Final Author to Appear in Codys@FCCB series!
Members of FCCB have been saddened to learn that Cody’s Books has had to close their store in downtown Berkeley. Cody’s has been a Berkeley institution for years and the closing of the store is a loss to the community. We celebrate the collaboration we have had with the fine folks at Cody’s, especially Melissa Mytinger.
Audio files of past Codys@FCCB events will still be available on this page.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America
7:30 p.m. · Sanctuary
In conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Veteran journalist Robert Scheer brings a lifetime of wisdom and experience to one of the most overlooked and dangerous issues of the time—the destructive influence of America’s military-industrial complex and the arrogance of American foreign policy. Scheer takes aim at America’s defense policy and bloated military budget in this pugnacious and rigorously researched polemic. Tragedy can be opportunity, Scheer writes, and 9/11 provided the defense industry with the opportunity it had long been seeking. Unable to persuade the first Bush and Clinton administrations to invest in expensive, state-of-the-art weapons, the defense industry found fresh life as the current President Bush launched his war on terror and military expenditures swelled to the highest level in history. Scheer argues that war cannot defeat terrorism. What’s required is simple police work—dogged, boring and not terribly expensive”not trillion-dollar bombers, submarines and nuclear arsenal expenditures he contends are unrelated to defeating terrorists and of little use in Iraq.
Robert Scheer is currently Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig.com, 2007 Webby Award winner for best political blog. Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on diverse topics such as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993 he launched a nationally syndicated column based at the Los Angeles Times, where he was named a contributing editor. That column ran weekly for the next 12 years and is now based at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tickets are $5, available at Cody’s Books and at the door. Free ticket with purchase of the book.