FLASHPOINTS

According to several leading scientists, if BP’s plan fails to plug its as-yet uncontrollable offshore oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, the hole in the ocean could be pumping vast quantities of thick, brown crude for months and even years to come; we’ll speak to our special correspondent on the scene and shrimperwoman, mom and local activist Kindra Arnesen; also, on Community Business with Catherine Austin Fitts, we’ll report on how the key major Wall Street bandits are now suing each other and casting blame outside their own corporate headquarters; and sounds from the film The Yes Men Fix the World.

————-
LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Larry Everest

Kindra Arnesen

Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari Network

Sounds from the film The Yes Men Fix the World (Affiliates only)

Ed Rosenthal

Oil hits marshes

We’ll have a report from the Gulf of Mexico, where at this hour local residents are confronting officials from BP at a town meeting; also, we’ll have a special report on how staffers, tasked with overseeing the oil industry, were accepting bribes and payoffs; also, we’ll be joined by Greg Palast to talk about the oil and the potential collapses of the Greek, Thai, and Spanish economies.

————
LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Larry Everest, journalist

Diane Wilson, shrimperwoman and activist

Greg Palast, investigative journalist

La Mission

We’ll continue our frontline reporting on one of the worst environmental disasters in modern history, we’ll hear from our reporters who were out on the water, around the marsh and the bay where the oil is spilling into now by the millions of gallons; also, we’ll have in-depth analysis on the state visit by Mexican president Felipe Calderon; we’ll talk about San Francisco’s decision to kill the “secure communities” program that condones racial profiling and the arrest of migrant workers on mere suspicion; Miguel Molina interviews Benjamin Bratt and Peter Bratt about their new film, La Mission, filmed in San Francisco’s Mission District; and we’ll feature sounds from Crossing Arizona, the film that documents the negative impacts of current racist laws against migrant workers, their families and supporters.

————————-

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Larry Everest, historian and author

Francisco Herrera, internationally known troubadour and founder of Caminante

Arnoldo Garcia, Program Director, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Evelina Molina, Flashpoints Correspondent

Aiyanna Jones

Judi Bari

We honor the spirit of Earth First founder and radical union organizer Judi Bari, on the 20^th anniversary of the car bombing that ultimately cost her her life; we’ll hear a Flashpoints interview with Judi, done right after she left the hospital from the bombing, and we’ll hear the voices of some of those who worked closely with her; and we’ll devote the show to the memory of Aiyanna Jones, the 7 year old girl who was bombed and then shot in the head by Detroit police on Sunday.

———-

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Amanda Bellerby, producer

Dennis Cunningham, lead attorney

Ben Rosenfeld, attorney

Karen Pickett, Earth First! And Coalition for Headwaters

Alicia Littletree – paralegal and friend of Judi Bari

Ramona Africa – MOVE

BP oil spill

We’ll continue our frontline reporting of the BP spill as the giant oil company continues to demonstrate that it’s much better at capping the flow of information than it is at stopping the oil from coming out; and for the rest of the hour, we’ll be joined by BBC reporter and best-selling author Greg Palast; we’ll talk with Greg about the red-shirt revolution in Thailand, and the collapse of the economic system in Greece.

———–

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Larry Everest, author and historian

Kindra Arnesen, shrimper and mother

Greg Palast, investigative journalist

Michael Parenti - God and His Demons

We continue our coverage of the massive underground gusher as BP demonstrates that it’s much better equipped to control the flow of information than the flow of oil; also, noted author and radical political analyst Michael Parenti talks about his new book God and His Demons and his recently released article Pedophiles and Popes—Doing the Vatican Shuffle, which deals with all sorts of theoretic misconduct and misbelief.

————

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Larry Everest, Historian and Author

Richard Steiner, Alaska-based marine biologist

Michael Parenti, Author and social critic

Tona Tierra

We’ll focus on the first racist murder after the passage of Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, we’ll speak with Tupac Enrique Acosta; also, we’ll speak to Mapa President Nativo Lopez about Los Angeles’ action to restrain Arizona but fails to clean up its own anti-immigrant house; and, we welcome back advocate, author and marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal.

————

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Tupac Enrique Acosta

Nativo Lopez

Ed Rosenthal

This is what "Negev Development" funded by the JNF looks like in Khashm Zanna, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev. (International Jewish Anti-zionist Network)

We speak to UC Berkeley student activists after the hunger strike officially ended last night as the administration agreed to negotiate towards their demands, we’ll talk to them about what happens next and why one of the students remains on a hunger strike on his way to Arizona; plus, JR and the Block Report speak with Ramona Africa, the lone adult survivor of the MOVE headquarters bombing by police 25 years ago in Philadelphia; and Bedouin Palestinian attorney Rawia Abu Rabia of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel discusses the entrenched institutionalized racism and discrimination inside the state against its indigenous citizens, as home demolitions and attacks on civil rights leaders continue apace.

————–

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Alejandro Lara Briseño and Ricardo Gomez, UC Berkeley student hunger strikers

Ramona Africa, MOVE

Rawia Abu Rabia,  social justice activist and attorney,  Association for Civil Rights in Israel

An AP reporter scoops up oil from the Gulf of Mexico with a bucket and displays it in his hands at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on May 10.

Catherine Austin Fitts talks about the devastation of the Gulf as the BP-Halliburton oil spill gets worse, and the economic impact of the environmental disaster; also, we get an update on the struggle to protect access for medical marijuana patients as Federal attacks continue across the country; and longtime marijuana advocate and activist Ed Rosenthal talks about the upcoming potential for full legalization in California and his new book, Ed Rosenthal’s Marijuna Grower’s Handbook.

————-

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari Network

Kris Hermes, Americans For Safe Access

Ed Rosenthal, marijuana advocate and activist

Noam Chomsky in a speech at the Oakland Paramount Theater, October 2009

Norman Finkelstein and Lowkey

Norman Finkelstein talks about his new book, This Time, We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, in which he documents the 2008-2009 massacres by the Israeli military and sets forth possibilities for redemption as the world’s conscience galvanized in outrage; also, British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, who joins Finkelstein in his speaking event this week in Berkeley, discusses the powerful blending of hip hop and activism, we’ll also hear some of his music; and a look back at the Kent State massacre forty years later as new testimonies reveal shocking details.

————–

LISTEN ONLINE:
Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Norman Finkelstein, author, scholar and historian

Lowkey, British-Iraqi hip hop artist

EVENT:

Thursday, May 13^th, 7:30pm, Norman Finkelstein and Lowkey; King Middle

School, Rose st. in North Berkeley. More information: www.mecaforpeace.org or 510-548- 0542