The Monitor

News Analysis and Expert Interviews — Understand Your World

Archive for May, 2010

Show details for Monday, May 31st, 2010

Posted by themonitor on May 31, 2010

Tonight’s Guests are Michelle Kinman and Josh Ruebner

Headlines worth reading up on:

Guests:

Michelle Kinman on the Chevron Meeting in Houston

Michelle Kinman is co-founder and Deputy Director of Crude Accountability. In Crude Accountability’s first few years, Michelle led the international campaign to ensure greater public participation in the decision-making process surrounding the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, and conducted extensive research on oil spill prevention and response measures to be adapted to the Caspian region.  More recently, Michelle has turned her attention to shedding light on the need for greater corporate responsibility by the petroleum industry, researching and writing about oil and gas companies active in Turkmenistan and about Chevron’s activities in Kazakhstan.


Josh Ruebner on the Israeli raid on the flotilla heading to Gaza

Josh is the National Advocacy Director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 250 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law and equality for all. He also co-founded an organization named Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI), which later merged with Jewish Voice for Peace.

For more background on the Israeli raid you can listen to a press conference given on this topic by George Galloway here in Houston this morning click here.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media, Mentioned on Air, News And Analysis, Oil, Radio Shows | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for Monday May 24th, 2010

Posted by themonitor on May 24, 2010

KPFT’s Spring Membership Drive started on Sunday May 9. The overall goal is $300,000

The Monitor needs your support during the drive.

Please Call 713-526-5738 during the show.

Headlines worth reading up on:

  • Gulf Oil Spill: Similar Disaster Could Occur in Arctic Later This Year The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has heightened fears of a similar disaster occurring off America’s Arctic coast, where Shell is due to begin exploratory drilling later this year – by The Telegraph/UK
  • Obama Tells Military: Prepare for North Korea Aggression by Reuters
  • BP Admits Deepwater Rescue Is Capturing Less Oil Siphon tube is saving around 2,000 barrels a day from Gulf of Mexico spill, says BP, down from initial estimates of 3,000 by The Guardian/UK

Tonight’s Guests are Antonia Juhasz and Elias Mateus Isaac

Antonia Juhasz is the Director of the Chevron Program at Global Exchange. The Chevron Program links communities across California, the U.S. and the World to expose the true cost of Chevron and reign in the entire oil industry. She is joined tonight by Elias Mateus Isaac of OSISA – The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa based in Luanda, Angola.

Juhasz is the lead author and editor of The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report.

Upcoming Chevron-related events in Texas:

Posted in Iraq, Mentioned on Air, Oil, Primer, Radio Shows, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for Monday May 17th, 2010

Posted by themonitor on May 17, 2010

KPFT’s Spring Membership Drive started on Sunday May 9. The overall goal is $300,000

The Monitor needs your support during the drive.

Please Call 713-526-5738 during the show.

Headlines worth reading up on:

Tonight’s Guests are Bob Shalveston and Greg Palast

Bob Shalveston

Bob is the Executive Director of the COOK INLETKEEPER and a reformed attorney with backgrounds in biology, chemistry, and environmental sampling and compliance.  He was Editor-in-Chief of the University of Oregon’s Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation, and has considerable experience in toxics, the Clean Water Act, and Right-to-Know issues.  Prior to joining Inletkeeper in 1996, Bob worked in the United States Senate, Oregon’s Senate Majority Office, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium, and the University of Oregon’s Ocean Coastal Law Center.  He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the National Waterkeeper Alliance and the Cook Inlet Citizen’s Regional Advisory Council. He holds a BA in Biology; Chemistry from Boston University and a JD from the University of Oregon.

He joins The Monitor to talk about Offshore Drillling, The Exxon Valdez spill and Chevron’s upcoming shareholder’s meeting in Houston.

Upcoming Chevron-related events in Texas:

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Greg Palast

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Armed Madhouse“. Once called  “The most important investigative reporter of our time” [Tribune Magazine] in Britain, Greg is American journalist whose work often makes headlines in the UK but upsets enough powerful people in the US that his work is rarely mentioned on corporate owned media outlets. His first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers. You can read his work here: Greg Palast.com

Tonight we talk with him about the BP disaster in the Gulf, the Arizona Immigration Law and two new DVD’s you can get through our show tonight:

Jeremy Scahill, Greg Palast & Big Noise: From Blackwater to White Power


And his latest DVD: Palast Investigates

MORE INFO

Please Call 713-526-5738 during the show to pick up a copy of this DVD

Posted in Economy, News And Analysis, Oil, Race, The Economy, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for Monday May 10th, 2010

Posted by themonitor on May 10, 2010

KPFT’s Spring Membership Drive started on Sunday May 9. The overall goal is $300,000

The Monitor needs your support during the drive. Please Call 713-526-5738 during the show.

Headlines worth reading up on:

Tonight’s Guest is T.J. Buonomo

T.J. Buonomo is the founder of Citizens for a Sovereign and Democratic Iraq and the editor of its online blog. He is a former Military Intelligence Officer, U.S. Army and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and Middle East Studies from the U.S. Air Force Academy. T.J. has spent the past 5 years researching the nexus between multinational corporations, markets, and U.S. covert operations in developing countries, with a particular focus on the Middle East and Latin America. His current research focus areas include international trade and its impact on developing nations, the geopolitics of energy, and the history of U.S.-Middle Eastern relations.

In 2002, Thomas “TJ” Buonomo entered the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he majored in Middle Eastern studies and also studied Arabic. When he graduated, TJ cross-commissioned into the Army, believing that being on the ground in the Middle East would be the best use of his knowledge and abilities. Although he supported the war in Afghanistan, TJ had serious misgivings and concerns about what the U.S. was doing in Iraq, and began writing e-mails to fellow officers expressing his views. His chain of command learned about the e-mails, investigated, and determined that his criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney constituted a crime under military law. Rather than court-martial him, the Army discharged him.
TJ’s Recent posts

·         March 28, 2010 Alternatives to National or Foreign Control of Iraq’s Oil

·         February 6, 2010 The Iraqi Oil Conundrum: Energy and Power in the Middle East

·         February 1, 2010 Nigeria: Lessons for Foreign Diplomats and Businessmen Operating in Iraq

·         December 28, 2009 Al Jazeera Coverage of Iraq Oil Law Proceedings

·         November 14, 2009 A Brief Introduction To Iraq: 1918-2009

·         November 13, 2009 The Need For An Activist Global Citizenry

Posted in Economic Inequality, Empire, Iraq, Oil, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for Monday May 3rd, 2010

Posted by themonitor on May 3, 2010

This week’s guests:

Ray McGovern talks about a ‘Good Terrorist’

Diane Wilson talks about the DeepWater Horizon Oil Spill

Headlines:

Guest Details:

Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He has been a frequent guest with Mark Bebawi on The Monitor over the years. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.

Quotes and Links:

“If this kind of scenario is allowed to play out, hostilities with Iran will make the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like volleyball games between Mount Saint Ursula and Holy Name high schools. Can President Obama be so naïve as to be unaware of the stakes here?”

Article: Ray McGovern: A “Good” Terrorist Captured by Iran

Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, began fishing the bays off the coast of East Texas at the age of eight, by 24 she was a boat captain. In 1989, while running her brother’s fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. She joins Mark Bebawi on The Monitor tonight to talk about the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill in the wider context.

Quotes and Links:

“Corporations, whether it’s BP in the Gulf or Dow Chemical / Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, don’t follow the precautionary principle. They say that their worst-case scenarios won’t ever happen and so we shouldn’t dare threaten their profits with extra safety costs. Thanks in part to the deregulation from Dick Cheney’s energy task force during the Bush administration, the U.S. doesn’t require an emergency ‘acoustic’ shut-off valve that costs $500,000 and could have prevented BP’s disaster. … Yet most of the other oil-producing nations require the ‘acoustic switch’ and it has been used in Norway since l993. These corporations don’t want to spend a tiny portion of their billions of dollars on something that can prevent a disaster. They get the legal rights of being people and yet take actions that destroy the lives of real people. What BP has done is just a giant example of what happens constantly with the chemical and oil companies in the Gulf. They pollute, then they say it didn’t get into the water, then they say, well, it was only 20 gallons, then they say it was 200 gallons. Then it’s too much to clean up. One big problem is that so much is dependent on industry’s self-reporting. You can’t get decent information from companies. I find out a great deal because I work with an injured workers group.”

Diane wrote An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas. You can read an excerpt here.

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Shown in Graph

Posted in CIA, Department of Homeland Security, Empire, Iran, Israel, Oil, Radio Shows, The "War on Terror", Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

 
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