NSA Secrets: KPFK Wed. 7/21

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 America’s most powerful – and most secretive – intelligence service is the National Security Agency – they’re the people who monitor cell phones and computer networks around the globe and here at home.  MATTHEW AID has been researching the NSA for a long time – and now his book The Secret Sentry is out in paperback.  Also: READ James Bamford on the NSA HERE.

Also: Obama is having a bad summer – who do the Republicans have on deck to challenge him?  JOHN NICHOLS says it looks like SARAH PALIN is the best they’ve got–and, he says, the current primary season shows her to be smarter and more capable than we thought.  John is Washington correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Also: KPFK Sports!  The owners are ruining the games we love – that’s what DAVE ZIRIN says, starting with George Steinbrenner, who died recently.  The big question: Are the Frank and Jamie McCourt, owners of the Dodgers,  spending more money on their divorce lawyers than on their pitching staff? Dave writes about the politics of sports in his new book Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love.

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The Muslim World and the US: KPFK Wed. 7/14

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 How Obama should engage the Muslim World: historian JUAN COLE says the Muslim world is not a bloc but rather is full of close allies or potential allies; Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement but rather a small political cult; US  “energy independence” is impossible — we will need Islamic oil for the rest of the 21st century.  Juan writes theblog “Informed Comment”; his book Engaging the Muslim World will be out in paperback in Sept.

Also: How a new form of slavery was imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans after the Civil War: DOUGLAS BLACKMON found that tens of thousands of southern blacks were arrested, often for “vagrancy;” unable to pay their fines, they were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. His book Slavery by Another Name won 2009 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction; it’s out now in paperback.

Plus: Is Dick Cheney now the leader of the Republican Party? BART GELLMAN of the Washington Post talks about Cheney’s past — his hidden role in the Bush administration’s most fateful choices: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting “cruel and inhuman” methods of interrogation.  Bart Gellman’s book ANGLER, out now in paperback, won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Nonfiction for 2009.  Watch Bart Gellman on The Daily Show HERE.
show originally broadcast 5-6-09.

Israel’s Last Chance? KPFK Wed. 7/7

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 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu met with Obama yesterday — AMY WILENTZ argues that if Netanyahu cannot be convinced to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians by the end of the summer, “the two-state solution may well be doomed, and eventually …  so may the state of Israel.”  Amy was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker; her new piece is at Politico.

Also: MAZEL TOV, MIS AMIGOS: JOSH KUN has unearthed some amazing connections between Latin and Jewish popular music – from Yiddish mambos to Fiddler on the Roof charangas.  Also: how Tito Puente ended up playing the Catskills.  Josh teaches at USC’s Annenberg school and is director of the Popular Music Project there.  He curated the exhibition “Jews on Vinyl” currently at the Skirball Museum, and will be hosting a listening party tomorrow/Thurs there at 730pm.  Details HERE.

Plus: How Bush’s wars became Obama’s: TOM ENGELHARDT analyzes “a disaster that is yet to end.”  Tom created and runs the indispensable TomDispatch.com, and is the author of The End of Victory Culture; Andrew Bacevich says “Tom Engelhardt is the I.F. Stone of the post 9/11 age.”  Tom’s new book is THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR.

Rebecca Skloot on Henrietta Lacks: KPFK 6/16

How racism, poverty and science came together in the case of a poor black woman whose cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medical research.  Rebecca Skloot tells that story; her book is THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS.
We’ll be offering the book as a fund drive premium, along with the documentary about Henrietta Lacks by Adam Curtis, “The Way of All Flesh,” on DVD.  (originally broadcast 4/28/10)
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Also: Legalization of marijuana will be on the Nov. 2 ballot in California: for our fund drive premium today we are featuring The Marijuana Grower’s Handbook: The Indoor High Yield Cultivation Grow Guide, by ED ROSENTHAL, “the guru of ganja” and the same Ed from the “Ask Ed” grow tips column of High Times magazine: everything you need to know in a beautiful 500 page illustrated book.  (originally broadcast 5-19-10)

John Waters & his “Role Models”: KPFK Wed. 6/9

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 JOHN WATERS — filmmaker, actor, writer, mensch — will be live in-studio to talk about his new book ROLE MODELS.  It’s a self-portrait by the man who made cult classics “Hairspray,” “Pink Flamingos,” and “Cecil B. Demented” –writing about the people who have inspired him: Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and ‘Manson girl’ Leslie Van Houten — he says “it’s time to parole her.”
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It’s the KPFK fund drive: please call 818-985-5735 and pledge during the hour, and we can send you a copy of John Waters’s new book Role Models as a thank you gift — or the DVD of “Hairspray.”
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Also this hour:  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment on yesterday’s primary elections. He’s op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and editor at large of the American Prospect, where he wrote yesterday about “Why Republicans Should Give Up on California.”

Israel’s Attack on Gaza Aid Ships: KPFK Wed. 6/2

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Israel’s attack on the Gaza Movement’s aid ships: ROANE CAREY of The Nation asks, “What madness could have driven the Israeli government to order its navy to attack, in international waters, a flotilla of ships full of human rights activists, MPs from governments around the world, a Nobel Prize winner and two former US diplomats?”  And will the Israeli attack bring international pressure to end the blocade of Gaza?

Plus: A strike in China at an enormous Honda transmission factory has unexpectedly turned into a symbol of the exploitation of Chinese workers.  JEFFREY WASSERSTROM comments; he teaches history at UCI, writes for the Huffington Post and the China Beat blog, and his new book is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know .

Also: The US role in giving birth to Al Qaeda as an anti-Soviet force in Afghanistan is well-known — but it was not the beginning of enlisting Islamists to fight the Soviets.  Pulitzer-prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter IAN JOHNSON traces the practice back to Hitler in WWII, and then to the CIA in Germany during the Cold War.  He tells the story in A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West.

Arizona Immigration Laws & Sports: KPFK 5/26

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Arizona’s anti-immigrant laws have sparked opposition in the world of sports.  There’s a campaign to get Major League Baseball to move the All-Star game out of Phoenix.  A lot of athletes have been great, but there’s one big exception: Lakers Coach Phil Jackson.  DAVE ZIRIN will explain – he’s sportswriter for The Nation, he writes the blog Edge of Sports, and he’s author of A People’s History of Sports.

Also: the Plastic Panic:  Dr. JEROME GROOPMAN asks how worried should we be about everyday chemicals? Children are especially vulnerable.  Groopman is a staff writer for The New Yorker. he also teaches at the Harvard Medical School and is the chief of Experimental Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and he wrote the book How Doctors Think.

Plus: it’s Miles Davis’s birthday today — he would have been 84 years old today — and in honor of his birthday we’ll replay our interview from March 2000 with QUINCY TROUPE — he collaborated on Miles’s autobiography, and then wrote the book Miles and Me. We’ll talk about “Kind of Blue,” “Bitches Brew,” and Quincy’s work with Miles on the books.  Quincy is now professor emeritus at UC San Diego.