2010 Program Archive

2010 Program Archive

Daily Briefing - Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Steve Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and is also a Senior Fellow at New America, and previously served as Executive Vice President. Previously, Mr. Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute, of which he is still Director. Steve Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major leading op-ed pages, journals, and magazines around the world. He is the publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note.

 

Dr. Trita Parsi is an adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins Univerity's School of Advanced International Studies, co-founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council, the nation's largest Iranian/American organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michelle Richardson is a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office, focusing on national security issues such as the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance and state secrets, open government, and congressional accountability and oversight. Before coming to the ACLU, Richardson served as counsel to Representative John Conyers, Jr. and the House Judiciary Committee, where she specialized in national security, civil and human rights and constitutional issues for the Democratic staff.

 

 

 

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Daily Briefing - Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Jane Mamsher is the founder of Firedoglake.com and one of America’s most popular and influential political bloggers. She is also a motion picture producer of such films as Natural Born Killers, Apt Pupil, Permanent Midnight and From Hell. Her political writing and analysis has appeared in a number of other publications, including the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect. She is author of the best-selling book, Killer Instinct and has been one of the leading bloggers cover the White House.

 

 

 

 

Craig Aaron is the senior program director of “Free Press” a nationwide nnoprofit and nonpartisan media research group. He is a recognized authority on media, internet, and journalism issues. Previously he was the managing editor of In These Times magazine and an investigative reporter for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. Today his work is routinely featured in the Guardian and the Huffington Post. He has also co-authored the book Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age.

 

 

Shannyn Moore is the top-rated progressive radio broadcaster of Anchorage, Alaska, who pioneered the political talk radio for women in the 49th state. Born and raised in Homer, Alaska, Shannyn grew up hunting, commercial fishing, and living a rural lifestyle. On her program she has interviewed Sarah Palin numerous times, as well as many other figures on the American political scene.

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Daily Briefing - Monday, August 9, 2010

 

Daryl Felder has centered his interests encompass evolution, phylogenetics, molecular genetics, diversity, ecology, physioecology, development, systematics, and functional morphology of marine decapod crustaceans (crabs, shrimp and lobsters). Also conducting long-term studies of endemism among Gulf decapods, particularly those assemblages on deep hard banks throughout the Gulf, and more recently those on hydrocarbon seeps. A major project concerns compilation of a color illustrated monograph on the crabs and lobsters of the Gulf of Mexico. Some of this work is conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. He has long maintained collaborative research projects in the Indian River Lagoon. Other recent or currently active studies involve field work in Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela. Most funding for his program has come from the US Dept. of Energy, the US Geological Survey, Sea Grant, and the National Science Foundation.

Gerald Nunziato has served in various capacities as a Special Agent of the United States Department of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) from July 1970 to January 1999. From 1990 to 1991, he was the Firearms Interdiction Program Manager responsible for the ATF Firearms Stolen from Interstate Commerce Program , and later was assigned as Special Agent in Charge of ATF’s National Tracing Center until 1999. During his tenure as Special Agent in Charge at the National Tracing Center, Mr. Nunziato’s work revolutionized the firearms tracing capability as a law enforcement tool. Mr. Nunziato was then and is now nationally known for his ability to interpret crime-gun trace data to assist law enforcement investigations. Created the first computer program that analyzed crime-gun information to identify sources of illegal firearms traffickers. Nunziato also developed and taught a course in the use of firearms tracing to impact on illegal firearms trafficking to law enforcement officers national and worldwide.

Anthony Weller is the author of three novels (most recently, “The Siege of Salt Cove”) and a memoir of India and Pakistan. He is also well-known as a jazz and classical guitarist and composer. His father, George Weller, was a legendary Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent who ignored the news blackout that General MacArthur had imposed after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed and sneaked into Nagasaki four weeks after the blast ahead of the US Army and Navy.

George Weller wrote FIRST INTO NAGASAKI: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War  in six weeks.

His son Anthony Weller edited the book.

Every dispatch that George Weller sent to Tokyo was destroyed by MacArthur’s censors. Although George Weller tried to get medical assistance to the area  no doctors arrived for weeks. He also reported on several Allied POW camps nearby who were affected by the blasts.

Check out his website for more information: http://www.anthonyweller.com/home.html

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Background Briefing - Sunday, August 8, 2010


Dr. Marvin Weinbaum was the former Afghanistan and Pakistan Analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US Department of State from 1991 to 2003 and is an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois where he directed the program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Dr. Weinbaum was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and held Fulbright Research Fellowships for Afghanistan and Egypt. He has authored numerous books, including The Future of Afghanistan. He has a new article entitled "Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency and Terrorism in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier" in the current issue of Journal of International Affairs.

Check out more of Dr. Weinbaum's books here.
Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. Patel has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle and many others. His first book was Stuffed and Starved:The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller.

Purchase his books here - for more information go to rajpatel.org

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American feminist, democratic socialist, and political activist, a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2006, Ehrenreich founded United Pro- fessionals, an organization described as "a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers. She is a widely read columnist and essayist, and the author of nearly 20 books. Her book Bright-Sided was inspired by her personal battle with breast cancer - as a woman.

Purchase Bright Sided  here, or check out more of Ehrenreich's publications here. Check out her website for up to date information.

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Daily Briefing - Thursday, August 5, 2010

Part 1: Net Neutrality

Gigi Sohn is the co-founder and president of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working to defend citizens' rights in the emerging digital culture. She has served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens’ rights before the FCC and the courts. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi Sohn its Internet “Pioneer” Award. She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity’s “Well Connected” Telecommunications Project.

Sascha Meinrath directs the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and he is the Research Director of the Foundation’s Wireless Future Program. He is also a co-founder of Measurment Lab, a distributed platform for researchers around the world to deploy Internet measurement tools, advance network research, and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. In addition, he coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership dedicated to the development of open source, low-cost wireless technologies.

Part 2: Politics in Africa (continuing fall-out from World Cup-related bombings in Uganda; new Kenyan constitution)

Nii Akuetteh is a policy researcher and analyst who specializes in monitoring how international affairs affect Africa and exploring the participation of African immigrants in US public policy. Previously, he served as Executive Director of African Action in Washington, DC, he was the founder of the Democracy and Conflict Research Institute in Accra, Ghana and the Soros-funded grant-making foundation OSIWA. He also served as an aide to Randall Robinson directing a research affiliate of TransAfrica during the US anti-apartheid movement.

Part 3: Public participation in local politics (Corrupt Congresspeople and council members and the role of low voter turn-out and little press coverage)

Robert Stern is President of the Center for Governmental Studies. He began drafting and analyzing political reform laws as a staff attorney for the California Legislature’s Assembly Elections Committee; he then served as the Elections Counsel to the California Secretary of State’s office. He has drafted numerous state initiatives, was the principal co-author of California’s 1974 Political Reform Act, adopted by 70% of California’s voters, and was a principal drafter of the City of Los Angeles’ Ethics and Public Campaign Financing laws in 1990. Prior to joining the Center for Governmental Studies he served as the first general counsel of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

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