William Federer | Islam & The Qu’ran

January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with William Federer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we spoke with William Federer about some unique perspectives on the Qu’ran, and its implications within American society. A fascinating book, and an interesting view of Islam.
From William Federer’s website, www.americanminute.com

WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE QUR’AN - A HISTORY OF ISLAM & THE UNITED STATES You will be fascinated by this fast-paced, objective history of the world from a perspective you have never imagined. Current events will come into focus in the back drop of 1,400 years of inconceivable yet true events and conflicts. Thousands of books, documents and articles have been researched over several years in preparation for this book. In 2006, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress. He swore in on a Qur’an. Most Americans know little about the Qur’an, who wrote it and how it spread. Mohammed, who had 15 wives, fought in scores of raids and battles, even cutting off the heads of 700 Jews. Within one hundred years of his death, his followers conquered North Africa, the Holy Land, Persia, Spain - from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Read how Sultan Mehmet II conquered the 1000 year old Byzantine capital of Constantinople - How Jefferson sent Marines to capture the Muslim Barbary pirate port of Tripoli - How Woodrow Wilson tried to save millions of Armenian Christians killed in a jihad in Turkey. You will not be the same after you have learned what every American needs to know about the Qur’an. (288 pages, paperback)

Posted by admin | Filed Under Religion, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Eliza Steelwater | Death Penalty

January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Eliza Steelwater I [12:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We had the honor of speaking with Eliza Steelwater, expert on the death penalty, and author of The Hangman’s Knot. Today is the anniversary of the governor of Michigan’s commutation of more than a hundred death sentences. We speak about that, and also the recent New Jersey legislation to ban the death penalty in that state.
Eliza Steelwater’s biography from www.hangmansknot.com:

I was born and raised in New Orleans–a past I talk about in Chapter 6 of The Hangman’s Knot. My quest to make sense of the death penalty began after I received a four-year Alumni Federation fellowship to study at Louisiana State University. A doctoral degree and fifteen years of research, writing, and speaking followed, culminating in The Hangman’s Knot. I now live in Bloomington, Indiana, with my husband.

The book’s title reflects my conclusion: America’s use of capital punishment is a deadly tangle whose strands reach deep into our nation’s history.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Joe Crookston Transcript

January 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors radio on the fourth segment of each show. We interview authors of sound. It’s my special pleasure today to welcome Joe Crookston, a personal friend of mine and a fantastic musician. Hey, Joe.

Joe Crookston: Hey, Kent.

Kent: I’m going to read a quick review from the Victory Music Review in Seattle: “Joe’s songs are powerful, simple, distilled, lyrical paintings weaving together cycles of life and decay, cycles of joy and pain, and eventually they thread the needle through all of us.” It’s a beautiful quote and [audio glitch] music.

Tell me a little bit about your current project writing New York songs.

Joe: Yeah. Well, I’ve been — basically, I spent the last 14 months traveling around the Finger Lakes Region of New York and I was inspired to do the — I received a grant, basically, to do this for 14 months and I was inspired by Woody Guthrie who, in 1941 received a grant to travel around Washington State and write songs based on stories that he collected.

Songs about the dams being built and I lived out in Seattle for about nine years and I always thought that would be such a great way to approach music - is basically go out into my community and talk to people and hear their stories and then write songs based on these stories. So that’s what I did.

Basically, in September of this year, I finished where, basically, I traveled to the Finger Lakes. I met people who are carpenters. I met holocaust survivors. I met, you know, just truck drivers - it didn’t matter to me, I was just basically going out and talking to people, documenting, filming, doing some audio recording, interviews and then coming home and basically writing songs based on these people.

Right now, I’m basically finishing a CD which will have many of these songs on it and I’m pretty excited about them. To me it’s been a great 14 months and doing exactly what I want to be doing.

Kent: Can you tell me a little bit about “Blue Tattoo” before you play it?

Joe: Sure. Blue Tattoo - I live in Ithaca, New York and about 20 miles south of Ithaca is a town called Elmira. A friend of a friend put me in contact with a woman named Dina Jacobson and she’s in her late 80s right now. She is a holocaust survivor and lived in Auschwitz for three years. I ended up spending several days with her - full days with her and her daughter.

It took me almost 14 months to write this song. I’m very proud of it and what I finally ended up - the idea, the way that I frame the song was a conversation between Dina’s daughter, Connie, when Connie was maybe four-five years old and she was asking her mom questions, just like all kids do. I have a three-year-old and she says: “Papa, why is the sky blue? And what happens when we die?” And she asks us all the questions.

So I was just putting myself in that position of imagining what her daughter - Dina’s daughter would ask her and the answers Dina would give her as someone who came here from Poland and was a holocaust survivor.

Kent: Let’s listen to a little bit of it.

[Blue Tattoo playing]

Kent: It’s a stunning song with beautiful lyrics and Joe Crookston has an incredible ability to write melodies that don’t go out of your head.

[Joe Crookston laughing]

Joe: It’s good.

Kent: Yeah, we’re good friends. And give me a little back story. We don’t have much time left, but about your song “Brooklyn in July”.

Joe: Yeah, Brooklyn in July - I was actually — ironically, I was in Colorado doing some shows out in Colorado about a year ago and I mentioned at my concert this project that I was doing New York State stories and a guy came up to me and said: “Do you know about the Suitcase Project in the upstate - in the Finger Lakes Region of New York?” I said: “No, I’ve never heard of it.”

He basically said in 1995, the Willard Psychiatric Center closed and it’s on Seneca Lake, about 20 miles from where I live. When it closed, they basically were taking all the stuff and the equipment out of the building. They went up into the attic and found over 400 wooden suitcases of people, who, when they were admitted, they had all their stuff with them and they left them there.

So it was all like cobwebs and basically dusty and they went up in this attic and they have taken these and now, it’s a traveling exhibit. So one of the men who lived there for a good number of years - his name was Frank and the Brooklyn in July - he as a chauffeur. He was arrested and taken to Willard Psychiatric Hospital against his will and was basically kept there for many years.

The song - I feel like is a song that, kind of, just tells a story of an incident in his life that that changed his life and it’s called “Brooklyn in July”.

Kent: Let’s listen to it.

[Brooklyn in July playing]

Kent: Where can we find out more about your new project?

Joe: Oh, yeah, I would tell you, the best place right now would be my website and that is joecrookston.com.

Kent: And when can we expect [cross-talking] that one?

Joe: I have a lot of information on there, you can find out a lot about my music and purchase CDs and that kind of thing.

Kent: And when does the new album come out?

Joe: January 29th.

Kent: I’m excited to hear it. Thanks for being on the show.

Joe: Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Kent: And thank you to Allan Tripp, Paul Davis, Maureen Webb and Joe Crookston. Be safe, go vote and we’ll see you next week.

[Brooklyn in July playing]

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Maureen Webb Transcript

January 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors, where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests, visit soundauthors.com. Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.

Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest is Maureen Webb. Her new book is called “Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World.” Welcome to the show.

Maureen Webb: Thank you.

Kent: Give me a little sound bite about the book, and then we can keep chatting.

Maureen: Well, the book deals with one of the less-examined aspects of the war on terrorism, and that’s the insidious growth of surveillance in our Western democracies since 9/11. And this is a development that I think has gone largely unexamined. It’s gone largely under the radar screen of the public. For various reasons, there’s a myriad of initiatives that are being implemented by governments. It’s being done incrementally. It’s often being done outside of ordinary democratic processes, sometimes secretly. And so it’s something that really deserves more attention.

Kent: And the executive director of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen, she said about the book, “It describes how governments are spying, not only on foreigners, but also on their own citizens, and sharing the data with other countries and big corporations.” And of course, she went on to praise your book. But this is something that we all kind of deny in this country: “Oh, it’s not so bad.” Is the nation starting to realize what’s happening?

Maureen: Well, it’s interesting. Recent polls in the US and UK suggest that 75 percent of the populations in those countries think that there should be more, not less, surveillance. And in the UK, they’ve got more surveillance cameras in public spaces than any other country in the world. And so it’s interesting that people have this attitude towards surveillance. I think the idea is that privacy is a fairly minor right, and that it’s worth sacrificing in order to gain more security. But of course, that begs the question whether this greater surveillance is giving us more security.And what I talk about in the book is, really, how there’s been an exponential increase in surveillance since 9/11, and it’s been both qualitative and quantitative.States are not just looking for people on terrorist lists as they cross borders, or people suspected of terrorism on reasonable grounds as they cross borders, conduct transactions or send emails. What they’re doing is really sort of a paradigm shift. They’re starting to watch entire populations all the time, and to assess continuously what level of risk each individual poses to the state. In other words, who among us might be a terrorist? It’s really become predictive surveillance.And the surveillance has become ever more pervasive. It’s becoming more globalized all the time. Many of the initiatives are domestic. Some are global. But the global feed into the domestic, and the domestic into the global, so the information is circulating in a global way. There’s a global scope to this new infrastructure of surveillance.And whereas surveillance used to be–and I think the public has an idea that surveillance is used by police in their investigations by authorities to follow up on leads that they have. But really, now it’s being used to generate leads. And often the leads that are being generated are entirely false and misleading, and they’re sweeping in vast numbers of entirely innocent people into these sort of dragnets of surveillance.

Kent: Now, is there a historical precedence for this?

Maureen: Well, in some ways. Although because the technology has advanced so dramatically in the last 10 or 20 years, we think of George Orwell’s “1984″ where he talked about how the authorities could plug in your wire anytime they wanted to and listen to you.

Kent: Big Brother.

Maureen: Big Brother. We know about the Stasis, how they kept dossiers on individuals and continuously monitored them. We know about the Nazis, who had contracted with IBM in the 1930s and ’40s to develop a punch card system where they could tabulate the various characteristics of their populations and use this to socially sort people. It was first used to enforce the ban against Jews holding certain government jobs and academic posts, and then to ghettoize them and eventually put them into concentration camps.So, yes, there have been historical precedents for this, and yet all of them are fairly quaint in comparison to the extremely powerful technological capabilities that states now have to do this kind of thing.

Kent: That’s what I was going to say. What’s interesting is that I believe most folks around the world are of the belief that we have more access to news, we have more access to the truth. We can dig on the Internet and find anything we want to find. But at the same time, there’s a camera looking back at us.

Maureen: That’s right. And not just a camera, but also very powerful data mining technologies that are being developed. Data mining is the use of computer algorithms to sort through masses and masses of information for patterns or relationships. And previously, state authorities would never be able to use the information that they’re collecting. They’d never have the manpower to analyze all of it.The solution that many states–and the US is really in the lead on this–are pursuing now are these new data mining technologies, which are supposed to be able to sort through with artificial intelligence and flagging relationships between events or people or times, flagging patterns that indicate terrorist activity. In a way, it’s like the film, “Minority Report”, the film with Tom Cruise.

Kent: Yes.

Maureen: They have the capability to stop criminal acts before they happen, by reading people’s minds. It’s really the same premise, except, of course, the real-world technology falls far short of the Hollywood fantasy. And what’s happening is that these data mining programs identify thousands of completely innocent people or flagged.Just recently, there’s been a development across the American-Canadian border. And this gives you an indication of how risk is being assessed. Activists who participated in demonstrations 20 years ago and were stopped by the police–never charged, never convicted–are now being stopped at the Canadian-US border, on both sides, and refused entry across the border, on the basis of these earlier participations in political demonstrations. They have no criminal records at all, but they’re being assessed as being a security risk.

Kent: Do you think that the government is able to use a lot of the information that they’re gathering for anti-terrorist purposes, and they’re able to use that for other purposes?

Maureen: I think a large amount of it is being used for other purposes. We know that in Europe, for example, a lot of this is being used for purely immigration purposes, to keep refugees, for example, with legitimate rights of entry, out of countries, to expel or exclude immigrants. It’s being used to enforce entitlement bars for social benefits. In the United States, there’s multiple dozens and dozens of examples of it being used against peace activists and other dissidents.And more than anything, in Western countries, it’s being used for ordinary criminal law purposes. So, for example, with the sharing of passenger information, there’s been thousands and thousands of people pulled off planes for ordinary criminal-related charges. In the UK, there has been a proposal that, whenever they find a fingerprint at a crime scene, that they run it against the entire citizens’ fingerprint register that will be available to authorities when all of them have fingerprinted passports under the European rules.So a lot of this stuff has other agendas. Governments have pushed some of these initiatives in the past and then defeated because of democratic objections: checks and balances, constitutional laws, houses of government rejecting them, the people rejecting them. But since 9/11, they’ve been able to revive many of these initiatives, under the guise of anti-terrorism. And seeming to pursue only the anti-terrorism agenda, they’re also pursuing these earlier agendas, too.

Kent: In the last couple of minutes we have here, I’d love to hear your take on the primaries coming up in the beginning of January here.

Maureen: Well, as you know, I’m a Canadian. [laughs] Certainly, I’ve been following them from afar, but I have the sense that not a lot is going to change on the security front if the Democrats win. You just have to look at the very hawkish stance that people like Hillary Clinton obviously feels she has to take on Iraq, to get a sense of how far to the right the whole security agenda debate has moved.It was interesting in the Republican candidates’ debate recently, to hear John McCain chastising, was it Mitt Romney, so severely over the issue of torture. And that was encouraging, to hear him speak so frankly and so bluntly. But at the same time, he’s the guy that made the deal with the administration to pass the Military Commissions Act.And I think, when it comes to these surveillance initiatives in particular that I talk about in my book, they’re very costly. They’ve taken many years to develop and to implement. Often, they’re not working, and that’s always an excuse to pour more money and more resources into them.And governments begin to get hooked on them. They begin to use that information and get addicted to using the information and power that it gives them, the social control over populations in all kinds of policy forums and sectors, that I think it’s very unlikely that they’ll be rolled back by simply a change in government, because it’s governments that get addicted to these initiatives.

Kent: Well, it’s been fascinating speaking with you. I’m going to close out by reading a review from the “Midwest Book Review”: “Simply put, if our nation is to remain a bastion of democracy, ‘Illusions of Security’, by Maureen Webb, should be read by every American citizen, regardless whether their political philosophies are liberal or progressive, conservative or libertarian, Democrat or Republican or Independent.”It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. We can find “Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World” in bookstores out there. Thanks for being on the show.

Maureen: Thanks so much.

Kent: And my next guest is musician, Joe Crookston from New York.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Paul Davis Transcript

January 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors, where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests, visit soundauthors.com. Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.

Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest is Paul Davis. It’s the week of the election primaries. We’re all excited about it. And Paul Davis has some unique perspectives. I’d love to chat with him about those. His newest book is called “The United States of Arrogance”. And he’s a prolific poet and author. He’s written many books that are available on his website. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Paul Davis: Hey. Pleasure to be with you today.

Kent: So let’s start out by, why don’t you give me a sound clip on your new book, “The United States of Arrogance?”

Paul: Well, I’ve been in over 50 countries worldwide, six continents, and had an opportunity to interact with people across the globe and get a perspective on how they feel about American democracy and foreign policy, and the hypocrisy thereof.And the book is a 461-page, 20-chapter expose’ on the hypocrisy of American democracy and the arrogance of our persona in the way we carry ourselves on a global scale, playing the global police force abroad, internationally, and many times for imperial economic purposes, one of which primarily is to keep the dollar afloat economically as we see it rapidly declining here these last few months.

Kent: Do you see any hope in these primaries coming up?

Paul: There’s always hope. I never lose hope in humanity or the individual’s ability to exert influence on a daily basis, be it in their family, their community or their nation. So there’s always hope.The political process itself, I think, could be reformed and become perhaps more like a European system, where the media is not so heavily involved, nor corporate America.I think that’s our biggest downfall, is the way we allow and run our elections, the media and the money of corporations tends to, through lobbyists, manipulate the system. And if you’re not a rich person or you don’t have the millions of dollars of funding, you can’t even run for office at a presidential level or a national level. So I think that’s one of the hypocrisies of American democracy alone right there is the way our elections work.And even the debacle that happened with Gore and Bush about eight years ago and how that went down, I think the way they count the votes as well is very questionable, when you’ve got software that is not being regulated and watched and monitored well. These machines, eight years ago, came out of New Jersey, where there’s a lot of Mafia influence, and people from Europe were involved in those machines. So that’s a whole another story, but it’s more detailed in my book.

Kent: So, you are a Christian man, and you’re taking a position that’s not aligned with the Christian Coalition, the Christian right, entirely. Could you tell us about that?

Paul: No doubt. That’s for sure. And I’m really happy that I am showing that I do have a backbone and a heart. A lot of these Christians claim to be pro-life and anti-abortion, yet they’re pro-war. I don’t quite see how that fits or gels or jives. Jesus was never about killing people. He never killed a single person. In fact, he died himself at the hands of brutal men. And I just don’t see where the Bible tells us to go and kill, invade and occupy countries.And ironically, President Ahmadinejad from Iran, when he was on “60 Minutes”, he was asked by the reporter of “60 Minutes”, “What do you admire about President Bush”. And intelligently, he responded, “What do you admire about him? He’s your president. Answer the question yourself.” And the gentleman admired his Christian faith, and then President Ahmadinejad from Iran said, “Well, does Christ encourage his followers to invade and occupy countries and kill innocent people?” Of course, there was no answer to that question.

Kent: So you don’t condone, of course, what Ahmadinejad does, but you see that perspective of that country.

Paul: Well, you say “what he does”. Let’s be specific: what does he do that you’re referring to?

Kent: Right. And so, in “The United States of Arrogance”, your expose’–that’s the word you used–who are you wanting to change? Are you aiming for Christians? Are you aiming for the general public? Who’s your target?

Paul: Every citizen needs to be alert and aware of what’s going on and not duped by the media. Our media is owned by multi-national corporations, and they are very much into censoring that which is said and told via the airwaves.So I think people need to be more apt to read. Our country is becoming increasingly illiterate. And people need to read more books and do their own homework, and not just sit back on their couch and flip through the channels and get a 30-second sound bite on the news and believe everything they’re hearing, because the news oftentimes is given in a biased fashion. So I think people need to do their own research.Most Americans do not have a passport, nor have they ever traveled abroad. So, to be so quick to demonize a country such as Iran, without ever having spoken to an Iranian, ever having had an intellectual conversation with somebody from that part of the world, it seems a bit presumptuous.And even the Bible states, in Psalms chapter 19: “The great transgression is the sin of presumption.” And I think Americans are very quick to believe their own propaganda and how great we are as a country, and Christians thinking themselves to be righteous–which I think often is self-righteousness, which is not the God kind of righteousness, and in fact separates you from God, because pride precedes a fall, be it individually or nationally.And I think, many times, people need to be quicker to examine themselves, even as it pertains to a nation. How can we think ourselves to be good and Godly when we are killing innocent people in foreign countries and occupying them, and have done so historically for decades, be it in Latin America–not far from here–in Central America, with what we did in Nicaragua, what we did in Guatemala, Panama? The list goes on and on, and I document it fully in my book.

Kent: What I’m curious about is how you see the Christian right pervading, actually, both parties.

Paul: I think the Christian right is dead wrong, as it pertains to the mainstream as many see it. We have Pat Robertson, who endorsed Rudolph Giuliani. In years past, their platform was very pro-life, anti-abortion, pro-marriage, and very condemning of people who have had divorce in the past. Well, of course, Mayor Giuliani, he’s been divorced himself as well.So the thing I have a problem with a lot of these mainstream leaders in the media and Christendom is their lack of congruence and continuance in that which they’ve said previously in years gone by, now they’re wavering. With what little the Republican party has brought to the table, now they’re lowering the bar.Even Reverend Falwell, before he died, he was interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, and she asked him, “What is important? What are you supporting? Politically speaking, who are you going to support?” And he said, “Well, it used to be that we were supporting anti-gay and purity and no homosexuality and these type of things.” And then he goes, “Now it’s all about national security.”So, even in regards to moral issues, a gentleman such as Reverend Falwell kind of lowered the bar and said, “Well, now it’s all about national security.” Is it really? The military industrial complex is certainly behind a lot of the fear-mongering and propagating the hysteria, on a national scale, which enabled President Bush to get elected a second term, and furthermore to keep the war without end going full force abroad. Because war is very profitable; that’s why there always seems to be one.

Kent: Indeed. The candidates for president all seem to have a good understanding of war, the profits of war. They all talk about it all the time. What is your position, how religion will weigh in? How will Americans decide on their primary candidates based on religion, whether it’s Obama, whether it’s Clinton, whether it’s Giuliani?

Paul: Well, here’s the deal. Don’t believe somebody by the words of their mouth. Look at their actions. Look at their decisiveness and commitment to hold to the truth. I don’t think the majority of the candidates for president are committed to morality or purity. I think many of them have their special interest groups they’re catering to and serving. And I think Hillary Clinton specifically is very indecisive and continually wavering according to what the polls say, and she’s not very decisive.I think the only two people that I would trust, on either of those platforms, would be Senator Edwards, because he confronted Hillary in regard to her double talk. And I like people who have no fear of controversy, stating their convictions and having a backbone. I also like Ron Paul in the Republican party, because he himself, though a Republican, is against the war. He believes we should pull out of these imperial wars abroad and take care of business at home. Those are the only people I could really trust, because, honestly, when people are selling out…

Kent: It seems to be that a lot of truth is coming out in the media, because of some of these figures, whether those two, or through several of the other campaigns. A lot of the media is picking up on some truth. They’re finding out about people. What do you think the value of that is?

Paul: I think a national debate is very valuable, and I’m glad we can have people such as Ron Paul and Senator Edwards on the platform to stir up the issues. I also like Senator, I believe his last name’s Richardson, from New Mexico–Governor Richardson. He’s a great man. And he’s a diplomat. He’s been to North Korea. He’s dealt with the Middle East. If anybody has experience dealing with people on an international scale, it is him. And he’s a phenomenal man.He may not be as slick and good-looking outwardly as some of these other candidates who have lots of money behind them, but I think he is way more intelligent and able, on a diplomatic level–which I think is what the world, and our country specifically, needs, because our credibility globally is depleting, diminishing, daily.And as it does, and as Iran, as Venezuela, and eventually OPEC pulls away from the United States dollar in regards to global trade and the purchasing of oil, it’s going to hurt us immensely if we don’t hurry up and regain some international credibility by reason of our interaction with other nations respectfully and regaining some diplomacy. I don’t know what on earth the State Department has been doing the last eight years, but they need to kick it up a notch.

Kent: Well, we will check out your website at…

Paul: Yeah, paulfdavis.com. The website: paulfdavis.com. And the book: “The United States of Arrogance”. Also got 11 more books on the site, several relational books and books to empower executives and their companies, individuals and organizations, to live their dreams, transcend limitations, and most importantly, peaceably reconcile nations, as I’ve been trained in conflict resolution at Hofstra Law School, and also Harvard Business School and strategic negotiations.So, lots of good stuff. Executive coaching is available for those who’d like to pursue that, consulting, and many other services. So please check out the website, paulfdavis.com. And I do appreciate the time and the dialog and the great conversation.