Posted on

Show 165: Robert Dreyfuss on How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

Audio here!

“I wrote Devil’s Game to fill in a gap amid the millions of words that have been written about political Islam and U.S. policy since September 11, 2001.

“It’s the story before the story, and it helps answer the question: How did we get into this mess? It’s my contention that part of the answer to that question, at least, is that for half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.

“I approached this book not as an historian, but as a journalist. A great deal of it is based on scores of interviews with men and women from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. military, and the private sector who participated in many of these events. And I relied on dozens of published works. Most of the sources I interviewed are quoted on the record, and virtually every fact in the book is footnoted…” – Robert Dreyfuss

Continue reading “Show 165: Robert Dreyfuss on How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam”

Posted on

Show 164: Tim Wise: The Extended Interview

Tim Wise: The Extended Interview

Audio here!

Scientific naturalists recognize that our bias always threatens to keep us from accurately interpreting what we see. Indeed, the degree to which our efforts to study the world around us will generate the accurate information we desire, is limited by how effective we are at offsetting the bias that would otherwise mislead us.

While most naturalists are aware of the need to defeat bias in order to accurately perceive the world around us, when it comes to understanding what drives our fellow humans, naturalists are often far less committed to applying the standards of scientific evidence to attain an unbiased view. In America perhaps the most blaring examples of such unchecked bias obstructing our ability to perceive accurately has to due with the issue of race.

Continue reading “Show 164: Tim Wise: The Extended Interview”

Posted on

Show 163: Michael Neumann – The Case Against Israel

Audio here!

Humanism is a sociopolitical philosophy concerned with promoting, among other things, a behavior of peoples via ethical and moral interactions.  These ethics and morals include compassion, truth, honesty, interconnectedness, and fairness, and a resort to reason and the understanding of cause and effect in society.  Humanists, therefore, tend to look at the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of human behavior – studying both the biological and anthropological nature of our species – toward the attempt of creating a truly egalitarian, planetary culture – a culture, while not diminishing local cultures, strives for a universal humanity where violence, war, racism, and other social injustices become obsolete.

So what is a humanist take on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?  Is there a way to look at this conflict not from an Arab or Jewish point of view, or even a political or historical point of view?  And if so, what would we learn from such an exploration?

Continue reading “Show 163: Michael Neumann – The Case Against Israel”

Posted on

Show 160: Julia Scheeres

Audio here!

“In the name of religion, (Julia) Scheeres (Jesus Land) and her adopted black brother, David, suffer cruel abuse, first in their Calvinist home in Indiana in the 1970s and then when their surgeon father and missionary-minded mother send the teens to a fundamentalist Dominican Republic reform school that is run like boot camp.  The self-righteous sermonizing would be hilarious if it were not the justification for vicious punishment.

“The racism is open, from the other kids and from authority.  Scheeres tries to find comfort in drink and in sex with a classmate … What is unforgettable is the tenderness between sister and brother, as uplifting as any sermon.  Their relationship is never sentimentalized: She is ashamed of the times she turns her back on him, tired of being called “nigger-lover . . . the black boy’s sister,” but they help each other through the worst with horseplay, humor, and courage” – Hazel Rochman @ American Library Association
Continue reading “Show 160: Julia Scheeres”

Posted on

Show 158a: The Trials of Democracy: American Nationalism, Religion & Foreign Policy

The Trials of Democracy: American Nationalism, Religion & Foreign Policy (Part One)

Audio here!

What is the relationship between nationalism and religion in the US? How do Americans see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and why? How does nationalism and religion in America influence US Foreign Policy? And what is the relationship between Islamic Fundamentalism, and US Foreign Policy?

As Iraq slips into civil war, bin Laden continues to record threats of terror against America, and the misguided brouhaha in the western press over the Muslim reaction to Danish cartoons unfavorably depicting Islam, add to the tensions of the modern world, these kinds of questions are more important than ever.

Anatol Lieven, originally from the UK, offers a European take on American nationalism while Stephen Bronner offers an American-born outlook, and Pervez Hoodbhoy offers a Pakistani (Muslim world) outlook.