PERSPECTIVES with Julie Rufo

PERSPECTIVES interviews, Table of Contents

• Ann Ginger on Civil Rights
• Kate Resucha and Karen Kenney, from Girls Inc., on raising young women
• Two Muslim neighbors, Dr. Hatifie and Sister Baldes
• Susan Galleymore about mothers in Middle East conflict areas, 2 shows
• Sureya Sayadi on Honor Killings
• Andrea Buffa on Media Reform
• Sanaz Meshkinpour on U.S.-Iran relations
• David Bacon on Immigration
• Sheryl Lane and Venesia Thompson of Urban Habitat
• Rafael Schiller-Laden of World Can't Wait
• Dr. Richard Walker on the Greening of the SF Bay Area. 2 shows
• Jacqueline Cabasso, on the dangers of nuclear energy and the resurgence of nuclear weapons, 2 shows
• Dr. Michael Parenti on the meaning of Imperialism and what we can do about it, 2 shows
• Barbara Lubin, Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance
• the Renegade Rescuers about the SF Bay Oil Spill in 2007
• Elizabeth de la Vega on Outlaw Government, 2 shows
• Dahr Jamail on Iraq: What We Have Done, 2 shows
• Virender Goswami on Immigration Law Abuses
• James Soper on Electronic Voting Machines
• Antonia Juhasz on The BU$H Agenda, 2 shows
• May Day 2008, when Labor shutdown all West Coast ports to protest the invasion of Iraq
• Dr. Raj Patel on the worldwide food crisis
• Dr. Barry Schutz on Zimbabwe
• Matt Heberger on the water crisis
• MaryAnn Thomas of World Can't Wait, protesting military recruiting in Berkeley
• Daniel Lavelle on Venezuela
• Norman Solomon on the Warfare State and Political Possibilities, 2 shows
• Dr. Farid Younos on Afghanistan, 2 shows
• Betsy Rose on the importance of singing, 2 shows
• Ann Fagan Ginger on "Undoing the Bush-Cheney Legacy", 2 shows
• Ishmael Reed, on the Media's Treatment of African-Americans, 2 shows

Nancy Powell and Lisa Owens Viani are remarkable people because they didn't believe there was nothing they could do to help save birds injured by the November 2007 oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. In spite of official objection and because the official response was slow and sparse, they went to the beach to save birds. So they call themselves the Renegade Rescuers.

Because they both knew what to do from their experiences as volunteers for WildCare (http://www.wildcarebayarea.org) and Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue (http://www.mickaboo.org/), Nancy and Lisa waded into the fight. They were able to enlist many others who also wanted to help.

In this interview, they talk about what they did and how they were able to do it. And they have many recommendations to make about improving official response. They have firsthand accounts of the disaster and saw what was done and left undone. They also suggest what all of us can do to help when disaster like this strikes.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience as an Assistant U.S. Attorney who was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Since her retirement in 2004, Elizabeth de la Vega has been writing political and legal pieces which have appeared in numerous on-line and print publications, including The Nation magazine, the L.A. Times, tbe Chicago Sun-Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon, Mother Jones, TomDispatch and Truthout. She authored the book, United States vs George Bush, et al

In these two shows, Julie asks Elizabeth whether the Bush administration has committed impeachable crimes and what will it mean if Congress allows the President to continue such conduct without censure or impeachment.

Among the issues Julie asks Elizabeth to examine, she asks, Could the President suspend Habeus Corpus? Could the admintration torture U.S. citizens? Can the government spy on us? What is the value of international law and could members of the administration be charged for ordering acts of rendition and torture? What is the legal legacy of the Bush adminstration? Can violations committed be reversed? What can we do to make sure the government acts justly?

To answer these questions, Elizabeth brings to bear her years of legal experience in Federal law, including the Constitution and the international treaties signed by the United States.

In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail, a fourth-generation Lebanese American who grew up in Houston, Texas and later moved to Alaska, traveled to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. In the "eight months between November 2003 and February 2005, Jamail reported "collateral damage" far beyond what the military or embedded journalists acknowledged. He wrote of soldiers shooting people in prayer at a Baghdad mosque… and of men and women who bore white flags being shot in the Euphrates River as they tried to swim to safety. Jamail also watched those profiting from the war, reporting examples of blurred lines between the military and corporations operating in Iraq.

In these two interviews, Dahr Jamail explains how the U.S. occupation has destroyed Iraq and reduced its people to the edge of survival. In careful questioning, Julie asks how sectarian strife has arisen and whether the resistance to occupation is legitimate. She goes on to probe Jamail about the attitudes of Iraqis toward the United States and its military in their country.

Dahr Jamail releases much of his reporting on Iraq through his website, www.dahrjamailiraq.com. He is the author of the book, Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.