Monday, July 30, 2007

Publisher Le Vu on Viet Weekly and Anti-Communism

On our 30 July Show, we aired an interview with Le Vu, the publisher of Viet Weekly, a magazine in Garden Grove under attack by rightwing opponents in Little Saigon. Le Vu defends his publication and asserts the right to present various points of view, including those from Vietnam. This continues our coverage of this crisis -- the previous week we covered a demonstration outside the paper's offices and interviewed a lone counter-protester.


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Monday, July 23, 2007

Prison Industrial Complex; Free Press and Anti-Communism

For our 23 July 2007 show, we focused on two timely issues, California's prison industrial complex, and a breaking story, the implications for free press as certain anti-communists in Little Saigon protest the courageous reporting of Viet Weekly.


We talked with UC Riverside ethnic studies assoc. prof. Dylan Rodriguez about his campaign to fight California's expansion of the prison industry, the biggest such expansion thus far. The activist cum professor will be making a presentation Monday evening at a public forum at the Ontario City Library, 215 East C. St., Ontario that begins at 6:30 pm.

In addition we bring you a report from this past weekend's anti-communist demonstration against a courageous magazine, Viet Weekly, currently under siege by anti-communist demonstrators in Garden Grove. We talk with the lone counter protester,at this past Saturday's protest, James Du, a Vietnamese immigrant for some 30 years, who speaks up for the importance of free speech. Unfortunately Viet Weekly no longer publishes its English section.

See my 1999 Los Angeles Times op ed on an earlier anti-communist protest, Little Saigon Slowly Kicking the Redbaiting Habit.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Author/Journalist/Filmmaker John Pilger

On our next show, Monday 16 July, 2007, we chat with filmmaker, author and journalist John Pilger about his new book, Freedom Next Time (Nation Books, 2007). John Pilger has been war correspondent, author and film-maker. He has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of Journalist of the Year, for his work all over the world, notably in Cambodia and Vietnam. He has been International Reporter of the Year and winner of the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal. For his broadcasting he has won France's Reporter Sans Frontieres, an American television Academy Award, an Emmy, and the Richard Dimbleby Award, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He has made 57 documentary films, most of them shown on ITV network television in the UK and around the world. In 2003, he received the prestigious Sophie Prize for "thirty years of exposing deception and furthering human rights". He holds numerous honorary degrees from British, Scottish and Irish universities. He is a Frank H.T. Rhodes Visiting Professor at Cornell University, New York. A complete CV and filmography is on his website www.johnpilger.com See also Who's Who UK and International Who's Who.


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