Interviews
Should
the United States Support the International Criminal Court?
Criminal Defense Weekly. Nov.
20, 2002
The
author most recently of The International Criminal Court and
the Transformation of International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat
is Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.
Question: What's the back story on why the Bush Administration
wants to withdraw from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court? Are they genuinely concerned that the average American
peacekeeper or soldier might get caught up in an ICC war crimes
trial?
Click here for
complete interview.
Criminal
Lawyer: The Government's Attack on Attorney-Client Privilege
Criminal Defense Weekly. April
30, 2002
A criminal defense attorney for 26 years, Lynne Stewart was
indicted by John Ashcroft on April 9, 2002, on charges of "conspiracy
to aid a terrorist organization" and "aiding a terrorist
organization." Her crime is representing a Muslim sheik with
suspected links to terrorists.
Would you address the Sixth Amendment concerns that your case
raises?
Click here for
complete interview.
The
Crisis of Our Times: Nationalism, Identity and the Future of Israel-Palestine:
An Interview With Rashid Khalidi
North Coast Express. May 2001
Rashid Khalidi's Palestinian Identity, The Construction
of a Modern Conciousness Movement (Columbia, 1997) was a major
contribution to the contemporary historiography of the Palestinians.
Grounded in the study of primary sources in Arabic—many housed
in the Khalidi library in Jerusalem—along with interviews
and detailed documentation culled from more than two dozen Arab
newspapers and magazines, the book presents the "other side
of the story," and in effect an irrefutable argument: that
the Palestinian people not only exist, but have had a consciousness
movement nearly as long as Jews have had Zionism. National identity,
however—for Israelis and Palestinians—is not a fixed
monolith, as Khalidi notes; his work is based on the premise "that
national identity is constructed; it is not an essential, transcendent
given, as the apostles of nationalism . . . claim." Nonetheless,
the current crisis, with the collapse of the Oslo accords and
a peace process which appears all but buried, has roots in the
parallel struggle of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine to forge
a new identity in the aftermath of the second World War.
Click
here for complete interview.
Breaking
the Language Barrier: A Conversation With Harold Brodkey
Blue Penny Quarterly. Summer 1996
More than a decade ago, I spoke to Harold Brodkey about
the then-growing presence of writers and poets in Los Angeles
who were participating in spoken-word events, appearing in cafes
and bookshops to read their work aloud. Brodkey, when we met,
was suffering from an on-again, off-again case of laryngitis,
but he unselfishly agreed to speak at length on the question of
a literary renaissance, of problems of language, political climate
and the collapse of all previous systems.
Brodkey, of course, published short stories in The New Yorker
for many years. He authored the collections, First Love, First
Sorrows and Stories in An Almost Classical Mode, as
well as the novels The Runaway Soul and Profane Friendship.
This Wild Darkness, a memoir of the author's struggle with
AIDS and death, appeared posthumously at the end of '96.
Click
here for complete
interview.
Timothy
Leary Live: The '60s Counterculture Guru Looks Ahead to the 21st
Century
El Europeo. Jan.
1995
A tall, limber, silver-headed gentleman with boyish good looks
has just leaped onto the stage of the Café Largo, a Los
Angeles cabaret showcasing all manner of performance artists,
visionaries and mad scientists. This solo act—coming from
a man Richard Nixon couldn't wait to put in prison—will prove
to be a combination of all three. "In the 21st century,"
our zealous prophet gleams with irrepressible enthusiasm, "whoever
controls the screens controls consciousness. The screen is a mirror
of your mind, get it? If you are passively watching screens, you
are being programmed. If you are editing your own screen, you
are in control of your mind."
Click here for complete
interview.
