Remembering Community Historian Allan Berube

Irvine -- As 2007 comes to an end, we remember friends and activists who have passed on.

On Subversity's New Year's Eve show, we celebrate and honor the engaged life of Allan Berube, a community historian, who documented the lives of gays in the military, and who received a MacArthur Foundation award. His book, Coming Out Under Fire, was developed into a film by documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong. Berube, who helped found the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, died December 11, 2007.

We talk with several fellow travelers of Berube's, including fellow historian Gerard Koskovich and activist Amber Hollibaugh about Berube's role in the gay liberation movement and his impact on a whole new generation of queer scholarship and activism.

Gerard Koskovich is a San Francisco-based editor, writer, historian, and rare book dealer and collector. He is the staff liaison for the American Society on Aging's Lesbian and Gay Aging Issues Network. His entry on LGBT archives and libraries in the United States is forthcoming in the three-volume reference work LGBTQ America Today (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2008). Recent publications include an extensive French-language portfolio on the GLBT Historical Society published in volume 6 of Triangulere (Paris: Editions Christophe Gendron, December 2006), an annual review of queer arts and culture, and "The 'Modest Collection' of Bud Flounders: How 5,400 Gay Novels Came to Green Library," published in the fall 2005 issue of Imprint, the journal of the Associates of the Stanford University Libraries. Amber Hollibaugh, senior strategist at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, formerly was the director of education, advocacy and community building at SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders). She was the first director of the Lesbian AIDS Project at Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York. She is a well-known activist, artist, writer and community organizer. She is author of My Dangerous Desires: a Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. She also co-produced and directed The Heart of the Matter, a documentary about women's sexuality and HIV risk, which won the 1994 Sundance Festival Freedom of Expression Award and ran on the PBS series, P.O.V.

Have a safe and productive new year!
See obituaries:
New York Times: obit.
Los Angeles Times: obit.
Bay Area Reporter: obit
Sullivan County Democrat: obit.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

Hoang Tan Bui Case Settlement

Irvine -- On this Christmas Eve edition of Subversity, we look back at the Hoang Tan Bui case, where a Westminster police officer, later fired, ran over Bui, causing massive injuries that killed him. This past week, his family settled the case against the City of Westminster for less than $1 million.

We look back at the case that we first covered over two years ago, when we interviewed Hoang Bui's wife, Phuong, who was then spending her first Thanksgiving with her two children without their father, a Caucasian-Vietnamese. The case sparked intense community protest with community meetings as well as a march against police headquarters. The case continues with the Bui family's lawsuit against the city over a ban on grieving their loss at the site of the incident. That case goes to court in March, 2008, where the family is represented by attorney Michael Avila.

See Deepa Bharath's article: "Court Oks Westminster Police Settlement," Orange County Register, 19 December 2007, as well as the reader comments.

See also Trinh Luu's article, "The Hoang Tan Bui case: What are they not telling us?" in the Fall 2005 edition of Jaded, a UCI alternative Asian Pacific American magazine, p.7. The piece was written right before two years before the settlement.

We dedicate the show to the memory of a fellow traveller, Alan Berube, a community activist cum historian, who won the MacArthur Foundation award after his work on gays in the military. He passed away 11 December 2007 at the age of 61.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

What Constitutes Torture?

Irvine -- As Congress and various agencies begin investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and as Congress moves to restrict certain types of interrogation techniques, Subversity talks with a Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) staff member about what constitutes torture. For example, does forcing someone to stand for hours constitute torture? Hint: Watch: Waiting for the Guards video from Amnesty International.

On our Monday, 17 December, 2007 show we chatted with Lynne Kates. She is the CCR's Organizer for the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. She is an active member of the National Lawyers Guild and co-chair of its Middle East subcommittee, and is a community activist with New Jersey Solidarity - Activists for the Liberation of Palestine and Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition. She received her JD in 2006 from Rutgers University School of Law, and her BA in 2002 from Rutgers University.

Kates cited the case of Maher Ara, the Canadian national who was "renditioned" and tortured by the CIA. See Ara Commission from Canada.

We also aired a segment from National Radio Project's Making Contact, on "The War on Torture: U.S. Policy Exposed," with analysis from Law and Philosophy Prof. David Luban of Georgetown University.
To listen to the entire show, click here:

Government Surveillance post-9/11: Student Activist Gets FBI Visit

Irvine -- US law (the Privacy Act) prohibits the federal government from collecting or retaining information about the First-Amendment-related activities of citizens and permanent residents but since 9/11, all bets are off it seems. A Washington Asian American student activist was visited 29 November (last month) by the FBI at his residence after he spoke out against "Islamo-Fascism" week.

On the 10 December 2007 edition of Subversity, we chat with Shemon Salam about what happened, what this portends for activists today and more generally about the state of activism today, especially among Asian Americans.

Salam is a University of Washington graduate student and an Asian American Muslim. He has been an anti-war and Palestine solidarity activist for the past six years. He has also been involved with anti-fascist organizing, and been active countering police brutality and immigrant deportation.

See his: "A Visit from the FBI: When Fear is Not an Option," CounterPunch, 1 December 2007.

To listen to the show, click here:

James Petras on CIA Destabilization in Venezuela

Irvine -- On our next show, to air Monday 3 December 2007, Subversity focuses on the situation in Venezuela, a day after a referendum to decide whether or not President Hugo Chavez can re-run for office indefinitely, but also to decide on various measures to improve conditions of the poor in Venezuela. We talk with Prof. James Petras, a long-time observer of Latin American social change, about the role of the CIA in stirring up opposition to Chavez, in the wake of the disclosure of a secret document alleged to be drafted by the CIA to destabilize the country.

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet.

His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

His website is: petras.lahaine.org.
See:
James Petras, "CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces," CounterPunch, 28 November 2007.
James Petras, "Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets," CounterPunch, 14 November 2007.
James Petras, "China Bashing and the Loss of U.S. Competitiveness," CounterPunch, 22/23 2005.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "The Enigma of Chavez," Le Monde Diplomatique, 4 October 2000.

To listen to the show, click here:

Q! Film Festival founder John Badalu

On our 26 November 2007 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we chatted with John Badalu, the founder of the all-free Q! Film Festival, a queer film festival that started in Jakarta and has spread to other towns in the Indonesian achipelago. Badalu discusses why he believes in keeping his festival free of charge and community-based, and how he has managed to keep the state censors at bay.

Badalu was recently on the UC Irvine campus where he met with students and also curated a queer Southeast Asian film shorts program. Badalu is both an independent producer working with some of East Asia's leading filmmakers as well as the director of the Q! Film Festival. The Jakarta-based Q! Film Festival weathered attacks early in its history from fundamentalist religious groups to emerge as the only film festival of its kind in Indonesia with venues in Jakarta, Jogjakarta, and Bali. It is the largest queer festival in Asia. Badalu has served as a juror for the Berlin and Bangkok Film Festivals and as a producer for five independent films.

To listen to the show, click here:

Cultural Work, New Media and the Screenwriters' Strike

On the 19 November 2007 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we discuss the nature of cultural work, new media (such as streaming video) and why screenwriters are currently on strike. We talk with Tony Bui ("Three Seasons"), a screenwriter-director, who is actively participating in the current Writers Guild of America strike, and with Sylvia Martin, a UC Irvine Ph.D student in anthropology, who has been doing field observation of the writers' strike and offers an ethnographic analysis of the picketing.

Tony Bui directed and wrote "Three Seasons," shot in Vietnam and starring Harvey Keitel. He also co-wrote and produced "Green Dragon", which his brother, Timothy Bui, directed. Airlifted out of Vietnam at age two, Tony Bui studied film at Loyola Marymount University and shot his thesis short, "Yellow Lotus" in Vietnam. His developed his screenplay for "Three Seasons" at the Sundance Filmmakers and Screenwriters Lab, with the film later winning at the Sundance Festival both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. On the show, he addresses the importance of solidarity with striking screenworkers and the growing numbers of Asian American screenwriters in the guild.



Sylvia J. Martin is writing her dissertation in anthropology at UCI on media industries. She has conducted ethnographic research of the production process of commercial film and television programs in the Hollywood and Hong Kong media industries. Her fieldwork experience includes working at a film and television production company at Warner Bros. Studio and observing on the set of numerous films and television shows, even working as an "extra". Prior to graduate school, Sylvia worked on over a dozen National Geographic Television Specials and in visual effects in feature films.



To listen to the show, click here:

Mike Davis, winner of Lannan nonfiction prize, on "Katrina in the Suburbs" and on OC and Academia

Mike Davis at 2002 UCI rally supporting UC lecturers & librarians; photo © 2002 Daniel C. Tsang

Irvine -- On this Veterans Day show, KUCI's Subversity show features a veteran of countless peace and justice struggles and related literary output, cultural critic and UCI history prof. Mike Davis. Davis, who last week won the noted Lannan Literary Award for non-fiction for his prolific body of work, speaks to Subversity about developers and Orange County, and why he would like to reduce his time in academia (from full-time to one-third). He has made such a request to UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake. We talked to him after his recent (October 31) UCI talk, "Katrina in the Suburbs," about the politics of wildfires, which will also air.

Davis, who will receive $150,000 with the Lannan honor, is a past recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship award.

His biography from the Lannan Literary Awards notes:

"Mike Davis was born in Fontana, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles in 1946, and is a veteran of 1960's civil rights and anti-war movements. From his first book, Prisoners of the American Dream (1986), about unionism in the United States, to his most recent, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (2007), Davis' fearless writing in 18 books shines a fresh light on economic, social, environmental, and political injustice. Some of his other books include City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Magical Urbanism, Planet of Slums, Dead Cities, In Praise of Barbarians, and No One is Illegal. He is currently working on a book about climate change, water, and power in the U.S. West and northern Mexico. A former meat cutter and long-distance truck driver, Davis has been a fellow at the Getty Institute and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine."

His Wikipedia entry is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_%28scholar%29.

The show airs on Monday, 12 November 2007, on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, and is webcast simultaneously via kuci.org. Subscribe to podcasts here: www.kuci.org/podcasts/?ShowID=600 .

He was last on Subversity after the Katrina disaster (14 October 2004). To listen to that show (unfortunately some audio is lost): kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv051014b.mp3.
Among his recent articles is this one, "San Diego Builds a Statute to an Arsonist: Developers with Matches".
To listen to the show, click here:

Daring Singapore film Solos and its director Loo Zihan

On our next show, airing Monday, 5 November, 2007, we talk with director Loo Zihan (on right in poster), whose provocative new film, Solos, dares to depict a taboo relationship, that of a secondary school teacher and a student.

Loo, who turns 24 next Sunday, plays the teenager.

The film has its U.S. premiere (after its world premiere at Pusan), Sunday and Tuesday at the AFI Festival in Los Angeles. It will also show in Hong Kong later this month.

The film was censored by the Singapore censorhip board and thus taken off the Singapore film festival lineup to preserve its artistic integrity in April.

The film depicts the last stages of a loving -- if agnonized -- relationship between the two with artistic, lyrical scenes in bed, in the shower and elsewhere. Its frank depiction of gay lovemaking -- even a threesome -- is pioneering in the Lion City, where sodomy and other sex acts among males remain a crime. The film also depicts the the mother while the boy is focused on seeking sexual and emotional satisfaction with the man.

Loo, originally interested in becoming a graphic designer, is pursing his MFA in digital filmmaking at Nanyang Technological University's School of Art Design and Media in Singapore, where he was among the first batch of students to enrol in the new school in 2005.

Solos: loozihan.wordpress.com/solos-2007/ (Loo is on the right in the first picture)AFI film showings: filmguide.afifest.com/tixSYS/2007/filmguide/title/detail/Biography of director Loo: loozihan.wordpress.com/about/

To listen to the show, click here:

Defending Critical Thinking in Academia

On our 29 October 2007 show, we talked with Reginald Dylan, of the National Project to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia about attempts to suppress critical thinking and alternative viewpoints in higher education. The interview comes in the wake of a so-called "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" organized by David Horrowitz.

In the actual broadcast, we also aired a clip of Bob Avakian, who heads the Revolutionary Communist Party, on the topic of critical thinking in academia.

To listen to the show, click here:

Chinese Political Poster Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Irvine -- For our next show, KUCI's Subversity radio program interviews the compilers of a new collection of Chinese political poster art from the Cultural Revolution. We chat with Lincoln Cushing, a librarian/scholar of political posters and with Ann Tompkins, whose collection of such posters has just come out in a wonderful compilation from Chronicle Books, Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

We also chat with an Chinese American activist mentioned in the book, Steve Louie, about the impact of the Cultural Revolution, and its art, on social and political movements here.

The show airs from 9-10 a.m. on Monday, 22 October, 2007, on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast on the Web via kuci.org.

Cushing maintains a documents for the people site: http://www.docspopuli.org/..

The bulk of the poster collection is housed at the East Asia Library at University of California,

Berkeley: www.docspopuli.org/ChinaPosters.html.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

L.A. Times and Armenian Genocide Censorship

As the U.S. Congress moves to a vote by the full body on calling the Armenian genocide a genocide, Subversity takes a look back at how one mainstream paper has dealt -- rather poorly -- with the issue. In an encore edition, we talk with Mark Arax, a longtime journalist at the Los Angeles Times, whose story on the Armenian genocide was spiked by an editor. He subsequently left the paper after an out-of-court settlement. The editor also left, to work for the Wall Street Journal in Ankara.

The interview aired Monday, October 15, 2007 at 9 am on Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, webcasting via kuci.org.

We discuss why the censorship occurred and what happened. See coverage in the Armenian Weekly.

See also Robert Fisk, "A Reign of Terror which History has Chosen to Neglect," The Independent, 12 October, 2007.
To listen to the entire show, click here:

CIA at 60: Domestic Surveillance Continues

Sixty years ago, the U.S. National Security Act led to the creation of the CIA. The spy agency was not supposed to spy on Americans, but KUCI's Subversity host Dan Tsang found out the CIA was spying on him. He took the CIA to federal court, with the help of the ACLU and the Center for National Security Studies, and prevailed. In an out-of-court settlement, the CIA promised to not spy on him again and promised to expunge anything collected on his First-Amendment-protected activities.

Subversity takes this 60th anniversary of the CIA as the opportunity to look back at the CIA and its history of domestic surveilance, before and after 9/11. We air a 1999 interview we did with attorney Kate Martin, of the Center for National Security Studies, who represented Tsang in his Privacy Act lawsuit against the CIA, as well as portions from an hour-long interivew, taped this past July for KUCI show host Mari Frank's "Privacy Piracy" show (www.kuci.org/privacypiracy/#09_12_07) where Frank interviewed Martin and Tsang about his lawsuit that exposed CIA domestic spying after the Privacy Act was enacted supposedly to prevent such illegal activities. We talk about how the CIA used the National Security Act to illegally spy on Tsang. Although the CIA settled the case with Tsang, a U.S. citizen at birth, it refused to promise to not spy on other Americans (or permanent residents).

To listen to the entire show, click here:

For more information, see press release.

Human Rights & Sex Offenders

On our next show, airing Monday, 1 October 2007, KUCI's Subversity show kicks off its fall 2007 season by focusing on a new report, No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US, that recently was issued by Human Rights Watch.

We talk with the report's author, Sarah Tofte, who is a researcher with the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch. In her report, she assails "mistaken premises" that are prevalent about sex offenders and argues that we must rethink sex offender laws because the laws are counterproductive.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

Last month, we aired a related program, an interview with Paul Shannon, who has started a campaign to reform sex offender laws.

Audio of that earlier Subversity show is here.

Shannon's article in CounterPunch is here.

Shannon's web site with an online petition is here.

UCI Law School Saga continues: Unanswered Questions

Irvine -- While the UCI community seems happy that the UCI Chancellor has rehired (last Monday) as law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, and then apologized to the academic senate for making a mistake in earlier rescinding the job offer, some faculty remain unconvinced that Chancellor Michael V. Drake has provided all the answers about the law school hiring/firing/rehiring debacle.

We talk with one such doubter, Sociology Prof. David S. Meyer, a specialist on social and political protest. We discuss how faculty protest at UCI quickly fizzled out after Chancellor Drake made an apology to the faculty senate last Thursday.

We also air highlights from the emergency session of the faculty senate, which passed a resolution reminding the UCI administration of the need to uphold academic freedom, but tabled any resolution that hinted at any criticism of the Chancellor. The body did adopt a motion, put forth by a founding law school faculty member, Prof. Joseph F. Dimento, to create a committee to investigate the Chancellor's actions.

Despite the "love fest", others outside UCI have continued their criticism of the Chancellor's action earlier this month, which brought national attention to UCI, amidst allegations of the university caving in to outside pressures.

A Los Angeles Times editorial writer continued to call on the Chancellor to " 'Fess Up" while one commentator called him "The Most Corrupt Man in California". See also:

L'affaire Chemerinsky:href="http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/09/19_opinion.shtml" www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/09/19_opinion.$
OC Register on last week's show:Google News

To listen to the entire show, click here:

Political Pressure and UCI Law Deanship Hiring/Firing

The developments over the hiring and firing of a liberal new law school dean at UCI threatens to derail not only the opening of the law school, but endangers UCI's reputation as a site of renowned scholarship free from political interference.

Faculty and newspapers, such as the New York Times, have already called for the UCI Chancellor, Michael Drake, to reverse his decision and say he made a mistake. Subversity has learned the chancellor may already be flying to North Carolina to meet with the hired and fired dean, Duke University Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky and renew negotiations with the latter. We are seeking confirmation of that unconfirmed account.

In our next show, slated for Monday, 17 September 2007, at 9-10 a.m., we talk with two key faculty members about this sad saga.

We talk with a founding faculty member at the forthcoming law school, Distinguished Prof. Elizabeth Loftus, who talks about one way out of this impasse.

We also talk with Prof. David Theo Goldberg, who heads the UC-system's Humanities Research Institute headquartered at UCI, and who drafted the "open letter" in the form of an online petition, calling for the Chancellor to re-offer the dean's position to Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky.


To listen to the entire show, click here:

Recent Articles linked on Google News:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=UCI+law+school&btnG=Search+News

Looking at Iraq War

On the same day as Gen. David Petraeus was slated to present the latest Bush administration spin to Congress on the disaster in Iraq, we looked back at the grassroots commission to investigate war crimes of the Bush regime and air highlights from the testimony, including those of former Abu Graib commander Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinsky, and independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who has reported extensively from Iraq about the impact the war on the people there. The show aired from 9-10 a.m. on Monday, 10 September, 2007.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

Labor Day Show: Moral Panics & Vietnam Labor Struggles

For our Labor Day show, KUCI's Subversity show had two parts.

Part 1: Moral panics in Boise, Part 1 (9:00 am) takes a look back at some historical antecedents for the travails of U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who has now announced his resignation in the wake of a tearoom conviction disclosure. We chat with writer/director/producer Seth Randal about his documentary, The Fall of '55, that documented the witchhunt against homosexuals caught in sex with teenagers.

His op ed (co-written with an archivist, Alan Virta, also on the show) appears in Saturday's New York Times, which also ran a separate op ed on the late sociologist Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade book that analyzed the folks who engage in tearoom sex.

Part 2 focuses on Vietnam with Prof. Angie Ngoc Tran Part 2 (9:30 am) focuses on labor in Vietnam, as the forces of globalization converge on changing work and working conditions in that country. We chat with Prof. Angie Ngoc Tran, of CSU Monterey Bay, whose field is political economy. See press release.

To listen to the entire show, click here:

http://kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv070903b.mp3

Feminist Poetry from Vietnam

On our 27 August 2007 show, we aired an interview, taped in Hanoi, Vietnam, with long-time progressive author Lady Borton about her work on the first bilingual collection of feminist poems from Vietnam, The Defiant Muse: Vietnamese Feminist Poems, just out from Feminist Press

To listen to the show, click here:

To listen to just part 2 of the show on Vietnam labor conditions, click here:

Sex Offender Law Reform

On our 13 August show, we chatted with Paul Shannon, whose website is advocating a reform of sex offender laws. We ask him why.

The web site is at: http://www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org/ . His Counterpunch article is here: www.counterpunch.org/shannon07102007.html.

To listen to the show, click here:

Censorship at the Los Angeles Times

On our 6 August show, we aired an interview with long-time LA Times reporter Mark Arax, whose article on the Armenian Genocide was spiked by an editor. Arax has now settled out of court with the paper and has left the paper. We discuss why the censorship occurred and what happened. See coverage in the Armenian Weekly: www.hairenik.com/armenianweekly/fpg07140702.htm.

To listen to the show, click here:

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.

To listen to the show, click here:

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.

To listen to the show, click here:

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.

To listen to the show, click here:

Queer Asian Survey Results Analyzed

On our next Subversity show, we chat with Alain Dang, a UCI/UCLA graduate who authored a pioneering national survey of Asian/Pacific American queer life, recently released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in New York City, where he works as a policy analyst. More information on the suvey report, Living in the Margins, is posted here: www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/api_study.

The actual report is here: www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/orts/API_LivingInTheMargins.pdf

The show airs from 9-10 a.m. on Monday, 18 June 2007, on the first day of KUCI's new summer schedule, and is webcast simultaneously via kuci.org.

Here is more info. on Dang:

Alain Dang is a policy analyst with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. His research focuses on the intersections of race, sexual orientation, community building, and public policy. He co-authored Living in the Margins: A National Survey of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, Asian Pacific American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People: A Community Portrait and Black Same-Sex Households in the United States: A Report from the 2000 Census for the Task Force Policy Institute. His autobiographical chapter is featured in Kevin Kumashiro's Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian Pacific American Activists , published by Harrington Park Press. He and his work have been featured in a variety of media across the country, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle , Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AsianWeek, The Advocate, World Journal, News India Times, Filipino Reporter, Hyphen Magazine and The Western Journal of Black Studies, among others. In addition, he has traveled the country speaking at conferences, colleges and universities. He holds a BA in Environmental Analysis & Design from UC Irvine (Social Ecology) and an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA.

To listen to the show, click here:

Vietnamese Canadian Actor David Huynh

On our next Subversity show, we talk with David Huynh, who starred as a young Chinese American gangster in "Baby". which had it world premiere at closing night at recent Visual Communication Asian Pacific American film festival in Los Angeles, where the film won two awards including one for him. Show host Dan Tsang interviews Huynh from 9-10 am on Monday, June 11, 2007, on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, Calif.; the show is webcast simultaneously via kuci.org.

A Canadian transplant, David Huynh has had the fortunate opportunity to have performed on both Canadian and American theatre, television and film productions. David was seen on Canadian television as a series regular on YTV's "2030 C.E." His stage credits also include the role of Oscar in "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang" and Berthold Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle". David has studied at The Prairie Theatre Exchange and was a member of the influential Manitoba Theatre for Young People. Before David pursued acting professionally, he was attending The University of Manitoba, working on a Film Major and a Minor in Theatre Studies.

In Los Angeles, David made his stage debut in Joe Jordan's "Dubya 2004" at The Sacred Fools theatre. Most recently, David was last seen on stage in Lisa Hammer's "Grimmer than Grimm" in addition too The Underground Theatre's production of Langford Wilson's "Balm In Gilead" and on television as Sun Kim on ABC's freshly cancelled program "Invasion". David became the proud recipient of the 2007 Visual Communication Film Festival Special Jury Prize winner - Emerging Actor in "BABY", a gang-land drama from director Juwan Chung. "BABY" was also awarded the Jury Prize - Narrative feature award at the festival. In July, David will start principal photography on "All About Dad" a story about a Vietnamese - American family dealing with change and Dad's old world views on life, and his children's new-world views. Shooting will take place on location in San Jose, CA. For more information and pictures of the actor, see: http://www.david-huynh.com/.

To listen to the show, click here:

State of Journalism in Orange County

Irvine -- On the Subversity show 4 June 2007, we talked with a newspaper editor, a publisher, and a communications professor/former journalist about the state of journalism in Orange County.The show airs from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, and is webcast simultaneously via kuci.org.

Orange Coast Voice Editor John Earl, CSU Fullerton Communications Prof. Jeffrey Brody and The District and former OC Weekly publisher Will Swaim discussed reportage and journalism in the OC with show host Daniel C. Tsang. Earl, a former KUCI Public Affairs Host ("The News Gap") and a former area reporter, edits the independent monthly Orange Coast Voice, which covers Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach. Brody is a former Orange County Register reporter who is best known for his coverage of Little Saigon. Will Swaim is founded the OC Weeky before taking some of the staff to The District in Long Beach.



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Jimmy Carter on Palestinian Rights

On our May 21, 2007 show, we aired the 3 May 2007 talk given by former President Jimmy Carter at UC Irvine, where he defended Palestinian rights and attacked Israel's lobbyists in the U.S. for stifling discussion of this topic. The talk had been aired live on KUCI when he came to campus a few weeks ago.

To listen to the show, click here:

There is also a transcript of Carter's talk.

More information on his talk at: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/events/carter/.

The full audio of the event is here: http://www.kuci.org/podcastfiles/611/carter5-3-07.mp3.

Anthropologist Joe Carrier on Vietnam's Central Highlanders

In connection with a new exbibit on Vietnam's Central Highlanders opening at UCI's Langson Library, on the next Subversity show (May 14, 2007 at 9 a.m.) on KUCI, we talk with anthropologist Joe Carrier, whose photos taken during the Vietnam War and more recently form a major part of the exhibit, "Surviving War, Surviving Peace: The Central Highlanders of Vietnam."


We talk with Carrier about why he took the photos of the Central Highlanders, their plight during various wars and and more recently, the role of various regimes, and the responsibilities of an anthropologist in documenting people in cultures different from one's own.


A reception and panel discussion in connection with the exhibit will take place Tuesday 15 May at 5:30 p.m. at UCI's Langson Library. For more information, see: www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/new/exhibit_spr07.html .


For more information, see press release.


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Actor Dustin Nguyen

Irvine -- On our next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we take a look at the Visual Communications' Asian Pacific Film Festival, currently under way in Los Angeles. URL: http://www.vconline.org/.

We talked with actor Dustin Nguyen, who attended Orange Coast College, went on to act in 21 Jump Street, as well as many other films, the latest three showing at the VC Film Festival, two made in Vietnam. See press release for details. To listen to the show, click here:

Nationalism in Vigils: How about a Vigil for those killed in Iraq?"

On our 30 Aril 2007 show, we chat with UCI anthropology graduate student Philip Grant, whose research is on Iran, about why he wrote the UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, to challenge UCI on why Drake's email to UCI evoked "our nation" as being in "deep sorrow." How about those not of this nation, Grant asked. See press release. To listen to the show, click here:

Orange County's Dust of Life [Bui Doi]

Dust of Life Actor Devon Duy Nguyen with Director Le-Van Kiet. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2007

On our next show, we talk with the director of a new film that will the showing at the closing night of the Vietnamese International Film Festival in Orange County. VIFF is in its third edition: http://www.vietfilmfest.com. Featured this year are five films from Vietnam as well as films from the Vietnamese diaspora the world over.

On Monday, we talk with film director Le-Van Kiet about his film, Dust of Life (Bui Doi) about why he chose to bring to the screen the fraught lives of Vietnamese youth in 1990s Orange County.

The show airs from 9-10 a.m. on 16 April 2007 on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Irvine, California, and via the Internet on kuci.org.

Dust of Life will be screened on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at UCI, HIB 100, at 7 p.m., as VIFF's closing night film. For more info., see the VIFF website: http://www.vietfilmfest.com/.

For more information, see press release.

To listen to the show, click here:

Dorothy Fall on Vietnam War Journalist Bernard Fall

On our next show, Monday, March 12, 2007, we talk with author Dorothy Fall about her book on her husband, Bernard Fall, whose scholarly works, Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, on the French disaster in the Vietnam War, are classics. He predicted that the U.S. would be unable to win the war politically, even if it had superior military power. The book is Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar (Potomac Books).

To listen to the show, click here: .

Teaching Sexuality

On our next Subversity show on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, we chat with Kassia Wosick-Correa about a sociology of sexuality class she has taught at UC Irvine. Wosick-Correa is a Ph.D candidate in Sociology.

The show airs from 9-10 am on Monday, 9 April, 2007 on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County.

New University story on her class: Students React to Watching Pornography in the Classroom

ACADEMICS: A recent lecture featuring pornographic films and performers resulted in mixed responses.

By Julian Camillieri, New University, March 13, 2007.

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Cage-Free Eggs campaign comes to UCI

Irvine -- Why isn't UC Irvine serving cage-free eggs in its food services?

For months UCI political scientist and Asian Americanist Claire Kim has been trying, without success, to get UCI to serve eggs of cage-free chickens in its dorms and campus restaurants. Aramark, which has a multi-year contract with UCI to provide food services, is willing to do so, according to Prof. Kim, but the university still hasn't moved on the issue.

We chat with Prof. Kim on our next show April 2, 2007 at 9 am.

See press release.

To listen to the show, click here:

Elizabeth Loftus on Academic Freedom and Recovered Memory

On our next show, March 5, 2007, in the wake of the California Supreme Court affirming UCI distinguished pschology prof. Elizabeth Loftus' academic freedom to conduct research, we re-air our 2002 interview with Loftus, when she first arrived on the UCI campus. The case, Taus vs. Loftus et al, continues on one count, however. See details and links in press release. To listen to the show, click here:

The original 2002 interview is here (in RealAudio): .

Remembering Gay Liberation Pioneer Barbara Gittings

On our next show, to air on February 26, 2007 at 10 am, we remember the decades-long activism of Barbara Gittings, who died last Sunday in Pennsylvania. Subversity's show host was honored to share the panel with her just three months ago at UCLA's library school, where she talked about how she managed to get gay and lesbian books into libraries.

Barbara loved books, and saw their importance to lesbians and gays. Though not a librarian, she became active in the American Library Association's task force on gay liberation. We air her reflections on her involvement with librarians in our memorial show Monday.


See press release.



To listen to the show, click here: .

Teen gets parade boat in Amsterdam, but gay scholar gets death threats

On our next show, we talk with University of Amsterdam gay scholar Gert Hekma, who's embroiled in a nasty controversy in the Netherlands.

Danny Hoekzema came out as gay when he was 12 years-old. At 14, he wonders why there are no resources for gay youth in the Netherlands, where the age of consent is set at 16. He's managed to get gay parade organizers in Amsterdam (as well as the city major) to let him and his peers join the parade in a gay teen boat for those aged 12-16.

But in the process, a gay scholar who supports the teen boat idea has been pilloried in the Dutch media as well as the gay establishment, for his views on teen sex. Gert Hekma, who is a gay studies professor at the University of Amsterdam, has received numerous death threats on email and in blogs. His university, however, stands by him and supports his right to free speech. We talk with Prof. Hekma, who has authored over a dozen scholarly works on gay life and culture, about his support of youth sexuality and those on the "sexual fringe".

See press release. To listen to the show, click here: .

Author Le Ly Hayslip on State Assemblyman Van Tran and on her Humanitarian Work in Vietnam

On our next show, Monday, 12 February 2007, we air an encore edition of Subversity.
In the wake of electoral success in the Orange County Supervisor's race attributed to the political machinery of state Assemblyman Van Tran, we bring you author Le Ly Haylip's view of Van Tran as she addresses her humanitarian work in Vietnam. The progressive Hayslip, no friend of anticommunist Van Tran, had her biographies made into Oliver Stone's 1993 film, Heaven and Earth.

See press release. The interview with Le Ly Hayslip first aired in 2005. To listen to the show, click here: .

Actor Justin Chon on his Acting Career

On our February 5, 2007 show, we talked with actor Justin Chon. The Korean American actor is currently in Nickelodeon's "Just Jordan." A rising star, his film credits include "The OC". A New York Times reviewer called him "good-looking" in "Just Jordan."
For more on Justin Chon, see press release.

To listen to the interview with Justin Chon, click here: .

Stuart Timmons on Gay L.A.

On our January 15, 2007, we talked with author Stuart Timmons about a new book he has co-authored, with historian Lillian Faderman, Gay L.A., about the underground histories and struggles that led to today's emergence of public lesbian and gay communities in the Los Angeles region. Timmons had been on Subversity earlier, most notably when he talked about his book on Harry Hay, the progressive gay activist. An audio file of that interview in July 2001 is clickable here: . To listen to the latest interview about Gay L.A., click here: .