A diary from John McNeil, a gay former priest, reflecting on the current crises in the Catholic Church.

Guests:

John McNeil, gay former priest

You’re either on the bus or you’re off it: a mantra for any revolution. And in the revolution towards international justice, the US is decidedly off the bus. While all of Europe is behind the newly created International Criminal Court, along with Asian allies, mideast friends and Latin American compadres, President George Bush and partners in the Senate are dead set against ratifying a legal agreement that might mean overseas prosecution of American soldiers, potentially American leaders.

Yesterday, the final signatures were set, and whether or not the U.S. joins up, the court will start this summer. And at a time when international cooperation is so important to the President, it’s a moment of US legal isolationism.

Guests:

Lee Casey, attorney with Baker and Hostetler, formerly with Reagan and first Bush Administration;Michael Scharf, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy at Neww England School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts

Peter Ford, senior European correspondent for the Christian Science Monior.

Andrei Sakharov was an unlikely hero in Cold War Russia. A brilliant physicist more inclined to the little miracles of the laboratory than to the glare of public scrutiny. A man of abundant vision, courage and conscience whose mark on Russian history is unmistakable, but whose footsteps have all but vanished. His childhood home is now a police station. His place of exile, the sealed city of Gorky, is now Nizny Novgorod. The Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, where he made his triumphant return, is now the Russian Duma.

But scan the globe for human rights struggles, and there he is. Where courage and determination in the face of oppression live, so does Sakharov’s spirit. Andrei Sakharov, through the eyes and the recollections of his translator and biographer .

Guests:

Richard Lourie, author, “Sakharov: A Biography.”

Guests:

Kevin M. Burke, district attorney, Essex County, MA

Kathleen Reagan, writer and former prosecutor, Plymouth County, MA

TBA.

It seems it’s more a matter of when than whether. Calls for the resignation of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law are rising in volume and number by the hour. The man who allegedly knowingly protected child-molesting priests, who seems to have been more concerned with secrecy and the image of the church than the well-being of its children, is being told by the papers, by politicians, by priests and by thousands of parishioners that his time is past.

Yet even beyond the calls for resignation are the questions of liability: whether Law is legally responsible for the actions of his priests, whether he can or should be taken to court. RICO anti-racketeering laws, obstruction of justice questions and Good Samaritan statutes, the spirit and the letter of the Law and Cardinal Law.

Guests:

Kevin M. Burke, district attorney, Essex County, MA

Kathleen Reagan, writer and former prosecutor, Plymouth County, MA

Rev. Paul E. Kilroy, pastor, St. Bernard Church in Newton, MA and a founder of the Boston Priests’ Forum

Tom Gagen, chief editorial writer, Boston Globe

Derrick Jackson, Boston globe Columnist.

No one knows where Fado actually came from. Although it’s claimed now as quintessentially Portugese, a kind of Lisbon blues, the music’s mournful yearning for home and lost love may have its roots in Africa, swept in on trading ships that used to fill the port cities of a 17th century world power. It is therefore utterly appropriate that the women who’s touted as the next diva of Fado, comes herself from Africa, born there in the last days Mozambique was a still a Portugese colony.

Her name is Mariza, and Fado aficianados say she has the voice and the passion to be the next Amalia Rodriguez. In America that’d like being the next Sinatra, the next Louis Armstrong. A trip to the rain-slick seaside cobbled streets of Lisbon, and the music of Fado, with Mariza.

Guests:

Mariza, Fado singer

Remember your first time? I bet it still gives you a little frisson. The way your hands shook and voice trembled. The tiny beads of sweat that dotted your forehead, the telltale signs of a first-timer. The sense of relief and satisfaction that came after. Peace of mind, really, that you had arrived, done the right thing, made your contribution. Maybe it was in the car, or at home, or in a phone booth. Wherever, whenever you made that first contribution to public radio, I bet it became a habit, something you had to do regularly, with generosity, and gusto.

Guests:

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Robert Cheldini, Regents Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ

Beverly Schwartz, social marketing guru and Senior Vice President of Fleishman Hillard International Communications

Dr. Richard Geist, President, Institute of Psychology and Investing

and Ernie Boch Junior, quintessential closer.

“You can help little Johnny. Or you can turn the page.” For years, a charity dared readers to ignore their full-page ads, and many managed to. In a world saturated with images of “bang-bang” (as some in the news business call scenes of violence), it’s hard not to get used to scenes of fighting and suffering.

Three years ago, as Kosovo dominated the headlines, many photojournalists captured images of NATO jets striking the forces of Slobodan Milosevic, tractors full of Kosovar Albanian refugees streaming to the borders, bodies by the roads, and tattered tents and burnt houses. Not Melanie Friend. She came up with another approach, one meant to make people stop, look, and listen, and to move beyond terms like “refugee.”

Related Information:
Melanie Friend will discuss and show slides from her book, “No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo” on Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 7 p.m. at New Words Bookstore
186 Hampshire Street
Inman Square
Cambridge MA
02139
For more information: 617-876-5310.

Guests:

Melanie Friend, author and photographer, “No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo”

Visar Hoti, producer and general manager, Radio Tema, Ferizaj, Kosovo.

One step forward, two steps back. Israel’s Prime Minister moves some troops out and others into Palestinian territories as President Bush implores him to withdraw immediately. Colin Powell continues to circle the war zone, the Secretary of State’s plane is currently on the ground in Egypt, and Arab leaders are urging him to go to Israel sooner rather than later to help broker a ceasefire.
At the same time, many Palestinians remain under a form of house arrest. Tanks are in the streets, Apache helicopters are in the air, and running gun battles keep the doors closed. Israelis, many uncomfortable with the attacks, still note that there haven’t been any suicide bombings since the latest phase of the Army offensive began. Israel, Palestine, and the United States.

Guests:

Ariel Merari, Director of the Political Violence Research Unit at Tel Aviv University

Hamdi Farraj, head of the Palestinian TV station Al-rouah in Bethlehem.

It was in the days after prohibition when marijuana was outlawed in America. 1937 to be precise. Since that time, all the states of the union have wrestled with the right mix of laws and sanctions, to prevent and to punish drug use and abuse. Draconian laws generally won the day, low thresholds and harsh sentences. Currently, the War on Drugs costs the U.S. 18.8 billion dollars a year, and most of it goes to prisons. There is, however, another trend, towards decriminalization and treatment rather than incarceration. One of the recent champions of that is the Republican governor of New Mexico. Gary Johnson says its time to ‘just say no’ to the war on drugs, that you shouldn’t be busted for smoking pot.

Guests:

Gary Johnson, Governor of New Mexico

and Dr. Eric A. Voth, M.D., specialist in International Medicine and Addiction Medicine.