Bush Breakfast

3CR Tuesday Breakfast Show 20 January 2009
As today in America it’s still the 19th of January, which means it's George W. Bush’s last day in office as President of the United States, this morning we marked the occasion by getting perspectives on Bush’s legacy, and what opportunities for 'hope and change' Obama might bring in the wake of it.

• I spoke to Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now! and most recently co-author of Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. She's in Washington DC for the inauguration festivities, and spoke about the role of independent media in the Bush years.
  
• I spoke to Dr Paul Sendziuk, who teaches history at the University of Adelaide and was a visiting scholar at New York University and Columbia University last year. He's the author of Learning to Trust: Australian Responses to AIDS, and in this article in Dissent Magazine last year, he laid out why the $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - where the bulk of funding goes to abstinence-until-marriage programs - probably shouldn't be considered a positive Bush legacy. Preventing HIV transmission by 'educating' people to distrust condoms? Not so awesome, it turns out.
  
• Rachel spoke to Jessica Morrison, Australian Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She spoke about Bush's eight years of inaction on nuclear disarmament and looked ahead to what Obama's commitment might be to ridding the world of the threat posed by 27,000 nuclear weapons.
  
• I spoke to Michael Otterman, a visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, and author of American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond and the forthcoming Collateral Carnage: The Human Cost of the War in Iraq.

LISTENING Tuesday January 13-Tuesday January 20.
Last.fm says this week was spent in the company of:
Asobi Seksu, Hush
Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion and People EP and Prospect Hummer EP and Strawberry Jam and Sung Tongs and Water Curses EP
Coconut Records, Davy
Tim Hecker, An Imaginary Country
Vetiver, Tight Knit
Rockabye Baby!, Lullaby Renditions of Nirvana and Lullaby Renditions of Björk and Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead
Radiohead, In Rainbows
The Triffids, Australian Melodrama
Tactics, The Sound of the Sound Vol 1
Fulton Lights, The Way We Ride
Bachelorette, The End Of Things and Isolation Loops
and some Democracy Now!