KPFA - Letters and Politics

Guest: Richard Becker is the Western Region Coordinator of the ANSWER – Act Now to Stop War & End Racism – Coalition, and the author of Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, and The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks. He is also co-author of several books Storming the Gates: How the Russian Revolution Changed the World, Revolution Manifesto: Understanding Marx and Lenin’s Theory of Revolution. Feature photo: Noah Brooks on Wikimedia   The post Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Richard Becker appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University (crrj.org), she has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights lawyer, a defense attorney, and a judge.  Professor Burnham was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.  She is the author of the book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. The post Legal Murder: A Legacy of Jim Crow appeared first on KPFA.

Guest:  John Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation Magazine. He is the author of the book Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers:  Accountability for those who Caused the Crisis.  His latest piece in The Nation is Attorneys General Elections Take Center Stage Post-Roe: AG races across the country will determine whether local prosecutors are encouraged to bring charges in abortion cases or forced to comply with pre-Roe bans. The post A Preview of the 2022 Midterm Elections with John Nichols appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Zakhar Popovych is a member of the Left Opposition in Ukraine. Photo credit: Wikimedia commons The post Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Ukrainian Opposition Leader Zakhar Popovych appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation and a columnist for The Washington Post.  She is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.   She wrote in the Nation the piece The Cuban Missile Crisis Was 60 Years Ago, but It’s Urgently Relevant Today: That pivotal moment proves that de-escalation and diplomacy can prevail. Photo credit: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Wikimedia And Antiterrorist Operation in Eastern Ukraine on Flickr The post Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Katrina vanden Heuvel appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Katherine Corcoran is a former Associated Press bureau chief for Mexico and Central America and is currently co-coordinator of MasterLAB, an investigative editor training program in Mexico City.  She is the author of In The Mouth Of The Wolf: A Murder, A Cover-up, and The True Cost Of Silencing The Press.   The post The Murder of Regina Martina Perez appeared first on KPFA.

Part I. Ukraine and the U.S. Military Budget Guest: William Hartung is an expert on national security/foreign policy  at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.  He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (2011).   Part II. The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century Guest: Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of award-winning books on African American history, including The Sword and the Shield and Stokely: A Life.  His latest is The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century (2022). The post Ukraine and the U.S. Military Budget & Peniel Joseph on Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Serhii Plokhy is Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.  He is the author of several books including, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2021) and most recently, Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (2022). The post A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Peter Kuznick is a professor of history and director of the award-winning Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.  He has written extensively about science and politics, nuclear history, and Cold War culture. He is the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (2019); the co-author of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with Akira Kimura; Rethinking Cold War Culture (2010) with James Gilbert; and of The Untold History of the United States with Oliver Stone (2012). Photo by Yves Alarie on Unsplash The post A History of Nuclear War with Peter Kuznick appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Kai Bird is an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy and of McGeorge and William Bundy. He won the Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin). His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA.  He is a contributing editor for the Nation, his latest piece can be found here Not Even Nuclear War Will Stop the Fighting in Ukraine: Kyiv deserves our economic support and military aid, but not American troops or nuclear ambiguity. Feature photo: Wikimedia The post Kai Bird on Robert Oppenheimer & Tactical Nuclear Weapons appeared first on KPFA.