Latest News: Archive for the ‘interview’ Category

“Dispelling Myths About Iran, Trump’s Bogeyman.” – MEDEA BENJAMIN on the The Real News

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

One of the key elements of the Trump administration’s foreign policy has been increasing aggression against Iran. Trump has cozied up with the Saudi regime, but at the same time, has repeatedly called for the overthrow of Iran’s government. Well, joining us to discuss this is a leading figure in the U.S. peace movement who has been helping to lead the fight to save the Iran Nuclear Deal. I’m speaking with Medea Benjamin, who is a co-founder of the women-led peace movement, Code Pink, and also the author of a book on Iran that expels many of the myths about the country, called Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Read the full article here.

“He’s going to certainly cross swords with Washington, D.C. Now, whether he wants to hit the sword very hard, that’s another issue.” – VIJAY PRASHAD on Mexico’s new president at the The Real News

Thursday, December 13th, 2018

A bold transformation of Mexico’s economy is one of the many promises the newly inaugurated President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, is promising his people. Some have deemed this the fourth transformation of Mexico. But that won’t be easy for the newly elected president. Joining me now to discuss the challenge is Vijay Prashad. He is the executive director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. Vijay, good to have you back.

Read the full article here.

“George H.W. Bush Is Alive in His Many Victims Across the Globe, Including Me.” – ARIEL DORFMAN interviewed on Democracy Now

Monday, December 10th, 2018

George H.W. Bush was the only president in U.S. history to serve as CIA director, a role that would come to define his career and politics. He once described the intelligence agency as “part of my heartbeat.” Bush Sr. was at the helm of the CIA from January 1976 to January 1977. We speak with Ariel Dorfman, best-selling author, playwright, poet and activist, who teaches at Duke University. In 1973, he served as a cultural adviser to Chilean President Salvador Allende’s chief of staff. He says George H.W. Bush was “presiding over the CIA when Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, had concentration camps open. They were torturing people. They were executing people. They were persecuting people. And they were killing people overseas.” We also speak with Greg Grandin, prize-winning author and professor of Latin American history at New York University, and José Luis Morín, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Read the full article here.

GREG SHUPAK discusses THE WRONG STORY: PALESTINE, ISRAEL, AND THE MEDIA at Unauthorized Disclosure

Thursday, December 6th, 2018

Greg Shupak, author of “The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media,” joins the show to discuss his book that sharply critiques how establishment and left-of-center media cover the Israeli military occupation.

Listen to the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the birth of the focus group at Citations Needed

Monday, November 26th, 2018

Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism.

But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they’ve simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world?.

Listen to the full interview here.

“Airbnb likes to say, ‘Come and live like a local.’ But if they’re driving out locals while they’re doing that, that is a problem.” – TOM SLEE interviewed in The Coast

Monday, November 26th, 2018

Airbnb likes to position its hosts as everyday people offering up their homes for a little cash when they take a vacation or leave on a work trip. But new data assembled for The Coast shows the exact opposite.

Over half of the Airbnb listings in the urban core seemingly belong to property owners with multiple listings. The exact figures, however, are difficult to pin down.

Read the full article here.

VIJAY PRASHAD on the return of the IMF to Latin America at the Real News

Monday, November 26th, 2018

Argentina’s legislature approved a drastic austerity budget for fiscal year 2019 on Thursday which will cut social spending by as much as 35 percent and increase debt service payments by 50 percent. The budget is expected to cause a further contraction of Argentina’s economy. The austerity budget is being implemented to a large extent. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, which has given Argentina alone a $56 billion dollars, one of its largest loans ever.

Read the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE on how focus groups are ruining politics on the Katie Halper Show

Monday, November 12th, 2018

Liza Featherstone talks to me and Gabe about focus groups and how they’re ruining politics. We discuss her latest book “Divining Desire: the Culture of Consultation,” her latest piece in The Baffler “Sorry to Bother You,” and the midterms.

Listen to the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the culture of consultancy in the Baffler

Monday, November 12th, 2018

THE APARTMENT WAS in one of those large luxury apartment buildings, like dorms for young New Yorkers lucky enough to have the money to buy a real home but still lacking the inclination to do so. The property had several sprawling lounges, a weight room, and a doorman. A pets-inclusive happy hour was advertised in the elevator.

Read the full article here.

“To be contributing to writing, contributing to language — I consider those to be political acts.” – KAREN FINLEY interviewed in The Villager

Friday, November 9th, 2018

At 62 years old, artistic provocateur Karen Finley has worn many outfits over her storied lifetime. Most recently she’s donned a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, as well as a frumpy, untailored blue suit, a billowy blue cotton dress with a headscarf, and a white power suit topped with a blond wig, variously impersonating Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.

Read the full interview here.

MEDEA BENJAMIN on Donald Trump’s imposition of new sanctions on Iran at Loud & Clear

Thursday, November 8th, 2018

On today’s episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by economist and political analyst Shabbir Razvi; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, and the author of “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran;” and University of Tehran Professor Mohammad Marandi.

Listen to the full interview here.

“We have a history within our families, our country, about resistance, and we know what to do.” – read an interview with KAREN FINLEY in Paper

Thursday, November 1st, 2018

No one knows provocative quite like Karen Finley. The artist’s politically charged writing and performances have brought her both admiration and notoriety since the early 1980s. Her ninth and most recent book, Grabbing Pussy, is an outrage-driven, anger-filled, yet often satirical examination of the psychosexual obsessions of men in power. Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Harvey Weinstein and, of course, President Donald Trump all get the Finley treatment.

Read the full interview here.

“Can America Survive the Rule of a “Stupified Plutocracy”?” – LEWIS LAPHAM discusses MONEY AND CLASS IN AMERICA at the Institute for New Economic Thinking

Tuesday, October 30th, 2018

When author and journalist Lewis Lapham, founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and former editor of Harper’s, turned his shrewd gaze on the go-go ‘80s in “Money and Class in America,” he never imagined the era’s avatar of greed would one day become President Donald Trump. Three decades later, Lapham shares his views on the decades-long deterioration of democracy in an interview with INET’s Lynn Parramore. An expanded and revised edition of his book is now available with a new foreward by Thomas Frank from OR Books.

Watch the full interview here.

Unintended Consequences: US Sanctions on Russia and Iran Weaken Dollar’s Rule – VIJAY PRASHAD on The Real News

Thursday, October 25th, 2018

As the US tries to keep countries such as India from dealing with Iran and Russia, it is driving more and more countries to seek alternatives to the US dollar, threatening the dollar’s hegemony, says Vijay Prashad.

Watch the full interview here.

GREG SHUPAK discusses THE WRONG STORY: PALESTINE, ISRAEL, AND THE MEDIA on By Any Means Necessary

Monday, October 15th, 2018

In the third segment “By Any Means Necessary” is joined by Dr. Greg Shupak teaches Media Studies at the University of Guelph in Toronto to talk about his new book “The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media”, the reasons why the media is pro-Israel, the biggest fallacies around the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and the role of US imperialism in advancing Israeli political and economic goals..

Listen to the full interview here.

‘Mad Men’ & the Power Elites – LIZA FEATHERSTONE in conversation with Chris Hedges at RT

Monday, October 15th, 2018

Liza Featherstone in Divining Desire: Focus Groups & the Culture of Consultation shares with journalist Chris Hedges how advertising techniques developed by early Viennese intellectual elites were adapted and coopted by US elites to control politics, consumption and opinion.

Watch the full interview here.

“You rarely hear the voices of Saudis because the royal family makes sure of that.”- MEDEA BENJAMIN on the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Sputnik

Thursday, October 11th, 2018

Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who went missing October 2 after having entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was “a mild critic” of the Saudi government, peace activist Medea Benjamin told Radio Sputnik Tuesday. Nonetheless, “the royal family makes sure” dissidents are rarely heard, she said, even abroad.

Listen to the full interview here.

MEDEA BENJAMIN, author of KINGDOM OF THE UNJUST on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Democracy Now

Wednesday, October 10th, 2018

Fears are growing over the fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials say they believe was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last week. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States, entered the Saudi Consulate in Turkey seeking a document he needed to get married and has not been seen since. .

Watch the full interview here.

MEDEA BENJAMIN on the Iran deal, Trump’s sanctions on Iran, and the US-Saudi alliance at RT Going Underground

Thursday, October 4th, 2018

In today’s episode of Going Underground, we speak firstly to Medea Benjamin, the fearless anti-war activist who stormed a Trump official’s stage to denounce US attempts at inflaming tensions with Iran. Among the issues we discussed with her were the Iran deal, Trump’s sanctions on Iran, and the US-Saudi alliance. Plus we speak to John Duffy, author of the book ‘The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark’ talks to us about 9/11, the CIA, and NSA mass surveillance. Lastly, Elliot Grove, the founder of the Raindance Film Festival, talks to us about the importance of independent films for democracy as well as persistent American propaganda in Hollywood films.

Watch the full interview here.

MEDEA BENJAMIN on the fracturing of US-EU relations over Trump’s Iran sanctions at Loud & Clear

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

Iran and the EU have come up with a payment system to work around the US’s sanctions against Iran and anyone doing business with Iran. This is yet another fracture of the EU and US’s relationship. Meanwhile, National Security Adviser John Bolton said in a speech that there would be hell to pay if Iran harmed the US. Medea Benjamin, an anti-war and anti-torture activist who is the co-founder of Code Pink, and whose most recent book is “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”, joins Brian..

Listen to the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE discusses the rise of the focus group at BackStory Radio

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

BackStory is a public radio program & podcast that brings historical perspective to the events happening around us today. On each show, renowned U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths. Over the course of the hour, they are joined by fellow historians, people in the news, and callers interested in exploring the roots of what’s going on today.

Watch the full interview here.

“Detailed information about contemporary Iran – the origins and functioning of its political system, its regional role, its citizens’ way of life.” – INSIDE IRAN reviewed in Survival: Global Politics and Strategy

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

Subscribe to Survival to ead the full review here.

MEDEA BENJAMIN on the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Iran at Sputnik

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink: Women for Peace joins us to talk about the Trump administration’s continued sanctions against the Iranian people, the misinformation campaign around the new sanctions, and the efforts by the US to push for regime change in the country.

Listen to the full interview here.

Whitewashed Saudi ‘Reformer’ Prince Boosts Authoritarian Crackdown on Dissent – MEDEA BENJAMIN interviewed at the Real News Network

Monday, September 17th, 2018

The regime of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is punishing satire on social media with 5 years in prison and sentencing women’s rights activists to death. CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin speaks about the Western whitewash of MBS..

Watch the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the history of the focus group at KPFA UpFront

Tuesday, September 11th, 2018

Liza Featherstone is a journalist and a contributing editor to The Nation, where she also writes the advice column “Asking for a Friend.” Her latest book is “Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation.”.

Listen to the full interview here.

ARIEL DORFMAN discusses the extraordinary history of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK at NPR Latino USA

Thursday, August 30th, 2018

Later in the podcast, we learn more about How to Read Donald Duck, a 1970s critique of Disney’s Donald Duck comics written by Ariel Dorfman. The book came out after Chile had the first democratically elected socialist in the Americas. We find out how one small book changed the author’s life—and why the book is hard to find even today.

Listen to the full interview here.

“We want to thank those who don’t fight in wars and recognize John McCain as a symbol of the glorification of the military that we have to fight against.” – MEDEA BENJAMIN on the death of John McCain at Democracy Now

Tuesday, August 28th, 2018

We host a roundtable discussion on the life and legacy of John McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, six-term senator and two-time presidential candidate, who died Saturday at the age of 81 of brain cancer. We speak with Mehdi Hasan, columnist for The Intercept and host of their “Deconstructed” podcast. He’s also host of “UpFront” at Al Jazeera English. He’s been tweeting in response to McCain’s death and wrote a piece last year headlined “Despite What the Press Says, ‘Maverick’ McCain Has a Long and Distinguished Record of Horribleness.” We are also joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, which McCain once referred to as “low-life scum,” and by Norman Solomon, national coordinator of RootsAction, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Watch the full interview Women’s Review of Books here.

After School Bus Massacre in Yemen, US Media Finally Begins to Pay Attention – MEDEA BENJAMIN on the war in Yemen at Loud & Clear

Friday, August 24th, 2018

A leading US anti-war activist told Radio Sputnik Tuesday she is “so glad” to see the Saudi war in Yemen finally getting mainstream media attention after having been ignored for three years. “Cable networks don’t cover international news” anymore, she lamented, “unless it has to do with Russia.”.

Listen to the full interview here.

LARRY HANCOCK on the history of US-Russian relations at Ochelli Effect

Thursday, August 23rd, 2018

Historian and author Larry Hancock returns to continue the discussion on the existing and emerging history of U.S. and Soviet/Russian relations.

Over a century of interaction between The American Empire and the post-Communist-Revolution Russian Empire we observe many covert and overt changes.

What would the Wikileaks Clinton e-mail issue look like 100 years ago? The tools change despite unyielding objectives. Is Putin looking for pay-back?

What is the reality of organized crime as it relates to the intelligence of the Russian Federation, and how did it get that way?.

Listen to the full interview here.

LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the history of the focus group at Inc. Uncensored

Thursday, August 23rd, 2018

This week, Inc. editors and writers talk about how 20 small business owners who appeared on CNBC’s “The Profit” allege that Marcus Lemonis took advantage of some of the companies he’s claimed to save. The crew also talks about how an American paper straw company dealt with insane 5,000 percent growth. Lastly, author Liza Featherstone comes to the studio to talk about her book Diving Desire, which is about the history of the focus group and how it transformed from being a tool to determine what things people want to a way to sell us stuff we don’t need..

Listen to the full interview here.