Foreign Policy

Israel-Palestine Through the Lens of Settler-Colonialism – Professor Ilan Pappe

30sec Preview for Part ONE click HERE
30sec Preview for Part TWO click HERE
A460CD - To purchase a one hour CD at cost click HERE

The program begins with a standard disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the following program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this radio station, its staff or board of directors.
I placed the disclaimer because content critical of the Israel/Palestine peace process is frequently criticized. Please give it an airing because the ideas expressed may help explain a situation that has led to decades of pain and bloodshed in the Middle East. And Professor Ilan Pappe is an extraordinary intellectual and historian.
Here is background on him and the organizers:
Ilan Pappe was born in Haifa and educated in Israel. He was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and [ . . . ]

Read More

The Project for the New American Century

30 second Preview/Promo for Part ONE
30 second Preview/Promo for Part TWO
code A230CD: To order a 58 minute CD at cost click here: $10.00

A reading from the document by Mime Troupe founder R.G. Davis
Introduced by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The paper was commissioned by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the year 2000, before any of them were  in government. The think tank, the Project for the New American Century, produced a blueprint for a system of world-wide US military dominance and intervention. The document remained secret until 2002 when it was discovered by the Scottish Sunday Herald.
The program opens with the peace poem: “Speak Out” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, features General John Allen’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president with Bernie Sanders supporters shouting “no more war”; and ends with a reading by SF Mime Troupe founder R.G. Davis from the bone [ . . . ]

Read More

Downing Street Minutes – With John Bonifaz, Ray McGovern, Cindy Sheehan, and Joseph Wilson

The Downing Street Minutes say that the Bush administration was already committed to waging war on Iraq a year before the war began and was asking the British government to “fix” the intelligence data and facts around the policy. The three page memo contains the minutes of a highest level cabinet meeting with the British Prime Minister at Downing Street in July 2002. It was published in the Times of London on May 1, 2005. The Downing Street Memo created a storm in the international press but was suppressed in most US media. If the allegations are true they may lead to impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush.
On Thursday June 16th, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, ranking Member of the House [ . . . ]

Read More

In Times of War Who Dies and Who Makes a Killing? Dick Cheney and Halliburton

Thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s former company are working alongside American troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. This report by Pratab Chatterjee is tracing the history of Halliburton. Chatterjee is an investigative journalist. Read his articles on <www.corpwatch.org >
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
Emperors in the Jungle
The hidden presence of US chemical weapons in Panama
“Regime Change” in Panama in 1989 is not the only parallel to the war on Iraq. The US used and tested biological and chemicals weapons in Panama and left behind 2 tons of VX nerve agents when it finally vacated the Canal Zone in 1999. Now the US [ . . . ]

Read More

Ralph Nader: How to End the War on Iraq

In early 2005 Ralph Nader began a 10 city tour to stop the war and end the occupation of Iraq. Undaunted by the outcome of the 2004 election he presents a passionate critique not just of Bush but of the democratic party and launches a grassroots movement of a million committed activists that demands a complete pull out of troops and corporations from Iraq within a 6 month period. Nader acknowledges the work of <http://www.veteransforpeace.org>
Ralph Nader was recorded in Seattle in January of 2005
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of the full 29 minute program click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
code: A265 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code A265CD: [ . . . ]

Read More

Dennis Brutus: Cry for the Beloved Country Peter Dale Scott on “Plan Colombia”

Brutus, he poet, teacher, and former political prisoner in South Africa gives a moving account of the betrayal of the liberation movement by the current South African government. The country is taking a full turn toward neo-liberalism and the policies of the World Bank and IMF, institutions that Brutus is part of a campaign to confront and challenge.
Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at UC Berkeley. Among his books are “The War Conspiracy” and “The Iran-Contra Connection”. He draws frightening parallels to the US war on Vietnam.
Code A183 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Go to A-Infos to download a broadcast quality copy of the 29 minute radio version (BRUTUS)
Go to Read More

Edward Said: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights

This is a special tribute on the anniversary of the death of Edward Said. Friends say that he knew that his life was coming to an end when he gave this legacy address on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.
Professor Said was known as both a scholar of modern literature and an expert on Middle Eastern politics. Educated at Princeton and Harvard he now teaches at Columbia.  His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, include: Covering Islam, and The Politics of Dispossession. He was born in Palestine before the founding of the Jewish State. By 1950 his extended family had all fled Jerusalem for Cairo. Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians they were displaced by the Jewish [ . . . ]

Read More

Naomi Klein – War And Fleeze

How Economic Shock Therapy Backfired in Iraq
Naomi Klein, the award winning journalist and author of the international best seller, No Logo, spoke to the abyss between the spin of the new democratic Iraq in the US media and the reality on the ground. The wave of privatization, instituted by Paul Bremer and reinforced by the International Monetary Fund, will not easily be reversed since the new government needs an impossible to reach majority to undo Bremer’s laws and enact the wishes of the Iraqi people. The IMF, the US government, the Paris Club and other international organizations are making a cruel joke of the promise of self determination in Iraq.
Naomi Klein writes an internationally syndicated column for The Nation, The [ . . . ]

Read More

Tariq Ali Movement Against the Wars in the Middle East & Religious Fundamentalism

An eloquent analysis of the wars in Iraq and Palestine and the reasons for the absence of an anti war movement in the US.
Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali came to Berkeley at the end of April 2005. Tariq Ali was born in Pakistan in 1943. Educated at Oxford, he became involved with the movement against the war on Vietnam. He is also a world renowned scholar on the history and culture of Islam. Tariq Ali is editorial director of Verso books and editor and board member of the New Left Review.
Tariq Ali’s fiction includes a series of historical novels about Islam: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, A Sultan in Palermo and The Stone Woman. His non-fiction includes the just [ . . . ]

Read More

Tariq Ali – War, Empire And Resistance

Exiled from his home in Pakistan where he was born in 1943, Tariq Ali is a scholar, activist, novelist, play write, film maker and radio and TV commentator. He is the editor of the New Left Review and his name is linked with the rise of the New Left since his arrival in Oxford in the 1960s. He is one of the charismatic speakers of the anti-war movement.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
code: A233 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code A233CD: To order a CD click here: $10.00

Robert Fisk: The Fantasy War Liberation, Weapons of Mass Destruction & Democracy

Fisk’s detailed account of events on the ground stands in stark contrast to reports in the US media. He says that today Iraq lives “a tragedy of epic proportions”. Governments in the West “are doomed to suffer contagion by our hubris, lies and fantasies.” Details of this very informative talk include: Civilian casualty reports, life in the palace of Paul Bremer, the use, by the US army of Israeli “terms of engagement in civilian areas”, the cutting down of orchards, a terrible sequence of sounds from a Secret Police torture, an update on the frigate Stark incident and more.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of the radio program click HERE
code: A235R To order a cassette copy click here: [ . . . ]

Read More

Robert Fisk on war crimes in Jenin and the New Terrorism

The refugees in the Jenin camp, near the center of the town of Jenin in occupied Palestine were able to see their former homes across the border of what is now the state of Israel. In April of this year the camp made world history. After 12 days of shelling and bulldozing by the Israeli army large parts of the camp were turned to rubble. Did Israeli bulldozers destroy buildings while people were trapped inside? What occurred here while the media and foreign observers were excluded at gun point? Robert Fisk tells the story.
As a war and Middle East correspondent for the London Times, and now for the London-based Independent, Fisk has shown both personal and political courage. His coverage [ . . . ]

Read More

Robert Fisk: On the War on Iraq

Pity the Nation
What a war on Iraq would do to the Middle East
Just back from Beirut where he lives, the noted British journalist and Middle East expert gave another fact filled talk about recent developments in the Middle East. Topics: 9/11, hidden motives for war, his meeting with Osama bin Laden and US plans to pay itself back with Iraqi oil for the cost of war.
<www.independent.co.uk>
For a broadcast quality mp3 file of Parts ONE and TWO click HERE
code A223: To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code A223CD: To order a CD click here: $10.00

Iraq, Alternatives to Occupation Rania Masri

While the attention of the world is focussed on the daily attacks on US soldiers the radical restructuring of the Iraqi economy gets little notice. Privatization, destruction of the local economy by imports and free trade zones, changes in tax and banking laws decreed with the stoke of a pen by executive order have made Iraq a free-for all for US and British corporations. Things are so bad that two bills are making their way through House and Senate to deal with dishonest contracting and war profiteering.  <http://www.southernstudies.org >
Rania Masri is a Lebanese American writer, scholar and activist. She is the director of the Southern Peace Research and Education Center at the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, [ . . . ]

Read More

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti A Challenge to Humanity – The Situation in Palestine

This is a moving, urgent report from Palestine by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He is a medical doctor, and one of the leaders of the Palestinian movement that calls for an end to Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Gaza. His organization provides health and community services to more than 1 million people every year.
Reduced to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians were promised by a UN resolution, to maintain the state of Palestine on 45% of their former land. But this promise was never filled. Instead Israel occupied both areas and established armed settlements. Presently Ariel Sharon demands that over half of the West Bank also be given to Israel.  The terrible humanitarian crisis of our time is [ . . . ]

Read More