Sunday Monitor: *Empire & Econ. *John Bolton nom. Coming up at 6 CDT

It's your world. Understand it!
April 10, 2005: Sunday Monitor


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6 pm Central
. . . 7 pm Eastern
. . . . . 4 pm Pacific


<> 6:00 pm CDT -- HEADLINES


<> ~ 6:15 pm -- GUEST 1: CHALMERS JOHNSON
discussing empire, economics, and more



Chalmers Johnson has been on Sunday Monitor before, and we are delighted to have him back. He is working on the third book of a trilogy:

<> Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.

<> The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.

<> The third volume is being written.

Dr. Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute. He taught for thirty years, 1962-1992, at University of California, on the Berkeley and San Diego campuses. He first visited Japan in 1953 as a U.S. Navy officer and has lived and worked there with his wife, who is an anthropologist, virtually every year since 1961. He has written 15 books, and advised two PBS documentaries that won Emmy Awards.

One of the recent articles he has published will be one of the things we'll talk about today.

"Wake Up!" by Chalmers Johnson, In These Times, March 31, 2005 http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2042/

A couple of recent quotes by Dr. Johnson:
"It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing."

"The United States faces the imminent danger of bankruptcy, which, if it occurs, will render all further discussion of foreign policy moot. ... Any decision by East Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro or other currencies in order to protect themselves from dollar depreciation would produce the mother of all financial crises."

The US, he says, is now "easily the world's largest net debtor nation. Refusing to pay for its profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India. This situation has become increasingly unstable."


<> ~ 6:45 pm -- GUEST 2: LARRY BIRNS
discussing the nomination of John Bolton to be UN ambassador



Larry Birns is director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Their website is http://www.coha.org/. A former defense researcher and member of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London and public affairs officer for the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, Chile, Birns taught and lectured for 15 years in the fields of Latin American studies, comparative government, and international law at a number of U.S. and British colleges and universities.

We'll talk to him about the Bolton nomination, which he has written about here: http://www.counterpunch.org/birns03102005.html

Birns writes of the Bolton nomination: "Akin to calling in the clowns, those familiar with his record believe that there is no one in U.S. public life today more ill-suited for that position than Bolton."

He quotes Bolton: "There is no such thing as the United Nations," portentously declared John Bolton to a panel of the World Federalist Association in 1994, and then added, "The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Bolton on International Law: "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so ­ because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States" (Insight Magazine, 1999).

CO-HOSTS: Mark Bebawi and Pokey Anderson

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PACIFICA RADIO SPECIALS

Tune in to KPFT at www.kpft.org

TOMORROW - Monday April 11th
John Bolton Confirmation Hearing - 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

TUESDAY April 12th
John Negroponte Confirmation Hearing - 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Both hearings anchored by national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky. Special guest experts and live listener call-ins for post show and break show.