http://www.weeklysignals.com with Mike Kaspar and Nathan Callahan Feeder 1.1.2 http://reinventedsoftware.com/feeder/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en-us Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:06:07 -0700 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:06:07 -0700 http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#walternugent Walter Nugent author of Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion.

Discussions abound today about the state of the union, its place in the world, and the founding fathers’ intentions. Did they want the United States to become a republic or an empire? Thomas Jefferson, after all, called the young nation an “empire for liberty.” Later words through two centuries all evoked empire: “manifest destiny” in the 1840s, “benevolent assimilation” in 1898, and “our responsibility to lead” in 2002.

Indeed, since Jefferson’s day, Americans have proudly proclaimed liberty and cherished democracy even as they have often behaved imperially. Nugent documents this expansionist behavior by examining each of the nation’s territorial acquisitions since the first in 1782 — how the land was acquired, how its previous occupants were removed or reduced, and how it was then settled and stabilized. By 1853, when the continental United States was fully established from sea to shining sea, the nation’s habit of empire-building had become firmly formed.

Nugent has taught history at the University of Notre Dame since 1984 and, before that, was Professor of History at Indiana University for twenty-one years. As a visiting professor he has also taught and lived in England, Israel, Germany, Poland, and Ireland. He has published eight previous books and well over a hundred essays and reviews on American and comparative history.

Recorded July 22, 2008 ]]> Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:06:07 -0700 walter-nugent-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#barrysiegel Barry Siegel author of Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets.

Siegel unfolds the shocking true story behind the Supreme Court case that forever changed the balance of power in America.

On October 6, 1948, a trio of civilian engineers joined a U.S. Air Force crew on a B-29 Superfortress, whose mission was to test secret navigational equipment. Shortly after takeoff the plane crashed, killing all three engineers and six others. In June 1949, the widows of the engineers filed suit against the government. What had happened to their men? they asked. Why had these civilians been aboard an Air Force plane in the first place?

But the Air Force, at the dawn of the Cold War, refused to hand over the accident reports and witness statements, claiming the documents contained classified information that would threaten national security. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which in 1953 sided with the Air Force in United States v. Reynolds. This landmark decision formally recognized the "state secrets" privilege, a legal precedent that has since been used to conceal conduct, withhold documents, block troublesome litigation, and, most recently, detain terror suspects without due-process protections.

Siegel, a Pulitzer Prize winning former national correspondent for Los Angeles Times, directs the literary journalism program at UC Irvine where he is a professor of English. He is the author of six books, including three volumes of narrative nonfiction and three novels set in imaginary Chumash County on the central coast of California.

Recorded July 15, 2008]]> Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:15:20 -0700 barry-siegel-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#chrishedges Chris Hedges co-author of Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians.

Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian spent the past year interviewing over fifty veterans to expose the patterns of the occupation in Iraq. The testimonies of these soldiers—many of who remain deeply traumatized by their experiences—uncover how the very conduct of the war and occupation have turned the American forces into agents of terror for most Iraqis.

Collateral Damage is organized around key military operations — Convoys, Checkpoints, Detentions, Raids, Suppressive Fire, and “Hearts and Minds.” Military convoys traveling at tremendous speeds through towns have become trains of death. Civilians are routinely run over or shot to death. Soldiers fire upon Iraqi vehicles with impunity at checkpoints. Late-night detentions based on shoddy intelligence terrify women, traumatize children, and radicalize the young men caught in their dragnet.

These soldiers have found the moral courage to speak out about the true nature of a war that has become one long, unchecked atrocity, and has given rise to the instability, sectarian violence and chaos that we witness today in Iraq.

Hedges, currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries, worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. Hedges is also the author of the best selling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which draws on his experiences in various conflicts to describe the patterns and behavior of nations and individuals in wartime.

Recorded July 8, 2008]]> Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:37:29 -0700 chris-hedges-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#billbishop Bill Bishop author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart.

America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote like we do. This social transformation didn't happen by accident. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of Bishop's ground-breaking work.

In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop made national news in a series of articles when he first described "the big sort." Armed with original and startling demographic data, he showed how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into homogeneous communities — not at the regional level, or the red-state/blue-state level, but at the micro level of city and neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today, and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

Bishop wrote The Big Sort with retired University of Texas sociologist Robert G. Cushing. Bishop has worked as a reporter at The Mountain Eagle, in Whitesburg (Ky.); a columnist at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and on the special projects staff of the Austin (Tx.) American-Statesman. Bishop and his wife, Julie Ardery, owned and operated The Bastrop County Times, a weekly newspaper in Smithville, Texas. They now co-edit The Daily Yonder, a web-based publication covering rural America.

Recorded July 1, 2008]]> Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:06:38 -0700 bill-bishop-interview http://weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#terryaladjem Terry J. Aladjem, author of The Culture of Vengeance and the Fate of American Justice.

America is driven by vengeance in Aladjem’s provocative account — a reactive, public anger that is a threat to democratic justice itself. From the return of the death penalty to the wars on terror and in Iraq, Americans demand retribution and moral certainty; they assert the ‘rights of victims’ and make pronouncements against ‘evil’. Yet for Aladjem this dangerously authoritarian turn has its origins in the tradition of liberal justice itself – in theories of punishment that justify inflicting pain and in the punitive practices that result. Exploring vengeance as the defining problem of our time, Aladjem returns to the theories of Locke, Hegel and Mill. He engages the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche, Paine and Foucault to challenge liberal assumptions about punishment. He interrogates American law, capital punishment and images of justice in the media. He envisions a democratic justice that is better able to contain its vengeance.

Aladjem is a Lecturer on Social studies at Harvard University and an Associate Director at Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

Recorded June 24, 2008]]> Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:12:33 -0700 terry-k-aladjem-interview http://weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#gabormate Gabor Maté, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

Bestselling writer and physician Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours.

For over ten years Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté's patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves? And why is it so difficult to stop these habits, even as they threaten our health, jeopardize our relationships and corrode our lives?

Beginning with a dramatically close view of his drug addicted patients, Dr. Maté looks at his own history of compulsive behaviour. He weaves the stories of real people who have struggled with addiction with the latest research on addiction and the brain. Providing a bold synthesis of clinical experience, insight and cutting edge scientific findings, Dr. Maté sheds light on this most puzzling of human frailties. He proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts and, for the many behaviour addicts among us, to addressing the void addiction is meant to fill.

Recorded June 17, 2008]]> Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:57:36 -0700 gabor-maté-interview http://weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#vincentbugliosi Vincent Bugliosi author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

Famed Charles Manson prosecutor and three time #1 New York Times bestselling author Vincent Bugliosi has written the most powerful, explosive, and thought-provoking book of his storied career.

In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses — a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world.

As a prosecutor who is dedicated to seeking justice, Bugliosi, in his inimitable style, delivers a non-partisan argument, free from party lines and instead based upon hard facts and pure objectivity.

A searing indictment of the President and his administration, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder also outlines a legally credible pathway to holding our highest government officials accountable for their actions, thereby creating a framework for future occupants of the oval office.

Bugliosi calls for the United States of America to return to the great nation it once was and can be again. He believes the first step to achieving this goal is to bring those responsible for the war in Iraq to justice.

In his career at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Bugliosi successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his true-crime classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history.

Recorded June 10, 2008]]> Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:07:58 -0700 vincent-bugliosi-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#tarasgrescoe Taras Grescoe author of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood.

A look at aquaculture that does for seafood what Fast Food Nation did for beef.

Dividing his sensibilities between Epicureanism and ethics, Grescoe set out on a nine-month, worldwide search for a delicious — and humane — plate of seafood. What he discovered shocked him. From North American Red Lobsters to fish farms and research centers in China, Bottomfeeder takes readers on an illuminating tour through the $55-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry. Grescoe examines how out-of-control pollution, unregulated fishing practices, and climate change affect what ends up on our plate. More than a screed against a multibillion-dollar industry, however, this is also a balanced and practical guide to eating, as Grescoe explains to readers which fish are best for our environment, our seas, and our bodies.

Taras Grescoe has written articles on travel for The Times, Independent, Condé Nast Traveller, National Geographic Traveler and the New York Times. His bestselling first book Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction and First Book Award, among numerous other awards. His book, The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists, was called "one of the most original travel books to come out in years" by the Globe and Mail.

Recorded June 3, 2008]]> Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:18:33 -0700 suzanne-gordon-interview-1 http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#suzannegordon Suzanne Gordon co-author of Safety in Numbers: Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care.

Legally mandated nurse-to-patient ratios are one of the most controversial topics in health care today. Ratio advocates believe that minimum staffing levels are essential for quality care, better working conditions, and higher rates of RN recruitment and retention that would alleviate the current global nursing shortage. Opponents claim that ratios will unfairly burden hospital budgets, while reducing management flexibility in addressing patient needs.

Safety in Numbers is the first book to examine the arguments for and against ratios. Utilizing survey data, interviews, and other original research, Suzanne Gordon, John Buchanan, and Tanya Bretherton weigh the cost, benefits, and effectiveness of ratios in California and the state of Victoria in Australia, the two places where RN staffing levels have been mandated the longest. Their book shows how hospital cost-cutting and layoffs in the 1990s created larger workloads and deteriorating conditions for both nurses and their patients — leading nursing organizations to embrace staffing level regulation. The authors provide an in-depth account of the difficult but ultimately successful campaigns waged by nurses and their allies to win mandated ratios. Safety in Numbers then reports on how nurses, hospital administrators, and health care policymakers handled ratio implementation.

Gordon is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Prospect, The Globe and Mail, and The Toronto Star. She’s the author of seven books.

Recorded May 27, 2008 ]]> Tue, 27 May 2008 14:05:02 -0700 suzanne-gordon-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#matttaibbi Matt Taibbi author of The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off-or radicalized-by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders ("they hate us for our freedom") that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.

Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.

Recorded May 20, 2008 ]]> Tue, 20 May 2008 14:18:48 -0700 matt-taibbi-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#nicholsonbaker Nicholson Baker author of Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.

Baker delivers a deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources — including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries — the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy.

"'Burning a village properly takes a long time,' wrote a British commander in Iraq in 1920. Baker traces a direct line from there to WWII, when Flying Fortresses and incendiary bombs made it possible to burn a city in almost no time at all. Central to Baker's narrative — a chronological juxtaposition of discrete moments from 1892 to December 31, 1941 — are accounts from contemporary reports of Britain's terror campaign of repeatedly bombing German cities even before the London blitz. The cynical warmongering of Churchill and FDR; Churchill's hate-filled reference to "yellow Japanese lice" force one to reconsider means and ends even in a 'good' war and to view the word 'terror' in a very discomfiting context.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

Baker has published three works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001.

Recorded May 13, 2008 ]]> Tue, 13 May 2008 13:58:00 -0700 nicholson-baker-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#gleengreenwald Glenn Greenwald author of Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Long since Americans were wooed by images of Ronald Reagan astride a horse, complete with cowboy hat and rugged good looks, the Republican Party has used a John Wayne mythology to build up its candidates and win elections. Their marketing scheme of evoking brave, courageous, heroic warriors has been so persuasive and strikes such a patriotic nerve, that many citizens have voted based on this manipulative imagery even when they’ve flat out disagreed with the GOP’s positions on key issues.

Glenn Greenwald puts this bogus GOP mythology under microscopic critique and successfully argues that none of these men is, in fact, a brave, strong moral warrior — far from it. Rather, most have dodged military duty, have strings of broken marriages and affairs, and live decadent, elitist lives, which they so ruthlessly condemn Democrats for doing. Such false archetypes — that GOP leaders are exclusively fit to command the military, represent traditional family values, and are fiscally restrained and responsible because they’re just regular folk like us — are so firmly entrenched in our culture as to allow the GOP to sit back and let their time-tested marketing ploy spin itself silly while avoiding debate on real issues. When they actually do voice opinions, it’s nothing more than a smear campaign of the supposed weakness and elitism of the Democrats.

To prevent this tired marketing scheme from succeeding again, Greenwald takes off the gloves and knocks down the hoaxes and myths, exposing the tactics the right-wing machine uses to drown out both reality and consideration of real issues. But he also calls on Democrats to shake off the defensive posture (“We love America too,” “We support the troops too,” “We also believe in God”) and start attacking the Republican candidates for the hypocrites they, in truth, are.

Greenwald is a former constitutional law attorney and now a contributing writer at Salon. His political reporting and analysis have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the American Conservative, and numerous congressional reports.

Recorded May 6, 2008 ]]> Tue, 06 May 2008 12:49:28 -0700 glenn-greenwald-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#susanjacoby2008 Susan Jacoby author of The Age of American Unreason.

Jacoby paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, she dissects a culture at odds with America's heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society-on the political right and the left. America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Jacoby is the author of eight books. She is also program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank with offices in Lower Manhattan.

Recorded April 22, 2008]]> Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:48:29 -0700 susan-jacoby-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#maudebarlow Maude Barlow author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

In their international bestseller Blue Gold, Maude Barlow and co-author Tony Clarke exposed how a handful of corporations are gaining ownership and control of the earth's dwindling water supply, depriving millions of people around the world of access to this most basic of resources and accelerating the onset of a global water crisis.

Blue Covenant, the sequel to Blue Gold, describes a powerful response to this trend: the emergence of an international, grassroots-led movement to have water declared a basic human right, something that can't be bought or sold for profit.

World-renowned activist Maude Barlow is at the center of this movement, which is gaining popular and political support across the globe, encompassing protests in India against U.S. bottling giant Coca-Cola; in Bolivia against the water privatization scheme of European water conglomerate Suez; against the use of water meters in South Africa; and over groundwater mining in Barrington, New Hampshire, and dozens of other communities in North America.

Barlow traces the history of these international battles, documents the life-and-death stakes involved in the fight for the right to water, and lays out the actions that we as global citizens must take to secure a water — just world — a "blue covenant"—for all.

Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council.

Recorded April 15, 2008]]> Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:31:01 -0700 maude-barlow-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#nickdavies Nick Davies author of Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media.

Davies names names and exposes the national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda. He shows the impact of this on a world where consumers believe a mass of stories which, in truth, are as false as the idea that the Earth is flat - from the millennium bug to the WMD in Iraq - tainting government policy, perverting popular belief. He presents a new model for understanding news. With the help of researchers from Cardiff University, who ran a ground-breaking analysis of our daily news, Davies found most reporters, most of the time, are not allowed to dig up stories or check their facts - a profession corrupted at the core.

Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues. He has been a journalist since 1976 and is currently a freelance, working regularly as special correspondent for The Guardian.

Recorded April 8, 2008]]> Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:47:15 -0700 nick-davies-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#marnialazreg Marnia Lazreg author of Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad.

Lazreg looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through a close examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. By tracing the psychological, cultural, and political meanings of torture at the end of the French empire, she also sheds new light on the United States and its recourse to torture in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Torture and the Twilight of Empire is nothing less than an anatomy of torture — its methods, justifications, functions, and consequences. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their systematic use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population--especially women--and also on the French troops who became their torturers. She explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts, and the ways in which torture became not only routine but even acceptable.

Lazreg is professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her books include The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question.

Recorded March 25, 2008 ]]> Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:02:46 -0700 marnia-lazreg-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#fredkaplan Fred Kaplan author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.

America's power is in decline, its foreign policy adrift, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past eight years is well-known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. Slate columnist Fred Kaplan combines in-depth reporting and analysis to explain just how George W. Bush and his aides got so far off track — and why much of the nation followed.

For eight years, Kaplan reminds us, the White House — and many of the nation's podiums and opinion pages — rang out with appealing but deluded claims: that we live in a time like no other and that, therefore, the lessons of history no longer apply; that new technology has transformed warfare; that the world's peoples will be set free, if only America topples their dictators; and that those who dispute such promises do so for partisan reasons. They thought they were visionaries, but they only had visions. And they believed in their daydreams.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate. The author of the classic book The Wizards of Armageddon, he has also written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. He worked as a foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill, and spent decades as a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter in Washington and Moscow.

Recorded March 18, 2008 ]]> Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:15:16 -0700 fred-kaplan-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#nicholasmaxwell Nicholas Maxwell author of From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities.

Maxwell argues that there is an urgent need, for both intellectual and humanitarian reasons, to bring about a revolution in science and the humanities. The outcome would be a kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to create a better world. The basic intellectual aim of inquiry would be to seek and promote wisdom — wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.

According to Maxwell, "Natural science has been extraordinarily successful in increasing knowledge. This has been of great benefit to humanity. But new knowledge and technological know-how increase our power to act which, without wisdom, may cause human suffering and death as well as human benefit. All our modern global problems have arisen in this way: global warming, the lethal character of modern war and terrorism, vast inequalities of wealth and power round the globe, rapid increase in population, rapid extinction of other species, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these have been made possible by modern science dissociated from the rational pursuit of wisdom. If we are to avoid in this century the horrors of the last one — wars, death camps, dictatorships, poverty, environmental damage — we urgently need to learn how to acquire more wisdom, which in turn means that our institutions of learning become devoted to that end.

For nearly 30 years Maxwell taught the Philosophy of Science at the University College London, where he is now Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science and Honorary Senior Research Fellow. He is also the author of What's Wrong With Science?, The Comprehensibility of the Universe, and The Human World in the Physical Universe.

Recorded March 11, 2008 ]]> Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:20:18 -0700 nicholas-maxwell-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#charlesbarber Charles Barber, author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation.

Public perceptions of mental health issues have changed dramatically over the last fifteen years, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the rampant overmedication of ordinary Americans. In 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, more than any other class of medication; in that same year, the United States accounted for 66 percent of the global antidepressant market. Barber provides a much-needed context for this disturbing phenomenon.

Barber explores the ways in which pharmaceutical companies first create the need for a drug and then rush to fill it, and he reveals that the increasing pressure Americans are under to medicate themselves (direct-to-consumer advertising, fewer nondrug therapeutic options, the promise of the quick fix, the blurring of distinction between mental illness and everyday problems). Most importantly, he convincingly argues that without an industry to promote them, non-pharmaceutical approaches that could have the potential to help millions are tragically overlooked by a nation that sees drugs as an instant cure for all emotional difficulties.

Barber was educated at Harvard and Columbia and worked for ten years in New York City shelters for the homeless mentally ill. The title essay in his first book, "Songs from the Black Chair," won a 2006 Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times and Scientific American Mind, among other publications. He is a senior administrator at The Connection, an innovative social services agency, and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Recorded March 4, 2008]]> Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:28:37 -0800 charles-barber-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#jeffreygoldfarb Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, author of The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times.

Political change doesn't always begin with a bang; it often starts with just a whisper. From the discussions around kitchen tables that led to the dismantling of the Soviet bloc to the more recent emergence of Internet initiatives like MoveOn.org and Redeem the Vote that are revolutionizing the American political landscape, consequential political life develops in small spaces where dialogue generates political power.

Goldfarb provides an innovative way for understanding politics, a way of appreciating the significance of politics at the micro level by comparatively analyzing key turning points and institutions in recent history. He presents a sociology of human interactions that lead from small to large: dissent around the old Soviet bloc; life on the streets in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest in 1989; the network of terror that spawned 9/11; and the religious and Internet mobilizations that transformed the 2004 presidential election, to name a few. In such pivotal moments, he masterfully shows, political autonomy can be generated, presenting alternatives to the big politics of the global stage and the dominant narratives of terrorism, antiterrorism, and globalization.

Goldfarb is the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of seven books, including On Cultural Freedom, The Cynical Society and Beyond Glasnost.

Recorded February 26, 2008 ]]> Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:36:29 -0800 jeffrey-c-goldfarb-interview http://weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#robertcreamer Robert Creamer, author of Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win.

Some people think that in order to win this November, Democrats need to move to the political center by adopting conservative values and splitting the difference between progressive and conservatives positions. History shows they are wrong. To win the next election and to win in the long term, progressives need to redefine the political center. Creamer, one of America s most experienced political strategists and organizers lays out a broad strategy for progressive victory and describes the tactics needed to win real-world political battles one at a time. He analyzes: The self-interests of voters; Targets for political communication; The principles of political messaging; The secrets of winning electoral and issue campaigns; What is meant by progressive values, and; How to describe a compelling progressive vision for the future.

Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist for almost four decades. He is a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America's budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform.

Recorded February 19, 2008]]> Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:15:17 -0800 robert-creamer-interview http://weeklysignalsarc-2008.html#jonathansimon Jonathan Simon author of Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear.

Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences.

Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal?

Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their problem: politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime.

Simon is Associate Dean of Jurisprudence and Social Policy and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Recorded February 12, 2008]]> Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:21:57 -0800 jonathan-simon-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Sarah Posner discusses her book God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.

Posner examines the unholy alliance between a new breed of corrupt televangelists and the Republican Party, which is eagerly courting "values voters" in the nation's largest megachurches.

Posner exposes the activities of Kenneth Copeland, John Hagee, Rod Parsley, T.D. Jakes, and other politically connected, skillfully marketed, and increasingly influential religious leaders. Preaching the "prosperity gospel" — the notion that faith and tithing alone can ensure financial security — both in their churches and over the airwaves, these charismatic leaders scam the gullible even as they enjoy unprecedented access to top Bush Administration officials. Admired by Republican strategists for their antigovernment ideology and authoritarian leadership styles, these televangelists work together to maximize profits; protect themselves legally; influence elections, judicial nominations, and promote their pro-war, apocalyptic ideas.

Posner is an investigation journalist covering the religious right for the American Prospect, The Nation, The Washington Spectator, AlterNet, and other publications. She also writes the Fundamentalist List which counts down the week's top news about the religious right, for the American Propect website.

Recorded February 5, 2008 ]]> Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:08:02 -0800 sarah-posner-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Matt Mason author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism.

Mason charts the rise of various youth movements - from pirate radio to remix culture, from punk and hip-hop to graffiti and gaming - and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society. He shows how subversive ideas, fringe movements, street and youth culture have combined with technology to subvert old hierarchies and empower the individual. And it shows why the rest of us had better catch up.

Extending this argument to the world of pirate radio, graffiti, hip-hop, and advertising in subsequent chapters, Mason shows how, by thinking like pirates, people grow niche audiences to a critical mass and change the mainstream from the bottom up. It considers what the world will look like when people begin virtually annotating real space - where the nature of privacy, the public domain, and the role of graffiti suddenly change. In this world, boundaries might just be a thing of the past.

Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London, going on to found the seminal magazine RWD (the largest urban music title in the UK). In 2004, he was presented the Prince's Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles. He has written and produced TV series, comic strips, and records, and his stories have appeared in VICE, Complex, and other publications in more than 12 countries around the world.

Recorded January 22, 2008]]> Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:04:05 -0800 matt-mason-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Mark Winne author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty.

Food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?

To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another.

Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level. Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.

For twenty-five years Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food System in Hartford, Connecticut. He now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics.

Recorded January 15, 2008]]> Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:03:27 -0800 mark-winne-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Craig Unger author of The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future.

The presidency of George W. Bush has led to the worst foreign policy decision in the history of the United States — the bloody, unwinnable war in Iraq. How did this happen? Bush's fateful decision was rooted in events that began decades ago, and until now this story has never been fully told.

Craig Unger, the author of the bestseller House of Bush, House of Saud discusses the secret relationship between neoconservative policy makers and the Christian Right, and how they assaulted the most vital safeguards of America's constitutional democracy while pushing the country into the catastrophic quagmire in the Middle East that is getting worse day by day.

A seasoned, award-winning investigative reporter connected to many back-channel political and intelligence sources, Unger interviewed scores of figures in the Christian Right, the neoconservative movement, the Bush administration, and sources close to the Bush family, as well as intelligence agents in the CIA, the Pentagon, and Israel, Unger shows how the Bush administration's certainty that it could bend history to its will has carried America into the disastrous war in Iraq, dooming Bush's presidency to failure and costing America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Far from ensuring our security, the Iraq War will be seen as a great strategic pivot point in history that could ignite wider war in the Middle East, particularly in Iran.

Recorded January 8, 2008 ]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:11:49 -0800 craig-unger-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Ismael Hossein-zadeh discusses his book The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism.

Hossein-zadeh's wide-ranging, interdisciplinary analysis blends history, economics, and politics to challenge most of the prevailing accounts of the rise of U.S. militarism. While acknowledging the contributory role of some of the most widely-cited culprits (big oil, neoconservative ideology, the Zionist lobby, and President Bush's world outlook), this study explores the bigger, but largely submerged, picture: the political economy of war and militarism.

The study is unique not only for its thorough examination of the economics of military spending, but also for its careful analysis of a series of closely related topics (petroleum, geopolitics, imperialism, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, the war in Iraq, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) that may appear as digressions but, in fact, help shed more light on the main investigation.

An Iranian-born Kurd, Hossein-zadeh came to the United States in 1975 to pursue his formal education in economics. After completing his graduate work at the New School for Social Research in New York City (1988), he joined Drake University faculty where he has been teaching classes in political economy, comparative economic systems, international economics, and development economics.

Recorded January 1, 2008]]> Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:23:25 -0800 ismael-hosseinzadeh-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html David Rose, author of The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice.

Over the course of eight bloody months in the 1970s, a serial rapist and murderer terrorized Columbus, Georgia, killing seven elderly white women by strangling them in their beds. In 1986, eight years after the last murder, an African American, Carlton Gary, was convicted and sentenced to death. Though many in the city doubt his guilt, he remains on death row.

Award-winning Vanity Fair reporter David Rose has followed this case for a decade in an investigation that led him to the Big Eddy Club — an all-white, members-only club in Columbus, frequented by the town's most prominent judges and lawyers...as well as most of the seven murdered women.

Among Rose's discoveries was that a young black man was lynched in 1912 in Columbus after he was tried for murder and freed, and that the Columbus judge to whom the Gary case was first assigned in 1984 was the son of the mob leader in the 1912 lynching.

Rose is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has worked for The Guardian, The Observer, and the BBC. He is the author of five previous books, including Guantánamo.

Recorded December 25, 2007]]> Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:05:23 -0800 david-rose-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Robert Kuttner discusses his book, The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity.

The incomes of most Americans today are static or declining. Tens of millions of workers are newly vulnerable to layoffs and outsourcing. Health care and retirement burdens are increasingly being shifted from employers to individuals. Two-income families find they are working longer hours for lower wages, with decreased social support. As wealth has become more concentrated, the economy has become more recklessly speculative, jeopardizing not only the prospects of ordinary Americans, but the solvency of the entire system. According to Kuttner, what links these trends is Robert Kuttner in this provocative, engaging, and necessary book, is the consolidation of political and economic power by a narrow elite, who blocks the ability of government to restore broad prosperity to the majority of citizens.

A co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, Kuttner writes for the magazine regularly on a variety of issues. Mostly, however, he focuses on economic policy, both domestic and international. His editorial column, which first appears in The Boston Globe, then on the Prospect website every Thursday, is distributed to 20 major newspapers nationwide. It was awarded the John Hancock Award for excellence in business and financial journalism. As well, Kuttner won the Jack London Award for labor journalism.

Recorded December 18, 2007]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:51:41 -0800 robert-kuttner-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Walter Russell Mead discusses his book God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World.

Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the country's leading students of American foreign policy, contends that the key to the predominance of the two countries has been the individualistic ideology of the prevailing Anglo-American religion. Mead explains how this helped create a culture uniquely adapted to capitalism, a system under which both countries thrived. We see how, as a result, the two nations were able to create the liberal, democratic system whose economic and social influence continues to grow around the world.

According to Mead, the stakes today are higher than ever; technological progress makes new and terrible weapons easier for rogue states and terror groups to develop and deploy. Where some see an end to history and others a clash of civilizations, Mead sees the current conflicts in the Middle East as the latest challenge to the liberal, capitalist, and democratic world system that the Anglo-Americans are trying to build. What we need now, he says, is a diplomacy of civlizations based on a deeper understanding of the recurring conflicts between the liberal world system and its foes.

Recorded December 11, 2007]]> Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:30:30 -0800 walter-russell-mead-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Christopher Ellinger of Bolder Giving. Christopher and Anne Ellinger were plunged into the philanthropy world when Christopher received an unexpected inheritance at age 21. After ten years of exploring the resources available for people looking to connect their money and values, they decided to put this knowledge to use by helping other wealthy people maximize their positive impact. In 1991, they founded More than Money, a nonprofit peer education network with over 2,000 participants nationwide. Through its publications, gatherings, and web resources, More Than Money helped people with significant financial resources to explore the impact of money in their lives and to act on their highest values.

Recorded November 27, 2007 ]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:11:01 -0800 christopher-ellinger-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Greg Anrig discusses his book The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.

Tax cuts that produce gargantuan budget deficits, an ill-conceived war that has diminished America's ability to defend itself, the quiet evisceration of laws that protect public health, safety, and the environment — after six years of virtually absolute conservative rule, the results of nearly every right-wing policy, program, and initiative can be summed up in a single word: failure. How could a vast, carefully constructed political movement, which so recently patted itself on the back for winning "the war of ideas," be so utterly feckless when it comes to governing the nation?

Anrig offers a scathing indictment of right-wing ideology and reveals point by point how and why the conservative agenda produces terrible government. In a series of devastating critiques, he examines ideas and policies espoused by the right and assesses the degree to which they have delivered (or not) on promises to make America stronger and safer, and our government smaller and more efficient.

Anrig is Vice President of Programs at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and former Washington correspondent for Money magazine. He has written online for the American Prospect and Mother Jones, coedited volumes of essays about civil liberties, immigration, and Social Security, and is a regular contributor to the liberal blog tpmcafe.com.

Recorded November 20, 2007]]> Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:23:12 -0800 greg-anrig-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Paul V. Dutton discusses his book Differential Diagnoses: A Comparative History of Health Care Problems and Solutions in the United States and France.

Although the United States spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, more than 46 million people have no insurance coverage, while one in four Americans report difficulty paying for medical care. Indeed, the U.S. health care system, despite being the most expensive health care system in the world, ranked thirty-seventh in a comprehensive World Health Organization report. With health care spending only expected to increase, Americans are again debating new ideas for expanding coverage and cutting costs.

According to the historian Paul V. Dutton, Americans should look to France, whose health care system captured the World Health Organization's number-one spot.

Dutton debunks a common misconception among Americans that European health care systems are essentially similar to each other and vastly different from U.S. health care. In fact, the Americans and the French both distrust "socialized medicine." Both peoples cherish patient choice, independent physicians, medical practice freedoms, and private insurers in a qualitatively different way than the Canadians, the British, and many others.

Dutton is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University.

Recorded November 13, 2007]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:02:09 -0800 paul-v-dutton-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Richard Goldstein co-author of The Contenders — a book about the Democratic Presidential candidates — returns to talk about Hillary, Edwards and the Republicans.

Goldstein, who writes regularly for The Nation, is the author of Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right.

Recorded November 6, 2007 ]]> Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:17:10 -0800 richard-goldstein-interview-2 http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Lawrence Wright discusses his book of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat.

Wright spent two years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. The author of five works of nonfiction — City Children, Country Summer; In the New World; Saints and Sinners; Remembering Satan; and Twins — he has also written a novel, God’s Favorite, and was cowriter of the movie The Siege.

Recorded October 30, 2007]]> Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:58:33 -0700 lawrence-wright-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Norman Solomon author of Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State.

Since he was first under FBI surveillance at age 14 in the mid-1960s, Norman Solomon has been on a collision course with what he calls "the warfare state."

In his latest book Made Love, Got War Solomon recounts his controversial trips to Baghdad and Tehran with Sean Penn as well as televised showdowns with Judith Miller and other pro-war journalists before the invasion of Iraq. Made Love, Got War blends personal reflections with social commentary and firsthand accounts of Solomon's activism and reporting from the late 1960s to present-day Tehran.

In his foreword, Daniel Ellsberg writes that the book "helps us understand where we are now and how we got here." The Pentagon Papers whistleblower concludes: "I was born in 1931, and my generation had to reorient itself to the unprecedented threat of planetary nuclear suicide-murder. Norman Solomon was born twenty years later, and his generation has never lived under any other circumstance. The strands of this book form a unique weave of personal narrative and historical inquiry. Made Love, Got War lays out a half-century of socialized insanity that has brought a succession of aggressive wars under cover of - but at recurrent risk of detonating - a genocidal nuclear arsenal. We need to help each other to awaken from this madness."

Recorded October 23, 2007]]> Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:16:39 -0700 norman-solomon-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Robert B. Reich discusses his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.

The United States economy has soared since the 1970s. We have access to new products (computers and iPods, hybrid cars and high-tech shoes, web movies and vegan frozen dinners. The quality of the goods we buy is, on average, up; the cost of these items is, on average down.

But there is a downside to this progress. Capitalism has invaded democracy. The negative consequences of this “supercapitalism” loom large: workers are forced to resign themselves to flat or declining wages and reduced job security. As chain stores such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot harness the power of the consumer, our main streets are ravaged and towns and cities suffer a loss of community. Outsourcing has gone from a possibility to a reality.

So what to so? Reich has the answer, and it lies in a return of power to democracy: what he calls "a system for accomplishing what can only be achieved by citizens joining together with other citizens — to determine the rules of the game whose outcomes express the common good."

Reich is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and former US labor secretary.

Recorded October 16, 2007]]> Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:49:27 -0700 robert-b-reich-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html John Anderson author of Follow the Money: How George W Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-tied America — a jaw-dropping and damning picture of the money laundering, underhanded deal-making and dirty politics that made their way from Texas to DC.

With its barbecues, new Cadillacs, and $4,000 snakeskin cowboy boots, Texas is all about power and money -- and the power that money buys. This detailed and wide-scope account shows how a group of wealthy Texas Republicans quietly hijacked American politics for their own gain.

Getting George W. Bush elected, we learn, was just the tip of the iceberg....

In Follow the Money, award-winning journalist and sixth-generation Texan John Anderson shows how power in Texas has long been vested in the interconnected worlds of Houston's global energy companies, banks, and law firms -- not least among them Baker Botts, the firm controlled by none other than James A. Baker III, the Bush family consigliere. Anderson explains how the Texas political system came to be controlled by a sophisticated, well-funded group of conservative Republicans who, after elevating George W. Bush to the American presidency, went about applying their hardball, high-dollar politicking to Washington, D.C.

Anderson is the former deputy editor of American Lawyer and author of two other widely praised nonfiction books Burning Down the House and Art Held Hostage.

Recorded October 9, 2007]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:58:45 -0700 john-anderson-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Nicholas Guyatt discusses his book Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World.

Journeying to the dusty heartlands of America’s Bible Belt, Guyatt goes in search of the truth behind a startling development – that fifty million Americans have come to believe the apocalypse will take place in their own lifetimes. They’re convinced that, any day now, Jesus will snatch up his followers and spirit them to heaven. For the rest of us, things are going to get very nasty indeed: massive earthquakes, devastating wars, not to mention the terrifying rise of the Antichrist.

But true believers aren’t just sitting around waiting for the Rapture. They’re getting involved in debates over abortion, gay rights and even foreign policy. Are they devout or deranged? Why do they seem so cheerful about the end of the world? And does their influence stretch beyond the Bible Belt — perhaps even to the White House?

Born and brought up in the UK, Guyatt spent seven years in the United States — first as a PhD student at Princeton and then as a lecturer in Princeton's Department of History — prior to teaching American History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His book on US foreign policy, Another American Century, was published by Zed Books in 2000, and he is a regular reviewer for the London Review of Books.

Recorded October 2, 2007]]> Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:13:24 -0700 nicholas-guyatt-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Richard Goldstein co-author of The Contenders.

Goldstein offers an unusual perspective on Obama, contrasting his “soft” brand of masculinity with a machismo that dominated contemporary politics and popular culture (i.e. George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eminem) just a few years ago.

"Call it packaging, call it hype,” Goldstein says. But that saga of personal and political discovery is the most exciting narrative to emerge from the Democratic repertoire in many years. It is not a drama of rising from meager expectations or a romance of courage under fire. Those are tropes of presidential theater, but Obama’s story is a more like an epic that resounds with a root American theme: overcoming the burden of history."

Goldstein writes regularly for The Nation. He is also the author of Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right.

Recorded September 25, 2007]]> Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:36:29 -0700 richard-goldstein-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Stuart Ewen co- author of Typecasting: On the Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality.

Written with Elizabeth Ewen, Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the “science of first impression” and reveals how the work of its creators — early social scientists — continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society, Ewen & Ewen demonstrate “typecasting” as a persistent cultural practice. Drawing on fields as diverse as history, pop culture, racial science, and film, and including over one hundred images, many published here for the first time, the authors present a vivid portrait of stereotyping as it was forged by colonialism, industrialization, mass media, urban life, and the global economy.

Stuart Ewen is CUNY Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College and in the Ph.D. Programs in History and Sociology at The CUNY Graduate Center.

Recorded September 18, 2007 ]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:42:02 -0700 stuart-ewen-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html R. Jay Magill, Jr. author of Chic Ironic Bitterness.

The events of 9/11 had many pundits on the left and right scrambling to declare an end to the Age of Irony. But six years on, we're as ironic as ever. From the Simpsons and Borat to the The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the ironic worldview measures out a certain cosmopolitan distance, keeping hypocrisy and threats to personal integrity at bay.

Chic Ironic Bitterness is a defense of this detachment, an attitude that helps us preserve values such as authenticity, sincerity, and seriousness that might otherwise be lost in a world filled with spin, marketing, and jargon. And it is an effective counterweight to the prevailing conservative view that irony is the first step towards cynicism and the breakdown of Western culture.

Magill is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in American Prospect, American Interest, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Policy, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Print, among other periodicals and books. A recent recipient of a PhD in American Studies from the University of Hamburg in Germany, Magill has taught at the University of Lüneburg and at Harvard University, where he received the Derek Bok Award for Distinction in Teaching. He also served as Executive Editor and a staff writer at the National Magazine Award-winning quarterly of photography and journalism, DoubleTake.

Recorded September 11, 2007]]> Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:16:18 -0700 r-jay-magill-jr-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Benjamin Barber author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.

Consumed offers a portrait of how adult consumers are infantilized in a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers. Driven by a frantic imperative to sell, consumer capitalism specializes today in the manufacture not of goods but of needs.

Barber discusses “The McDonald’s Experiment” and how it relates to the upcoming presidential campaign.

Barber is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, and Director, CivWorld.

Recorded September 4, 2007 ]]> Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:20:07 -0700 benjamin-barber-907-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Bjorn Lomborg discusses his book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.

Lomborg argues that many of the actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions that may have little impact on the world’s temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply — which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime.

Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity’s problems, not just global warming.

Lomborg was named one of the 100 globally most influential people by Time magazine in April 2004. Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine had him listed as the world’s 14th most influential intellectual in October 2005. He is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and author of the controversial best-selling The Skeptical Environmentalist, where he challenges our understanding of the environment, and points out how we need to balance economics with environmental priorities.

Recorded August 28, 2007]]> Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:01:27 -0700 bjorn-lomborg-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Elliot D. Cohen discusses his book The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship.

Cohen shows how mainstream media corporations like CNN, Fox, and NBC (General Electric) together with giant telecoms like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America. He details how incredible power, control, and wealth have been amassed in the hands of an elite few while the rest of us have been systematically manipulated, deceived, and divested of our freedom.

Cohen is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, ethics editor for Free Inquiry magazine, and the author or editor of many books in journalism, professional ethics, and philosophical counseling, including News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership and Its Threat to Democracy, and Philosophical Issues in Journalism. He was the first prize recipient of the 2007 Project Censored Award for his investigative reporting on the corporate takeover of the Internet.

Recorded August 21, 2007]]> Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:22:07 -0700 elliot-d-cohen-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Dave Zirin, columnist for SLAM Magazine, a regular contributor to the Nation Magazine, and Los Angeles Times discusses his book Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports. Terrordome has already been called "the sports primer for our time." Sports Illustrated wrote that Terrordome is "a provocative, sometimes chilling, look at sports and society right now." This much-anticipated sequel to What's My Name, Fool? breaks new ground in sports writing, looking at the controversies and trends now shaping sports in the United States-and abroad. Features chapters such as "Barry Bonds is Gonna Git Your Mama: The Last Word on Steroids," "Pro Basketball and the Two Souls of Hip-Hop," "An Icon's Redemption: The Great Roberto Clemente," and "Beisbol: How the Major Leagues Eat Their Young."

Recorded August 14, 2007 ]]> Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:46:00 -0700 dave-zirin-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Peggy Levitt, Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wellesley College, discusses her book God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape.

Levitt argues that current debates about religion and immigration are based on assumptions that are out-of-sync with our national reality because they fail to grasp the strong connection between changes in immigration and changes in religious life. When we talk about how religion influences American culture and politics, we still really mean Protestantism. When we think about what religion is, where we look for it, and how it works we tend to think in traditional terms. Jewish and Catholic colors are included though they hardly dominate the design. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are barely visible.

Today’s immigrants, however, are remaking the religious landscape by introducing new faith traditions and Asianizing and Latinoizing old ones. They don’t trade in their home-country membership card but challenge the taken-for-granted dichotomy between either/or, United States or homeland, and assimilation vs. multiculturalism by showing it is possible to be several things simultaneously and, in fact, required in a global world.

Recorded August 7, 2007 ]]> Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:10:15 -0700 peggy-levitt-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Felicia Kornbluh discusses her book The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America.

Kornbluh chronicles an American war on poverty fought first and foremost by poor people themselves — telling the fascinating story of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest membership organization of low-income people in U.S. history. Setting that story in the context of its turbulent times, the 1960s and early 1970s, historian Felicia Kornbluh shows how closely tied that story was to changes in mainstream politics, both nationally and locally in New York City.

Offering new insight into women's activism, poverty policy, civil rights, urban politics, law, consumerism, social work, and the rise of modern conservatism, Kornbluh tells, for the first time, the complete story of a movement that profoundly affected the meaning of citizenship and the social contract in the United States.

Kornbluh teaches history at Duke University. She has written for many publications, including the Nation, Feminist Studies, Los Angeles Times, Women's Review of Books, Journal of American History, and In These Times. Cofounder of Historians for Social Justice, she is a long-standing member of the Women's Committee of 100, an advocacy organization.

Recorded July 31, 2007 ]]> Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:11:26 -0700 felicia-kornbluh-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Aviva Chomsky author of "They Take Our Jobs!": and 20 Other Myths about Immigration.

Claims that immigrants take Americans' jobs, are a drain on the American economy, contribute to poverty and inequality, and contribute to a host of social ills by their very existence are openly discussed and debated at all levels of society. Chomsky dismantles twenty of the most common assumptions and beliefs underlying statements like "I'm not against immigration, only illegal immigration" and challenges the misinformation in clear, straightforward prose. In exposing the myths that underlie today's debate, Chomsky illustrates how the parameters and presumptions of the debate distort how we think-and have been thinking-about immigration. She observes that race, ethnicity, and gender were historically used as reasons to exclude portions of the population from access to rights. Today, Chomsky argues, the dividing line is citizenship. Although resentment against immigrants and attempts to further marginalize them are still apparent today, the notion that noncitizens, too, are created equal is virtually absent from the public sphere. Engaging and fresh, this book will challenge common assumptions about immigrants, immigration, and U.S. history.

The daughter of Noam Chomsky, Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State College. The author of several books, Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants' rights issues for over twenty-five years.

Recorded July 24, 2007 ]]> Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:16:37 -0700 aviva-chomsky-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Daniel Brook discusses his book The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America.

What is lost when the best and the brightest are corralled into corporate America? Brook argues that the exploding income gap — a product of the misguided conservative ascendance — is systematically dismantling the American dream, as debt-laden, well-educated young people are torn between their passions and the pressure to earn six-figure incomes. Rising education, housing, and health-care costs have made it virtually impossible for all but the corporate elite to enjoy what were once considered middle-class comforts. Thousands are afflicted with a wrenching choice: take up residence on America’s financial and social margins or sell out.

When the best and the brightest cannot afford to serve the public good, Brook asks, what are we selling out: an individual’s career, or the very promise of American democracy?

Brook is a journalist whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, Dissent, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe, among other publications.

Recorded July 17, 2007 ]]> Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:58:40 -0700 daniel-brook-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Eva Rutland discusses her book When We Were Colored: A Mother's Story.

Rutland, author of more than 20 novels and winner of the 2000 Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement, presents the timely and relevant story, first published in 1964, of her life in the years before integration, before affirmative action — when segregation was the norm, discrimination was legally tolerated, and blacks were second-class citizens

Rutland chronicles the lives of an ordinary yet extraordinary "colored" family as they move from segregation to integration during the turbulent civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s.

Beyond the lunch counter sit-ins, the freedom rides and church bombings, black Americans went about their day to day lives with a fearful but quiet determination, moving into newly integrated schools, neighborhoods and work places. Veteran novelist Rutland tells their true story from her special vantage point of "colored" wife and mother who lived it.

Recorded July 10, 2007 ]]> Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:17:29 -0700 eva-rutland-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Steve Berkman a former World Bank staffer and contributor to A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption.

In his essay, "The World Bank and the $100 Billion Question," Berkman explains how the World Bank has pushed a debt-based development strategy for Third World countries for decades. Hundreds of billions in loans were supposed to bring progress, yet the programs have never lived up to their promise. Instead, governing elites amass obscene fortunes while the poor shoulder the burden of paying off the debts. Berkman presents an inside investigator’s account of how these schemes work to divert development money into the pockets of corrupt elites and their First World partners.

Berkman joined the World Bank’s Africa Region Group in 1983. Hired to provide advice and assistance on capacity-building components for Bank-funded projects, he worked in twenty-one countries. Within a few years, he realized that the Bank’s approach to economic development was a failure, but his attempts to convince management of the extent of the problem went unheeded until the arrival of President James Wolfensohn in 1995. Retiring in that same year, he was called back to the Bank from 1998 to 2002 to help establish the Anti-Corruption and Fraud Investigation Unit and was a lead investigator on a number of cases. Since 2002 he has provided assistance to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on legislation calling for reform of the multilateral development banks and Senate consideration of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. He is currently finishing a manuscript on the World Bank that provides an inside look at the Bank’s management, its lending operations, and the theft of billions of dollars from its lending portfolio.

Recorded July 3, 2007 ]]> Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:32:39 -0700 steve-berkman-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Sasha Abramsky author of American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment.

In this expose of U.S. penitentiaries and the communities around them, Abramsky finds that prisons have dumped their age-old goal of rehabilitation, often for political reasons. The new "ideal," unknown to most Americans, is a punitive mandate marked by a drive toward vengeance.

Surveying this state of affairs-life sentences for nonviolent crimes, appalling conditions, the growth of private prisons, the treatment of juveniles — Abramsky asks: Does the vengeful impulse ennoble our culture or demean it? What can become of people who are quarantined for years in a violent subculture? California's Three Strikes law typifies the politics that exploit the grief of victims' families and our fears of violent crime. American Furies shows that the ethos of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" has enormous social costs.

Abramsky has written for The Atlantic, The Nation, & Rolling Stone. The author of Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House and Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation, he has also reported on U.S. prisons for Human Rights Watch.

Recorded June 26, 2007 ]]> Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:59:13 -0700 sasha-abramsky-interview-2007 http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Scott Gac discusses his book Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform.

In the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire became America’s most popular musical act. Out of a Baptist revival upbringing, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby Hutchinson transformed themselves in the 1840s into national icons, taking up the reform issues of their age and singing out especially for temperance and antislavery reform. Singing for Freedom is the first book to tell the full story of the Hutchinsons, how they contributed to the transformation of American culture, and how they originated the marketable American protest song.

Through concerts, writings, sheet music publications, and books of lyrics, the Hutchinson Family Singers established a new space for civic action, a place at the intersection of culture, reform, religion, and politics. The book documents the Hutchinsons’ impact on abolition and other reform projects and offers an original conception of the rising importance of popular culture in antebellum America.

Gac is visiting professor of American studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and an accomplished double bass player.

Recorded June 12, 2007]]> Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:02:01 -0700 scott-gac-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Joseph Gerson discusses his book Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.

The United States is the only country to have dropped the atomic bomb. Since the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every U.S. president has threatened nuclear war. Gerson shows how the United States has used nuclear weapons to bolster its imperial ambitions. He explains why atomic weapons were first built and used — and how the United States uses them today to preserve its global empire.

Gerson reveals how and why the United States made more than twenty threats of nuclear attack during the Cold War — against Russia, China, Vietnam, and the Middle East. He shows how such threats continued under Presidents Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Gerson is the Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England — the principal Quaker peace organization in the United States. He is a leading figure in the U.S. peace movement. His previous books include The Sun Never Sets and With Hiroshima Eyes.

Recorded June 5, 2007 ]]> Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:33:37 -0700 joseph-gerson-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Laura Flanders discusses her book Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians.

Flanders believes there are no such things as "red" and "blue" states. Even in the most surprising places, she's finding progressive change. From Vermont to Salt Lake City to Las Vegas's famous Strip, she journeys through the heartland USA and discovers a simple truth: people don't vote for the GOP because Republicans represent their interests; they vote Republican because Democrats barely field a team.

Flanders hosts her own weekly radio show on Air America. She is the author of Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man and Real Majority, Media Minority: The Costs of Sidelining Women in Reporting.

Recorded May 29, 2007 ]]> Tue, 29 May 2007 15:01:04 -0700 laura-flanders-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Jonathan Cohn, senior editor at The New Republic, discusses his book Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crises – and the People who Pay the Price.

Every day, millions of hard-working people struggle to find affordable medical treatment for themselves and their families — unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Some of these people end up losing money. Others end up losing something even more valuable: their health or even their lives. Cohn traveled across the United States — the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee access to medical care as a right of citizenship — to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans.

Recorded May 22, 2007 ]]> Tue, 22 May 2007 15:48:26 -0700 jonathan-cohn-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html George Monbiot discusses his book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.

It now seems certain that we need a 90% cut in our emissions within 25 years if we are to stop ourselves reaching the point where the "climate feedback" becomes unstoppable, and our world becomes largely uninhabitable. Monbiot explains how this cut could be achieved. Combining his knowledge of political campaigning and environmental science, he analyses the possibilities and pitfalls of energy efficiency, nuclear power, renewable resources and new technologies, and applies them to our everyday lives, measuring the cuts that can be made.

Monbiot is a bestselling author and a weekly columnist for the Guardian. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has been named by the Evening Standard as one of the 25 most influential people in Britain, and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the 40 international prophets of the 21st Century. His books include Captive State: the Corporate Takeover of Britain and, most recently, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order.

Recorded May 15, 2007 ]]> Tue, 15 May 2007 14:29:35 -0700 george-monbiot-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Ellen Bravo discusses her book Taking On the Big Boys: Or Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation.

Enough about "breaking the glass ceiling." Here are blueprints for a redesign of the entire building, ground up, to benefit women and men-and even the bottom line.

Bravo relates stories from business and government and women's testimonies from offices, assembly lines, hospitals, and schools and unmasks the patronizing, trivializing, and minimizing tactics employed by "the big boys" and their surrogates who portray feminism as women against men, and dismiss as outrageous demands for pay equity, family leave, and flex time.

Bravo argues for feminism as a system of beliefs, laws, and practices that fully values women and work associated with women, while detailing activist strategies to achieve a society where everybody-women and men-reach their potential.

Bravo is a long-time activist, author, and former director of 9 to 5, the National Association of Working Women. A well-known speaker, she has been described as "moving, witty, and sometimes bawdy." Bravo teaches Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Recorded May 8, 2007]]> Tue, 08 May 2007 14:50:51 -0700 ellen-bravo-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Andrew Koppelman author of Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines.

Americans are profoundly divided over same-sex marriage, and now that gay civil unions and marriages are legal in some states, the issue has become increasingly urgent. Koppelman offers a sensible approach that will appeal to the best instincts of both sides. Drawing on historical precedents in which states held radically different moral views about marriage (for example, between kin, very young individuals, and interracial couples), Koppelman shows which state laws should govern in specific situations as gay couples travel or move from place to place.

Koppelman is professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law and author of Antidiscrimination Law and Social Equality and The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law.

Recorded May 1, 2007 ]]> Tue, 01 May 2007 14:26:14 -0700 andrew-koppelmanm-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Eric Boehlert, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America discusses his book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush — the first book to demonstrate that, for the entire George W. Bush presidency, the news media have utterly failed in their duty as watchdog for the public.

Boehlert reveals how, time after time, the press chose a soft approach to covering the government, and as a result reported and analyzed crucial events incompletely and even inaccurately. From WMDs to Valerie Plame to the NSA's domestic spying, mainstream fixtures such as The New York Times, CBS, CNN, and Time magazine too often ignored the administration's missteps and misleading words, and did not call out the public officials who betrayed the country's trust. Throughout both presidential campaigns and the entire Iraq war to date, the media acted as a virtual mouthpiece for the White House, giving watered-down coverage of major policy decisions, wartime abuses of power, and egregious mistakes — and sometimes these events never made it into the news at all. Finally, in Lapdogs, the press is being held accountable by one of its own.

Boehlert worked for five years as a senior writer for Salon.com, where he wrote extensively about media and politics. Prior to that, he worked as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone.

Recorded April 24, 2007]]> Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:03:39 -0700 eric-boehlert-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Albert Bates, an influential figure in the intentional community and ecovillage movements discusses his new book The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times.

Over the coming years we will need to move from a global culture addicted to cheap, abundant petroleum to a culture of compelled conservation, whether through government directive or market forces. Bates takes a positive, upbeat, and optimistic view of "the Great Change," promoting the idea that it can be an opportunity to redeem our essential interconnectedness with nature and with each other.

Bates is a lawyer, author and teacher. He has been director of the Institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee since 1994.

Recorded April 17, 2007]]> Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:26:03 -0700 albert-bates-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Robert Ivker discusses his book One Town's Terror: 9/11, Iraq and Burlington Vermont.

Perhaps few US locales have been turned upside since 9/11 as much as Burlington, Vermont and its surrounding villages. According to Ivker, the city of Burlington and the state of Vermont have sent more citizen-soldiers into active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan than most other states in the country. At the same time, Burlington has been at the forefront of a wide range of anti-war, pro-peace movements and boasts the country's only Socialist member of Congress.

Previously a credentialed journalist at the United Nations, Ivker has published dozens of articles in political newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally.

Recorded April 10, 2007]]> Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:21:14 -0700 robert-ivker-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Peter Navarro Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine discusses his book The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won.

China's breakneck industrialization is placing it on a collision course with the entire world. Tomorrow's China Wars will be fought over everything from decent jobs, livable wages, and leading-edge technologies to strategic resources such as oil, copper, and steel...even food, water, and air.

Navarro also reveals how China has become the world's most ruthless imperialist...how it is promoting global environmental disaster... and, perhaps most terrifying of all, how this nuclear superpower and pirate nation may be spiraling toward internal chaos.

Recorded April 3, 2007]]> Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:34:12 -0700 peter-navarro-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Benjamin Barber discusses his new book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. A sequel to Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a portrait of how adult consumers are infantilized in a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers. Driven by a frantic imperative to sell, consumer capitalism specializes today in the manufacture not of goods but of needs.

This culmination of Barber's lifelong study of and capitalism shows how the infantilist ethos deprives society of responsible citizens and displaces public goods with private commodities. Traditional liberal democratic society is colonized by an all-pervasive market imperative. Public space is privatized. Identity is branded. Our world, homogenized. Barber confronts the likely consequences for our children, our liberty, and our citizenship, and shows finally how citizens can resist and transcend the civic schizophrenia with which consumerism has infected them.

Barber is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, and Director, CivWorld.

Recorded March 27, 2007]]> Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:13:05 -0700 benjamin-barber-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html George Galloway discusses his new Fidel Castro Handbook.

As Fidel Castro turned eighty, Galloway published a look at the Cuban leader's life from childhood, through his dramatic conquest of power, and his leadership of Cuba over forty-seven years — including takes on the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra, life with the Soviet Union, involvement in Third World politics, and survival in the face of the hostility of the United States just ninety miles away.

Galloway is a British politician noted for his socialist views, confrontational style, and rhetorical skill. He is currently the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bethnal Green and Bow, and was previously elected as a Labour Party MP for Glasgow Hillhead and Glasgow Kelvin. He is perhaps best known for his vigorous campaign to overturn economic sanctions against Iraq, and for his visits to Saddam Hussein in 1994 and 2002. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 when a party body decided that he had brought the party into disrepute over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when he called the Labour government "Tony Blair's lie machine" and stated that British soldiers should "refuse to obey illegal orders".

Recorded March 20, 2007 ]]> Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:30:38 -0700 george-galloway-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Sara Miles lived a happy secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into an Episcopal church, took communion and was transformed. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. Mile’s new book Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion is the story of that transformation. A former editor at Mother Jones magazine she is also the author of How to Hack a Party Line. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Progressive, La Jornada, and Salon.

Recorded March 13, 2007 ]]> Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:48:28 -0700 sara-miles-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Max Blumenthal who attended the the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference and documented his experience for The Nation — a clip widely viewed on YouTube. The lowlight of the CPAC event was a speech by Ann Coulter in which she said "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.” Blumenthal is a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow whose work regularly appears in the Nation magazine. He is also a Research Fellow at Media Matters for America.

Recorded March 6, 2007]]> Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:22:14 -0800 max-blumenthal-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Chalmers Johnson discusses his new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

In his prophetic book Blowback, Johnson linked the CIA’s clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism and the garrisoning of the planet have jeopardized our stability. Now, in Nemesis, he shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically.

Johnson, the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is a frequent contributor to Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and The Nation. He appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight.

Recorded February 27, 2007 ]]> Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:22:09 -0800 chalmers-johnson-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html William Rivers Pitt discusses his new book House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation.

The presidency of George W. Bush promised to restore integrity to the White House, but instead it has been plagued by scandal. Pitt guides us through a jaw-dropping series of presidential missteps from the missing weapons of mass destruction and the Halliburton contracting scandals, to the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps and the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina. For anyone who suspects the Bush administration of playing fast and loose with the facts, William Rivers Pitt provides a welcome voice of truth, untainted by corporate ownership.

Pitt served as Press Secretary to Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, worked as the managing editor of truthout.org and is currently the editorial director of Progressive Democrats of America.

Recorded February 20, 2007 ]]> Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:58:23 -0800 william-rivers-pitt-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Barry Lando author of Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.

In February 1991, the Shia of southern Iraq rose against Saddam Hussein. Lando, a former investigative producer for 60 Minutes, argues compellingly that this ill-fated uprising represents one instance among many of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity. The Shia were responding to the call for rebellion from President George H.W. Bush that was broadcast repeatedly across Iraq by clandestine CIA stations. But, just as the revolution was on the brink of success, the United States and its allies turned their backs. In the end, tens of thousands were massacred.

Lando draws on a wide range of journalism and scholarship to present a complete picture of what really happened in Iraq under Saddam, detailing the complicity of the West in its full and alarming extent.

Lando spent over 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes.

Recorded February 13, 2007 ]]> Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:00:21 -0800 barry-lando-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, discusses his new book Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy.

With the explosive growth of the Internet and broadband communications, we now have the potential for a truly democratic media system offering a wide variety of independent sources of news, information, and culture, with control over content in the hands of the many rather than a few select media giants. But the country's powerful communications companies have other plans. Assisted by a host of hired political operatives and pro-business policy makers, the big cable, TV, and Internet providers are using their political clout to gain ever greater control over the Internet and other digital communication channels. Instead of a "global information commons," we're facing an electronic media system designed principally to sell to rather than serve the public, dominated by commercial forces armed with aggressive digital marketing, interactive advertising, and personal data collection.

Chester gets beneath the surface of media and telecommunications regulation to explain clearly how our new media system functions, what's at stake, and what we can do to fight the corporate media's plans for our "digital destiny" — before it's too late.

Recorded February 6, 2007 ]]> Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:31:08 -0800 jeff-chester-interview http://www.weeklysignals.com/weeklysignalsarc.html William R. Clark, discusses his book Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar and his groundbreaking essay "It’s the Energy and the Economy, Stupid."

The invasion of Iraq may well be remembered as the first oil currency war. Far from being a response to 9/11 terrorism or Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, Clark argues that the invasion was precipitated by two converging phenomena: the imminent peak in global oil production and the ascendance of the euro curre