jwiener

Getting rid of Bad Sheriff Baca: KPFK 3/5

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
LA Sheriff Lee Baca ran some of the worst prisons in America, right here in LA; a year ago it seemed like there was no way to get rid of him.  Then last month he resigned.  CELESTE FREMON explains how we did it: she writes the indispensable WitnessLA blog, and reported on the sheriff for LA Magazine.

TOM FRANK: Why Democrats are scared of “class”: “’Inequality’ is what we say when we mean to describe the ruined downtown of your city, or your constant fear that the next round of layoffs will include you.”  Tom, author of the classic What’s the Matter with Kansas, recently moved his column from Harper’s to Salon.com, where it is free.

The politics of grapes in Chile and the US: after seizing power in 1973, Augusto Pinochet made Chile the world’s leading grape exporter. Fruit workers, mostly women, started to buy appliances, clothing, and cosmetics, and consumerism changed gender relations as well as pro-democracy movements.  Meanwhile, back in the US, the United Farm Workers and Chilean solidarity activists boycotted grapes. HEIDI TINSMAN will explain – she teaches history at UC Irvine; her new book is Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States.

 

Oliver Stone on US History: KPFK 2/26

Today on KPFK we’ll speak with OLIVER STONE about the Untold History of the United States – it’s his 10-part documentary, analyzing the American empire especially after WWII.  It’s provocative, massively documented, and a necessary antidote to the mainstream media’s celebration of American triumphalism—and the DVD is our featured thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.  Please call and pledge during the show: 818-985-5735.
READ my piece from The Nation about Oliver Stone’s “Untold History” HERE.

 Also: JOHN NICHOLS with today’s political update: John is Washington Correspondent for The Nation, and he blogs at www.TheNation.com.

The Talibanization of Hindu History: TheNation 2/14

When Penguin Books announced on Feb. 11 that it would withdraw from India and pulp The Hindus: An Alternative History in response to a lawsuit claiming the book “has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus,” it was only the latest in a series of surrenders by distinguished publishers in the face of militant Hindu fundamentalism….
…more at TheNation.com HERE

7 Questions for Rachel Kushner: The Nation, 2/13

JW: you’ve said there are disadvantages to the paperback.
RK: Yes, I said this softer edition is less useful for protecting yourself against the blows of an officer. I was kidding around, remembering the episodes at UC schools in California where people at demonstrations used books to protect themselves from riot police.
. . . continued at  The Nation, HERE.

LA & NYC: Left Politics in 2 Cities: KPFK 2/5

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
LA and NYC: two new progressive mayors; two cities with a shrinking middle class and a vast low-wage service sector, and with an effective labor-liberal political alliance. So why are the agendas of the two cities’ mayors, Bill de Blasio and Eric Garcetti, shaping up so differently?  Analysis from HAROLD MEYERSON – he writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page; he’s editor-at-large of The American Prospect, and he wrote about LA and NYC for the LA Times op-ed page.

Also: We’re still thinking about PETE SEEGER, who died last week.  We’ll talk about Pete with PETER DREIER – he says (in The Nation), “Every day, every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song.”  Peter’s new book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century—of course Pete is one of them.

We’ll listen to my 1981 interview with Pete Seeger about the day he led half a million people singing “Give Peace a Chance” at the Vietnam Moratorium in 1969–Plus: “The Ballad of Pete Seeger”–the 2-hour Pacifica special, featuring Tim Robbins with Pete.  We’ll speak with the writer/producer MARK TORRES.  “The Ballad of Pete Seeger” is our featured thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive: please call and pledge during the show: 818-985-5735.

Rachel Kushner on “The Flamethrowers”: KPFK 1/29

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
Art, revolution, and motorcycles—and a girl called “Reno”: they’re all in RACHEL KUSHNER’s glorious novel The Flamethrowers.  It was a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller, and it’s out now in paperback.

Plus: Edward Snowden: hero, or traitor?  DAVID COLE says “Consider what we have learned from Snowden’s leaks and the further government disclosures that they prompted.”  David wrote about Edward Snowden—and Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange – for the New York Review.

Also: JOHN NICHOLS on Obama’s State of the Union—right on wages, wrong on trade—and on our hero Pete Seeger, who died Monday.  John is Washington Correspondent for The Nation.

Pete Seeger’s Biggest Day: The Nation, 1/28

November 15, 1969—“Vietnam Moratorium Day”—nearly half a million people gathered on the mall in Washington DC, to protest the war, and Pete Seeger was on the stage. “I guess I faced the biggest audience I’ve ever faced in my life,” he told me in an 1981 interview. “Hundreds of thousands, how many I don’t know. They stretched as far as the eye could see up the hillside and over the hill.”  The song he sang was “Give Peace a Chance” . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

When Nixon asked Haldeman about Philip Roth. . . . L.A. Review of Books 1/25

RICHARD NIXON didn’t talk much about American writers. On the White House tapes, which recorded his conversations from February 1971 to July 1973, there’s no mention of Norman Mailer, John Updike, or Gore Vidal. There’s no mention of best-selling authors of the era like William Peter Blatty of The Exorcist or Frederick Forsyth of The Day of the Jackal. But Nixon did talk about Philip Roth.
NIXON: What if anything do you know about the Roth book?
HALDEMAN: Oh, a fair amount.
. . . continued at LA Review of Books, HERE.

Gary Shteyngart Q&A: The Nation 1/23

JW: You spent your first seven years in the Soviet Union—what was your 7-year-old understanding of communism, of Lenin himself?

GS: Let’s start with Lenin. One of the biggest statues of Lenin was in Leningrad right outside our window. I loved Lenin so much that I would wake up every morning and hug his pedestal. When I was 5, I wrote a book called Lenin and His Magical Goose, in which Lenin and a talking goose conquer Finland and make it a socialist country. I very much wanted to become a soldier in the Red Army, or a cosmonaut. I wanted to try to launch an attack against the United States and make it safe for socialism.
– – – continued at The Nation, HERE.

NSA “Reform,” from Nixon to Obama: Rick Perlstein KPFK 1/22

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
President Obama has proposed “reforms” of the NSA, suggesting we need a plan to come up with a plan about bulk metadata gathering on civilians.  RICK PERLSTEIN compares Obama’s proposals with the Church Committee’s final report from 1976 on spying on Americans.  Short version: the Nixon administration was better.

Also: the My Lai massacre was not an isolated incident; millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians were killed and wounded by American forces—“a My Lai a month” is what award-winning reporter NICK TURSE calls it.  His decade of research in secret Pentagon archives and interviews with vets and Vietnamese are the basis of his important book, KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES: The Real American War in  Vietnam–it’s out now in paperback.

Plus: Slavery, freedom, and Islamophobia: GREG GRANDIN uncovered the true story of a rebellion on a slave ship in 1805–by African Muslims– that inspired Herman Melville to rethink slavery and freedom 50 years later.  It’s a story with  echoes in our own time as Tea Party activists charge that Obama is a secret Muslim from Africa.   Greg teaches history at NYU; his magnificent new book is The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.  It is featured on the cover of The Nation this week.