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Podcast for Saturday, May 31, 2008 [ 0:01 | 107.5 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (195)

• Jeff Sharlet is author of the new book, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (HarperCollins). Jeff is a contributing editor at Harper’s and Rolling Stone. He is also an associate research scholar at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media. He is also the editor of the web site, The Revealer.
• Dr. Carsten Wieland wrote the piece, “The Syria-Israel talks: old themes, new setting,” at openDemocracy. In the article, Carsten explains that ‘The latest phase of negotiations between Damascus and Jerusalem will need the right constellation of events to become more than another lost opportunity.’ He is the author of the book “Syria – Ballots or Bullets? Democracy, Islamism, and Secularism in the Levant” (Cune Press), and “Syria at Bay: Secularism, Islamism and ‘Pax Americana’” (Hurst). He is a consultant and journalist and was a research fellow at Georgetown University in Washington. He spent several years living in various countries of the Middle East. Wieland studied history, political science, international relations and philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and Duke University in North Carolina.
• Frida Berrigan returned to This is Hell! to talk about her article posted at TomDispatch this week, “The Pentagon Takes Over.” Frida is a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation‘s Arms and Security Initiative. She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor at In These Times.
• the Democracy Center‘s Jim Shultz returned to This is Hell! to give us the skinny on what’s happening in Bolivia. You can read Jim’s blog by visiting http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/. The Democracy Center, based in both San Francisco and Cochabamba, Bolivia, “works globally to advance social justice through investigation and reporting, training citizens in public advocacy, and leading international citizen campaigns.”

And our irregular correspondents were:

• live from Budapest, Todd Williams was the host of the recently canceled Hungarian TV show “Feszti Korkep” …
• Jeff Dorchen delivered a ‘Moment of Truth’ …
• and, from San Francisco, Kate O’Donnell gives us her San Francisco ‘Perspective.’