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Ever a ready critic of what some call the 'US military industrial complex', Claudia Cragg was at first extremely hesitant to interview Rye Barcott on his memoir 'It Happened on the Way to War' (Bloomsbury). Before she read the book, it appeared as though it might possibly be just another warped US military propaganda message to justify the ever-burgeoning expansion of the US Armed Forces around the world in the guise of 'doing good'. 

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The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its second annual conference April 8-11, 2011 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. This was the same scene of the great conference that established a renewed global economic architecture as World War II drew to a close.

In this interview, Claudia Cragg speaks with INET's Robert A. Johnson who serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

Johnson is an international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy. He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.

Previously, Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to working at Soros Fund Management, he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund.

Johnson served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin). Before this, he was Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).

Johnson was an Executive Producer of the Oscar winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, and is the former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future.

Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The program begins, however, with an introduction to INET by University of Colorado Denver's Professor Steven G. Medema. He is a recipient of a grant from the Institute to write an intellectual history of the Coase Theorem.

Exceptionally for a high level conference of this type, and at this level, an abundance of video material and documentation is freely available on INET's site. This radio interview includes only snippets from presentations by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Andrew Sheng (of the PRC's Regulatory Commission), and George Soros and Paul Volcker, moderated by The Financial Times' Gillian Tett. Viewing of the original longer form presentations is highly recommended.

KGNU Denver/Boulder's Spring Fund Drive fell slightly short in its goal to raise much-needed funds that keep the eclectic music and vital news (local, national and international) programming on air. If you feel that independent public radio deserves support (in this age of corporate, monolithic media), please consider a donation (however small) especially in the light of the potential slash and burn, politically motivated, cuts. Please visit: KGNU and give if you enjoy this podcast. Even a tiny donation to the station that makes this podcast possible is very gratefully received. Thank you.

PHOTO (with kind permission) taken in the Washington DC independent bookstore, Politics and Prose by Kirstin Fearnley (Copyright ©2011).

CLICK POD BUTTON ABOVE TO LISTEN Claudia Cragg talks here with Jasper Fforde who spent his early career in the film industry working on films such as 'Goldeneye' and 'The Mask of Zorro' as a focus puller. Today, though, he is the author of several novels, which cross over genres, a mixture of fantasy, crime thriller, and humorous fiction and which glory in an abundance of metafictional devices. They are noted for their literary allusions, wordplay and tight plots. His latest books in the 'Thursday Next' series has just come out and is called 'One of Our Thursdays is Missing'. 

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THIS IS AN UPDATE dated 1 April 2011 from Dr. Helen Caldicott, physician, paediatrician, and author of  'Nuclear Is Not The Answer' on the current situation in Japan.

The concerned citizens of Japan, through the auspices of some 160+ NGOs, are meeting with resistance from the Japanese government and, not surprisingly, with the operators of the stricken plant, The Tokyo Electric Power Company. 

To bolster citizen claims that their concerns must not only taken seriously but must be acted upon immediately, Caldicott spoke with Claudia Cragg to underscore the dire seriousness of the situation.

She points particularly to the futile measure of external gamma radiation using Geiger counters. It is, she says as an expert in the field, the internal emitters that cause concern, that is, even just one micro gram of radiation entering the lungs for example. This cannot be measured outside the body, she argues, only by a whole body measure using spectroscopy. There are some 200 such different isotopes which cannot be removed from the human body once it is engaged.

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Claudia Cragg speaks here with Leah McGrath Goodman about her new book 'The Asylum'.

"They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's gilded financial establishment. They would go on to corner the world's multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while bringing the economy to its knees.

Meet the self-anointed kings of the New York Mercantile Exchange. In some ways, they are everything you would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers, and celebrities; and blissfully jacked up oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel while profiting off the misery of the working class. In other ways, they are nothing you can imagine: many come from working-class families themselves. The progeny of Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants who escaped war-torn Europe, they take pride in flagrantly spurning Wall Street.

Under the thumb of an all-powerful international oil cartel, the energy market had long eluded the grasp of America's hungry capitalists. Neither the oil royalty of Houston nor the titans of Wall Street had ever succeeded in fully wresting away control. But facing extinction, the rough-and-tumble traders of Nymex—led by the reluctant son of a produce merchant—went after this Goliath and won, creating the world's first free oil market and minting billions in the process. Their stunning journey from poverty to prosperity belies the brutal and violent history that is their legacy.

For the first time, The Asylum unmasks the oil market's self-described "inmates" in all their unscripted and dysfunctional glory: the happily married father from Long Island whose lust for money and power was exceeded only by his taste for cruel pranks; the Italian kung fu–fighting gasoline trader whose ferocity in the trading pits earned him countless millions; the cheerful Nazi hunter who traded quietly by day and ambushed Nazi sympathizers by night; and the Irish-born femme fatale who outsmarted all but one of the exchange's chairmen—the Hungarian emigre who, try as he might, could do nothing to rein in the oil market's unruly inhabitants.

From the treacherous boardroom schemes to the hookers and blow of the trading pits; from the repeat terrorist attacks and FBI stings to the grand alliances and outrageous fortunes that brought the global economy to the brink, The Asylum ventures deep into the belly of the beast, revealing how raw ambition and the endless quest for wealth can change the very nature of both man and market.

Showcasing seven years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, Leah McGrath Goodman reveals what really happened behind the scenes as oil prices topped out and what choice the traders ultimately made when forced to choose between their longtime brotherhood and their precious oil monopoly".

Chang-rae Lee speaks here with Claudia Cragg about his latest novel 'The Surrendered'. [See below for an extract from the book]. The Korean-American author was born in Seoul, South Korea and emigrated to the US in 1968, aged two. He grew up in the New York City area and began his university education at Yale, before moving on to the University of Oregon, where he earned an MFA. His first novel, "Native Speaker" won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the American Book Award and the ALA Book of the Year Award.

Another much acclaimed work "A Gesture Life" grew out of four years work. It originally focused on the experience of a Korean comfort woman, and was told from her perspective. Chang-rae Lee went to Korea to interview surviving comfort women. He currently directs the creative writing program at Princeton University in the US. His 2004 novel Aloft features an isolated suburbanite forced to deal with his world.

Extract:

“It was June’s decision to climb atop the overcrowded train. Since that night she had often wondered if it would have been better to wait for the next one, or to have taken their chances on foot, or else steered the twins and herself far off the main road without any provisions and simply waited for the one merciful night that would lift them away forever. The twins would not have suffered and she would not be here now. For what had surviving all the days since gotten her, save a quelled belly? She had merely prolonged the march, and now that her hunger had an altogether different face, it was her heart that was deformed, twisting with an even homelier agony.”

It was three years ago that Claudia Cragg spoke with Dr Helen Caldicott about the inherent risks (or so it would now appear) in the Japanese nuclear industry. Now following a massive earthquake and the explosions that took place at the Fukushima plant Japan's nuclear crisis has become more complex than ever. The earthquake(s) is (are) tragic enough, but the proven record of incompetence with nuclear incidentis unforgiveable? This piece was part of Cragg's coverage of an 'incident' after a large earthquake at the world's largest nuclear power plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Japan, and was first broadcast in July 2007. In this week's earthquake, no reports have (yet?) surfaced about damage at the K-K plant.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, physician and vocal anti-nuclear campaigner, comments in a phone interview from Australia with journalist Claudia Cragg on the recent 6.8 earthquake in Japan which hit the world's largest nuclear power plant at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. Caldicott believes the problems experienced in Japan recently also hold resonance for those in California living near the Diablo nuclear power plant. According to Japanese activisit Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Japan, there is now concern in Kashiwazaki City and Kariwa Village that Tokyo Electric may be covering up evidence of extent of damage from the earthquake before a thorough investigation is undertaken. According to Mioko Smith, a Kashiwazaki legislator who has been inside the plant has said he is shocked at the extent of visible damage PLUS the rush Tokyo Electric is in to cover over/repair the damage before a fullinvestigation is undertaken.

In this program, Claudia Cragg speaks with prize-winning author David Vann about his work in general and about his novel 'Caribou Island'. The book was recently featured as the night-time serial on BBC Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime'.

'Caribou Island' "is set in David Vann's native Alaska, amid the icy, glacier-fed lakes and the remote islands covered in alder and Sitka spruce. And it is on such island, far from any habitation, that Gary, a medievalist who fled to Alaska 30 years before with his young wife, Irene, in search of an unattainable idyll, is now determined to begin once again. He will build a simple cabin there and at last find peace. Irene joins him in his endeavour, understanding, unlike her husband, that there are costs." 

Caribou Island is the second major literary work from David Vann, whose ground-breaking first book, 'Legend of a Suicide' has become a best-seller around the world and has won numerous literary awards including the prestigious Prix Medicis Etranger for 2010.

KGNU Denver/Boulder is in the middle of the Spring Fund Drive to raise much-needed funds that keep the eclectic music and vital news (local, national and international) programming on air. If you feel that independent public radio deserves support (in this age of corporate, monolithic media), please consider a donation (however small) especially in the light of the potential slash and burn cuts in government subsidies. Please visit: KGNU and give if you enjoy this podcast. Even a tiny donation to the station that makes this podcast possible is very gratefully received. Thank you.

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The Homelessness Marathon is an annual 14-hour radio broadcast featuring the voices and stories of homeless people from around the United States. It features live call-ins all night long via a national toll-free number and the programming is made available for free to all non-commercial radio, and some TV stations around the USA, on the internet and even internationally. Jeremy Weir Alderson is both founder and prime mover of the Marathon.

On the Homelessness Marathon, the producers talk to many different kinds of people who hold any number of  different views about how to end homelessness. In so doing, a wide diversity of opinion is presented, as well as the stand of the organizers themselves.

Behind the effort is at core the idea that the elimination of poverty is a moral duty for society. They believe that fulfilling this duty makes for a better society and that there are many ways to fulfill this duty, but that all of them should be guided by these principles.

The archives of this year's event - and of all preceding years' events back to 1998 - can be found HERE. If you are unable to listen in real time, there is a wealth of downloadable audio available right there for when you are. 

The interview attached here in this podcast is only one very tiny part of this year's event, an interview with two guests at Denver's daytime residence for the homeless, The St. Francis' Center, and with that entity's Executive Director, Tom Luehrs.