Filed under: Radio | Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Alcoholism, Amateur Boxing, Ardoyne, Ballylongford, Belfast, Boston, Boxing, Catholics, Chiltenham, Class, Cystic Fibrosis, Drinking, Ireland, Larne, London, Marlon Brando, Martial arts, Michael Mason Saunderson, Northern Ireland, Protestants, RADA, Smoking, Tattooes, Travellers, Ultimate Fighting Championship
Michael
Michael Mason Saunderson started boxing at 11 with a tube in his stomach, thanks to his cystic fibrosis. He abandoned it around 17, when he was drinking heavily, getting tattoos and eating poorly. But now, at 21, he’s an amateur boxer in Belfast once again, living cleanly, and foraging careers in television and theater.
In today’s episode, Michael takes on an onslaught of questions. Does he expect to have a career in boxing? How is it to be from a Protestant background, fighting in a predominantly Catholic club? When he walks down the street, does he size up every passing man for whether he can take him? What’s his personality in the ring? And, if he’s so intent on never returning to a hospital, why does he fight?
Filed under: Radio | Tags: Afghanistan, Civil Rights Movement, Conflict Resolution, Creaative Writing, IRA, Iraq, Kelly Cullen, Loyalists, Marines, Nationalists, Northern Ireland, Pacifism, The Troubles, Tony Novosel, University of Pittsburgh, UVF
It’s Part 2 of the continuing series on American perspectives on the conflict in Northern Ireland. This time it’s Kelly Cullen, a senior at Pitt and a marine reservist, who explains why he took such an interest in the Troubles + what he learned from studying it.
Partly it’s a heritage thing for Kelly, having grown up in an Irish American family. But his interest in Northern Ireland also grows out of his impending deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, and his creative writing projects.
Produced for The Politics Show
Filed under: Radio | Tags: Afghanistan, Alim Seytoff, Barack Obama, China, Department of Justice, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Ethnic Conflict, George Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Pakistan, Tibet, Uighur, Uyghur, Uyghur American Association, War on Terror, Xijiang
The Five Uyghur detainees released in 2006 to Albania
The countdown to Bush’s exit is on – and it has special meaning to a group of 17 Uyghur men who have been incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay detention facilities since 2001 –despite having been cleared of enemy combatant status as as early as 2003. If soon to be-President Obama closes Guantánamo, the Uyghurs will finally be released — but the question then is, where will they go?
The Uyghurs are Turkic Muslims from the far West of China, but the US refuses to return them to China for fear of the abuse and execution they would face there. China and the Uyghurs are locked in a long-standing low-level conflict, like that of China and the Tibetans.
But even though it doesn’t want to give China the Uyghur detainees, the Bush administration won’t admit them to the US, and it hasn’t been able to persuade European, Canadian, or Australian governments to resettle them either. If the Guantánamo system is finally closed in the coming weeks, the question of ‘what next’ for the detainees may prove just as Kafkaesque as their past seven years.
Produced for RustBelt Radio
Filed under: Radio-Video | Tags: Cancer, Chemotherapy, Hospitals, Radiation, Religion
Filed under: Radio | Tags: Baltimore, Barack Obama, Barry Goldwater, Bureaucracy, Claire Hagan, Compassionate Conservativism, Gay Marriage, Green Tree, Health Care, Iraq War, John McCain, Lobbyists, Lyndon Johnson, Medicaid, Medicare, Paul Simon, Pittsburgh, Potomac Fever, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Scrabble, The Revolution: A Manifesto, Third Party Candidates
- Ron Paul Humor
The election is long over, but the 2008 presidential candidates – and their supporters — persist. Republican Congressman Ron Paul didn’t make it on the ticket in November, but his appearances in the primary debates brought him a wide crop of new supporters – including Claire Hagan, a social worker in Baltimore.
After watching him face off with the other Republican candidates last year, she found him to be the only real conservative on the stage and has been a Ron Paul convert since. No matter his ‘out-there’ reputation, Claire believes in his program for cutting government agencies, pulling out of Iraq, and abiding closely to the Constitution. She’ll even buy you a copy of his book if you show any degree of interest in him.
Produced for The Politics Show.
