Flashback Friday – Iraq, Nixon & Sting

Sting with Nicole Sandler at Channel 103.1/Los Angeles – Oct 1999

Each Friday morning, we wrap up our broadcast week with a trip into my musical radio past. Believing that music soothes the savage beast, it was especially useful today as the world has descended into savage madness. More on that in a bit.

Today, our Flashback Friday featured my two interview with the former Police-man, Sting!

I first interviewed him at LA’s legendary KSCA fm 101.9 in 1996, in conjunction with the release of his Mercury Falling album. As he noted, our “Music Hall” was named with tongue firmly in cheek, as it was actually a hall-way that led from the main studio to the production room and production office. But the sound that came from our “music hall” was magical.

Sting hadn’t done a radio station appearance like this in over a decade, but he was so pleased with our session that he began doing more of them.

Three years later, on October 27, 1999, Sting was touring in support of Brand New Day. In the midst of a four-night stand at the Universal Amphitheater, he joined me in studio again, this time at Channel 103.1, also in Los Angeles, this time with some lucky listeners joining us in studio too.

Soothing the Savage Beast

The beasts certainly need soothing right now as the world seems to be a giant pressure cooker ready to blow. Last night, President Obama took to the TV to announce that he had authorized two types of actions in Iraq: the first, air drops of humanitarian had already begun,  the second “targeted” air strikes to protect American interests in Iraq.

The need for humanitarian aid is without question.

U.S. aircraft, escorted by fighter jets, dropped 5,300 gallons of fresh drinking water and 8,000 meals ready to eat. The aircraft were over the drop area for less than 15 minutes flying at a low altitude, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

The emergency effort is being deployed to help a group of 40,000 Yazidis, a group of ethnic Kurds, who fled villages in northern Iraq under threat from ISIS.

The Yazidis fled to the Sinjar Mountains, in a remote part of northern Iraq near the border of Syria, where they are stuck without food or water while ISIS forces are gathered at the base of the mountains.

As for the “targeted air strikes,” which began early this morning, it’s not so clear that bombs are the way to go. My friend David Swanson, one of the founders of World Beyond War, explained in a post this morning he titled “Back in Iraq, Jack.  (I guess this is the bad kind of flashback.)

Obama promises no combat troops will be sent back to Iraq.  No doubt.  Instead it’ll be planes, drones, helicopters, and “non-combat” troops.  “America is coming to help” finally just sounded as evil as Reagan meant it to, but it was in Obama’s voice.  The ironies exploded like Iraqi houses on Thursday.  While the United States locks Honduran refugee children in cages, it proposes to bomb Iraq for refugees.  While Gaza starves and Detroit lacks water, Obama bombs Iraq to stop people from starving.  While the U.S. ships weapons to Israel to commit genocide, and to Syria for allies of ISIS, it is rushing more weapons into Iraq to supposedly prevent genocide on a mountaintop — also to add to the weapons supplies already looted by ISIS.

Flash back a bit further – 40 years ago today this happened…

It seems like yesterday…

And finally, I invited my old friend Judge David Young on the show for a couple of reasons this morning. As the first openly gay judge to sit on the bench in Miami, and the first openly gay man with a TV show (The Judge David Young Show), I wanted his take on the progress Florida is making toward marriage equality.  He also gave us some advice on how to vote in judicial elections — bottom line is DO YOUR RESEARCH!

There’s no easy way to figure it out, but he’ll help you if you ask nicely!

And with that, we’re done for the week.

If we’re still standing, we’ll be back Monday with Howie Klein and The Steve Israel Hour, and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel too… Radio or Not.