Darfur Sudan is marked as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And now the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is warning African leaders that the violence in Western Sudan threatens to destabilize the entire region.

What began as a small rebellion has lead to a year and a half of attacks by government backed Arab militias. Now there are thousands dead, many villages burned, a million people displaced and a horrifying number of young girls and women who’ve been raped. Aid agencies say they are unable to provide food, medicine and protection for thousands gathering in camps for refugees and displaced people.

As aid workers return from the region with their own stories of misery the politicians continue to quarrel over the definition of genocide.

Guests:

Kenny Gluck, Operational Director, Doctors Without Borders

Jerry Fowler, Committee on Conscience, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Abraham McLaughlin, Christian Science Monitor Africa Reporter

Stuart Holliday,
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

North Carolina’s Senator John Edwards will stand beside John Kerry as the Democrat’s candidate for vice president. After much speculation, the choice of Edwards was confirmed on Tuesday morning to be cemented on a stage in Pittsburgh by John Kerry.

It’s common that the choice of running mate, at the moment of the announcement, ends up being less a story about the prospective vice president and more a story about the candidate, Kerry, how he makes decisions, and what the choice says about him as a potential leader.

Americans will ask, is Edwards a good choice as running mate for Kerry? Will he help the Democrats?

Guests:

David Greenberg, Presidential Historian and Professor of History and Political Scientist at Yale “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image”

Rob Christenson, Chief Political Writer and Columnist for The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina

Darrell West, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Brown University

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s America, 200 years later. The aloof author of some of this nation’s best-loved and most maudlin morality tales is still the star of high school syllabi everywhere. Why his message resonates as loudly now as it did in his day.

Guests:

Philip McFarland, author of “Hawthorne in Concord”

Brenda Wineapple, author of “Hawthorne: A Life.”

This holiday weekend millions of American will pack up the kids, jump in the car and head to a national park. Along with the magnificent views many visitors will also be confronted with a few “service-level adjustments” — that’s the latest government description of – cutbacks. At Shenandoah National Park the seasonal maintenance staff has been cut by more than half. At Gettysburg National Military Park they don’t have enough money to repair the battlefield cannons.

Now, a chorus of critics is speaking out on the budget crunch saying it’s unprecedented and that officials are trying to hide the problem from the public. But the government maintains the controversy is “much ado about nothing” and that budget dollars are actually up at the National Park Service. Who’s right and who really cares about America’s National Parks.

Guests:

Ron Tipton, Senior Vice-President of the National Parks Conservation Association

Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget at the Department of Interior.

Here’s what some Mexicans are doing to protect themselves against a nation-wide rise in kidnapping. They’re driving to work with a life-sized dummy in the passenger seat. They’re storing a cell phone and water in the car trunk – in case that’s where they end up.

Mexicans say they have had enough of the violent crime wave, police corruption, and they’re cynical about the government’s promises to crack down on the crooks. In the largest demonstration in public memory, last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people jammed the streets of Mexico City, silently marching in protest. There are now calls from voters and politicians for the reinstatement of the death penalty, but Mexicans aren’t ready to rely on the justice system when the police are so directly implicated in crime.

Guests:

Arturo Alvarado, Fulbright Fellow and Professor of Sociology at El Colegio de Mexico

Dolly Mascarenas, Time Magazine’s Mexico City reporter

Robert Varenik, co-founder of the Institute for Security and Democracy in Mexico City and criminal justice law consultant in Latin America.

At this moment, hundreds of people are flocking to the city of San Francisco for their annual meeting. Its like any such gathering where people share their common concerns. But its also a celebration, with dancing, and lots of flirtation.

What makes this gathering distinct, are the participants. They’re all dwarves. Not so long ago, the most welcoming public place for a dwarf might have been the circus. And although the days of the freak show are past, dwarves remain marginalized by much of society. Even in this country’s culture that claims to celebrate all that is colorful and diverse, one only needs to look at the standard height of a door handle to see the challenges they face.

Guests:

Dan Kennedy, Senior Editor and Media Critic for the Boston Phoenix, and author of Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter’s Eyes

and Laura Zirpolo, Director of Financial Services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Chairperson of the 2003 Little People of America National Conference, held in Danvers, Mass.

Trying Saddam Hussein may be a lot harder than anyone thought. And it’s not just the fate of the former Iraqi dictator that’s at stake, it’s also the future of a country that is desperately trying to move ahead. Many Iraqis want to see Saddam executed. Some, it seems, want him set free; but the real challenge will be to conduct a trial that most Iraqis see as fair, and not controlled by foreign hands.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal has millions of documents to sort, and hundreds of witnesses it will try to persuade to testify. Done right, these pre-trial preparations might drag on for years, a delay which could anger most Iraqis. And critics are already wondering if an Iraqi judiciary, crippled from years of repression and corruption, is even up to the task of trying such a complex case.

Guests:

Greg Keyhoe, Regime Crimes Liaison Office in Baghdad;
Hanny Megally, director of the Middle East program at the International Center for Transitional Justice;
Neil Kuritz, Rule of Law Program, the United States Institute of Peace