I had the pleasure this morning of interviewing Stefan Forbes on my radio program, Uprising, about his new documentary, Boogieman: The Lee Atwater Story. I had only heard vague mentions of the name Lee Atwater but really had no idea how influential to American political campaigning he was, until I watched the film. This young Republican upstart from South Carolina, wrote the script-book for today’s GOP election tactics. Not surprisingly he …

I didn’t think Marjane Satrapi’s coming-of-age-in-Iran memoir could be much improved by animating it, but having just seen the Oscar-nominated film Persepolis, I realize I was wrong. I described it to a friend interested in viewing it thus: a black-and-white, animated film in French with English subtitles about a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. That description sets up a number of obstacles to a mainstream American audience. But Persepolis is absolutely worth watching. …

Published on Alternet.org on March 30, 2006

by Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls

Daily media reports over the case of Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman have revealed a sudden concern over Afghanistan’s repressive human rights environment. But routine human rights reports of the ongoing oppression of Afghan women, suppression of the media and underlying Western complicity have barely been noticed.

In the West, government officials, media pundits and right-wing commentators have expressed vocal concern over the life of one Afghan man who …

Published on commondreams.org, September 30, 2003

The latest CNN/USA Today poll in the California Recall Election betrays a dangerous trend: a large majority of Californians now polled think that the recall is a good idea — 63% compared with 59% three weeks ago. So now the candidates running to replace Gray Davis really do matter– not all 135 of the registered candidates whose number seems to be the object of much amusement across the nation — but the top candidates, one …

Published on Znet online (www.zmag.org) in September 2002

In an article on Pacifica entitled “Gloves Off”, Michael Albert wrote: “progressive organizations should employ participatory and self-managing rather than corporate structures … advocating self-managing structures has not only long-run but also short-run relevance to Pacifica, because Pacifica activism will grow quicker and be stronger and wiser if it pursues positive aims.”

As a listener and subscriber to KPFK, Pacifica’s Los Angeles station, I kept a close watch on the campaign to “save …