Ferguson, Charles — Will This War Ever End?

“The Endless War,” a movie released in late July 2007, written, directed and produced by Charles Ferguson, depicts the blunders and ill-prepared manner in which the United States initiated and carried out the war against Iraq. This full-length feature film juxtaposes the statements and actions of the Washington leadership of the war, which at the outset failed to include President Bush – the Commander-in-Chief, with the leadership’s actions and grievous consequences that followed.  Charles Ferguson holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has extensive experience in foreign policy analysis, and lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area. When I spoke with him on July 20, 2007 we began with his explanation how the war and the occupation of Iraq were shaped by an extremely small group of people In Washington D.C., with limited foreign policy and post war occupation experience.


The film he recommends is “The Lives of Others,” a story about East Germany under the community regime.

 

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Rosin, Hanna — God’s Harvard

Since 2000, ambitious young evangelicals have made their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school near Washington, D.C. Most of them are home schoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. At “God’s Harvard” they are groomed to become tomorrow’s elite, dispatched to the front lines of politics, entertainment and science to “take back a godless nation.” Hanna Rosin, author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America,” visits the nerve center of the evangelical movement and describes who they are, their background, goals and desires.

The book Hanna Rosin recommends is “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman.

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Anderson, Bruce — The Reporter Interviewed

The Anderson Valley Advertiser is an iconoclastic newspaper originating weekly from Boonville, Mendocino County, California, edited and published by Bruce Anderson, whose name is merely coincidental with the name of the Anderson Valley. The masthead of the AVA, as it is sometimes called, says, “Newspapers should have no friends,” and “Fan the Flames of Discontent.” After a three-year hiatus, beginning when Anderson sold the AVA and attempted to establish a newspaper elsewhere, he repurchased the AVA and returned to Boonville on July 1, 2007 to write again. We met in the studios of Radio Curious on July 13, 2007 and talked about why he left Mendocino County, what he did while he was gone, how he reckons with the aggravated relationships he created with some people in years past, and what the readers can expect now that he again buys ink by the barrel.

 

The books Bruce Anderson recommends are those by Rebecca Solnit.

 

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Marshall, Joseph III — The End of a Nation: the Lakota Tribe

Independence unfortunately comes and goes, frequently under the guise of independence for other people. And independence is today’s topic. In this two-part Radio Curious interview, recorded on June 29, and broadcasted on July 4 and July 11, 2007, we visit the concept of independence as seen from the Lakota point of view. The Lakota nation was made up of the largest known group of North American native people and encompassed a large portion of the northern plains in what is now Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. Our guest is Joseph M. Marshall, III, author if “The Day The World Ended at Little Bighorn, a Lakota History.” Growing up on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, where his first language was Lakota, Marshall is a historian, storyteller and author whose work shares the history of his people. I spoke with Joseph Marshall when he visited San Francisco, California. We began our discussion when I asked him to describe what turned out to be the largest and last gathering of the Lakota people when they met at Little Bighorn in July of 1876.

The books Joseph Marshall recommends are “The World We Used to Live in: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men,” by Vine Deloria and”The Snow Walker,” by Farley Mowat.

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