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Legendary investigative reporter SEYMOUR HERSH says Obama’s best chance for restarting the Mideast peace process is mediating talks between Israel and Syria.  Syria’s president Bashar Assad told Hersh that despite Israel’s war on Gaza, he is very interested in closing a deal on the Golan Heights.  Hersh writes about “Syria Calling” in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Plus: in Agfhanistan and Pakistan,  TOM ENGELHARDT says, the US is  “trading in a limited war in a mountainous, poverty-stricken country of 27 million people for one in an advanced nation of 167 million, with a crumbling economy, rising extremism, advancing corruption, and a large military armed with nuclear weapons.”  Tom wrote about “The Great Afghan Bailout” for his indispensable website TomDispatch.com.

Also: What a billion Muslims really think:  the Gallup poll did 50,000 interviews with Muslims  in 35 countries, and found that Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable; that large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution — and they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution. DALIA MOGAHED will explain — she’s Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think.

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Hunting the Mortgage Predators: BOBBI MURRAY will report on the mortgage-backed securities business and how it propelled the aggressive marketing of hideously risky loan “products.” Bobbi has reported on politics, economics, police reform and healthcare issues for Los Angeles magazine, The Nation and LA Weekly, and she’s a contributor to the new book Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered our Financial System and How We Can Recover.

Also: RICHARD PRICE talks about his novel LUSH LIFE – it’s out now in paperback, and it’s about intersecting worlds on the Lower East Side: yuppies, Chinese immigrants, kids from the projects, old Jews, and of course the cops.  Michael Chabon calls Richard Price “one of the best writers of dialogue in the history of American literature.”
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Plus: the KPFK Dodger preview!  DAVE ZIRIN is sports columnist for The Nation magazine, their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. He also writes for the L.A. Times and The Progressive; his new book is A People’s History of Sports in the United States – and we’ve seen him recently on the Rachel Maddow show. 

More stuff to read: my new post at TheNation.com, “Obama’s ‘Katrina Moment’?  Never Mind.”

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“We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent,” AIG says, unless they pay those bonuses — $165 million. Barney Frank had the best and brightest reply: on the Rachel Maddow Show Monday night, he said: “I don’t want to retain them.” JOHN NICHOLS will comment – he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Also: Obama’s economic stimulus provided NOTHING for New Orleans hurricane recovery or flood protection.  For a reminder on what Katrina and President Bush did to New Orleans, we’ll speak with DAN BAUM – after Hurricane Katrina he moved to New Orleans to write about the city’s response to the disaster for The New Yorker.  His new book Nine Lives reveals the hidden history of a haunted and beloved city told through the intersecting lives of nine remarkable characters.

Plus: novelist PETER CAREY has won two Booker prizes: the first for Oscar and Lucinda, which was made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett; the second for The True History of the Kelly Gang, which sold two million copies worldwide. Now his tenth novel is out in paperback: His Illegal Self, which tells the story a seven-year-old boy whose parents are part of the Weather Underground.  (Originally broadcast 3-12-08)

More stuff to read: My new piece at TheNation.com, “AIG’s ‘Best and Brightest.’”

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How a well-connected oil company revolutionized the way America makes war – and why Obama still needs them: PRATAP CHATTERJEE talks about the past and future of Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR.  Pratap is the managing editor of CorpWatch and has written for the Financial Times, the Guardian and The Independent of London. He recently appeared on the Rachel Maddow show, where he talked about his new book Halliburton’s Army.

Also: Your Minnesota Moment: Remember Franken & Davis on the old Saturday Night Live? Al Franken’s comedy partner TOM DAVIS will talk about how they met in prep school in Minneapolis, went on to SNL, and why Al ran for Senate and Tom didn’t. Tom’s new book is Thirty-Nine Years of Short Term Memory Loss. He’ll be in conversation with Laraine Newman Thurs Mar. 19, 7:30pm at Writers Bloc at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills.

Plus: The old, weird American music: Art Rosenbaum’s “Art of Field Recording” vol. 1 won the Grammy for best historical album; now v. II is out. We’ll speak with Lance Ledbetter, who produced the new 4-CD set for Dust-to-Digital.
READ the New Yorker article HERE.
PLAYLIST: “Garfield”-Jack Staggers, 1981; “Brother you ought t’ve been there”-Nathaniel Mitchell, 1979; “John Henry”–Lawrence Eller, 1978; “John Henry”–Mose Parker, 1961; “Old Joe Clark”-Helen McDuffie, 2007.

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Hillary In Ramallah: Sec. of State Clinton visited Palestinian leaders on the West Bank this morning — for comment and some historical perspective, we turn to RASHID KHALIDI, he holds the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University, and his new book is Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.

And: Socialism in Washington?  “We’re all socialists now,” says Newsweek. HAROLD MEYERSON of the Washington Post op-ed page isn’t so sure: “I’ve still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation’s capital: Vermont‘s Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and  the guy I see in the mirror when I shave,” he says.

Plus: Honeymoon in Tehran: a report on love and danger in the Islamic Republic: we’ll speak with Azadeh Moaveni — she was pregnant and unmarried in Iran last year — not a good place to be.  And she attended government sex ed classes for brides-to-be.  She also reported on Iran’s nuclear program for Time magazine.

More stuff to read: my new piece in The Nation, “Opening the Files on Bush’s Secrets.”  A Freedom of Information wish list: What did Treasury do with the TARP money? Who authorized torture? Plus, warrantless wiretap targets, FEMA’s Katrina records and White House e-mail.

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Last night in his address to Congress Obama argued that the economic crisis requires structural shifts involving health care, energy and education reform. The Republican Party’s answer: just say “no.”  JOHN NICHOLS will comment: he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and he writes The Beat blog at TheNation.com.

The KPFK fund drive continues!  Please call 818-985-5735 during the show to pledge your support, or pledge online at kpfk.org.
Our featured fund drive premium today is the DVD of Werner Herzog’s awesome documentary Encounters at the End of the World. “Few filmmakers make the end of days seem as hauntingly beautiful as Werner Herzog does, or as inexorable,” Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times.  “This professional madman and restlessly curious filmmaker travels to the blinding white of the Antarctic, where he meets melancholic scientists, brooding journeymen and various poets of the soul.”

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“Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story,” nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film,  is about Israeli soldiers’ memories of one night in Beirut in 1982 when they stood by while Christian militia members massacred thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The New York Times called it “a furious act of conscience and lament.”  It’s been compared to Art Spigelman’s Maus.
Now Waltz with Bashir is also a gorgeous graphic book, and we’ll be speaking with co-author DAVID POLONSKY — and featuring the book as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.

ALSO: “MAKE ’EM LAUGH: The Funny Business of America” is a six-hour documentary that explores how comedy has dealt with our politics, race relations, gender issues, and the taboos in everyday life over the past century. Hosted by Billy Crystal.  We will listen to Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, “All in the Family,” and others featured on the program — and we will be featuring the DVD of “Make ’em Laugh” as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.

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The essential guide to the left in America – to help find our kinds of places close to home and on the road. Editor RICHARD LINGEMAN will talk about the new book THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION: organic and slow-food restaurants, bookshop cafes, parades and festivals, no-sweat clothing stores, and alternative weeklies — and also the blogosphere.
We are featuring The Nation Guide to the Nation as a KPFK fund drive premium.
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ALSO: “THE TRAP: What happened to our Dream of Freedom” is the latest BBC documentary from award-winning director ADAM CURTIS – the man who made “Century of the Self”and the unforgettable “Power of Nightmares.” “The Trap” criticizes the idea that  human beings are inevitably self-seeking.  Contributors include R.D. Laing, Clancy Sigal, Tom Frank, Robert Reich, Kevin Phillips, and Franz Fanon. We are featuring “The Trap” on DVD as a KPFK fund drive premium.

And: Your Minnesota Moment: the Al Franken Senate saga continues–we’ll have an update.

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Dick Cheney yesterday said if there’s another terrorist attack, it will be Obama’s fault.  Rush Limbaugh says about Obama’s economic stimulus plan, “I hope he fails.”  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment – he’s editor-at-large of the American Prospect, and writes for the op-ed page of the Washington Post. He also had a piece on “Labor’s Real Fight” in the LA Times on Sunday.

Also: “I was tortured by the American military”: that’s what DAVID MORRIS says – as a marine, he was sent to the military’s secretive torture school—it’s been called “a repository of the world’s knowledge about torture.” Dave writes for Slate and The Nation; his book is Storm on the Horizon, about a Gulf War battle.

Plus: Christian punk and heavy metal: EILEEN LUHR talks about how the evangelical right embraced rock n roll in the Reagan-Bush era. Eileen teaches history at Cal State Long Beach; her new book is Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture; Mike Davis calls it “highly original, witty, and at times mind-boggling.”

And: Your Minnesota Moment: yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly – he was on his way to perform in Moorhead Minnesota.

More stuff to read: my new piece at The Nation, “Let the Sun Shine In.”