Before she died on April 16, 2005, Marla Ruzicka succeeded in documenting civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, and persuading the U.S. Military and the U.S. Congress to assist victims and their families, as well as to create a fund to grant reparations for the harms done. It is believed to be the first time in history that this has been done.

This is an updated rebroadcast of a program originally aired on Easter Sunday, 2006. It was the first anniversary of her death at the age of 28. We spoke with her parents, Cliff and Nancy Ruzicka, and her twin brother, Mark, at their home on the shore of Clearlake, CA.

Equally at home with the military, the media, members of Congress of the people of the many countries she visited and came to know in her short life, she lived her belief that every life matters and deserves dignity, respect and justice.

The organization she founded, CAMPAIGN FOR INNOCENT VICTIMS IN CONFLICT (CIVIC) in 2003, can be accessed here: https://civiliansinconflict.org/about-us/

Ray McGovern earned a Masters’ degree with honors in Russian Language, Literature and History from Fordham University. In the early 1960s, he served as a US Army Infantry Intelligence Officer in the analysis division on Soviet foreign policy, especially with respect to China and Indochina, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Thailand.

In the CIA, he served under seven presidents from 1963 to 1990, beginning with John F. Kennedy. In the 1980s he chaired the National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. In 2003, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) dedicated to analyzing and criticizing the mis-use of intelligence, specifically the false claims leading to the Iraq War. In 2006, he returned to CIA headquarters to protest the CIA’s involvement in torture, when he returned his Intelligence Commendation Medal.

We spoke with Ray McGovern on April 6, 2022. The next day, The United Nations General Assembly voted to expell Russia from The Human Rights Council.

To hear this interview or access links to articles, maps & videos pertinent to it, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2022/04/07/ray-mcgovern-veteran-intelligence-professionals-for-sanity-russia-ukraine/

Henry Giroux is McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest & The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.

An internationally renowned writer and cultural critic, Professor Giroux has authored, or co-authored over 65 books, written several hundred scholarly articles, delivered more than 250 public lectures, and been a regular contributor to print, television, and radio news media outlets.

He is on the Board of Directors for Truthout, and he is on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly journals, and he has served as the editor or co-editor of four scholarly book series. He co-edited a series on education and cultural studies with Paulo Freire for a decade. His books have been translated into many languages and his work has appeared in the New York Times and many other prominent news media

His latest book is PEDAGOGY OF RESISTANCE AGAINST MANUFACTURED IGNORANCE, which will be published on April 21, 2022 by Bloomsbury Academic.

To hear this interview or access articles pertinent to it, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2022/03/24/henry-giroux-pedagogy-of-resistance-against-manufactured-ignorance/

With the latest addition to his Hidden History Series, veteranor, journalist, Thom Hartmann, returns to discuss THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BIG BROTHER IN AMERICA: HOW THE DEATH OF PRIVACY AND THE RISE OF SURVEILLANCE THREATEN US AND OUR DEMOCRACY. It was just published by Barrett-Koehler on international women’s day, March 8, 2022.

To hear this interview or access articles pertinent to it, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2022/03/16/thom-hartmann-the-hidden-history-of-big-brother-in-america-how-the-death-of-privacy-the-rise-of-surveillance-threaten-us-our-democracy/

This interview was first broadcast as the sovereign nation of Ukraine was being invaded by the Russian Army. Terrible as this was, it was also an appropriate time to examine our own history, which Jonathan Katz has done in his most recent book, GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM: Smedley Butler, The Marines, and the Making and Breaking of the American Empire, published in January 2022 by St. Martin’s Press.

This edition of Forthright Radio ends with a tribute to Dr. Paul Farmer, who died on on February 21, 2022 at the age of 62. It is followed by Paul Farmer’s own voice speaking of his work.

To access articles pertinent to this program, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2022/02/26/jonathan-katz-gangsters-of-capitalism-smedley-butler-the-marines-and-the-making-and-breaking-of-the-american-empire/

John D. Leshy is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He was Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Interior Department throughout the Clinton Administration. Earlier, he was counsel to the Chair of the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Associate Solicitor of Interior for Energy and Resources in the Carter Administration, an attorney-advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a litigator in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He led the Interior Department transition team for Clinton-Gore in 1992 and co-led it for Obama-Biden in 2008.

The U.S. government owns and manages more than six hundred million acres, which is about 30% of the nation’s land. These lands and the agencies that manage them—the National Forest Service, the National Park Service, the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management—are a presence in our western communities.

John Leshy’s forthcoming book, OUR COMMON GROUND: A HISTORY OF AMERICA’S PUBLIC LANDS, soon to be published by Yale University Press. In 600+ pages, it chronicles this history of our public lands and suggests how Congress, the executive and the federal courts have responded to the numerous challenges facing these lands.

Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies in the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University. He is the director of the Center for Critical Social Research, founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity,
and co-chair of the UK Black Studies Association. In fact, he was the first black studies professor in the UK and led the establishment of the first black studies program in Europe at Birmingham City University.

Among his books are Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality, and the Black Supplementary School Movement and Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century.

His most recent book is THE NEW AGE OF EMPIRE: HOW RACISM & COLONIALISM STILL RULE THE WORLD, published in the US by Bold Type Books.

To hear this interview or find links to articles pertinent to it, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2022/01/27/kehinde-andrews-the-new-age-of-empire-how-racism-colonialism-still-rule-the-world/

Karen Greenberg is a noted expert on national security, terrorism and civil liberties. She founded and is Director of The Center on National Security at Fordham University.

Her 2016 book, Rogue Justice:The Making of the Security State, explored the War on Terror’s impact on justice and law in America. Her latest book, SUBTLE TOOLS: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, is published by Princeton University Press.

We spoke with Karen Greenberg on January 7, 2022, one year and a day after a momentarily united, completely bipartisan Congress, fled in fear for their lives from a mob, who had violently invaded the capitol, preventing the fulfillment of their obligation under the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to meet to count the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election on January 6. They were prevented from doing so until January 7, one year to the day that Karen Greenberg and I spoke.

The recent catastrophic firestorms in Superior and Louisville, CO, brought to mind this 2012 interview with Kristen Iversen about her book, FULL BODY BURDEN: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats. In it she documents the history of plutonium contamination over six decades from the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant to the area burned, including Superior and Louisville.

The impacts of this plutonium contamination in the dirt and taken up by the plants, which then burned in the conflagration spewing unknown quantities of plutonium unknown distances, have not been reported on elsewhere. We do so here.

To hear this updated interview/report and find maps and articles pertinent to it, click on this link:  https://forthright.media/2022/01/04/kristen-iversen-full-body-burdengrowing-up-in-the-nuclear-shadow-of-rocky-flats/

Alfred McCoy is University of Wisconsin Harrington Professor of History. He was our guest in 2017, when his book, IN THE SHADOWS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF US GLOBAL POWER, came out. That archived interview can be heard on our website: https://forthright.media/2017/10/04/alfred-mccoy-in-the-shadows-of-the-american-century-the-rise-and-decline-of-us-global-power/

Fifty years ago, the publication of his book, THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTH EAST ASIA, led to his testifying before the Senate Committee on Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee in June 1972. His research, including traveling to Hmong villages in Laos, revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency was knowingly involved in the transportation of heroin in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. The CIA tried to block its publication, but it has been translated into 9 foreign languages with three English editions and is regarded as the “classic” work on global drug traffic.

His new book, published by Haymarket Books, is titled TO GOVERN THE GLOBE: WORLD ORDERS & CATASTROPHIC CHANGE. In it, he explores the interplay of three factors—sovereignty, human rights, and energy—in shaping the succession of empires and their global systems from the Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050. It is packed with meticulously researched facts and analysis of world history of the last 600 years, examining the continuities and disruptions that create the systems that rule international affairs. We spoke with him on the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2021.

To hear this interview and/or access links to articles referenced or pertinent to it click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/12/22/alfred-mccoy-to-govern-the-globe-world-orders-catastrophic-change/

Spencer Ackerman had just graduated from Rutgers University, when the attacks on 9/11 occurred. He began his journalism career, focused on national security, with the New Republic in 2002, and then went on to write for Wired, The Guardian and The Daily Beast.

He won a 2012 National Magazine Award for his reporting on biased FBI training, and a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (with Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, and others at the Guardian) for reporting on revelations of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency based on the Edward Snowden revelations.

His recent book, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, was published by Viking in August, 2021. We spoke with him on December 3, 2021.

To hear this interview and/or find links to articles referenced or pertinent to it, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/12/10/spencer-ackerman-reign-of-terror-how-the-9-11-era-destabilized-america-produced-trump/

In addition to having been a lead author of the fifth Assessment Report to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Giulio Boccaletti was Chief Strategy Officer and Global Managing Director for Water at The Nature Conservancy, where he led a team of over 200 freshwater scientists, policy experts, economists and on-the-ground conservation practitioners, promoting action on water issues by governments and businesses.

Earlier in his career, he was a partner of consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he co-founded the water practice and worked with businesses and governments around the world. He trained at MIT, Princeton and Bologna University in Physics and Atmospheric Science.

His book, WATER: A Biography, was published in Sept. 2021 by Pantheon Books. We spoke on October 15.

To find links to articles referenced or pertinent to this interview, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/10/19/giulio-boccaletti-water-a-biography/

Andrew Cockburn is the award winning journalist, documentary film producer and Harper’s Washington, DC editor. For more than four decades, he has focused on national security not just of the United States, but of the Soviet Union as well. Beginning with his Peabody Award winning 1981 PBS film, THE RED ARMY, which was the first in-depth study of deficiencies in the Soviet military, he has covered the wars in Afghanistan since the 1980s with his wife, Leslie Cockburn. In 2009, they produced the film AMERICAN CASINO on the financial collapse of 2007.

His 8th book, THE SPOILS OF WAR: POWER, PROFIT and the AMERICAN WAR MACHINE, has just been published by Verso. In it he asserts that “The record shows America’s Afghan War was nothing other than a prolonged and entirely successful operation – to loot the US Taxpayer. At least a quarter of a million Afghans, not to mention 3,500 US & allied troops paid a heavier price.”

We spoke with Andrew Cockburn on Sept. 29, 2021, as the Senate Armed Services Committee was grilling Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, about the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years and trillions of dollars spent, which he characterized as “a logistical success but a strategic failure.”

To find links to articles referenced or pertinent to this interview, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/10/05/andrew-cockburn-the-spoils-of-war-power-profit-and-the-american-war-machine/

His ancestor, Sir George Cockburn, 10th Baronet, ordered the Burning of Washington in 1814.

Returning to Forthright Radio is Izzy Award winning Todd Miller. He was our guest in 2017, when the book that won the Izzy Award, STORMING THE WALL: CLIMATE CHANGE, MIGRATION, AND HOMELAND SECURITY, came out.

Last Spring of 2021, City Lights published his latest book, BUILD BRIDGES, NOT WALLS: A Journey to a World Without Borders. We spoke with him on August 30, 2021.

He documents over and over that natural forces alone make border walls temporary solutions to political problems at best.

To access article referenced or pertinent to this interview, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/09/01/todd-miller-build-bridges-not-walls-a-journey-to-a-world-without-borders/

To hear this interview with Thom Hartmann about the latest addition to his Hidden History series, THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE: WHY SICKNESS BANKRUPTS YOU AND MAKES OTHERS INSANELY RICH, and/or to find links to articles by him or pertinent to the interview, click on this link: https://forthright.media/2021/08/18/thom-hartmann-the-hidden-history-of-american-healthcare-why-sickness-bankrupts-you-makes-others-insanely-rich/