Category: Podcast Info

Holiday Music Special!! Dr. Elmo celebrates 30 years of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”. Dr. Elmo plays live in our studio and guides us through his expansive Christmas music catalog from Killer Fruitcake to Junk Bond Christmasto the rap version of Grandma, plus Santa’s E-mail from Nigeria, Christmas in the USA and the freaky Uncle Johnny’s Glass Eye. You get a special budget cutting message from our Governator and a stunning live rendition of Grandmaalong with some pet advice from the Doctor, a licensed veternarian. Downloads at iTunes and www.drelmo.com. Tech note: this show is a big file–we did not want to compress the music too much. Enjoy, and share with friends!

Journalists Reese Erlich and Robert Parry on Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan; Michael Blecker of Swords to Plowshares projects the human costs to the new US troops deployed; Gary Chew reviews the new film “The Road”. Erlich is the author of Target Iraq and The Iran Agenda and was in Afghanistan with Norman Solomon in September (podcasts 36 and 41). Parry is a frequent contributor to the PBC Show, and runs ConsortiumNews.com We play key excerpts from Obama’s Dec. 1 speech at West Point and offer critical commentary and context. We compare Obama to Bush in some respects, offer distinctions between Iraq and Afghanistan, and debunk the myth that the “surge” in Iraq succeeded. And we describe many factors that make Obama’s plan futile and politically dangerous. Swords to Plowshares has support vets since Vietnam, and Blecker projects that 30% of those who serve in Afghanistan will return with PTSD or traumatic brain injury. www.stp-sf.org Consistent with these downbeat developments, Gary Chew says The Road is bleak and powerful Oscar material. www.tulsatvmemories.com

British journalist Andy Worthington returns to update us on the delayed closure of Guantanamo and the Obama decision to try KSM and others in Federal Court in New York. Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and is co-producer and presenter of the new documentary Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo. We talk about the complacency of most Americans about the torture and detention schemes, about Binyam Mohammed (now released) and Shakar Amer (still held in isolation at Gitmo), and about the utter lawlessness of the Bush policies. We also talk frankly about Obama’s challenges from fellow Democrats that have hindered the plan to close Gitmo.

Journalists Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald discuss Afghanistan and how US foreign policy and military decisions are based on miscalculated and misunderstood Afghanistan politics, history, and culture. This is the eleventh installment of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds.
Gould and Fitzgerald talk about the “real” history of Afghanistan; how the media misled the public by not laying out the fundamental facts about what was really going on, and the consequences; the differences between Pakistani Taliban and Afghani Taliban, and how our policy since 2001 has been emboldening them; the role of Pashtuns; and more!
Fitzgerald and Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media.

Tom Hayden asks, “Why Die for Karzai?” and Gov. Don Siegelman asks, “Can I get some justice from Justice?” Hayden was an anti-war activist in the ’60’s, one of the Chicago 8 defendants, and served in the California Assembly and Senate. We talk about Obama’s pending decision on troop levels, Hayden touts the new resolution from the California Democratic Party calling for a planned withdrawal of US forces, and offers advice to activists. Gov. Siegelman was the Democratic governor of Alabama until he experienced a stolen election and political prosecution driven by close friends of Karl Rove. Siegelman is now hoping the Supreme Court will review the case, as the Holder Justice Department is not supporting his calls for investigation and a new trial.

The Health Care Debate: Angela Bonavoglia talks about the Stupak amendment and undue influence by Catholic bishops; Dr. Len Saputo and Byron Belitsos on the defects of the House bill. Film reviewer Gary Chew on Pirate Radio. Bonavoglia is the author of Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church, and we discuss the huge rollback of abortion rights intended by Stupak, and the role of the Catholic bishops in its passage. PBC concludes that this is a poison pill and that the overall bill will make things worse. Saputo and Belitsos chime in, and argue that true reform is unlikely to come from a Congress beholden to the insurance and health industries. They also have just published a paper called The Infection Deception, which raises major questions about the true extent of the epidemic and the value of vaccine efforts. Please read this report before you get a vaccination! Gary Chew says the new Pirate Radio movie is fun for radio geeks, but not a great film. Read his review at www.tulsatvmemories.com

Stephen Kohn, counsel to whistleblowers. This is the 10th installment of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds. Kohn explains whistleblowing as a civil liberties and a First Amendment issue, the role of whistleblowers as enablers of congressional oversight, and discusses the legal and political implications involved in whistleblowing. He talks about the broken Merit System Protection Board, the abuses of secrecy laws and State Secrets Privilege, the current status of whistleblower protection laws in Congress, the case of Halliburton whistleblower Bunnatine Greenhouse, the current administration’s highly disappointing stand against national security whistleblowers despite President Obama’s endorsement prior to his elections, and more!

SteveKohnStephen M. Kohn is the Executive Director of National Whistleblowers Center, one of the nation’s foremost experts in whistleblower protection law, and the author of the first legal treatise on whistleblowing, Protecting Environmental and Nuclear Whistleblowers: A Litigation Manual. Since 1984, Mr. Kohn has successfully represented whistleblowers in numerous cases (both at trial and on appeal), has testified in Congress on behalf of whistleblower reforms, and has worked directly with the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee on drafting the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate whistleblower law. Mr. Kohn has a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law; an M.A. in Political Science from Brown University; and a B.S. in Social Education from Boston University. In addition to his books on whistleblower law, Mr. Kohn is the author of Jailed for Peace and American Political Prisoners.
More info at Sibel’s new website, www.boilingfrogspost.com

Nomi Prins talks about Democrats’ moves to weaken Sarbanes-Oxley and the plans to pay out record bonuses; Robert Dreyfuss talks about the “Generals’ Revolt” against Obama re: Afghanistan. Prins is a former Goldman Sachs managing director, and the author of the new book “It Takes A Pillage”; she also talks about Glass-Steagall and its repeal under Clinton, and the obscene bonuses projected by Goldman Sachs this year. Prins is speaking in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Club on Tuesday, November 10. Dreyfuss talks about his recent article in Rolling Stone on the leak of Gen. McChrystal’s report and Obama’s response, and suggests that Obama should have fired McChrystal. We also talk about the range of bad options Obama is facing vis a vis the Taliban and al Qaeda; about Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to Pakistan, and about her stop in the Middle East and her controversial comments on Israeli settlements. In his blog at www.thenation.com Dreyfuss states that Obama’s peace efforts there are a failure.