Reality of Torture With No Euphemisms

The reality of torture is usually smothered in euphemism when it is discussed in Washington as it has been during the Senate hearings on Gina Haspel, Trump’s nominee to run the CIA. It shouldn’t be.

In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb, who has interviewed torture victims and torturers, and made the DuPont award winning documentary, ‘Surviving Torture: Inside Out’ cuts through the euphemisms surrounding this barbaric practice. He explains why the official version of what happens in CIA blacksites is wrong. Torture is for punishment not to extract information.

Warsaw Ghetto Anniversary Meditation: What Would You Have Done?

On the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb has a meditation on the uprising’s meaning today. He tells the story of how the Jews of Warsaw, one-third of the population of the city were herded into a Ghetto and how slowly and then rapidly the Nazis tried to kill them all until, eventually, a group of fighters decided to die with a gun in their hands on teh street of the Warsaw Ghetto rather than to walk meekly into a gas chamber. He explains what effect this story continues to have on himself and his fellow Jews, wherever they live and he asks profound questions about finding the courage to respond to the worst violence.

King and Kennedy Assassinations: America’s Repressed Trauma

The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in the spring of 1968 was a national trauma. Like most traumas people have repressed their memories of the event. Yet, half a century later, the twin decapitation of America’s progressive leadership still has an effect on the country. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb traces the decline of broadcast journalism and political discourse to the murders. No politician today speaks as honestly to the American people as King and Kennedy. He also recalls what it was like to be young and hear the news that another American leader had been murdered.

Iraq War 15 Years On: What Might Have Been

The Iraq War began 15 years ago. Seems like ancient history given where America is now. This FRDH podcast, made at the start of the war, shines a light on what might have been and foreshadows the disaster the Occupation became, a disaster Iraqis are still trying to crawl out from under. Was the failure of the Iraq War the American unipolar moment begin to unravel? Was the day Saddam Hussein’s regime disintegrated in Mosul, the day when the seeds were sown for the city to be overrun by ISIS? Did the Bush administration’s catastrophic lack of planning for the day after, the moment when Syria’s fate was sealed? This deeply mixed sound documentary will take you to the battlefront of the Iraq War, experience it with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb and the extraordinary Iraqis he met. Was there a possibility it all might have worked?

You can also read my book about it. Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2005. Out of print now, but still available for download into your e-reader at Amazon.

1968-2018: 50 Years On Time to Change the Paradigm

In 2018 There will be many stories marking the 50th anniversary of events from 1968.
1968 year of defeat, assassination, riots and treason in America.
There were near revolutions in France and Czechoslovakia. An early demonstration of the violence which would consume much of Latin America over the next quarter century in Mexico City.
We still live with the cosmic echo of those events.
It is good to remember 1968 via news media but what lessons people who didn’t live through these cataclysms will learn. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks back at one of the most dramatic years since the end of World War 2. He describes living through a paradigm shift and asks if it’s time to find a new one. The paradigm has shifted on the economy, and, God knows, on standards of mainstream political leadership in the Anglo-American world.
But has the paradigm shifted on modes of political activism? Are people to tied up with the past?

In 2018 There will be many stories marking the 50th anniversary of events from 1968.
1968 year of defeat, assassination, riots and treason in America.
There were near revolutions in France and Czechoslovakia. An early demonstration of the violence which would consume much of Latin America over the next quarter century in Mexico City.
We still live with the cosmic echo of those events.
It is good to remember 1968 via news media but what lessons people who didn’t live through these cataclysms will learn. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks back at one of the most dramatic years since the end of World War 2. He describes living through a paradigm shift and asks if it’s time to find a new one. The paradigm has shifted on the economy, and, God knows, on standards of mainstream political leadership in the Anglo-American world.
But has the paradigm shifted on modes of political activism? Are people to tied up with the past?