WASHINGTON - August 30 -

• JOHN STAUBER, john@prwatch.org, www.prwatch.org
• SHELDON RAMPTON, sheldon@prwatch.org
  Authors of the book Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State, Stauber and Rampton said today: "Conventions have become giant orchestrated PR and advertising.... In 2000 only 4 percent of the actual Republican delegates were black, but the talent onstage looked quite different featuring Colin Powell, Chris Rock, the Temptations, J.C. Watts and others. This year the emphasis is on projecting an image of moderation to mask the far-right Republican reality ... More moderate Republicans including Schwarzenegger, McCain and Giuliani will be featured speakers while far-right factions that are key to the Republican base will be kept more in the wings. As Karl Rove has remarked, 'It's all visuals. You campaign as if America was watching TV with the sound turned down.'"
  
  
• NAOMI KLEIN, [via Jeremy Hurst, klp1@sympatico.ca], www.nologo.org
  Currently in New York City, Klein is available for a limited number of interviews through Wednesday. She wrote the article "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia" in the current issue of Harper's magazine. She said: "What surprises me is what isn't here: Najaf. Even within the antiwar movement, the events in Najaf are barely visible. The 'handover' has worked: Iraq is becoming somebody else's problem. It's true that war is at the center of the election campaign -- just not the one in Iraq. The talk is all of what happened on Swift Boats thirty-five years ago, not of the cannons being fired from U.S. AC-130 gunships now." Klein is the author of the book Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.
  
  
• LAURA FLANDERS, lflanders@aol.com, www.lauraflanders.com
  Currently in New York City, Flanders is author of the book 'Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species', which includes profiles of Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Laura Bush and others. Flanders said today: "Cloaked in the cynical language of protecting families and 'life,' the Bush administration and its allies have mounted an all-out assault on women's rights, science and family health.... Thirty-three years after Congress passed a joint resolution to celebrate the victory of the women's suffrage movement and to celebrate Women's Equality (August 26), the country and the world are more divided than ever. W doesn't stand for Women, it stands for Wealth, War and Whopper. Women around the world are feeling the effects of the anti-equality, anti-secularist upsurge which George W. Bush has helped to advance."
  
  
• JOHN NICHOLS, JNichols@madison.com, www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1
  Currently in New York City, Nichols is author of the just-released book 'Dick: The Man Who Is President'. Nichols said today: "Dick Cheney selected himself to serve as George W. Bush's vice president, ran the transition process that shaped the new administration, headed the Energy Task Force of the most oil-obsessed White House in history, personally advances and advocates for the most right-wing judicial nominees, directs White House political operations as Karl Rove's overseer, manages everything from regulatory policy to tax-cut schemes and continues to serve as Salesman-in-Chief for the Iraq invasion and occupation."
  
  
• PAUL LOEB, www.soulofacitizen.org
  Author of the new book 'The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear', Loeb said today: "Too many people hold back from volunteering or even voting, because they feel politics is out of their control. We need to remind ourselves -- and others -- that history isn't some inevitable pendulum. It's contingent on the hope that enables us to act."

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