Haiti, once hailed hopefully as one of the bright new stars in democracy’s firmament, is fading. Last year, the people of this former slave Republic chose Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Mandela-like figure and the country’s first democratically-elected President, to return to the helm. But lately, thousands of protestors have rioted in the streets, calling for his ouster.

His government is stymied, charged with corruption and human rights abuses. Haiti is always the poorest nation in the hemisphere. Its desperation is deepening as the United States and the rest of the international community withholds millions of dollars in aid. Some say this will only add to Haiti’s horrors, others say it is the stick that’s needed to ensure democracy.

Guests:

Mildred Aristide, wife of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Alex Dupuy, professor of sociology, Wesleyan University

and Nancy Dorsinville, medical anthropologist at Harvard University

No one expects to open an instruction book for the latest household geegaw and discover a literary treasure. Ad copy and owners manuals are hardly fertile forms for would-be Phillip Roths, but couldn’t we at least expect Hemingway’s terse clarity?

Why must consumers struggle through Joycian tangles to set the alarm clock, to run the washing machine, to properly steep tea, or even to decide which bag of “grab and go” chips to snag?

Bad language is everywhere, and it’s someone’s fault. Perhaps the companies that hire Kerouac wanna-be’s to kick out ad copy, or the would-be poets themselves, scraping to pay the bills. We’re looking at writing no one expects will sing, but which all of us need to speak clearly.

Guests:

Barbara Wallraff, words columnist and senior editor for The Atlantic Monthly

David Dobrin, author of the essay, “Do Not Grind Armadillo Armor in This Mill” and teacher of technical writing.

Here comes the judge. Straight out of the ballot box. The independent judiciary of the founding fathers didn’t quite survive the “empower the people” era of populist President Andrew Jackson, who opened wide the doors to judicial elections.

Today, 87 percent of state and local judges rule at the mercy of the voters. The people’s court, indeed. But with judges forced to amass campaign war chests, knee-deep or neck-deep in dough and caught up in negative, partisan campaigns. Some say that the halls of justice are compromised, the scales tilted.

Critics from business, the law, and academia say that it’s time to take the bench off the auction block. The integrity of the judiciary, the whims of voters, and the power of deep pockets: tuning up the American judiciary.

Guests:

Roderick M. Hills, co-chair of the Committee for Economic Development’s Subcommittee on Judicial Selection

Roy Schotland, Professor of Law at Georgetown University and author of “Elective Judges’ Campaign Financing: Are State Judges’ Robes the Emperor’s Clothes of American Democracy?”

Chief Justice Thomas Philips, elected Chief Justice of the Texas supreme court.

Andrew Niccol says he sets his films about five minutes in the future, and what a future it’s been. “Gattaca” and the quest for genetically-modified perfection, “The Truman Show,” exploring a twisted conspiracy against one man for the whole world’s entertainment. And now Niccol’s latest film “Simone,” where a computer-generated starlet — think Madonna mixed with Julia Roberts and Princess Di — becomes everyone’s idol.

What Niccol says about our obsession with celebrity, about the culture and the future of entertainment, rips at the American Dream Machine, at Hollywood and who we are. It’s a soft science fiction. What to watch out for as we watch and watch and watch.

Guests:

Director, Writer, and Producer, Andrew Niccol

When a country pauses to mourn, it affirms how it lives, and has lived, as a body politic and a body spiritual. September 11, 2002, is drawing nigh.

Officials in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC are planning how to honor that day, how to bestow it with dignity and significance. In ways, a mission impossible. There are more ideas about how to mark this day than there are citizens. The sites are so different: a rural field, the Pentagon, the Pit at Ground Zero, and everyone’s hometown, everyone’s sofa.

Speeches, music, moments of silence, it’s all so appropriate, all so inadequate. Some strive for closure, for connection, for an assertion of American strength and resilience. We’re looking inward, plumbing the desire to remember.

Guests:

Jonathan Greenspun, Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Community Assistance Unit

Richard McGraw, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs

Susan Hankinson, Flight 93 coordinator, Somerset County, Pennsylvania

Edward Linenthal, historian,
author of “The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory”

Nick Lowe, quintessential wry Brit, pop star, songwriter and producer for Elvis Costello, member of Rockpile and graduate of London’s pub band scene of the ’70s, has never really gone away, but he has spent most of his time behind the scenes.

Now he’s 53, and while Glam rock and gray hair are hard to fuse, he’s found that roots music and gray hair go pretty well. Lowe’s new lyrics and songs are tinged with regrets, heartbreak, and, of course, satire.

What he did for Costello, The Pretenders, early punks, and even Johnny Cash, he’s now doing for Nick Lowe, singing surprisingly soul-baring songs about rediscovering smoking and finding old food in the fridge. “Along with my pride,” he sings, “lately I’ve let things slide.”

Guests:

Nick Lowe, musician

Something is wrong in Latin America. Currencies are tanking with astonishing speed, and the people are taking to the streets. At the root: what’s called “financial contagion.” Argentina led the way, defaulting on national debt and devaluing the currency in a collapse so profound that hungry mobs recently fought over a spilled truckload of live cattle.

Uruguay, Paraguay and, here’s the big one, Brazil are worried, and that’s got the Bush administration on alert, reversing philosophical course on whether or not to bailout these economies.

Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil is in Latin America this week, putting a finger to the pulses, figuring out how triage should work amidst so many bleeding patients. Saving Latin America and covering our own assets down South.

Guests:

Guillermo Perry, chief economist of the Latin America and Caribbean region of the World Bank

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development

Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel professor of capital formation and economic growth, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

Ray Collit, Sao Paolo bureau chief, the Financial Times

Richard Russo is famous for making “small town” feel as big as America, an insular neighborhood as full of funky people as SoHo or SoMa. But now, for the first time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his epic voice to the short form.

In a new collection called “The Whore’s Child,” Russo digs into darker emotions and motivations, using the concise form that’s leant itself to the curiosities and talents of some of America’s bleakest writers; Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Denis Johnson.

In the imaginative expanse he recently filled with “Empire Falls” Russo carefully crafts miniatures, character reductions, and pointed plot concentrates. As one reviewer put it, it’s like watching a homerun hitter go for the squeeze bunt.

Guests:

Richard Russo, Pulitzer prize-winning author

Reprisals, retaliations and despair; even crackdowns and reoccupation can’t seem to stem Palestinian attacks. After a bloody weekend, Israel is enacting a strict travel ban in the West Bank and parts of Gaza, and it’s resumed the practice of destroying suspected bombers’ homes. But no matter what the Israeli Defense Force does, insecurity reigns in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and beyond.

Israelis who once called for negotiations now demand a wall to separate their nation from their neighbors. Well, there’s 120 feet done, only 225 miles to go. And as criticisms of the Sharon government escalate, so does malnutrition amongst Palestinian children.

Calculating the cost of the military approach: assessing the chances for progress in the Middle East.

Guests:

Gal Luft, former IDF member

James Bennet, New York Times Mideast correspondent

Jerrold Green, director of Middle East policies of Round Corporation

Lietenant Colonel Yehuda Shaffer, a reservist currently on duty in Raffiah, located in the Gaza strip.

Rape is the most heinous of crimes, which is perhaps why Pakistan is reeling at its use as a punishment. Attempting to right an alleged family insult, looking to satisfy pride and tradition, a Punjabi tribal counsel just over a month ago sentenced a young woman to be gang-raped.

When word spread, the national government decided to put not just the perpetrators, but the council members on trial. It’s just one example of an awful human rights abuse being carried out in the name of justice, under the foggy cover of local custom. Increasingly, nations that depend on these ways are finding that modernization is a complex and painful process, and that balancing progress with pragmatism and a respect for tradition is essential.

Who pays the price: modernizing justice.

Guests:

Adrienne Germain, President of the International Women’s Health Coalition

Asad Hayauddin, Press attache for the Pakistan embassy in Washington DC

Asma Jahangir, Co-founder of non – govermental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan