Bob Feldman, Author at Toward Freedom

Laura Flanders: Anti-War Radio Journalist

Bob Feldman October 26, 2005 Bob Feldman

Laura Flanders is one of the most influential anti-war journalists in the United States. Her tough debating skills, powerful intellect and sharp wit have made her a force to reckon with in media today. In addition to hosting countless radio shows, including her current program on Air America Radio, she recently came out with Bushwomen, a book that examines the background of powerful Republican Party women like Condoleezza Rice and Lynn Cheney. Flanders became involved in activism in the 1980s as a student Barnard College, where she circulated petitions against the U.S. government's intervention in Central America and demonstrated against Columbia University's refusal to divest itself of its investments in U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa during the apartheid era. Flanders initially became involved in the U.S. alternative media world as a radical filmmaker.

A People’s History of Iraq: 1963 to 2005

Bob Feldman September 22, 2005 Bob Feldman

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 138,000 U.S. occupation troops. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq. But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”: A 100th Anniversary Retrospective

Bob Feldman September 12, 2005 Bob Feldman

Among the early 20^th century muckraking writers, Upton Sinclair had perhaps the most intense immediate impact on U.S. public opinion after his novel, "The Jungle", was published 100 years ago. His target was the Beef Trust that controlled Chicago's stockyards and its meatpacking industry. The problem that Sinclair wished to expose through his muckraking was the way the Beef Trust treated its workers under an economic system that Sinclair felt was a system of "wage-slavery." But the result of Sinclair's muckraking work was only effective in exposing the unsanitary way the Beef Trust packed meat for middle-class U.S. consumers. As Sinclair wrote in October, 1906:

Irish Women and Nationalism: An Interview with Margaret Ward

Bob Feldman August 29, 2005 Bob Feldman

In November 2004, Irish Academic Press published Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags, a book co-edited by Margaret Ward and Louise Ryan. In an e-mail interview with Toward Freedom, Irish historian Ward recently discussed her new book.

Media Reform in Post-Jennings Era at Disney/ABC?

Bob Feldman August 15, 2005 Bob Feldman

As 1960s U.S. antiwar activist Bill Ayers recalled in his 2001 book Fugitive Days, at the time of the October 1967 anti-war march on the Pentagon, the recently-deceased anchor of Disney/ABC's World News Tonight show, Peter Jennings, was the boyfriend of Diana Oughton's sister, Christina Oughton. [Diana Oughton would later perish in the March 1970 West Village Townhouse explosion that killed her and two other members of the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society]:

60 Years Later: A Look at Hiroshima

Bob Feldman August 4, 2005 Bob Feldman

August 6, 2005 marks the 60^th anniversary of Democratic President Truman's use of the atomic bomb against the people of Hiroshima, at a time when the Japanese government was apparently seeking a negotiated end to World War II. Yoshihiro Kimura was a third-grade student in Hiroshima on the morning the U.S. government dropped its A-bomb on the city. In Children Of The A-Bomb, Kimura recalled how it felt: