March 31 2009

By Louise

Hour 1: "Hillary: The Movie" is before the US Supreme Court - Is banning "Hillary: the Movie" the same as banning books? Thom mixes it up with filmmaker David Bossie of Citizens United www.citizensunited.org
Hour 2: Will we all be speaking Chinese soon? Journalist/author Eamonn Fingleton joins Thom to talk about his important new book "In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony" www.unsustainable.org
Hour 3: Could it happen here too? Spanish Judge to hear torture case against 6 Bush officials - Thom speaks with Constitutional Law Professor Marjorie Cohn www.marjoriecohn.com
Comments
#2
Wow Thom! Way to go with that David Bossie guy! Loved it.
#3
Thom, The Chinese system of government sponsored capitalism sounds a lot like the American military industrial complex as is has been working under Republican rule. The Chinese just don't bother to hide their methods from their people!
Thom,
You just said that John McCain was tortured by the Vietnamese and didn't break and give up true information. I'm not sure that you know that as a fact.
I know that he's told a story about being asked to give the names of the other pilots in his squadron and claims that he gave the names of the Green Bay Packers' defense or was it the Pittsburgh Steelers'; he's mentioned both teams in different versions of the story. And we know that he came up with a story about a Vietnamese prison guard drawing a cross in the dirt with his foot, but that story was lifted from a book by someone else.
Now, I'm not justifying torture. I'm against it. But McCain did break and make numerous propaganda films for the Vietnamese, which was probably more important to them from their point of view than any information that he might have had.
It's not that torture never works, it's that the information gotten through torture is unreliable because people will lie and/or make up information to stop the torture.