The Monitor

News Analysis and Expert Interviews — Understand Your World

Archive for February, 2012

Show Details for the week of February 27th, 2012

Posted by themonitor on February 27, 2012

In recent news, we saw Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) making headlines and being protested online by Wikileaks and Google, among others. Three weeks ago we mentioned Google’s new privacy settings and how they would affect users. How much do people really know about Google and their practices? We have Scott Cleland on the show to tell us more.

Our second guest is Rebecca Garvin from Idaho. She gives us a blow by blow description of how a homeowner gets thrown out of their home. For reference, the Obama administration recently settled with the banks on the issue of ‘robo-signing’. More about that here: Too Big to Jail

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Scott Cleland

Scott Cleland

Scott Cleland writes about Internet competition and threats to tech capitalism (economic regulation, property infringement, and harmful industry behavior and misrepresentation.) Cleland is President of Precursor® LLC, a Fortune 500 research consultancy focused on the future of Internet competition, privacy, security, property rights, innovation and algorithmic markets. Scott Cleland is author of the book: “Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.” www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com. Cleland also authors the widely-read www.PrecursorBlog.com; publishes www.GoogleMonitor.com; and serves as Chairman of www.NetCompetition.org, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests. Eight Congressional subcommittees have sought Cleland’s expert testimony and Institutional Investor twice ranked him the #1 independent telecom analyst in the U.S. when he was working for institutional investors.

Articles:

The Real Reasons Google Killed SOPA/PIPA – Forbes

More: Here

Book:

Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.

 

 

Posted in Google, Mentioned on Air, News And Analysis, privacy, Radio Shows, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for the week of February 20th, 2012

Posted by themonitor on February 20, 2012

Contraception Compromise? An interview with Stephanie Seguino

More Austerity? Government vs People in Greece. An interview with Costas Panayotakis

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About this this week’s guests:

Stephanie Seguino

Stephanie Seguino is professor of economics at the University of Vermont. She recently wrote “Help or Hindrance? Religion’s Impact on Gender Inequality in Attitudes and Outcomes.”

Quote: “By making it harder for women who work for Catholic organizations to access contraceptive insurance (researching to find the name of the insurer, taking the time to make the arrangement), access is constrained. This may seem trivial to some, but for women juggling many household responsibilities and stresses, this is a significant impediment. For young women not knowledgeable about insurance practices, this is even more of a barrier. Moreover, we do not know what the impact will be on the work climate, on social norms about using contraception, and whether women in these workplaces will feel pressured to not avail themselves of insurance for fear of the impact on their job. These are unknowns, but it is safe to say that access is made more difficult than if contraceptive care were part of the insurance package Catholic organizations provide.”

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Costas Panayotakis

Costas Panayotakis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York and author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy.  He has written extensively on Greece and has appeared on dozens of TV and radio shows around the world

Quote:
“A Greek parliament that, according to all the polls, no longer represents the views of Greek citizens has passed a new austerity package that, like the previous austerity packages dictated by the European Union and the IMF, will not only lead to the collapse of people’s living standards but also prove ineffective by adding to the Greek economy’s severe depression. The reliance, by the government of the unelected former banker, Lucas Papademos, on intense police repression did not prevent very large protests from taking place both in Athens and around Greece. Though marred by fires that burned many buildings in downtown Athens, these protests have intensified the pressure on the Greek political class, leading to over 40 deputies from the socialist and conservative parties supporting the government to vote against the new austerity package. Adding to a third party’s withdrawal of support for the government and the resignation of six cabinet members over the last few days, this latest development shows that, as the Greek economic and social crises intensify, the Greek political system is now hanging by a thread.”

See Panayotakis’ pieces: “The Eurozone Fiasco”
http://www.indypendent.org/2011/12/19/eurozone-fiasco

Debunking the Greek (and European) Crisis Narrative”
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/panayotakis171111.html

Posted in Greece, Health Care Reform, Hypocrisy | Leave a Comment »

Show Details for the week of February 13th, 2012

Posted by themonitor on February 13, 2012

As the US Presidential election season ramps up we hear more talk about China from the candidates and just recently President Obama and The Pentagon unveiled a new Asia-Pacific policy that increases US militarization in the region. However, since China is increasingly painted as a competitor, or a threat, isn’t it time we learned about and from China? Our first guest is Ann Lee.

About our guests this week:

Ann Lee

Ann Lee

Ann Lee is the author of the book ‘What the U.S. Can Learn from China” and a senior fellow at Demos. She also teaches graduate finance and economics at New York University and was formerly a professor at Peking University and Pace University. Before that, she was a former investment banker and hedge fund partner. Ms. Lee was educated at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and Harvard.

Articles:

A World Without China

10 Lessons the U.S. Can Learn From China

More: Ann Lee

Book:

What the U.S. Can Learn from China: An Open-Minded Guide to Treating Our Greatest Competitor as Our Greatest Teacher

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Gary Taubes

Gary Taubes

Gary Taubes is an American science writer. He is the author of Nobel Dreams (1987), Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion (1993), and Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), titled The Diet Delusion (2008) in the UK and Australia. His book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It was released in December 2010. In December 2010 Taubes launched his own blog at GaryTaubes.com to promote the book’s release and to respond to critics.

Born in Rochester, New York, Taubes studied applied physics at Harvard University and aerospace engineering at Stanford University (MS, 1978). After receiving a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1981,

Taubes joined Discover magazine as a staff reporter in 1982.[2] Since then he has written numerous articles for Discover, Science and other magazines. Originally focusing on physics issues, his interests have more recently turned to medicine and nutrition.

Taubes’s books have all dealt with scientific controversies. Nobel Dreams takes a critical look at the politics and experimental techniques behind the Nobel Prize-winning work of physicist Carlo Rubbia. Bad Science is a chronicle of the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion experiments of 1989.

Posted in China, Your Body | 1 Comment »

Pledge Drive Show – week of February 6th, 2012

Posted by themonitor on February 6, 2012

This week’s show is your last chance this drive to support The Monitor. Our guests are Sam Pizzigati and Gareth Porter. Please call 713.526.5738 or go online to www.kpft.org to make a secure online pledge. We have a goal of $900 for the hour and we can only do it with your help.

About our guests this week:

Sam Pizzigati

Sam PizzigatiA veteran labor journalist, Sam Pizzigati has written widely on economic inequality, in articles, books, and online, for both popular and scholarly readers. Pizzigati edits “Too Much,” the weekly Institute for Policy Studies newsletter on excess and inequality. He recently wrote the piece “The 10
Greediest Americans of 2011,’ which will be the topic of this interview.

Currently as associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., Pizzigati has been editing Too Much, a newsletter on inequality and excess, since the publication’s 1995 debut. His op-eds and articles on income and wealth maldistribution have appeared in a host of major American dailies, from the New York Times and the Washington Post to the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, as well as a broad variety of magazines and journals.

Pizzigati, 62, has edited publications for four different national American unions and directed, for twenty years, the publishing operations of America’s largest union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association. The 1992 anthology he co-edited, The New Labor Press (Cornell University ILR Press), remains the primary reference for trade union journalists.

Pizzigati’s most recent book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives (Apex Press), builds on work he began with his 1992 Apex title, The Maximum Wage. Greed and Good, published in 2004, earned an “outstanding title” of the year rating from the American Library Association (Choice, January 2006).

Pizzigati’s next book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The forgotten triumph over plutocracy that created the American middle class, will be forthcoming in spring 2013 from Seven Stories Press.

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Gareth Porter

Gareth Porter is an historian with a PhD in South-east Asian studies from Cornell University in New York state. He was Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service in 1970 and 1971. Porter has taught international studies at City College of New York and American University and has written several books on Vietnam, the most recent being “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War”, published by the University of California Press in 2005. He has also written on war and diplomacy in Cambodia, Korea and the Philippines. Porter has been a news analyst for IPS focusing on U.S. policy and developments in Iraq and Iran since September 2005.

We will be talking to Gareth about his most recent article: U.S. Leak on Israeli Attack Weakened a Warning to Netanyahu -
When Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius this week that he believes Israel was likely to attack Iran between April and June, it was ostensibly yet another expression of alarm at the Israeli government’s threats of military action.

You can read his other articles here:

Gareth Porter – North America – Inter Press Service

Posted in Assassination, Debt, Greed, Intelligence, Iran, Israel, Radio Shows, War Reporting, Wealth and Income distribution | Leave a Comment »

Pledge Drive show – week of January 30th, 2012

Posted by themonitor on February 6, 2012

Our only guest for the show was Greg Palast.

Author of the New York Times and international bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse, Palast is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde.

“A cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes” (Jim Hightower, The Nation), Greg Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering. Palast’s reports appear on BBC’s Newsnight and in Britain’s Guardian, Rolling Stone and Harper’s.

Palast directed the US’ government’s largest racketeering case in history (that garnered a $4.3 billion jury award) and the investigation of the Exxon Valdez.

Palast is recipient of the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Prize for his BBC television documentary, Bush Family Fortunes.

You can get a copy of his latest (and best) book – Vultures’ Picnic by calling 713.526.5738 and pledging $100 or more. Greg is a regular guest on the show and one of the last great muck-racking investigative journalists. Check out the website above and see why.

Vultures’ Picnic:
In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators. A tale of oil, sex, shoes, radiation and investigative reporting.

From the Arctic Circle to the Islamic Republic of BP, from a burnt nuclear reactor in Japan to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Palast uncovers a story you won’t get on CNN.

Greg Palast’s crew of journalist-detectives chase down British Petroleum bag men, CIA operatives, nuclear power con men—and “The Vultures,” billionaire financial speculators who, through bribery, flim-flam and political muscle, take entire nations hostage for mega-profits.

The action begins when the Deepwater Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico and a confidential cable arrives on Miss Badpenny’s desk from a terrified insider. He has the real, hushed-up facts of the disaster—which can only be found hidden in the files of a Central Asian dictatorship.

The show needs your support! Please call 713.526.5738 or go online to KPFT.org to make a pledge.

Thank you!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

 
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