Trump Watch

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Iraq, Iran, and the Dubai Ports: IAN WILLIAMS will explain everything. He’s UN correspondent for The Nation; he writes the “Deadline Pundit” blog, and his most recent book is RUM: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776.
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PLUS: The Republicans call it “illegal immigration”:
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist SONIA NAZARIO recounts the journey of a 16-year-old Honduran boy who fought immense obstacles and peril to reach his mother in the US, who he hadn’t seen since he was five. Sonia’s book is Enrique’s Journey.

She will be in conversation with MARC COOPER at the downtown LA Public Library next Wed., March 8, at 7pm — reserve online here.
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TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON:
The American Army executed 70 of its own soldiers in Europe between 1943 and 1946. Almost all of them were black, in an army that was overwhelmingly white. How an American war of liberation turned into a Jim Crow nightmare: Duke University professor ALICE KAPLAN will explain. Her new book is The Interpreter.

MORE STUFF TO READ: JON WIENER, “A Night at Arianna’s: The Democrats and the War,” at TheNation.com or TruthDig.com.

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TERRY GROSS of NPR’s “Fresh Air” is heard by more than 4 million listeners on more than 400 radio stations — she talks about what went wrong in her interviews with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, and Bill O’Reilly. Also, she answers the question, “What is the deal with rumors that you are a lesbian?” Her book, All I Did was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists, is out now in paperback. (Originally broadcast November, 2004)

ALSO: HAMAS says it expects to head a new Palestinian government. Its leaders have said recently they will never accept the legitimacy of Israel, but will consider a “long-term truce” if Israel withdraws to its 1967 borders. For comment and analysis we turn to ROANE CAREY, he’s acting managing editor of The Nation — he’s also editor of The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent — it’s out now in paperback.

PLUS: MIKE DAVIS has a new book out: PLANET OF SLUMS: “Sometime in the next year or two, a woman will give birth in the Lagos slum of Ajegunle, a young man will flee his village in west Java for the bright lights of Jakarta, or a farmer will move his impoverished family into one of Lima’s innumerable pueblos novenes. The exact event is unimportant and it will pass entirely unnoticed. Nonetheless it will constitute a watershed in human history, comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions. For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural.”

AMOS OZ, the great Israeli novelist and peace activist, talks about the Hamas victory – and what it means for those who seek an end to the Israeli occupation. Amos Oz’s new book is How to Cure a Fanatic.

READ JON WIENER’s Q&A WITH AMOS OZ at TheNation.com

Plus: our post-mortem on Bush’s State of the Union address with HAROLD MEYERSON, who will comment on the surprising news that we are “winning” in Iraq — as well as Bush’s statement that “we can only preserve freedom with a renewed commitment to spying on Americans.” Harold writes for the LA Weekly, the American Prospect, and the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: The politics of country music: Chris Willman explains why, during the 2004 election, the entertainers campaigning for Bush were almost exclusively the country stars, and how the rightward drift of country music has parallelled the transformation of the once-Democratic south into the heart of the Republican mainstream. We’ll also talk about the great exceptions, from Willy Nelson to the Dixie Chicks. Chris Willman is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly; his book Rednecks & Bluenecks is out now frrm The New Press.

Web extra: The dilemma of the mainstream journalist: “How does one report the facts when the facts themselves are biased?” asks Rob Corddry on The Daily Show. “Facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda,” he says – maybe that’s why it’s so hard to find them.

Paradise is lost: Remembering New Orleans
For two decades ANDREI CODRESCU has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. Andrei is a refugee born in Transylvania who found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; and where, in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps. Alas, as we now know, Paradise is lost. His new book is New Orleans, Mon Amour — an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

ALSO:
For a brief moment, the country tried genuine interracial democracy — in the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Historian ERIC FONER explains; his new book is Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.

PLUS:
It was thirty years ago today: the legendary “Born to Run” album is back, remastered. ANTHONY deCURTIS of Rolling Stone will comment on the album where Bruce Springsteen left behind his adolescent definitions of love and freedom. Anthony’s most recent book is In Other Words : Artists Talk About Life and Work.

PLAYLIST: “Tenth Avenue Freezeout”; “Thunder Road”; “Backstreets”; “Born to Run.”

“it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us. . . .”

More Stuff to read: Jon Wiener on “UCLA’S DIRTY THIRTY” from The Nation

THE MYSTERIES OF MICHAEL JACKSON: Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the New York Times, talks about the weirdness and the alleged criminality, the great music and the dancing, and the rise and fall of the one-time king of pop. Her new book is On Michael Jackson.
Margo will be speaking Sunday Jan 22 at 5pm at the UCLA Hammer Museum -Wilshire & Westwood.

Also: our Washington update with DAVID CORN, on the CIA’s recent attack on the Pakistani village — an attempt to kill al Qaeda’s No. 2 man – but instead it killed a dozen civilians. “No one pays for this. No one is punished.” David is Washington editor of The Nation, and author of The Lies of George W. Bush.

Plus: how a small group of people eliminated slavery in the British Empire: it took them 50 years, but they never gave up.
Adam Hochschild will explain: His book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves is out now in paperback.

MORE STUFF TO READ: “Bush on Bin Laden’s Satellite Phone: Wrong Again” by Jon Wiener — TruthDig.com

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS INTERVIEW HERE
The man who stopped the My Lai massacre, Hugh Thompson, died on Jan 6, 2006.
He was a military helicopter pilot who put his helicopter down between the soldiers and villagers, ordering his men to shoot their fellow Americans if they attacked the civilians. “There was no way I could turn my back on them,” he later said of the victims. We’  interviewed him in February 2000.

also on this show on KPFK Wed. 1/11: SAM ALITO is sort of like ROBERT BORK: he has a long and full record of challenging liberal positions on presidential power, abortion, civil rights and control of corporations. More than any nomination in memory, his threatens to finally transform the court. ROBERT SCHEER will explain: he writes a syndicated column and edits TruthDig.com.

Plus: Israeli Prime Minister ARIEL SHARON’s massive stroke has caused an earthquake in the political landscape there – he had dominated Israeli politics for two decades and had been expected to win the next elections. But does the sudden end of his politicl career make any difference to the Palestinians? AMY WILENTZ will comment: she was Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, and wrote an award-winning novel, Martyr’s Crossing, about Palestinians and Israelis.

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AMOS OZ, the great Israeli peace activist and novelist, will talk about the future of the Mideast, and about his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness – it’s a fantastic book about growing up in Jerusalem in the forties and fifties, and it’s out now in paperback. (archive edition, originally broadcast 12/04)

ALSO: Jack Abramoff and the Mideast: JUAN COLE notes that Abramoff took money from Indian tribes — and gave it to right-wing Israelis establishing illegal settlements on Palestinian Land. Juan is professor of history at Michigan, president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, and he writes the famous “Informed Comment” blog.

PLUS: Spying on Americans – we’ll have an update from DAVID COLE of the Center for Constitutional Rights and The Nation magazine — he says Bush acted in direct violation of a criminal law. David’s new book is Terrorism and the Constitution, and he wrote recently in The Nation about the many ways President Bush has abused the power of his office.

Also: FRANK WILKINSON died Monday — he fought HUAC for 25 years, and went to jail for nine months in 1961 for refusing to anwer the question “Are you now or have you ever been?” He’s also a hero of Freedom of Information — his FOIA lawsuit led to the release of his FBI file, 132,000 documents, the largest on any individual ever released under the FOIA. Frank’s story was featured on Ry Cooder’s recent CD “Chavez Ravine” — we’ll listen to Ry sing his song about Frank, “Don’t Call Me Red.”
READ the New York Times obituary on Frank Wilkinson (it’s pretty good).

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Two takes on the year in review:
REBECCA SOLNIT says it was “a bad year for Goliath” – but not necessarily a good one for David. “Thirteen months ago,” she writes at TomDispatch.com, “when Bush was reelected, the despondent around me seemed to think that our future was graven in stone. But in the best and worst of ways, in this wild, wild year that ends so differently than it began, it has turned out to be written in water.” Her book Hope in the Dark is out now from Nation Books in a new edition.

ALSO: JOHN NICHOLS picks “the most valuable progressives of 2005.” John’s new book is Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy–he writes The Online Beat blog at TheNation.com.

And JEFF CHANG talks about hip-hop politics. In his new book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, Jeff shows how hip-hop was “forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica,” and how it has been “a generation-defining global movement.”
PLAYLIST: Africa Bambaataa, “Don’t Stop – Planet Rock” (1982); Public Enemy, “Fight the Power” (1988); India Arie, “Video” (2001); Kanye West, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” (2005).

A FINAL NOTE: Radio Nation’s last broadcast with host Marc Cooper on KPFK 90.7 FM will be this Friday 7-8am – the program will move to Air America radio, where the Laura Flanders show will become “Radio Nation with Laura Flanders” – heard in L.A. on KTLK 1150am Sunday nights from 8-11pm. Cooper started Radio Nation at KPFK in 1996, and the show is currently heard on more than 100 public and community stations. Cooper’s recent guests on Radio Nation have included Seymour Hersh, Gore Vidal, and Barbara Boxer, as well as Nation writers like David Corn and Victor Navasky. (Recently Marc has been guest hosting “Left Right and Center” on KCRW 89.9 FM.) So it’s time to say thank you to one of the greatest interviewers working in radio today — he gave me my start in show business, as a guest host on Radio Nation.

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SEGMENT:
Spying on Americans: George Bush says it’s a good thing – and he also thinks the president has the power to do it. DAVID COLE disagrees – he teaches law at Georgetown and his new book is Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security. His new article in The Nation looks at the many ways President Bush has abused the power of his office.

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SEGMENT:
Also: gay cowboys and straight cowboys: JOHN POWERS will explain the difference — a talk about Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” and Tommy Lee Jones’s “Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.” John writes the “On” column for the LA Weekly, he’s a commentator on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.”
His book Sore Winners: American Idols, Patriotic Shoppers, and Other Strange Species in George Bush’s America is out now in paperback.

LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SEGMENT:
And we”ll have our Washington political update with HAROLD MEYERSON. Harold is political editor of the LA Weekly, editor at large of the American Prospect, and op-ed page columnist for the Washington Post.

Plus: YOUR MINNESOTA MOMENT: neighbors of a state prison in suburban Minneapolis say they do NOT want a 12-foot security fence built – they say the prisoners make good neighbors.