Finding Kukan/Big Sonia

As we have done each May for the last 10+ years, Forthright Radio is going to the movies, specifically reviewing documentaries from the upcoming Mendocino Film Festival. Today our show is in 2 parts. In the first, we interview Robin Lung, producer/director of FINDING KUKAN, a sort of detective story to find a long forgotten, lost film, and the almost forgotten woman who produced it, Li Ling-Ai.

In the second segment, we speak with Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday about their film, BIG SONIA. It’s about the amazing Sonia Warshawski, who survived 3 concentration camps, 2 beatings from SS guards, each of which almost killed her, and then, on the very day Bergen Belsen was liberated by the British, a bullet to the chest, which also almost killed her. Today, she is not only alive in her nineties, but she is a thriving, beloved member of her Kansas City community. And if you think this is just another depressing story of cruelty and brutality, you don’t know Sonia. We hope you’ll stay tuned to hear about her.

Among the things that unite these two films are: they are both about women with indomitable spirits, who are determined to get the truth out about unimaginable cruelty and atrocities. They are both about events that happened in WWII, one in Europe the other in Asia. They are both about women with unique fashion sense, of great longevity and spunk.

FINDING KUKAN:
It’s about an Academy Award-winning color documentary about World War II China, that has been lost for decades. An uncredited female producer from the early days of Hollywood. The mystery behind their disappearance from history. In the 1930s, China risked collapse under the onslaught of Japan’s military juggernaut. Chinese-American firebrand Li Ling-Ai decided to jolt Americans into action with a new medium: 16mm Kodachrome color film. She hired photojournalist, Rey Scott, to travel to China and document the war-torn country, including the massive bombing of the wartime capital. Their landmark film, Kukan: The Battle Cry of China, was screened for President Roosevelt at the White House, and received one of the first Academy Awards for a feature documentary in 1942. So, how come we have never heard of Li Ling-Ai? And why have all copies of Kukan disappeared? Our guest, Filmmaker Robin Lung, turns detective to uncover this forgotten story.

Robin Lung is a 4th generation Chinese American, who was raised in Hawai‘i. For over 15 years, she has been bringing untold minority stories to film. A graduate of Stanford University and Hunter College in NYC, Robin Lung made her directorial debut with Washington Place: Hawai‘i’s First Home, a 30-minute documentary for PBS Hawai‘i about Hawai‘i’s historic governor’s mansion and the home of Queen Lili‘uokalani. She was the associate producer for the national PBS documentary, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (aired October 2008), Hawai‘i unit producer for acclaimed film Vivan Las Antipodas!, unit producer for NOVA’s Killer Typhoon, and producer/director for numerous short documentaries for the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation.

BIG SONIA:

In the second segment we move to the other theater of WWII, the Nazis’ march across Europe, specifically the invasion of Poland in Sept. 1939, and what we have come to know as The Holocaust.

Here’s some of the description of the film on the Mendocino Film Festival website:
A “diva” known for wearing leopard print and high heels, Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski, serves as a bridge between cultures and generations, while continuing to run her late husband’s tailor shop in Kansas City. She miraculously survived concentration camps, death camps, and being shot in the chest on Liberation Day, but now she faces new challenges: the mall, where she works at her shop is about to close its doors, and the risk of forced retirement looms on the horizon. And unbelievably, the voices of Holocaust deniers seem to be getting louder & stronger. What will she do?

Leah Warshawski
Producer | Co-Director
Leah Warshawski produces documentary-style features, television, commercials, and branded entertainment in remote parts of the world. Her first feature, FINDING HILLYWOOD (2013) won 6 awards, and screened at more than 65 festivals. Leah’s career in film began in Hawaii, working in the marine department for LOST and HAWAII. She is currently working on the feature doc PERSONHOOD (2017-18), and advises filmmakers on outreach, marketing and hybrid distribution plans. In addition, Leah co-founded rwandafilm.org.

Todd Soliday
Co-Director | DP | Post Supervisor | Editor | Motion Graphics
Todd Soliday is a jack-of-all-trades with 25 years experience in production and post production. He specializes in documentary storytelling and adventure films such as PLATINUM (2007). He was post-production supervisor for FINDING HILLYWOOD. Recent feature documentary projects include OUT OF LUCK (2015) and THE BREACH (2014). He and Leah are married.

Earth Day Network/March for Science

In the first half hour, our guest is Gretchen Goldman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the second half hour our guest is Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network.

Ordinarily, I don’t organize Forthright Radio shows around declared months or day. Every month is African History Month or Poetry Month. Every day is international women’s day or Earth Day, but this year is distinctly different from any I can remember. Our species, Homo Sapiens, which is the Latin for wise man, is acting with disastrous lack of wisdom, and the biological & geological evidence of ongoing disaster is mounting as we speed willy-nilly into the anthropocene. But even as the forces of greed and ignorance accelerate their efforts wreaking environmental chaos and destruction, those who see this folly are rising and resisting to protect the biosphere. One of them is our first guest, Gretchen Goldman.

Gretchen Goldman is the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Goldman leads research efforts on the role of science in public policy, focusing on topics ranging from scientific integrity in government decision-making, to political interference in science-based standards on hydraulic fracturing, climate change, sugar, and chemicals.
Before joining the Union of Concerned Scientists, Dr. Goldman was at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she was a postdoctoral research fellow working on statistical modeling of urban air pollution for use in epidemiologic studies of acute human health effects.

Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, has worked for more than 20 years as an environmental attorney and advocate, focusing on international and domestic environmental public policy and law. Under her leadership, Earth Day Network has developed a significant role in advancing the new green economy and has emerged as a dynamic year-round policy and activist organization. Earth Day Network now reaches into 192 countries, embraces new constituencies — including youngsters and people of color — and integrates civic participation into each of Earth Day Network’s programs and activities.

Joan Walsh

Steven A. Ramirez The Case for the Corporate Death Penalty: Restoring Law & Order on Wall St.

Remember the Financial Crisis of 2008, when the shenanigans of Wall Street and the megabanks nearly crashed the global economic order? Remember the unfolding horror of families being put out on the streets, their possessions on their former front lawns? Remember the swift billions of tax payer dollars handed over to banks that were too big to fail, and the 10s and hundreds of millions of dollars quickly paid in bonuses to the very perpetrators, who were too big to jail – or as Matt Taibbi put it, “TOO SMUG TO JAIL”? Recent government figures put the cost to more than $20 trillion dollars, but how can one reckon the cost in human suffering? The soaring unemployment, the wiping out of retirement savings, the suicides, the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and the most needy to the least needy? Remember President Obama telling the nation that, while what they did “was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless, a lot of that stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal”?

Our guest is Steven A. Ramirez, law professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, and Director of the Business and Corporate Governance Law Center, at Loyola University School of Law. He and his wife, Mary Kreiner Ramirez, who is a Law Professor at Washburn University School of Law, have co-written an eye-opening book, THE CASE FOR THE CORPORATE DEATH PENALTY: RESTORING LAW AND ORDER ON WALL STREET, just published by New York University Press. In it, they lay out precisely, and in great depth, how and why criminal charges can, and should, be brought for the fraud and malfeasance perpetrated on the American public, and indeed nearly destroying the world economic order, and yet not a single senior executive has been indicted on any criminal charges, although ample evidence was provided to the Department of Justice and other agencies with the power to penalize wrong doing. As they note, in many cases, the statute of limitations has not run out.

Professor Ramirez is well qualified to establish this, since he served as a Senior Attorney for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as well as an Enforcement Attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has published extensively in the areas of law and economics, corporate governance and financial regulations. In addition to this latest book, THE CASE FOR THE CORPORATE DEATH PENALTY: RESTORING LAW AND ORDER ON WALL STREET, his books include, Lawless Capitalism: the Subprime Crisis and the case for an economic rule of law (NYU Press, 2013) and The Economics of Discrimination, in The Encyclopedia of Law and Society (2007)

Ray McGovern, Veteran CIA Analyst Co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, from 1963 to 1990, where he chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, but he returned it in 2006 to protest the CIA’s involvement in torture. In 2003 he co-found Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He speaks fluent Russian and has studied Russia for more than 50 years.

In this interview originally broadcast on January 18, 2017, he discusses Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence, the ethics of whistle-blowing, comparing her case with those of General David Petraeus, who became CIA Director, and General Cartwright.

Pre-emptive leaks by government agencies.

The Stuxnet Virus used against Iran, destroying 100s of their centrifuges, introducing a whole new kind of warfare: cyberwarfare. Russia’s proposals for a treaty to govern cyberwar, which have been rebuffed ever since.

Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections vs. wikileaks revealing the efforts by the Democratic National Committee to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

Director Colby’s testimony that the CIA controls just about everyone in the US media & his subsequent firing.

The popular vote vs the Electoral College.

Donald Trump’s relationship with the “Intelligence Community” & the rise of “The Deep State”. “After 9/11 everything changed…” Syria as a proxy war… and more

Benjamin Madley – AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe 1846-1873

Benjamin Madley is an historian of Native America, the United States, and genocide in world history. Born in Redding, California, Professor Madley spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border, where he became interested in the relationship between colonizers and indigenous peoples. He writes about American Indians, as well as colonial genocides in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach. He is a professor of history at the University of CA at Los Angeles. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 is his first book. It is published by Yale University Press. Professor Benjamin Madley, We welcome you to Forthright Radio.

The place we now call CA, was unknown to non-Indians until March 1543, when Spaniards first explored the coast, but it wasn’t until 226 years later, in 1769, that Spain sent soldiers and Franciscan missionaries north from Mexico to colonize it, to preempt British, Dutch and Russian expansion, and to protect northern Mexico’s silver mines. At that time, there were about 310,000 native people living there, which seems small compared to California’s current population of almost 40 million, but he writes that it was actually the densest native population north of Mexico in North America. We began by discussing this pre-European CA population, and how they lived on the land.

The Mendocino Indian Reservation was a former Indian reservation in Mendocino County, of the early ones to be established (Spring, 1856) in California by the Federal Government for the resettlement of California Indians, near modern day Noyo, which was the home of the Pomo Tribe. Its area was 25,000 acres (100km²), but Yuki, Yokiah, Wappo, Salan Pomo, Kianamaras, Whilkut and others were forced off their ancestral lands and removed there.The Mendocino Indian Reservation was discontinued in March 1866 and the land opened for settlement 3 years later.

nativa-american-pomo-woman-the-vault--edward-curtis.jpg

California and the Indian Wars The Mendocino War of 1859-1860 http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#a http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#c http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#d

The ethno-geography of the Pomo and neighboring Indians https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb9779p385/?brand=oac4

A California Law School Reckons With the Shame of Native Massacres https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/hastings-college-law-native-massacre.html

What Happened to the Tribes of Europe John Trudell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2wGOlVDsRw

David Quammen- Spillover: Animal Infections & the Next Human Pandemic

In this edition of Forthright Radio, originally broadcast on May 1, 2013, intrepid journalist, David Quammen, discusses his book, SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS& THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC, in which he tracks down the animal origins of such diseases we humans are now susceptible to, including viruses such as HIV-AIDS, SARS, EBOLA, HENDRA, MARBURG, and INFLUENZA, and bacteria such as LYME DISEASE and Q FEVER.

Among the questions he investigates are: Why do new diseases emerge when they do, where they do, as they do, and not elsewhere, other ways, at other times? Is it happening more now than in the past? And perhaps the biggest question: What sort of deadly bug, with what unforeseen origins and what inexorable impacts, will emerge next?

David Quammen is the author of four books of fiction, and seven acclaimed books of nonfiction, including THE RELUCTANT MR. DARWIN and THE SONG OF THE DODO. He served as the Wallace Stegner Chair of Western American Studies at Montana State University from 2007 – 2009. He is a contributing writer for National Geographic magazine. SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS AND THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC is more than a page turner about how microbes cross from animal species into humans and evolve into infectious diseases, it is also a chronicle of the many far flung journeys David Quammen has taken to some of the most remote parts of the globe, to interview the scientists in the field, who search for the animal reservoirs from which they come.

david_wide-a960150228d34236c602f3043f38a988ba363451.jpg

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Infection of Wildlife Biologist Highlights Risks of Virus Hunting https://theintercept.com/2022/07/02/virus-infection-bat-biosafety/

As Covid recedes in US a new worry emerges: wildlife passing on the virus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/us-covid-wildlife-virus

Matthew Wolf-Meyer- The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine & Modern American Life

This edition of Forthright Radio from November 11, 2012 came up in conversation (12-11-17), so we thought it might be of interest to our web listeners, as well.

As the nights grow longer, and the season approaches of long winter naps, it seems like a good time to discuss one of the inevitable aspects of life – sleep. And this seemingly simple topic is not so simple for more and more people in the modern world. And it really is quite mysterious. Neither doctors nor scientists can even tell us what sleep IS, much less what natural sleep might be. And then, there are the effects of capitalism on sleep.

To discuss these things and more, we have with us Matthew Wolf-Meyer, who was (then) a Professor of Anthropology, at UC Santa Cruz. Matthew Wolf-Meyer received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, specializing in medical anthropology, and the social study of science and technology. He holds previous degrees in Literature, Science Fiction Studies, and American Cultural Studies.

In January, 2016, he joined the faculty of the Anthropology Dept. at SUNY Binghamton. His work focuses on medicine, science and media in the United States to make sense of major modern-era shifts in the expert practices of science and medicine and popular representations of health. His book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life, published by The University of Minnesota Press, was the first book-length social scientific study of sleep in the United States and won the New Millennium book prize in 2013. It offers insights into the complex lived realities of disorderly sleepers, the long history of sleep science, and the global impacts of the exportation of American sleep.