Living in the USA

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How traffic works, and why we drive the way do: TOM VANDERBILT has been studying the most democratic place in America, where people of every race, class, religion, and age work together closely and successfully: in traffic. Tom answers questions like “Why does the other lane always move faster?” and “How much of bad traffic is caused by people looking for parking spaces?” Tom’s new book is TRAFFIC: Why We Drive the Way We Do. He also writes the blog “How We Drive.”

Plus: Randy Newman has “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” on his new CD, “Harps and Angels.”

Also: Myth and Mysogyny after 9-11 – that’s the subject of SUSAN FALUDI’s book The Terror Dream—out now in paperback. It’s a story about flight-suit superheroes, cowering “security moms,” Jessica-Lynchesque helpless “girls,” and Daniel Boone–wannabe politicians. Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of the best seller Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women.” (Originally broadcast 10-31-07)

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The first military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay has come up with a predictable verdict of “guilty” for Osama bin Laden’s driver in the first US war crimes tribunal since WWII. But Salim Ahmed Hamdan was found “not guilty” of conspiracy. The ACLU has called the trial ‘an embarrassment.’ UCI’s new law school dean ERWIN CHEMERINSKY will comment.
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Also: As host to the Olympics for the first time, China wants to be seen not as a country with a low-wage capitalist labor system and totalitarian restrictions on politial expression, and not as a central force for global warming and environmental devastation, but rather as a friendly world power. JEFFREY WASSERSTROM will comment; he teaches Chinese history at UC Irvine, is co-founder of The China Beat blog, and his latest blog at the Huffington Post, with Kate Merkel-Hess, is ‘Five Things We Wish George Bush Would Read Before his Olympic Trip to China.’

Plus: Medical Marijuana is transforming the pot industry, making pot the leading cash crop in America in 2006 – when 20 million pot plants brought in something like fourteen billion dollars. DAVID SAMUELS of The New Yorker will explain — he spent six months with a pot broker in Venice, in pot grow rooms, and in other places where medical marijuana is produced, traded, sold and consumed in California.

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The LA Times laid off 150 people from the newsroom last week; the stand-alone book review was published for the last time last Sunday; this week the paper is the thinnest it’s ever been. The new owner, Sam Zell, seems to hold his employees in utter contempt. But what is his plan? How can he get more readers by offering them less? We’ll have comment from KEVIN RODERICK –he publishes the indispensable source on the Times, LAObserved — and from KIT RACHLIS, editor-in-chief of LA Magazine.
Thurs. Aug. 14, 7pm: “LA Without the LA Times?” panel with Kevin Roderick, Kit Rachlis and others: Downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series.

Plus: John McCain opposes contraception – have you heard about this from the mainstream media? KATHA POLLITT, columnist for The Nation, has been listening to McCain — she will explain. Also, Katha on the candidates’ wives, Michelle and Cindy.

Also: Bottlemania: Fiji Water comes from 5,000 miles away; they say that makes it better. Poland Spring is good American water, but the good people of Maine have been fighting Nestle to keep the multinational from taking all their groundwater and selling it to other people. Tap water should be better, but it has some problems too. Elizabeth Royte tackles the question, What is to be done? Her new book is BOTTLEMANIA: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.
Lots more info at Elizabeth’s water links: here.

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In an effort to shore up his support among Jewish voters, many of whom voted for Hillary, Obama visits Israel Tuesday and Wednesday. His schedule includes trips to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, and Sderot, the town that is the frequent target of Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. AMY WILENTZ will comment – she was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker. Her most recent piece, in New York magazine, discusses Jimmy Carter�s place in the current campaign: ‘a walking McCain talking point.’

Plus: Women in politics after Hillary: there’s a serious shortage of women in elected office. In the aftermath of Hillary�s campaign, HAROLD MEYERSON looks at the future of women in politics — and who is leading the next wave of female candidates. Hint: they aren’t from states where religious traditionalism is strong, or where old-line political organizations hold power. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.
SEE the Vanity Fair McCain parody of the New Yorker‘s Obama cover.

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Young people in the Mideast are not all religious fundamentalists. MARK LeVINE found Morroccans who loves Black Sabbath, rappers in the Gaza Strip, and a young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song.’ — Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest — across North Africa and the Mideast, Mark says. Mark is a musician and historian at UC Irvine; his new book about the globalization of popular music is HEAVY METAL ISLAM: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

Also: UC Workers on strike: JACK MILES writes in the LATimes, “A single parent living in Riverside County or Orange County needs to earn $24.74 an hour to make ends meet. . . . But after 10 months of negotiation, $11.50 an hour is the last, best offer the 10-campus University of California has made to 8,500 gardeners, janitors, kitchen workers, parking attendants and the like. In response, their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, called a five-day strike, which began Monday.” — continued here.

Plus: one Guantanamo story: Adel Hamad was a hospital adminsitrator from Sudan who was doing refugee relief work in Pakistan when he was taken from his apartment, hooded and shackled, and moved to Guantanamo Bay on charges of connections with al-Queda. He�s been there for four years. He has an attorney: STEVEN T. WAX, a federal public defender in Portland. Steve�s book is KAFKA COMES TO AMERICA: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror — A Public Defender�-‘s Inside Account — he�ll be speaking in the ALOUD series at the downtown LA public library, 5th and Flower streets, Wed. at 700pm: reservations free but recommended: here.

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‘If a place is truly beautiful,’ BARBARA EHRENREICH says, ‘you can’t afford to be there.’ Barbara’s new book is THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND; she’ll be reading and signing at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont, Thursday July 10, 7:30pm.
JOIN Barbara and the L.A. CLEAN Carwash campaign
WATCH Barbara on The Colbert Report— she tells Stephen, “I’m talking about the super-rich. I don’t think you qualify.”

Plus: LALO ALCARAZ of the Pocho Hour of Power talks about “Clash of the Pochos,” the July 27 KPFK benefit concert featuring Culture Clash.

Also: Obama in the center: TOM HAYDEN says Obama “could put his entire candidacy at risk if his audacity on the war in Iraq continues to shrivel.” Tom writes about Obama and the war in the new issue of The Nation. We’ll also talk about his life as a writer, and the relationship between writing and activism.
His new book, a collection of his writings over the last 40 years, is Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader.

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Ike was right about the Military-Industrial Complex — that’s what ROBERT SCHEER argues. The US military budget for 2008 was $647 billion, more than 25 percent larger, in real terms, than the one for 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war. The military-industrial complex today is more powerful, more wasteful, and more destructive than ever. Bob is editor in chief of Truthdig.com, co-host of ‘Left, Right and Center’ on KCRW; his new book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.

Also: A Palestinian life: Sari Nusseibeh is a leading Palestinian intellectual and political figure, a long-time advocate of a two-state solution, and the PLO’s chief representative in Jerusalem in 2001 and 2002. His memoir Once Upon a Country is out now in paperback (originally broadcast May 2, 2007).

Plus: the ‘good news’ from Iraq, we are told, is that ‘the surge is working,’ violence is down. TOM ENGELHARDT says ‘don’t be fooled’: “Iraqis are still dying in prodigious numbers, and significant numbers of those dying are doing so at the hands of Americans.” Tom’s prediction: “This cannot end well. Not for Washington. Not for the U.S. military. Not for Americans. And, above all, not for Iraqis.” Tom edits the indispensable blog TomDispatch.com; his new book is The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire.

Your Minnesota Moment: A state judge in Minneapolis ruled that Wal-Mart violated state laws on rest breaks and other wage matters more than 2 million times and as a result could face more than $2 billion in fines.

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Politicians tell us how smart the American people are. But the evidence is overwhelming: American voters are ignorant, shortsighted and swayed by meaningless rhetoric. A Washington Post poll in 2003 found that 70 per cent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. A majority continued to believe this even after the 9/11 Commission reported that the claim was groundless. RICK SHENKMAN, author of the new book JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE? says we can blame the president and the media, but we also have to face the truth about the American voter. Rick teaches history at George Mason U. and founded the History News Network website.

Also: BARBARA EHRENREICH tried living on low-wage work — she tells that story in her classic book Nickel and Dimed, out now in a new paperback edition (originally broadcast May 22, 2003.

Plus: The ‘State Secrets Privilege’ allows the president and the executive branch to conceal conduct, withhold documents and block civil litigation in the same of national security. It didn’t always exist — it was created in 1953. BARRY SIEGEL, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has undercovered the facts that led the Supreme Court to create the privilege — a mysterious 1948 crash of an Air Force B-29 in Georgia, and the efforts of the families of the men who died in the crash to find out what happened. Barry�s new book is CLAIM OF PRIVILEGE: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets.

Okay, the primaries are over. How much damage did Hillary do to the Democrats — and to Obama? “The Clintons have behaved execrably,” Bob Herbert writes in the NYTimes, “But weak-willed party leaders showed neither the courage nor the inclination to stop them from fracturing the party along gender and ethnic lines.” HAROLD MEYERSON will comment: he’s executive editor of The American Prospect and writes for the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times: AMY GOODMAN talks about grassroots activists who have taken politics out of the hands of politicians, ordinary citizens who have challenged injustice — and won. Amy of course is host of �Democracy Now� , which airs on KPFK and more than 600 radio and TV stations around the world and on Democracynow.org. Her new book, co-authored by her brother David Goodman, is Standing Up to the Madness.

We will be featuring Standing Up to the Madness today as a KPFK fund drive premium – Pledge Online.
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Plus: Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary “The 11th Hour” argues that we’ve arrived at the last moment when change is still possible, when our impact on the earth’s ecosystem is not yet fatal. We’ll talk about the film and listen to clips featuring Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, scientist Stephen Hawking, R. James Woolsey (former head of the CIA) and sustainable design experts.
We will be featuring “The 11th Hour” as a KPFK fund drive premium–pledge online.

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The Age of Reagan: is it coming to an end? In 1964 the conservative movement seemed nearly dead. Then it manged to seize power and dominate American politics for the past 35 years. Historian SEAN WILENTZ will talk about Ronald Reagan – how his rise was hardly inevitable; how his successes had little to do with conservative ideology; and how the nearly forgotten Iran-Contra scandal was a fundamental challenge to the constitution and democracy. Sean teaches history at Princeton; his new book is The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.

Plus: Your Minnesota Moment: in preparation for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the local FBI is soliciting informants to keep tabs on local protest groups and their “vegan potlucks” — a report by Matt Snyders in CityPages.

Also: The “Frozen Chosen:” MICHAEL CHABON won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay – now after seven years he’s back with another one that’s dazzling fun: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, out now in paperback. In the wake of WWII, the US permits immigrant Jews to settle in Sitka, Alaska (which was in fact proposed by FDR) after the defeat of the nascent state of Israel. Our hero is detective Meyer Landsman, “a crazy little Jew with a question and a gun.” (originally broadcast May 9, 2007)

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