JILL NELSON Author of the book Straight, No Chaser: How I Became a Grown-Up Black Woman, Nelson is critical of “the current orgy of accolades” for Reagan. She said today: “On civil rights Reagan was a complete disaster. He tried to gut the Civil Rights Commission, to stop the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982. His administration was relentless in its attacks on affirmative action. Not only did he nominate Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, but he got an incredible number of white male right-wingers onto the judiciary. He tried to grant tax-exempt status to segregated…

ANDRE GUNDER FRANK Author of numerous books including The European Challenge and co-editor of The World System, Frank is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today: “A subject rarely spoken about but that underlies many issues is the rivalry between the dollar and the euro. OPEC is moving toward using the euro as its standard and this could cause a run on the dollar, dislodging the U.S. from its current primacy. The prosperity of the U.S. rests largely on its position in the world today as Britain’s did in the 19th century. This is both in terms…

JULIA VERVILLE, PETER FRUMHOFF, [via Linda Gunter] Verville is a staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists specializing in climate impacts. She said today: “Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher today than they have been for 400,000 years. The Earth is already warming and will continue to warm in the coming decades as a result of our emissions of heat-trapping gases.” Frumhoff directs the Global Environment Program at UCS. He said today: “The dramatic, virtually instantaneous and worldwide cooling depicted in the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is fiction, but like all good science fiction, the…

PHYLLIS BENNIS President Bush claimed today that “Brahimi made the decisions” regarding the makeup of the new Iraqi governing body, which he described as a step toward “freedom and democracy.” A fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the book Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, Bennis said today: “White House pressure on Lakhdar Brahimi has been relentless. But the UN envoy’s collapse under U.S. pressure, giving in to the U.S.-selected and U.S.-controlled Governing Council’s choice in selecting the prime minister and other top officials of the interim government, shocked even those observers accustomed to…

GREG PALAST Palast is author of the New York Times best-selling book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, an expanded election edition of which has just been released. He said today: “Florida has announced a surprise new purge of its voter rolls targeting 40,000 of its own citizens. Following the 2000 race, my investigative team at BBC Television discovered that tens of thousands of those purged by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush — mostly black voters — were utterly innocent. But this racially-poisoned list of voters represented a mass elimination of the civil rights of voters — and picked the…

MAHER NASSER Nasser, a representative of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, is based in New York. He said today: “The bombings are only the most visible sign of distress in Gaza. There is a humanitarian catastrophe occurring in the Israeli-occupied territories, largely because of Israeli blockades. Now, in Gaza, about 75 percent of the people are below the poverty line. Over 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been made homeless this month; hardest hit has been the Rafah area where 1,000 people, within the last three days, have lost their homes. In the last four years…

On Wednesday, the court-martial of Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia begins at Ft. Stewart in Georgia. After returning for a period from Iraq, Mejia was AWOL for several months, and then filed for conscientious objector status. He has publicly spoken out on the war, saying: “I could not continue to do the things I was doing in Iraq…. I’m completely against it because it’s an oil-motivated war.” TOD ENSIGN Director of Citizen Soldier, a GI and veteran rights advocacy organization, Ensign is at Ft. Stewart and has closely followed Mejia’s case. Ensign said: “When Sgt. Mejia surrendered at Ft. Stewart on…

PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee is program director for CorpWatch and recently returned from his second investigative trip to Iraq. He is one of the authors of the report “Houston, We Have a Problem,” an “alternative annual report” on Halliburton which will be released on May 18, the day before Halliburton’s shareholder meeting. Chatterjee said today: “Our report describes Halliburton’s estimated $9 billion in contracts and the various complaints and allegations of wrongdoing that have been lodged against the company. Halliburton has been accused of more fraud, waste, and corruption than any other Iraq contractor — from allegations of overcharging $61 million…

DOUG HENWOOD Author of the book After the New Economy, Henwood said today: “I feel a little callous about talking about the economic impact of the war in Iraq, which seems like an afterthought next to the human toll. But at a time when civilian budgets are being cut at every level, when clinics are closing and professors at our public universities have to pay for their own photocopying because there’s allegedly not enough money, it’s amazing how much we’re spending….Military costs so far are about $143 billion, with the tab rising $4-5 billion a month. Reconstruction has cost almost…

SUAAD AL-MAHDAWY Suaad Al-Mahdawy works with the Iraqi Human Rights Society. Reached in Iraq, she said today: “This is not liberation, we cannot do what we please in our own country. But Rumsfeld can come whenever he wants and pretend to care while occupying us.” RANIA MASRI Masri is a fellow at the Institute for Southern Studies and a producer of the newly released documentary “About Baghdad.” Her latest article is entitled “Freeing Iraq’s Economy … For Its Occupiers.” She said this afternoon: “The Washington Post reports today that four out of five Iraqis hold a negative view of the…