10 March 2011 (Update) - Both Robert Scheer and the New York City-based magazine City Limits have been named the shared winners of the third annual Izzy Award for Special Achievement in Independent Media. The Izzy Award is named after legendary maverick journalist I.F. Stone, who launched I.F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and exposed government deception, McCarthyism and racial bigotry. The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College in New York cited Scheer for being "a beacon of journalistic independence who exposes both major parties on issues foreign and domestic, while giving voice to the disenfranchised," and City Limits for providing "a model of in-depth urban journalism that examines systemic problems, challenges assumptions and points toward solutions."

Robert Scheer speaks here with Claudia Cragg about his latest book, The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books), was released on September 7, 2010. Publishers Weekly wrote that the book "proves that, when it comes to the ruling sway of money power, Democrats and Republicans, Wall Street and Washington make very agreeable bedfellows.” 

Born in 1936, Scheer is an American journalist who writes a column for, and is Editor in Chief of,  Truthdig, an online publication. His column is nationally syndicated throughout the US in publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle and The Nation. He teaches communications as a professor at the University of Southern California.

While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book, Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. He reported from Cambodia, China, North Korea, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East (including the Six-Day War), as well as on national security matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of Che Guevara — which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in Ramparts and by Bantam Books.

During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-Vietnam War candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of New Left Sixties radicalism.

After several years freelancing for magazines, including New Times and Playboy, Scheer joined the Los Angeles Times in 1976 as a reporter. There he met Narda Zacchino, a reporter whom he later wed in the paper's news room. As a national correspondent for 17 years at the Times, he wrote articles and series on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union during glasnost, the Jews of Los Angeles, arms control, urban crises, national politics and the military, as well as covering several presidential elections. The Times entered Scheer's work for the Pulitzer Prize 11 times, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer national reporting award for a series on the television industry.

Scheer has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton. He conducted the noted 1976 Playboy interview with Jimmy Carter, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to having "lusted" in his heart.^[2] In an interview with George H.W. Bush, the future president and then presidential candidate revealed that he believed nuclear war was "winnable." Scheer has profiled politicians from Californians Jerry Brown and Willie Brown to Washington insiders like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as entertainment figures like actor Tom Cruise.

Scheer has written eight other books, including a collection entitled Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals. In 2004, Scheer published The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq and made it to the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. It was co-authored by his oldest son, Christopher Scheer, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, senior editor at Alternet.

In 2006 Scheer published Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton – and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush; in 2008 he published The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.

(Apart from being made universally available, free, in this podcast, many of these interviews are conducted for and are broadcast on KGNU Denver-Boulder. This is a public radio station, like all public radio stations in these hard economic times, in need of listener funding and support. Kindly consider making a donation to KGNU, however small, to the station (NOT to Claudia Cragg) to continue to make air broadcast  of this work possible).

David Plouffe, author of 'Audacity To Win' (Penguin) is the American political strategist best known as the chief campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. A long-time Democratic Party campaign consultant, he is a partner with David Axelrod at the party-aligned campaign consulting firm AKP&D Message and Media, which he joined in 2000. "Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, has recently come out in paperback and in this interview Plouffe discusses the management strategies that he used in the 2008 campaign. He initally issued a video challenge for Obama supporters to buy a copy of his book on December 8, 2009 in order to "Beat Sarah Palin" and her best-selling book for one day.

Plouffe, who talks here with Claudia Cragg, is credited with the campaign's successful overall strategy in the race (primarily against Senator Hillary Clinton) for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, to focus on the first caucus in Iowa and on maximizing the number of pledged delegates, as opposed to focusing on states with primaries and the overall popular vote. He is also credited by The New Republic for Obama's success in the Iowa caucus and for crafting an overall strategy to prolong the primary past Super Tuesday. The Chicago Tribune writes, "Plouffe was the mastermind behind a winning strategy that looked well past Super Tuesday's contests on Feb. 5 and placed value on large and small states.^" Plouffe also maintained discipline over communications in the campaign, including controlling leaks and releasing information about the campaign on its terms. Averse to publicity himself, Plouffe's control over the internal workings of the Obama campaign successfully avoided the publicly aired squabbles that frequently trouble other campaigns.

In May, 2008, David Axelrod praised Plouffe, stating he had "done the most magnificent job of managing a campaign that I've seen in my life of watching presidential politics. To start something like this from scratch and build what we have built was a truly remarkable thing." After winning the election on November 4, Obama credited Plouffe in his acceptance speech, calling him "the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the . . . best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

Plouffe is currently working as an outside senior adviser to the Obama administration. He also signed with the Washington Speakers Bureau to give paid speeches and plans to engage in non-government consulting work. In May 2009, Plouffe delivered the Convocation address at Cornell University. In January, President Obama asked Plouffe to “give some extra time” to focus on the mid-term Congressional elections in November 2010.

(Apart from being made universally available, free, in this podcast, many of these interviews are conducted for and are broadcast on KGNU Denver-Boulder. This is a public radio station, like all public radio stations in these hard economic times, in need of listener funding and support. Kindly consider making a donation to KGNU, however small, to the station (NOT to Claudia Cragg) to continue to make air broadcast  of this work possible).

Scott Spencer is an author of many novels who has worked as a journalist publishing in the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, GQ, O, The Oprah Magazine, and he is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, Williams College and The Bard Prison Project. He is an alumnus of Roosevelt University and in 2004 was the recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship. For the past twenty years, he has lived in a small town in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York.

Spencer's best known novels are probably 'Endless Love' and 'A Ship Made of Paper. Both were nominated in the States for the National Book Award and the first sold more than two million copies and was made into a movie in 1981 by director Franco Zeffirelli. 'Waking The Dead' was also made into a film in 2000 produced by Jodie Foster and directed by Keith Gordon. *

Of 'A Ship Made of Paper', fellow writer Joyce Carol Oates gushed "Like Cheever, Spencer has imagined for his... infatuated lover melodramatic crises that verge on the surreal; like John Updike, Spencer is a poet-celebrant of Eros, lyrically precise in his descriptions of lovers' fantasies, lovers' lovemaking, lovers' bodies..."

The Wall Street Journal has written of Scott Spencer that "There are few novelists alive who use the English language as Spencer does... Every ache of feeling, every failed effort at restraint, every attempt at self-deception is captured in precise, beautifully cadenced prose."

* (n.b. Spencer's novel 'Men in Black' is not connected in any way with the Men in Black movies of that name).

(Coming soon, Claudia Cragg's interview - just recorded - with Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign Manager in 2008, David Plouffe, on his book The Audacity to Win - The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory).

In this radio interview with Claudia Cragg, Newsweek Senior Editor, Jonathan Alter, discusses his latest book which takes a close look at President Barack Obama's first year in office. He even goes so far as to grade the President's achievements, overall and specifically, on economic policy. Alter also answers questions as to perhaps why the President has not achieved all he set out to do, the stumbling blocks in his way, the tussle with General McChrystal and the question of the Afghan war, and the outcome, as Alter sees it, if disenchanted Democrats fail to turn out in this November's mid-term congressional elections.

Finally, the sale of Newsweek to new owners was being concluded, at almost exactly the time this interview took place. Some readers may wonder if a change of proprietor may lead to a change of tone and timbre in the content.

The following is an extract from the publisher of 'The Promise' on Simon & Schuster's website:

"Barack Obama's inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of "Change We Can Believe In" was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama's historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery." "What happened in 2009 inside the Oval Office? What worked and what failed? What is the president really like on the job and off-hours, using what his best friend called "a Rubik's Cube in his brain?" These questions are answered here for the first time. We see how a surprisingly cunning Obama took effective charge in Washington several weeks before his election, made trillion-dollar decisions on the stimulus and budget before he was inaugurated, engineered colossally unpopular bailouts of the banking and auto sectors, and escalated a treacherous war not long after settling into office." The Promise is a fast-paced and incisive narrative of a young risk-taking president carving his own path amid sky-high expectations and surging joblessness. Alter reveals that it was Obama alone—"feeling lucky"—who insisted on pushing major health care reform over the objections of his vice president and top advisors, including his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who admitted that "I begged him not to do this."

Apart from being made universally available, free, in this podcast, many of these interviews are conducted for and are broadcast on KGNU Denver-Boulder. This is a public radio station, like all public radio stations in these hard economic times, in need of listener funding and support. Kindly consider making a donation to KGNU, however small, to the station (NOT to Claudia Cragg) to continue to make the broadcast of this work possible.

This is Part Two of a Kate Mosse interview special each half conducted two years apart (in Part One she discussed in detail with Claudia Cragg her first novel 'Labyrinth' in detail. In this interview, we hear Kate discussing her next novel with Claudia and, as she points out, several of the major characters in the first work make cameo appearances in the second. 

'Sepulchre' is set in 1891 and Léonie Vernier is a young girl living in Paris until an invitation from her uncle's widow Isolde prompts a journey to the Carcassonne region with her brother, Anatole. Unknown to her, her brother and Isolde have been carrying on an affair, and he is being pursued by Isolde's jealous former lover, Victor Constant. For a while, they live an idyllic lifestyle in the country. However, Constant discovers where they are staying and sets out to exact his revenge.

In the present day, an American, Meredith Martin, is in France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a biography she is writing. She is also trying to find out more about her biological mother. During the visit, she uncovers information that links her lineage to that of Léonie Vernier and discovers the truth about the events in Carcassonne during that period in history.

Most of the action takes place in the Domaine de la Cade, a stately home in Rennes-les-Bains, which in 1891 is owned by Léonie's deceased uncle Jules and his wife Isolde of whom Anatole later marries. The house in Meredith's timeline has been repurposed as an upmarket hotel. There are also parts of the book that are situated in Paris at the same time as well as neighbouring towns and villages in the Carcassonne and the City of Carcassonne.

The story features heavy reference to the occult and tarot readings, and the stories of Léonie and Meredith are brought together by a series of visions that are related to the tarot and a small church, known as a Sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade.

There are current talks with producers of making both Labyrinth and Sepulchre into films.

As of of September 2010, Kate Mosse is taking part on BBC1 in 'My Story, as a judge on a panel with other writers, Fergal Keane, Jenny Colgan, who have chosen 15 finalists from 7,500 entries. The winners will have their stories published.

This interview was conducted a few years ago with Kate Mosse not long after her first bestselling novel, Labyrinth was published. It became a New York Times bestseller and a popular and critical success on an international scale. It won the 'Best Read' category at the British Book Awards 2006, was #1 in UK paperback for six months — selling nearly two million copies — and was the biggest selling title of 2006. In 2007, it was named as one of the Top 25 books of the past 25 years by the bookselling chain Waterstone’s. It also hit the bestseller charts in various countries throughout the world, including the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Norway, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Translation rights to Labyrinth have been sold in thirty-eight languages, including Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew.

In this feature, Kate discusses how she became an author (having started her literary career on the other side, as a commissioning editor in a major UK publishing house), the establishment of the Orange Prize for Fiction and how and why she became a writer. She descries the dominance of old, white, males as author in the English canon. She discusses why she took lessons in fencing that she took to understand a 16 year old medieval Cathar girl, the female hero (sic.) of 'Labyrinth'. To those who would consider 'Labyrinth' a clone in Brown 'Grail' novel style, Mosse has a counter: the subject is as old as time and found in almost every post-Christian culture.

Be sure, also, to listen to Part II (sequetial to this in the podcast series) in which Kate discusses her second best selling novel, Sepulchre.

Tom Hayden, who columnist Dan Walters of The Sacramento Bee once called "the conscience of the Senate", is an American social and political activist, politician, and regular contributor to 'The Nation' who is perhaps most famous for his involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s as well as in animal rights (The Hayden Act).

Hayden was elected to the California State Legislature in 1982, where he served for ten years in the Assembly before being elected to the State Senate in 1992, where he served eight years till the year 2000. He continues to serve as a member of the advisory board for the Progressive Democrats of America, an influential "grass roots" organization created to expand progressive political cooperation within the Democratic Party. With Medea Benjamin, he is also a co-founder of 'Code Pink'. 

Ahead of next week's primary elections in CA and with Colorado's own primaries now behind us, 'It's the Economy's' Claudia Cragg spoke with Hayden about the economy, the potential financial collapse of some states including California, Obama's stimulus package, small business and, importantly, why politicians on both sides continue stubbornly to refuse to debate the real 'elephant in the room', as Hayden puts it, the cost to the US and its people of its ongoing wars.

Hayden starts here by discussing that theme and the Pentagon's 'Long War' doctrine, "a 50 - 80 year war against Islamic terrorism" which he says comes at a huge cost to the economy and to the nation as a whole.

UPDATE - The following is reproduced here with the kind permission of Tom Hayden:

Published on Friday, November 12, 2010 by The Nation
When Will Troop Withdrawal From Afghanistan Ever End?
by Tom Hayden

Persistent waffling on dates for American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan has eroded any remaining patience with the Obama White House among peace activists and voters, a majority of whom favors a timeline for US troop withdrawals.

Nancy Youssef of McClatchy reports that the White House has decided to de-emphasize its pledge to begin withdrawing US forces by next July, and adopt a new goal of withdrawing by 2014. The New York Times on Nov. 11 described the new policy as "effectively a victory for the military." Seeming to miss the point entirely, the White House immediately declared it was "crystal clear" that there will be no change to the July 2011 date for beginning the drawdown.

The credibility problem is that the White House has never defined the scale of its initial drawdown, lending credence to reports that the elusive pursuit of "success" will take years. Filling in the blanks is the only way the White House can repair this image crisis. For example, Obama could promise to withdraw 50,000 US troops between 2011-2012, a number that would dispel the aura of tokenism and weakness which now surrounds US policy. The moderate Afghanistan Study Group, whose members have ties to the White House, has proposed withdrawing 32,000 by next October and another 38,000 by the following July. The AFG has stated, "The U.S. cannot afford to continue waffling on its commitments, lest it lose what little credibility it has with Afghan people.  Reneging on the July deadline will also likely have adverse political effects given that war is already very unpopular .

The president is expected to clarify his goals at a NATO conference this week. America's leading military partner, the United Kingdom , with some 9,500 troops, has already floated 2014 as the deadline for its troop departure. Canada , France , Italy , Poland , Sweden and the Netherlands , whose combat troops total a combined 14,850, are all in the process of withdrawing by 2014 at the latest.

The projected costs of another three years are staggering and rarely reported. Assuming the current pattern of American casualties and costs through 2012, followed by a fifty percent reduction in those figures in 2013-14, Pentagon data reveals the following:

Oct. 2001-Nov. 2010: Americans killed, 1378; Americans wounded, 9,256; direct taxpayer costs, $364 billion.

2011 projection: 450 more Americans killed, bringing the cumulative total to 1,850; 5,000 more Americans wounded, bringing the cumulative total to 14,800; another $113 billion in direct taxpayer costs, bringing the cumulative total to $503 billion.

2012 projection: at present rates, the cumulative death toll will become 2,300, the cumulative wounded number will become 15,300; and the cumulative budget cost will become $616 billion.

2013-14 projections [assuming a fifty percent reduction]: another 450 killed over two years, bringing the total to 2,750; another 5,000 wounded over two years, bringing the total to 20,300; another $113 billion over two years, bringing the total to $728 billion.

In plainer terms, the projected American casualties and costs in Afghanistan alone will double in the next three years from present levels.

According to the current Foreign Affairs , the war in Afghanistan is now more than twice expensive as Iraq [Altman-Haass, "American Profligacy and American Power", Nov.-Dec. 2010, p. 31].

Those numbers do not include Pakistan, Yemen or tens of billions in the growing US intelligence budget. Nor do the tax dollar figures include rising indirect costs such as veterans' health care. Nor are the casualties civilians known or estimated.

Perhaps the greatest policy question is what the American troops are fighting for. According to the CIA, there are no more than 100 Al Qaeda militants lingering in Afghanistan. Their sanctuaries have moved to Pakistan and CIA officials have recently said, "the Yemeni cell posed an even more dangerous threat to the United States than the Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan." [NYT , Oct. 17, 2010]

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, American troops are fighting and dying to prop up an Afghanistan regime that is riddled with corruption, lacks a sufficient army to defend itself, and maintains power by fraudulent elections.

The cruel pathos of the American situation is summed up in two options sketched by Gideon Rose, the new editor of Foreign Affairs, the organ of the Council on Foreign Affairs:

First, "at best, Afghanistan could become another Iraq, with strong late innings gaining the United States the opportunity to draw down its forces gradually" or, second, "it could be a replay of Vietnam, with the White House deciding to pull the plug on a thankless struggle in a strategically marginal country." A third option is ignored, that of another massive terrorist attack on the US provoked by the drone attacks and night raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan. [NYT , Nov. 5, 2010]

There is another cost, too. The constant drain in blood and taxes for the long wars may soon become a terminal drain on any hopes for the Obama presidency.

Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at PitzerCollege in Los Angeles. His books include The Port Huron Statement [new edition], Street Wars and The Zapatista Reader .

20 April 2011 UPDATE: 

Tragically, leading British photojournalist Tim Hetherington (see story below) has been killed while covering the fighting in the Libyan city of Misurata, the UK Foreign Office has confirmed. His vitally important work will be greatly missed. 

Sebastian Junger is an author and war correspondent whose 1995 novel 'Perfect Storm' was made into a movie and prompted comparisons of his work to that of Ernest Hemingway.

Having been hailed as a great new literary voice, Junger then seemed to transition to war correspondent and that may be, as he discusses here, after an encounter between his achilles tendon and a chainsaw up a tree. He was working in earlier days as a high flying arborist.

Shortly after that incident when he came face to face with the ghastly grizzle of his exposed foot, Junger found himself in the middle of the Balkans covering the atrocities. Some say that Junger has since further metamorphosized both his work and persona, appearing recently as part of a national book tour on various 'Sunday talkies' with US Army Generals and war pundits. Here though Junger explains to Claudia Cragg what he considers to be the motivations for his work.

Junger's latest book 'War' is based on visits he made to eastern Afghanistan from June 2007 to June 2008. These despatches on assignment for Vanity Fair have also resulted in the film Restrepo (2010). Made with Brit. Tim Hetherington this documentary was produced from the time the two worked together in Afghanistan spending a year with one platoon in the Korangal Valley, billed as the deadliest valley in Afghanistan. The title of the film refers to the outpost where Junger was 'embedded', which was named after a combat medic, Pfc. Juan Restrepo, killed in action. To Junger, "It’s a completely apolitical film. We wanted to give viewers the experience of being in combat with soldiers, and so our cameras never leave their side. There are no interviews with generals; there is no moral or political analysis. It is a purely experiential film. 

Restrepo, which premiered on the opening night of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, won the grand jury prize for a domestic documentary.Junger self-financed the film, but then toward the end got National Geographic to fund the rest of the film.

(You may have noticed that recent interviews have been with predominantly male subjects. This reflects, not the interviewer's preference, but sadly the dirth of female subjects. Should you wish to hear an interview with a specific author or personality, please do email your suggestions to journalist@bigfoot.com).

In this interview, Dr. Matthew B. Crawford talks to Claudia Cragg about 'Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good. This iconic book - bound to be as powerful as 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' was in its day - Crawford also explores why some jobs offer fulfilment while others leave us frustrated.

It answers the question as to why we so often think of our working selves as separate from our 'true' selves?

Over the course of the twentieth century, Dr. Crawford argues that we have separated mental work from manual labour, replacing the workshop with either the office cubicle or the factory line.

In this inspiring and persuasive book, he explores the dangers of this false distinction and presents instead the case for working with your hands. It will also force many a parent to question why today they are only pushing their kids hard towards academic (grade-based rote-learning, mulitple choice) success, turning them only into knowledge workers many of whom will be doomed to remain for an eternity on the very bottom of the pile.

The publishers believe that Dr Crawford "delivers a radical, timely and extremely enjoyable re-evaluation of our attitudes to work" and no doubt a great many listeners to this interview might well agree. 

Matthew B. Crawford majored in physics as an undergraduate, then turned to political philosophy (Ph.D. Chicago). His writings for The New Atlantis, A Journal of Technology and Society, bring the two concerns together, and consider how developments in the sciences influence our view of the human person. Currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he also runs a small business in Richmond.

note: In the US, the book is known as 'Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work'.

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In this interview, Dave Isay the founder of StoryCorps, talks to Claudia Cragg about 'Mom', the latest book to be published out of the project. This is a celebration in print of American mothers from all walks of life and experiences. Selected from StoryCorps’ extensive archive of interviews, Mom is, StoryCorps says, a presentation of collective wisdom that has been passed from mothers to their children in StoryCorps’ recording booths across the United States.

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit whose mission, they say, is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives. Since 2003, over 50,000 everyday people have interviewed family and friends through StoryCorps. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and millions listen to our weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition and the project's Listen Pages.

Isay is also the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including five Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work, as well as the StoryCorps books. 

You can listen to StoryCorps stories and learn more about the oral history project here.