Tuesday 31 March '09 show

• Guest: filmmaker David Bossie, president of Citizens United. His ”Hillary: The Movie” is before the US Supreme Court - is banning “Hillary: the Movie” the same as banning books? Is the case about the movie, or about the airing of ads about the movie during the campaign season? How much was spent on the ads compared to the cost of the movie? He did not stay for the whole segment.
• "The freedom of opinion and the reasonable maintenance of it is not a crime and ought not to occasion injury." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1801.
• French president Sarkozy saying he may walk out of the forthcoming G20 meeting. There is a huge debate over what is going to be the future of the world economic system. Globalization should be reconsidered. The US and the UK have been hardest hit, because of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher who promoted laissez-faire, deregulation. Sarkozy wants reform. Germany does not want to stimulate the economy, they have a budget surplus. They have a social safety net for those who have lost their jobs.
• George Soros said in the Guardian that if no significant change came out of the meeting, treat banks etc and regulate them like utilities, then there would be a far worse great depression than 1990s. We do have some safety net, albeit not enough, and a different president.
• Bumper Music: Place Out On The Ocean, Jamey Johnson (video).
• Article: UFOs captured on Google Street View hovering over East End bookies.
• Article: Google cheat view.
  "A FURIOUS wife has called in divorce lawyers after spotting her husband’s car parked outside another woman’s house — on Google.

  She saw the Range Rover while using the internet giant’s new Street View service to snoop on a female friend’s home.

  The hubby had claimed he was away on business, but his missus recognised his motor immediately because of its blinged-up hubcaps.

  The love cheat is not the only husband trapped by Google’s controversial new 360-degree photo search which covers 25 cities and towns throughout the country.

  "
• Bumper Music: We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover, from "Annie".
• Which European socialist country should the US try to be closer like? France, Denmark health care. Thom is going to do a week of people from Europe, Japan, other countries with national health care. Bernie's legislation proposal for state health systems. Social security cap.
• Book: "In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony", Eamonn Fingleton.

  "What if the Japanese never really did “surrender” to us, inasmuch as we think they “adopted” our culture and values after World War II, but instead have been playing us for suckers, angry about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ever since? What if they’re collaborating with the Chinese in creating an Asian sphere of influence – decidedly un-democratic – to rule the world over the next century?

  What if the Chinese have perfected a neo-Confucian system (with surprising resemblance to Machiavelli’s “The Prince”) that melds an oppressive and fascistic state with laissez faire capitalism, creating greater strength for both than has ever been seen before on Earth? And they are using this to both co-op and change our values, to take over our corporate and economic system, and to ultimately gain control of our political system? What if they were already well over halfway to that goal?

  It all sounds a bit far-fetched to somebody raised on a steady diet of American corporate news. But the corporate news in this country is coming from the very corporations that are profiting from and empowering the Communist Chinese new Reich. We’ve been intentionally deceived, by “useful idiots” like Tom Friedman and openly staged news events like those surrounding the Yasukuni shrine “controversy” or the Sino-Japanese “war” over the Senkaku islands.

  In the Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony is one of the most powerful, shocking, well-written, solidly documented, tear-the-scales-from-your-eyes books I’ve read in more than two decades. If you have any concern whatsoever about the future of American democracy, about peace in the world, about your own personal economic and political future, you must read this book.

  Eamonn Fingleton, the author and former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, has really done his homework."

• Article: Chinese hackers 'using ghost network to control embassy computers'.
• Guest: Journalist/author Eamonn Fingleton. Irish journalist/author of numerous books on global economics and globalism. A former editor for the Financial Times and Forbes. Author, "In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony". Will we all be speaking Chinese soon? Live from Japan. Buzzflash review. Today's news: the Dalai Lama urges China to open up Tibet after ghost hacking, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd defending his pursuit of closer ties with China. Authoritarian rather than fascistic. China has the money countries need to borrow. Confucianism, Machiavellian, government with no check from people, leave government to specialists. People at the top manipulative, duplicitous. One thirds of Chinese people have moved to find work, which is against the law unless you have permission. Selective enforcement of laws, can punish up to death. Impossible to abide by them all. Tax laws ambiguous.

  America's fate? America is losing it, its leadership of the world is coming to an end. The Chinese system is more effective, they can extend it around the world, manipulate people abroad. A lot is above board, visible; economic. China is breaking laws, they have OK-looking front companies that American companies trade with, but others behind them that are not OK. Internet companies are cooperating with censorship. The pressure their economic situation lets them make.

• Bumper Music: It's Your Life, Loverboy.
• From Eamonn's book chapter, "Power Begets Power":
  

  The media, which with virtually no exceptions, are under the direct statutory control of the Communist Party, 2,000 newspapers, 2,000 television channels, 9,000 magazines, 450 radio stations, all under the watchful eye of the party. China is estimated to have 42 journalists in prison, the highest number in the world. As reported in the People's Daily during 2004 alone, "censorship agencies permanently shut down 338 publications for printing 'internal' information, closed 202 branch offices of newspapers, and punished 73 organisations for illegally 'engaging in news activities'.

  Contrary to all conventional wisdom in the West, the reality of post-war Japan has been of an authoritarian society with a strongly nationalist agenda. Japan's nationalism and its authoritarianism were both essential preconditions for what followed; the emergence of Japan's pioneering version of the east Asian economic system.

• Japan and South Korea pioneered an economic system which the Chinese have adopted. This is capitalism and authoritarianism on steroids.
• Bumper Music: Talk, Coldplay.
• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Article: Ohio man charged with drunken driving on bar stool.
• 1984 convention against torture. Pinochet background, Parallels.
• Article: Spanish judge to hear torture case against six Bush officials.
• Guest: Dr. Marjorie Cohn. Author, "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent" with Kathleen Gilberd. "Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and international human rights law. She lectures throughout the world on human rights and US foreign policy." Author of "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law".

  Could it happen here too? Spanish Judge to hear torture case against 6 Bush officials; Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Douglas Feith, William Haynes, John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Spain's universal jurisdiction law for particularly heinous crimes. It complements but does not supercede national cases; if the US was prosecuting them other countries would not do so. Israel used it against Eichmann, but Spain is considering repealing universal jurisdiction. Spain is currently investigating charges of torture against Israel in Gaza. The movie Pan's Labyrinth. Fascism; Germany, Italy, Spain. Why Spain? Very progressive, courageous judge. If Spain backs down others may take it on, there is so much evidence. Holder should be doing it, and Obama should be for it. Bush pressurized a Belgian court out of pursuing Donald Rumsfeld. Would Obama pressure other governments? Prosecution in the USA would become highly politicized, it might be better for another country to do it. The US has statues such as the Maiming statute that should be used. When the US ratified the convention against torture it promised that it would prosecute people who had committed torture. The Republicans are blocking the confirmation of Dawn Johnson to the office of Legal Counsel because she has been so outspoken against these crimes. Call your senators and Specter and Leahy.

• Bumper Music: Come On In, Brad Paisley (video).
• Torture does not work, the Department of Defense says so.
• Clip:
  "Soon afterward, Washington lead his soldiers across the Delaware River and onto victory in the Battle of Trenton. There he captured nearly 1000 foreign mercenaries and he faced a crucial choice.

  How would General Washington treat these prisoners? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Washington's Crossing, thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors.” There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered, countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor, starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.

  You can imagine, the light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington was not that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it is easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:

  "

  Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.

  Senator Hillary Clinton, September 28, 2006.

• Bumper Music: Honeycomb, Nadia Fay (video).
• Bumper Music: Dizzy, Tommy Roe.
• Dr. Richard Silberstein told Thom and Louise why talking on cell phone is bad for driving, even hands free, because it is not the sane same tonal range as in conversation or radio, so the brain has to convert.
• Article: Sneezing fit causes driver to crash into Ore. home.
• Bumper Music: United We Stand, Brotherhood of Man (video).
• Upcoming Event: May 2 – Denver, CO – Green Festival – Thom is keynoting.