers to tap into.

     The beauty of baseball is its metaphorical quality, look no further then the ROS website. The baseball metaphor I’m most intrigued by these days is the dynamic diversity of players on today’s teams and how that translates to the diversity of America. South Americans, Japanese, guys from the sticks of Texas and the streets of Brooklyn, conservative guys, liberal guys, ugly guys and not so ugly guys, all working towards a common goal. What a great example that sets for all of us.

     A more specific “hook� could be the enigma of the Dominican Republic. The crazy proportion of players in MLB from that tiny island. We could look at the influx of Latino players compared to the sudden dearth of African American players.

     On any given night in the summer there are hundreds of thousands of people sitting in baseball stands across America, and thats just Major League Baseball! Add in minor leagues, college, high school, and little league. They build it and we come – but why?

135. nother Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 2:20 am

     My second sports suggestion of many is to look at the status of Title IX.

     “It’s been 33 years since Title IX became law and schools are still not giving women and girls equal opportunities in sports. Instead of enforcing the law, however, the Department of Education on March 17, 2005 issued a new Title IX policy that threatens to reverse the progress that women and girls have made in sports. The Department’s Title IX policy “Clarification” masks a major policy change. The only “clarification” is a clear invitation to schools who are not in compliance to escape the obligation of adding more participation opportunities for girls and women. A giant loophole has been opened without public notice or comment, and it has the potential of stopping the growth of women’s sports in its tracks.”

     The above is from http://www.savetitleix.com/current_fight.html

136. babu Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 4:01 am

     Our Attention-Deficit Nation and the Blogosphere

     There is a signature personality profile of the highly intelligent ADD adult which corresponds strongly with a self-selecting and persistent voice finding its pitch on blogs.

     ADD brain anomalies interfere subtly with a cluster of activities we call ‘executive function’. ADD-affected brains crave stimulation, live in the ‘Now’ and don’t respond to normal cause and effect analysis. They are idea junkies and are endlessly fascinated with the new at the expense of the necessary and practical. They are subject to long bouts of hyperfocus where anything they think up seems great to them. In this excitedand attenuated state, they are incautious and uncritical of their own thinking or other output. The web is a big beautiful, addictive pinball gallery for the ADD brain.

     Cognizant and well-managed, this is a gift, a lifetime of of child-like enthusiasms. But there is a definite link between the fast-focus, multi-subject, high-stim web and both real and synthecized ADD symptomology. The actual ADD population is figured at 8 to 10% and rising steeply. Why? The culturally-induced symptoms of our high-stim life-style are adding another overlay to the texture, ethics and content of our emerging web life. It has the muddy but interesting fingerprints of the somewhat amoral,

     I will come back with links and references about both the gifted ADD adult AND the

137. babu Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 4:04 am

     sorry, I clicked accidentally. Will follow up later.

138. h wally Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 10:54 am

     I suggest you get Stephen Kinzer author of “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” He’s making the rounds right now and I think His historical perspective would help us understand why things are the way they are in Iraq and where they’re headed. Even though he’s been on other shows I believe the unique nature of this show would add a different perspective to what I’ve already heard. Thank you

139. Mary Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 2:30 pm

     Scribe5, Chris went to Phillip Roth’s home in Connecticut last Friday and had a wonderful conversation with him. We’ll air it on Memorial Day.
     hwally, we’re in touch with Kinzer. Looks like it might be Monday the 15th.
     babu, send your links and guest suggestions for ADD and the blogosphere. We’ve been trying to figure out how to do that subject best.
     nother, we’re baseball nuts around here. David is a Mets fan and Chris and I are long suffering Sox fans. I don’t much appreciate how cocky David is about Pedro. We have a line on a person who works with baseball players in the Dominican Republic and we’ll pursue that show this summer. David is researching a show about baseball on radio. I’m pushing Joe Castigliione; he likes Gary Cohen.
     j, we’re following your links and leads re: Danner.
     Jake Sterling, as you know we’ve done a number of shows about global warming and some that touch on how a post-fossil fuel economy might work. We’d like to speak with David Blood, Al Gore’s new partner in a London based venture called Generation Investment Management (shouldn’t they have called it Blood & Gore?) thats meant to integrate sustainability research into its equity analysis. Blood was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Clinton’s 1996 campaign manager, Peter Knight, will be the US- based president of the company. The Ethernet guru Robert Metcalfeis into this game now too.
     NPR has been all over the Freud anniversary story. We’re more excited about Chelsea’s idea for a birthday show.

140. allison Says:
     May 9th, 2006 at 6:01 pm

     Perhaps we could talk about this letter form Ahmadinejad to Bush:

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4755831.stm

     scroll down to find the link to the full text of the letter.

141. spacebo Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 7:03 am

     The premier internet site for China is China Digital Times ..The directors, Xiao Qiang (previous director of Human Rights in China aas well as MacArthur Fellow )and Sophie Beach (previously with The Committee to Protect Journalists) would make interesting guests on the program because they have information on what is going on in China now with blogging and all internet use—It is worth checking out as an umbrella for all current issues concerning China–http://chinadigitaltimes.net/

142. malcom z Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 10:18 am

     Please do a show on modern day slavery. I just heard a report from the BBC on a Vietnamese woman osld for $5000 dollars in Malasia. China has may such problems as well as the US. Take some time and expose these problems. You might want to bring up the question of supporting such practises through or purchases of goods and lack of action.

143. Socrates Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 10:47 am

     I support Allison’s suggestion that we talk about the letter form Ahmadinejad to Bush. It raises a number of timely questions. People have a strong temptation to dismiss those who they think are their enemy, but to be free requires that we work even harder at understanding those with whom we disagree than those with whom we agree. John Stuart presents and defends that point of view wonderfully in On Liberty.

144. Socrates Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 10:48 am

     Sorry, that should read John Stuart Mill!

145. nother Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 12:29 pm

     The out of hand dismissal of Ahmadinejad’s letter brings to mind once again the lack of personal diplomacy exhibited by GW. Read Edwin Meese’s words:

     Ronald Reagan was a strong believer in personal diplomacy – the idea of having a face-to-face discussion with those he was seeking to persuade. That’s why, after becoming president, he often talked privately about the desire to engage the leader of the Soviet Union in a one-on-one conversation, to diminish any fear of the United States’ intentions and to seek common ground for reducing tensions and promoting peace.

     The rhetoric exchanged with the Soviet Union was just as bad as Iran. The difference is Reagan gave Gorbachev the dignity of a face to face meeting. This lack of respect exhibited is the precise reason Iran is yearning for the bomb, it bring respect. That’s the sad irony, they will get that technology eventually and only then will we engage in personal diplomacy.

     We need to let Ahmadinejad save face; by giving him and the Iranian people the respect of a summit, we could could quell their desire for the bomb.

     I haven’t figured out the hook here exactly for a show, but it’s here somewhere.

146. nother Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

     Sorry, I forgot the quotes up there in the second paragraph.

     The link to Meese: http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed061404c.cfm

147. oolitic Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

     How about a show about the best crafted English language short stories?

     My votes would be for

     * Raymond Carver
     * Steinbeck
     * Anton Checkov (okay, so it’s not English, but still!)

     I’m sure the staff of ROS could weave something nice!

148. Mary Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 2:34 pm

     Spacebo, the China Digital Times site is amazing. Thanks for the link.

149. spacebo Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 4:01 pm

     Yes, Mary, It is amazing and an Open Source program highlighting CDT would help us understand so much about the thinking of the Chinese people. Blogging is the only way the Chinese can express, rally, and make their lives better and their plight known to the world. It reminds me of all the underground literature that bloomed clandestinely during the Revolution.
     http://chinadigitaltimes.net/

150. spacebo Says:
     May 10th, 2006 at 6:29 pm

     That is the Russian Revolution I mean—-

151. joe briggs Says:
     May 11th, 2006 at 6:57 am

     houstonDave - jews I love; its Israel and Zionism that I have a problem with. In fact, it is the fine work of academic jews such as Noam Chomsky, Norm Finklestein, and many others that brings to light the attrocities of the Israeli government toward its indigenous, non-jewish population. Personally, I find repugnant the practice of suppressing the citizenship, civil, voting, property, and human rights of those whose only criime is that they don’t have a traceable jewish lineage. As for America, a nation formaly founded on the “proposition that all men are created equal”, we have no business supporting Zionism. A land that jews can live in peace and properity yes, but apartied no. I hope you can separate these issues.

152. andycarvin Says:
     May 11th, 2006 at 12:17 pm

     Hi everyone,

     There are a pair of Internet-related bills in congress that may be of interest.

     The first bill, the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, would require scientists who receive federal funding to supply their funding agency with copies of any peer-reviewed research they’re getting published. The govt agency would then be required to publish the full article for the public to access within six months. The bill is a major milestone of the Open Access Publishing movement, which strives to get more science research directly into the hands of the public, rather than forcing people to pay small fortunes in subscription fees with the major scientific publishers. Needless to say, publishers are furious, while knowledge advocates are thrilled. More about the bill here.

     The second bill, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), would require all schools and libraries
     receiving federal Internet subsidies to filter out student access to nline social networks. The vast majority of K12 schools receive these subsidies, so the bill would make them deny students access to any commercial online community, potentially including blogging tools, e-list tools and the like. It’s being pushed by a group of conservatives who want to rally their base around online child safety, which has been such a big news story in recent months. More about DOPA here. -andy

153. Nikos Says:
     May 11th, 2006 at 2:18 pm

     Ya’ll might be interested in Mark Danner, who spoke this morning on KUOW’s Weekday:

     Thursday on Weekday
     05/11/2006 9:00 am

     Mark Danner on Iraq
     Why did we invade Iraq? Journalist and Berkley Professor Mark Danner has a new book out on what he calls, The Secret Way to War. Danner poured over documents including the infamous “Downing Street Memo� of July 2002 that indicates the intelligence and facts were ‘fixed’ around the war policy. But regardless of how we got there, what should the U.S. do next? We’ll talk to Danner about the run-up to war and the latest news on U.S. intelligence and Iraq.

     Guests:Mark Danner professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He’s the author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror and The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and The Iraq War’s Buried History.

     http://www.kuow.org/weekday.asp

     After today you’ll be able to find it in the ‘Recent Shows’ archive toward the web page’s lower right-hand corner.

     (Nir Rosen was a great ROS hour, by the way…)

154. plaintext Says:
     May 12th, 2006 at 10:59 am

     For some follow up ideas on NSA phone-tapping

155. Ken R Says:
     May 12th, 2006 at 12:17 pm

     The NPR show ON THE MEDIA (good show too!) did a brief piece on Freud (birthday 150 this year) and somewhat on the decline of psychoanalysis, but what I found interesting (and not really covered) was the popular images of psychoanalysis & analysts particularly in films. I think that would be quite interesting to develop much further.

     their site is http://www.onthemedia.org/index.html

156. chilton1 Says:
     May 12th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

     I believe that we desperately need a rational debate about genetic modification in agriculture (as well as in medicine and research). To date all we have is polarised agenda-biased opinions from both sides. Open Source has a unique opportunity here to initiate a debate where others have failed. It will not be easy though and it’s highly emotional.

157. Jon Says:
     May 14th, 2006 at 10:07 pm

     Blogsday was a great show from June 2005. Any interest in doing this again for 2006?

158. Jon Says:
     May 14th, 2006 at 10:21 pm

     It seems to me we’re coming up soon to ROS’s first anniversary on the air. You might consider some extra special program to commemmorate this milestone.

     Perhaps a roundtable discussion by the ROS staff itself of the original vision, together with some behind-the-scenes stories of what goes into creating the programs? Maybe you could even find some tape that never made it to the air, but would be fun to hear in a party type of context? Or, for that matter, some gems that did make it to the air, and are worth reliving? Just a thought.

159. dsaklad@gnu.org Says:
     May 15th, 2006 at 3:01 am

     How about a broadcast on public libraries!…

     References
     Bernie Margolis, Boston Public Library
     http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/cc_video_library.asp?id=174
     http://citycouncilvideo.cityofboston.gov/ramgen/archive/W&M5_9_2006am.rm

     Title: FY07 Budget Hearing - Boston Public Library
     Docket Number: 0507
     Committee: Ways & Means
     Description: FY07 Budget Hearing for the Boston Public Library
     http://www.cityofboston.gov/budget/pdfs/volume2_07/02_Chief_Oper_Offi_Cab.pdf

160. wmjasco Says:
     May 15th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

     Want to try out the daily fix for thousands of blog-savvy linguistic buffs? Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log is a new book based on the popular online magazine Language Log (www.languagelog.com), by noted linguistics professors Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman (plus other linguistics professionals, including Geoff Nunberg).

     We the publishers would like to suggest you check out this delicious read and consider hosting Geoffrey Pullum, who possesses a genius charismatic wit and who is no stranger to the role of public radio guest.

     This book is rapidly gaining national acclaim and will continue to rise on the public radar. Although written by professional linguists on topics like syntax and phonetics, Far from the Madding Gerund appeals to a general audience with its “exuberant, tart, and totally addictive� style (The Boston Globe).

     For a taste, check out a couple of the top-ten Language Log posts, which you’ll also find in the book: Pullum’s funny stylistic criticism on Dan Brown’s style - “The Dan Brown code” http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/000844.html; and “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence” http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001628.html.

     For more details, visit our media information page at http://www.wmjasco.com/0555/media/055-5-media.html.

161. Scarequotes Says:
     May 15th, 2006 at 7:24 pm

     I came across a couple of things recently that made me think of a show I’d love to hear.

     The first thing: a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board, in which one member rants about tagging and graffiti in his neighborhood. Some people in the thread hate graffiti, wherever and whenever it appears. Others have a more nuanced perspective, appreciating it in certain contexts or just not minding its presence.

     The second thing: the opening of a new “urban contemporary” art gallery, BLVD, here in Seattle. In an interview, Kirsten Anderson, the gallerist, talks about how people think this hip-hop influenced art is all about graffiti and tagging, but that it’s more sophisticated than that.

     The two things together made me realize that, white boy that I am, I’m not very familiar with tagging and graffiti, the rules and the etiquette, how ideas from this (usually) outlaw art form percolate up into more accepted forms of visual media — art, advertising, cinema for all I know.

     That’s my thought for a show: explore the culture of tagging and graffiti. I know enough to know it’s not all gang signs, but more than that? I’m at a loss.

162. oldguyoldchick Says:
     May 16th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

     Before it is no longer timely, how about a show on the variety of maximum security prisons, in US and perhaps, elsewhere. I know a little of what Mousoui will face: 23 hours of solitary etc. But what about the States’ prisons? Are there better/worse (comparitively speaking) to do hard time? I will bet that our military prisons are worse than the Max in Colorado. I will go further to say that the Old South prisons give folks a rougher time than the northern ones. Most folks probably don’t know that the government takes in a lot of money by charging exorbitant fees for collect phone calls from jails. Conversely, which places are the cushiest? Somebody’s gotta know!

163. avecfrites Says:
     May 16th, 2006 at 6:57 pm

     We’re constantly hearing about yet another city-wide wi-fi project being started or planned. How about a roundup on the topic, particularly an examination of the effects of any such projects that are already up and running. Do they benefit lower-income computer users who can’t otherwise afford DSL or cable modems? Do they encourage new types of mobile applications that rely on always-connected masses? Do they affect local DSL or cable pricing? Do they encourage or discourage community?

     It’s only a matter of time until wimax and other technologies give always-on internet connections to most of us. These islands of municipal wifi could offer a window into what might happen on a wider scale.

164. Scarequotes Says:
     May 17th, 2006 at 6:20 pm

     wmjasco’s post about languagelog (a great site, by the way) helped me crystalize another idea I had.

     Oxford English Dictionary editor Jesse Sheidlower did an article in Slate recently about one ad copywriter’s campaign to get the verb “concept” added to the dictionary.

     That copywriter is specifically targeting Merriam-Webster, but it got me thinking about our relationship with The Dictionary. That mythical tome that determines What’s a Real Word. Because our casual references to and belief in The Dictionary seem to continue unhindered by the emergence of Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary, and Double-Tongued Word Wrester.

     But inclusion in the dictionary means different things to lexicographers than it does to everyday people arguing about words. People protest when a major dictionary includes “ain’t,” or “fuck,” or the nu-ku-lar pronunciation of nuclear. (Arnold Zwicky has some great posts about nucular vs. nuclear on Language Log.) And I think this tension — between documentation and promotion, evolution vs. devolution — would be an interesting thing to explore.

     Show idea: What does The Dictionary mean to you? What makes a real word?

     Possible guests: Sheidlower, Zwicky, Grant Barrett (of Double-Tongued Word Wrester), Erin McKean from the New Oxford American Dictionary and Verbatim, Robert Fiske from The Vocabula Review (anti-permissiveness)…

165. Loay Says:
     May 18th, 2006 at 12:56 pm

     Racism is central to concepts of modern nationalism. I wish you would look at the work of Anthony W. Marx president of Amherst College, and his book, Faith in Nation Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism. American Slavery and the War on the indigenous population fits in his thesis of racisms roots. Nation building by exclusion. Another book I plan to read that I think would be in the same vain is How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev.

     A review of Marx’s work

     Reviewed by G. John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004

     The rise of nationalism in the West in the late eighteenth century is typically viewed as a liberal exercise in inclusiveness, tolerance, and democracy-building (in contrast to the illiberal, exclusive nationalism that has often developed in other parts of the world). Challenging this idealized view, Marx argues that nationalism actually originated in Europe two centuries earlier than previously thought, when monarchical rulers pursued exclusionary and intolerant strategies of state consolidation. He traces early-modern state-building in England, France, and Spain, where rulers sought to mobilize and regulate the populace by forcibly constructing nationalism — a process that demanded religious exclusion, the repression of minorities, and political intolerance. Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain by expelling the Moors and the Jews, and the French religious wars of the sixteenth century fostered political unity at the expense of the Huguenots. By illuminating this illiberal European past, Marx succeeds in making Western civic nationalism seem less exceptional — and the problems of nation-building outside the West less foreign.

     Loay

166. joeyrenza Says:
     May 18th, 2006 at 6:22 pm

     open source religion.

     http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/08/2132256&from=rss

     News
     New-time religion
     Wednesday May 17, 2006 (08:00 PM GMT)
     By: Tina Gasperson

     Printer-friendly Email story
     Open source software methodologies, principles, and practices translate well into other arenas, like standards and intelligence, and have been proposed for the beverage and medical industries as well. But open source philosophy exists in religion too; a kind of collaborative spirituality in which there is no such thing as secrets known only to an inner circle, and participants work together to create a mutually acceptable and beneficial creed instead of passively receiving instruction from a priestly class.

     Because the participants are collaborating, most open source religions tend to be new creations, and many are primarily Internet-based. Perhaps the best-known example is Yoism, which calls itself the “world’s first open source religion.” Yo is the name the group has given to what it calls the “divine mystery.” Yoans say they reject truth based solely on authority, and focus strongly on community, evolution, democracy, environmentalism, and growth. Yoans also claim they can prove the existence of Yo, but that Yo is the “infinite, unknowable essence.” Yoans, or followers of the “way of Yo,” adhere to the Open Source Truth Process, which they claim was developed by members working with students and faculty at The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

     Using the Open Source Truth Process, Yoans hope that the community’s scriptures and beliefs will evolve and changed based on each person’s experience of reality, much as open source software is continually changed and made better through the input of many people. “Our Truth Process depends on the increasing involvement of many people with diverse life experiences,” proclaims Yoism’s Web site, and visitors are encouraged to post comments to any writings with which they disagree.

167. Lorenzo Says:
     May 18th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

     Am I dreaming?? Upon observing the security video released yesterday that alleged to show Flight # 77 crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11 I was NOT astonished to see that there was no plane! What has astonished me is how quickly the media dropped the entire issue. It barely got 12 hours. Since I am out here in Seattle, the” Land of Boeing”, I called some aquaintances at the Boeing plant in Everett, where the behemoth 757s are made, to ask them if perhaps my eyes deceived me. No they said, 4 of them; 3 engineers & 1 wing fabricator, “there was no plane, at least not in that video”. So how about a show around that issue. “Where’s the Plane” . It’s a big (& growing) topic on the street from all over the spectrum of the political Left out here. A good place to look for more information is the very, very good web site Pentagon Research by Russell Pickering. He would no doubt be a terrific guest. Since so many people question every half- breath of the Bush Administration the silence over this particular issue is deafening. Thanks. I am always enjoying your shows. More poetry please! Thanks.

168. Xcentric Says:
     May 19th, 2006 at 12:23 am

     Here is a show that will knock your socks off! Basically, ORGASMIC SEIZURES and the root cause of such an experience. The brain is such a complex organism. I promote the deciphering of such a twist to everyday people and the embarrassment or struggles that they may have experienced while attempting to hold ordinary lives and normal loving relationships with others. The problem is more common that you may think; seizures are categorized in such a wide range of definition. Personally, I’ve read about people who have fallen into full-scale convulsions, followed by an orgasm of indescribable intensity, right before passing out ENTIRELY - SIMPLY BY BRUSHING THEIR TEETH!

     Are these ‘ultra sensitives’ suffering from some king of undiscovered, unexplainable human phenomenon? What can the advancement of study in regards to the human brain tell us of such eccentricities? Before you laugh this off as some sort of weirdo’s suggestion, consider yourself… when was the last time you’ve blown a load, or become winched inside a waterfall of wizardry, WITHOUT contemplating it’s connection to everyone or everything around you?

     Sex is the underlying basis of the conversation, sure, but the abnormalities of this common exchange is most WORTHY of debate. Interesting would be an understatement.

     GLOBAL INCENTIVE FOR THE SHOW: The topic of Orgasmic seizures can umbrella so many other issues such as sexual dysfunction, bestiality, viagra, karma sutra, so many aspects of approach for a topic that may cause Chris to blush a little bit, nonetheless, allowing him to concoct the most exquisite form of journalistic enterprise especially on such a private, sensitive, yet crucially significant matter of discussion. Plus, as an avid listener, I’m utterly curious on how he would approach and organize such turbulent or taboo dialog.

     If you need a ‘SEXPERT’ guest to appear on the show, I’ll check my availability : )~
     No.. but in all seriousness, lets get the open source staff fired up on continuing more mind blowing discussions.

     Note to Robin: it’s one thing to ask me for a ‘hook’ to connect this suggestion to - pertaining to present day happenings. However, if coming home after a long day’s work and undressing to Marvin Gay’s “Sexual Healing “ song, is not present day enough for you, then what the hell is? I do commend you and the entire OS staff for covering topics that don’t necessarily need to be in the front page of the Globe or Herald. Well, this one hits home, in the many private lives and bedrooms of millions of individuals across the country. So, I guess all the hook you need is right here. With much due respect, Thanks for you time,

     XCENTRIC - The New Breed of Open Source Supporters!

     Relevant Links to Show Suggestion:

     http://www.springerlink.com/(ar3i0kmyxdadvn55oir34h45)/app/home/contribution.asp?

     http://www.wireheading.com/orgasmatron/orgasmic-aura.html

     http://www.webmd.com/content/article/18/1689_51901.htm

     http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic658.htm

     http://www.parascope.com/articles/slips/fs24_2.htm

     http://www.actionlove.com/cases/case12725.htm

169. Xcentric Says:
     May 19th, 2006 at 12:47 am

     Here is a show that will knock your socks off! Basically, ORGASMIC SEIZURES and the root cause of such an experience. The brain is such a complex organism. I promote the deciphering of such a twist to everyday people and the embarrassment or struggles that they may have experienced while attempting to hold ordinary lives and normal intimate relationships with others.

     The problem is more common that you may think; seizures are categorized in such a wide range of definitions. Personally, I’ve read about people who have fallen into full-scale convulsions, followed by a sexual orgasm of indescribable intensity, right before passing out ENIRELY - SIMPLY BY BRUSHING THEIR TEETH!

     Are these ‘ultra sensitives’ suffering from some king of undiscovered, unexplainable human phenomenon? What can the advancement of study in regards to the human brain tell us of such eccentricities? Before you laugh this off as some sort of weirdo’s suggestion, consider yourself… when was the last time you’ve blown a load, or become winched inside a waterfall of wizardry, WITHOUT contemplating it’s connection to everyone or everything around you?

     Sex is the underlying basis of the conversation, sure, but the abnormalities of this common exchange is most WORTHY of debate. ‘Interesting’ would be an understatement.

     GLOBAL INCENTIVE FOR THE SHOW: The topic of Orgasmic seizures can umbrella so many other issues such as sexual dysfunction, bestiality, viagra, karma sutra, so many aspects of approach for a topic that may cause Chris to blush a little bit, nonetheless, allowing him to concoct the most exquisite form of journalistic enterprise especially on such a private, yet crucially significant matter of discussion.

     If you need a ‘SEXPERT’ guest to appear on the show, I’ll check my availability. : )
     No… but in all seriousness, lets get the open source staff fired up on continuing to produce mind blowing discussions.

     Robin, it’s one thing to ask me for a ‘hook’ to connect this suggestion to - pertaining to present day happenings. However, if coming home night to night, after a long day’s work and unwinding to Marvin Gay’s - “Sexual Healing “ song, may not be present day enough for you, what on earth would qualify as present day real life happenings if not the act of making love? Our molecular reaction to the connectivity of coitus, unequivocally, all the hook you need is right here. : )~

     With much due respect, Thanks for you time,

     XCENTRIC - The New Breed of Open Source Supporters!

     Relevant Links to Show Suggestion:

     http://www.springerlink.com/(ar3i0kmyxdadvn55oir34h45)/app/home/contribution.asp?

     http://www.wireheading.com/orgasmatron/orgasmic-aura.html

     http://www.webmd.com/content/article/18/1689_51901.htm

     http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic658.htm

     http://www.parascope.com/articles/slips/fs24_2.htm

     http://www.actionlove.com/cases/case12725.htm

170. manning120 Says:
     May 19th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

     I’d like to suggest two topics. First, Dominionism (also called Christian Reconstructionism). Dominionists hold that the United States should become a theocracy structured in accordance with the principles of Romans 13. Romans 13 says everyone must submit to their government, even if it’s tyrannical, because the state derives all its legitimacy from God, and rebelling against the state amounts to rebelling against God. Disobedience unleashes the “power of the sword� – capital punishment – against the miscreant. We see incremental moves away from our Deistic foundations and toward Domininism in the addition of “under God� to the pledge, the unceasing attack on abortion rights, the movement to outlaw same-sex marriage and discredit “scientific materialism� (evolution), and other steps to establish official religious symbols and ceremonies, always with a “Christian� flavor. Our current president, whether consciously or just as a tool of fundamentalists, has contributed greatly to the cause. Dominionists maintain a low profile to avoid provoking opposition to the gradual elimination of secularism. The pro-Dominionist atmosphere has cowed the “liberal media,� which seldom exhibits even rudimentary awareness of the encroachment of Dominionism. It required a lay person, not a reporter, to ask the president if he didn’t find the Iraq war to be a sign of Armageddon. When Mr. Bush said “First, I’ve heard of that,� the official White House transcript was edited to “First I’ve heard of that� – as if a Bible-believing evangelical Christian would never have thought that a war in the Middle East could be viewed as a sign of the Biblical prophecy. The most frightening aspect of this is the “left behind� doctrine that non-believers at some point will be killed. Dominionists would welcome this version of the holocaust; their comfort with torture of non-Christians like those confined in Guantanamo betrays a harshness that would allow them to tolerate mass killing of non-believers. The most important question concerns what Dominionists would do if they gained complete control of the levers of power and decided that Biblical prophecy needed a nudge toward the establishment of God’s reign on earth.

     People conversant with these matters include Katherine Yurica, Pat Robertson, Joan Bokaer, Tim LaHaye, Francis Schaeffer, Michael Ledeen, Herb Titus, Charles Colson, and various members of the Bush administration.

     Second, the topic of same-sex marriage is again coming to the fore. This subject begins with scripture: Leviticus 18:22, for example. What many people don’t realize is that it also ends there. I’ve never heard a cogent, persuasive argument that apart from religious belief, there are reasons same-sex marriage should be banned. In fact, the secular reasons in favor of same-sex marriage are so readily apparent upon reflection that one wonders how so many seemingly intelligent people could be so overwhelmed by religious doctrine. But they are, at least in this country. I’d like to know more about why. It would be especially interesting to see if Rev. Dobson could rationalize his views. The man has some very good insight into family life, but what I hear him saying in the media about same-sex marriage seems grossly incompatible with his ideas about child rearing.

171. shoshm Says:
     May 21st, 2006 at 4:42 am

     I would like to see a show featuring someone like Jim Wallis (a born-again Christian with progressive political views and editor of Sojourner’s Magazine) and just about anyone mentioned in Manning120’s email.

     And I would like some really, really hard questions posed to politicians who say they are Christians. The Bush Administration seems to really try and spin its way out of the morality of torture (they keep trying to say that what they are doing is ‘legal’, but really, that is not the question); I can’t really see Jesus being in favor of sticking someone’s head in a toilet until they think they are going to drown.

     What would the Middle East be like today if we hadn’t been selling arms to the Taliban when they were fighting the Soviet Union? What if instead, we had been putting money into education and health care in Afganistan and Iraq? What if we had a Secretary of Peace instead of (or at least in addition to) a Secretary of War? If we are a ‘Christian’ nation, wouldn’t we be looking for ways to spread peace, equal opportunity and the means for education and health care to all peoples of the world? Wouldn’t these things be more reflective of Jesus’ example of love to even those who hate you?

172. Fungal_jungle Says:
     May 22nd, 2006 at 9:18 pm

     Three Words… Traditional Chinese Medicine

     *www.Qigonginstitute.org*
     http://www.nqa.org
     http://www.qi.org
     http://www.waydragon.com
     the list goes on. search TCM or Qigong to find more!
     (qi=chi)

173. RicHard Ryan Anderson Says:
     May 23rd, 2006 at 12:55 pm

     What I would like to know is, was The Educational System Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile?

     http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm

     This is a scary idea combined with the presidents no child left behind testing, right?

174. BigAlan Says:
     May 23rd, 2006 at 11:26 pm

     I am someone from outside America listening to Open source and learning some of the things that are really going on in America and the world. The war in Iraq stumbing into civil war, phone monitoring in America withquestionable authorisation, 100’s of Bush signing statements, white house lawyers along with the Ameriacn executive seeming to be using words to conceal the tructh, a comotose American congress and a comotose official new media scare people like me. Is America out of control? Where is America going ? Is the American voter as apathetic as in other countries like (New Zealand and Australia) or will the voter actually act to bring America back to a more sensible path? What might that path be? Can we the trust the American voter as the backstop who will bring their country back to its senses?

175. allison Says:
     May 25th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

     Have you seen this piece of US Rep. Owens (NY)?

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-major-r-owens/where-bush-leads-in-the-p_b_21569.html

     I find this the first inspiring leadership communication I have encountered in many a year. I think his notion of “Donocracy” and to move towards ending it is well worth many hours. But, of course, I can only hope for 1 on ROS. ;-D

176. Robert Ashworth Says:
     May 30th, 2006 at 8:19 pm

     Beyond just thinking about immigration, how about a show on population growth and the environment? Can we control population growth? Can we accomodate it. Can we also protect our environment?

     Here in Bellingham, population is increasing and many folks are alarmed. With construction everywhere and house prices shooting up some 23% in 2005 alone there is also a proliferation of “anti growth” activism. Organizations such as “Pro Whatcom” come to mind.

     Then there is the creativity of city planning which clashes with the fears about growth. Building up instead of sprawling out. Reducing automobile dependency, increasing neighborhood densities and walkability. Growth can be seen as an improvement.

     The US constitution will not allow Whatcom County (where Bellingham is) to build a fence on the county line.

177. brawleyj Says:
     May 30th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

     Pete Townshend.

     Pete’s been soaring ahead with a revival of new concepts, material, and amazing new blog/internet communications between himself and participants. Please check out his blog (The Boy Who Heard Music) and his girlfriend’s (Rachel Fuller) online show called “In the Attic�…much fun and in line with what I think Chris L. is interested in.

     http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/
     http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?id=289&zone=diary

     John

178. David Weinstein Says:
     May 31st, 2006 at 3:38 am

     Well I think Chris’ interview aired last night with Philip Roth was moving, intelligent, mind and heart provoking. All that I would expect of the best of ROS…. Urged on by Chris to describe our current social/political state of affairs, Mr. Roth I think put his finger on the pulse of the powerlessness we all feel in the face of the Bush/Rove/Chney et al machine. He also used the word “indecent.”

     Now what is more indecent and renders us more powerless than the widespread, in-your-face election fraud and vote suppression of the Bush/Rove/Cheney machine in the so-called 2004 elections.

     I submit, Chris, that it is time for you to step up to the plate, to go bravely where no reporter has gone before, and take straight on the election fraud issue. Primaries are happening now, mid-term elections are only a few months away… Here in California there is a race on to oust the secretary of state McPherson who certfied the notorious Diebold corporation to tabulate our elections despite failing his own test twice and not even deigning to show up the certification hearing.

     I would start with professor Mark Crispin Miller and his well researched and documented , Fooled Again, How the Right stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One too (Unless We Stop Them). Besdies the copious facts, he nails the sociology that made such an outrage possible, ties it to the extreme Christian Right, a shocking lack of ‘civic virtue’ among good men and women, and a bullied and supine press.

     Well there you have it. I will thank you, Mr. Roth will thank you, and if there is a God in heaven, She will thank you for bringing light to this darkness at the eahrt of of democratic system and society.

179. LindsayZinger Says:
     June 1st, 2006 at 3:30 pm

     I would like to suggest a topic for discussion on Open Source:

     The molestation scandals in the Catholic Church have received an enormous amount of press in recent years, but few people have taken a microcosmic look at these issues. While news coverage associated with these cases often shows how arrests and accusations affect the politics within the church, coverage rarely reveals how they affect the victims, the young boys and their families. How does years of abuse affects one’s ability to remain spiritual? How does one reconcile his feelings of betrayal and his belief in God? Why are victims often unable to reveal the abuse to their friends and family? What happens when a victim stays silent for over thirty years?

     Zingerplatz Pictures’ new feature-length documentary Hand of God seeks to answer these kinds of questions as it examines the life of Paul Cultrera, a Massachusetts native who was abused by Fr. Joseph Birmingham in 1964. The film follows Paul’s investigation to find others who suffered the same fate and to track down the clergymen who betrayed them. Heated encounters and interviews abound, the film is ultimately an engaging and vivid portrait of family, community, and the triumph of individual spirit.

     If you are interested in this topic or the documentary, please visit http://www.handofgodfilm.com.

     Upcoming Massachusetts Screenings:

     Cinema Salem
     Thursday June 8, 7pm
     Cinema Salem, One East India Square, Salem, MA
     http://www.cinemasalem.com/index.html
     Tickets may be purchased at the theatre starting June 2nd or by calling 978 744 1400 to reserve seats

     Boston International Film Festival
     Saturday June 10, 6 pm
     AMC/Lowe’s Theatre at Boston Commons, 175 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.
     Website & tickets: http://www.bifilmfestival.com/biffschedule.html 617-482-3900

     Paul and his brother Joe Cultrera will be present after both the Salem and Boston screenings to take part in discussion with the audience.

180. mulp Says:
     June 1st, 2006 at 8:28 pm

     As we head into the heat of political campaigns, how about a discussion of how to present issues to the voters?

     I recently participated in the moveon top issue voting and discussion, and what struck me was how the issues are framed in what is wrong, not in proposals for positive change. If change is advocated, the solution proposed is meaningless.

     for example, we have one of the following two types of campaign statements:

     - death is bad
     - I will end death

     Everywhere I interact, I see this as the means of debate. It is “stop immigration” not “remove the extrordiary incentive to immigrate to the US by any possible and at any expense” - when US businesses advertise in Mexico for workers and US businesses hire immigrants without question, clearly the rewards are great for overcoming immigration hurdles.

     If it were easy to not consume oil, then the past quarter century of “letting the market act” would have solved all the problems related to the unsustainable rate of consumption of oil and gas.

     As I was thinking of this problem, I caught up on my timeshifted NBR. viewing the special holiday edition of work in progress (may 30), and found a perfect expression of the failing in our factory education system, in the third segment.

     This provides a likely contributor to the discussion: Reported and Produced by Darren Gersh, NBR Washington DC Bureau Chief

     “In the shadow of Silicon Valley, we will visit a High School that stresses projects and team work similar to that encountered in the workplace. We will hear from Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, the nation’s leading thinker on high school reform, on what needs to be done to help our children and our nation prepare for the future.” - http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/WIP_home/ ——— suggests Linda Darling-Hammond

     “GERSH: Stanford education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond is one of the nation`s leading experts on high school reform. She says small learning communities are a big change from the high schools most of us remember.

     “LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: The factory model high school as we now call it Wall Street designed in about 1910 or 1920. The idea of that comprehensive high school was to cream off (ph) about 5 percent of the kids for specialized knowledge work. The notion of these schools was they were to select and sort kids, decide who was going to go where in the economy. Most of the work was not going to be thinking work and we were going to crank them out on this assembly line process.

     “GERSH: The curriculum is also different. Hillsdale focuses on project- based learning, helping students build up their expert thinking skills. Juniors like Monica Castaneda spend months researching the causes for a major problem confronting American society. Then they look for solutions.

     “MONICA CASTANEDA, JUNIOR, HILLSDALE HIGH SCHOOL: The projects just teach you how to think in a deeper sense. They teach you how to think about not just what`s going on in your normal life, but bigger, like, what the government`s doing. When you start doing projects like this, you think, if this isn`t being solved, what can I do to solve it in the future?

     “GERSH: Working in groups, researching problems, exploring solutions, presenting results, project-based learning is preparation for the knowledge economy. Unfortunately, it is relatively rare.

     “HAMMOND: You can get all the way through high school in this country and never have written an intensive research paper, never have had to go out and find and access resources and materials and solve problems and learn how to do difficult work with other people in a way that mirrors what you would do in the workplace and what you would do in college.”
     – http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/WIP_hammond1/index.html for longer version

     I can’t find quote by the student who was features in the story segment, but she expressed the methodology perfectly, and in a way that would challenge most politicians of any stripe. I suggest her as a candidate to explain how one tackles complex societal problems for you on the segment. Her first name is Monica, last name Castenado??, and can be seen/heard in the video clip http://www.pbs.org/nbr/wip/video2.html

     The NBR focus on “work” and “education” is interesting and perhaps worthy of a show, but the much more interesting aspect is the role of education in developing the skills needed to identify problems and then, most important, solutions that are both actual solutions and that are presented well to gain the support for implementation.

     Al Gore has presented a problem. Gov. Brian Schweitzer is presenting a policy solution, a market driven policy that addresses the problems of pollution, dependence on foriegn oil, and looming oil depletion.

181. hurley Says:
     June 3rd, 2006 at 2:57 am

     I’d like to hear a show about allegations that the 2004 election was stolen. (Was it Chris who let David Remnick’s lordly assertion that the elections were fair and anyone who disagreed a kook pass without comment?) Greg Palast has been investigating the story from the get-go, and Robert Kennedy Jr. has just weighed in with a long article on the subject in Rolling Stone.

182. Potter Says:
     June 3rd, 2006 at 12:30 pm

     Hurley and Dave Weinstein- I add my voice, also reverberating from the November and December suggestions, to your pleas. RFK might be amenable to being a guest.

     From DKos:

     The Most Important Thing About RFK Jr.’s Election Fraud Story

     The Rolling Stone article:

     Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

183. mrgc Says:
     June 3rd, 2006 at 5:43 pm

     I’d suggest featuring Mary Kay Magistad in a show on reporting from Asia. She’s been an independent, or nominally affiliated, reporter from that part of the world for 20 years. She’s the person I’d want to be if I had the nerve. I remember in particular once in the 90s that she was barricaded in some building in Phnom Penh, I think, with a Khmer Rouge leader who had come out of hiding, and there was a mob around the building, and she was broadcasting from inside. (The details, I must admit, are hazy, but my amazement that she was where she was remains.) It’s astonishing how much of the reporting from that part of the world originates with her.

     She has roots in the Boston area; I’ll bet she shows up around here occasionally. She’d be a great featured guest. She’s probably be great on China, but I’d rather hear her concentrate on how things are developing in Southeast Asia. (Of course, I lived in the Philippines for a while, so that may color my view on that)

184. Scarequotes Says:
     June 5th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

     What should the leading cause of death be?

     We’re all going to die. Someday. (Barring some incredible advances in medicine that confer virtual immortality on everyone.) How should that happen?

     We frequently hear about how such-and-such — heart disease, cancer, obesity, accidents, AIDS — is the leading cause of death among a subgroup of the population, or the population as a whole. And that inspires us to donate money to searching for a cure for whatever that thing is, and it inspires us to change our behavior to reduce our risk for whatever that cause is.

     And those are good things. Deaths from most of these things still come too early. And I doubt anyone really wants to die from painful cancers or AIDS or Alzheimer’s.

     But if we’re all going to die, all things being equal, what should the leading cause of death be? Heart disease in old age? Cancer? Suicide, especially of the death-with-dignity variety? In short, what’s the ultimate goal of modern medicine, short of immortality?

     I’d love to hear some medical professionals, medical ethicists, and just plain folks talk about this issue.

185. manning120 Says:
     June 5th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

     What a wonderful question Scarequotes raises! I second the motion.

     Here’s another topic: what should be the role of ordinary citizens in the domestic war on terrorism? Recently there’s been a skirmish over government funding of anti-terrorism measures in various parts of the country. The funds usually go to such things as strengthening security at chemical plants and ports, upgrading law enforcement and fire fighters’ training and equipment, etc. In my opinion, these will help only marginally. Terrorists can figure out ways around these measures. A side-effect of them is increased complacency among ordinary citizens. The American people aren’t ignorant sheep herded and guarded by government shepherds. They are, or should be, soldiers in the war on terrorism. The only truly effective way to prevent terrorism is for all citizens to watch for signs of terrorist plotting and report them to law enforcement officials trained to deal with the information without destroying civil liberties.

     The first lesson of Flight 93 – a lesson seldom mentioned despite the controversial movie released a few weeks ago – is that ordinary citizens, with absolutely no help from the government, after acquiring much less information than Bush administration officials who yawned at the revelations in the August 2001 briefing, can prevent catastrophes. The public should be advised, with the help but not domination of government, what particular things to watch for. For example, about a year ago an article appeared in the Times discussing how terrorists could contaminate milk supplies. After reading it, I, for one, will never look at a milk truck the way I did before. I think people who complained the terrorists were being educated underestimate the intelligence of both terrorists and our citizens. So, can we set up a terrorism clearinghouse to inform concerned citizens what to watch for? How else can people be involved directly in this war?

186. circusplexus Says:
     June 5th, 2006 at 10:39 pm

     I would like to suggest a show revolving around Michelle Goldberg’s new book “Kngdom Coming” which deals with the fundamentalist christian political movement and its push dominate American culture. I know in some circles it may feel like chrisian fundementalism may be on the wane, but i think the energy and determination of christian self-styled ayatollahs continues to threaten our freedoms.

187. Potter Says:
     June 7th, 2006 at 12:38 pm

     as per my above in today’s NYTimes, editorial - Block the Vote, Ohio Remix

     The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place “emergency” regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.

     ……Mr. Blackwell, who also happens to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, has a history of this sort of behavior……

     …..Under Mr. Blackwell’s edict, everyone involved could be committing a crime. Mr. Blackwell’s rules also appear to prohibit people who register voters from sending the forms in by mail. That rule itself may violate federal elections law…..

     ….Another of the nation’s most famous swing states, Florida, has been the scene of similar consternation and confusion since it recently enacted a law that is so harsh that the Florida League of Women Voters announced that it was stopping all voter registration efforts for the first time in 67 years.

188. Scarequotes Says:
     June 7th, 2006 at 7:12 pm

     Why do Americans settle for eating crappy food?

     Not just at home. Not just from vending machines. We patronize crappy restaurants and reward places that serve quantity, not quality.

     Hillel at TastingMenu.com has considered the question: “But the part that upsets me the most is the vicious cycle at work between the American food service industry and the American public. We expect garbage and restaurants give it to us. In huge quantities. The restaurants have no incentive to try and do better because they won’t be rewarded.”

     He links to Casing the Joint’s post Why 95% of US Restaurants Suck and How We Learn Not to Notice.

     Other countries, apparently, care about their food. Not primarily because it’s good for them, or good for the environment, or good for anything else — but because good food tastes good! And we, as a country, don’t seem to care about that. Why not?

     (And part of me wonders if it’s really better in other parts of the world…perhaps an angle worth investigating.)

189. manning120 Says:
     June 7th, 2006 at 9:07 pm

     Circusplexus (6/5/06) makes a suggestion similar to mine on May 19. Add Michelle Goldberg to the list of possible guests mentioned in that comment. It’s amazing that so many people have caught onto the dominionism agenda, and yet it remains not even a blip on the general public’s radar. The scary thing is that millions of Bible-believing Christians are just waiting to be instructed in what the Bible REALLY says, according to dominionists.

     In a related vein, I’ve been perplexed since becoming aware of Iraq’s existence by something no one ever discusses: what is it that drives Shiites and Sunnis to kill each other? Aren’t they all Muslims? If the Bush administration had ever considered this question, would they have even dreamed of trying to install democracy in Iraq?

190. bryongw Says:
     June 8th, 2006 at 9:57 am

     You guys might want to look into this brilliant blog:

     http://futility.typepad.com/

191. jgoldfin Says:
     June 8th, 2006 at 8:16 pm

     In pop culture, June is the month for weddings, for a day when years of anticipation and commercials comes to fruition. But with America’s divorce rate around 50%, a lot of us are finding our dream of marriage to be unrealistic. This year I’ve read two touching collections of essays on what makes a real marriage — one book by women and one by men. I think the topic would make a great show, especially this month, or soon after. I’d suggest you invite the editors.

     The book of multicultural essays by 24 women writers is called “Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes”. It was on The Boston Globe’s local bestsellers list for 8 weeks after it came out in February. You can reach the co-editors Karen Propp and Jean Trounstine through their website: http://www.whyimstillmarried.com/. The men’s book is “Committed : Men Tell Stories of Love, Commitment, and Marriage”, and is edited by Chris Knutsen and David Kuhn.

192. Scarequotes Says:
     June 8th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

     I think the marriage topic is a great idea, but the mythical 50% divorce rate isn’t one of them. It looks like about 1/3 of marriages in America end in divorce, though the 50% meme has been around for a few decades.

     But in an era when heterosexual marriage is supposedly “under attack” because of possible gay marriages, and there’s much discussion of what makes a marriage in the first place, a discussion with people whose marriages work could be fascinating.

193. Scarequotes Says:
     June 12th, 2006 at 1:49 pm

     With everyone’s sexual freedoms under attack, where is the sexual freedom movement?

     Dan Savage has argued that conservative assaults on gay rights were just the beginning:
     

     The GOP’s message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to f*** up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough s***. You’re going to have those babies, ladies, and you’re going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that’s too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

     Russel Shorto has written about the “war on contraception” in the NY Times magazine.

     Is there a war on sex? Are sexual freedoms being threatened? Savage asks, “What’s it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground?” A show dedicated to exploring that issue might be interesting. In addition to Savage and Shorto, Susie Bright or Tristan Taormino would be good people to talk to.

194. Scarequotes Says:
     June 12th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

     I meant to include this quote from the Shorto article in the above post. Pretend it’s there:
     

     For the past 33 years — since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960’s culminated in the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion,” says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission.

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196. fakesalt Says:
     June 14th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

     There have been previous shows on moderately challenging literary characters (e.g. Beckett) and there was recently a program on contemporary poets, but to this point there hasn’t been a discussion regarding the true avant-garde of poetry. I think this would be a truly fascinating program — and a look at a world not many people know about. As far as guest ideas, Charles Bernstein would be good (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bernstein) — a very funny, engaging guy. Also, Stephanie Young would be appropriate. She’s a poet, and also edited the recently released anthology /Bay Poetics/ (Faux Press). Oh, and Ron Silliman, who operates the (probably) most important poetry/poetics blog out there (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com). Another good out would be Kenneth Goldsmith, who re-typed an entire issue of the New York Times to create one of his books. He’s also the proprietor of ubu.com, which was mentioned on the Beckett program. There’s really just so much radical, conceptually interesting work going on, much of it centered around blogs, online poetry chapbooks, etc., etc. It’s an exciting time to be alive and reading and writing.

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