FRESH AIR
The Bush administration’s global anti-terrorism campaign was meant to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States. But journalist Jane Mayer says that policies like extraordinary rendition — whereby suspected terrorists are transferred to countries that allow harsh interrogations not permitted under U.S. law — have compromised American values. Mayer cites that case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who spent nearly a year in a Syrian prison after being deported from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport during a layover. Mayer has written for The New Yorker on what she calls “the outsourcing of torture,” on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and on the search for Osama bin Laden. She is the author of The Dark Side.
Maher Arar, a telecommunications engineer with dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, was detained during a stop-over in JFK Airport in 2002 and deported on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda. He wound up in a Syrian prison where he was locked up and beaten for almost a year before protests from his wife led to his release. Arar is pursuing a federal lawsuit charging that the United States government violated his constitutional right to due process as well as his right to choose a country of removal other than one in which he would be tortured, as guaranteed under the Torture Victim Protection Act. Maria Lahood, Arar’s attorney, specializes in international human rights litigation. She discusses her efforts to hold corporations and government officials accountable for torture, extra-judicial killings and war crimes abroad.
RADIO TIMES
Hour 1
This week may very well have been one of the most volatile ones in Wall Street history. First it was the announcements on Monday that financial giant Lehman Brothers was bankrupt and Merrill Lynch was being sold to Bank of America; on Tuesday, to further complicate matters, one of the world’s largest insurance company AIG was rescued by the Feds who also declined to lower interest rates. Business Week Economic Editor PETER COY joins us to help explain what it all means for the national and global economy as well as for the average investor. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
Hour 2
How do public parks improve a neighborhood? We talk with JOAN REILLY, Senior Director of The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s “Philadelphia Green,” and MICHAEL NAIRN, landscape architect and member of the faculty of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3
THE WORLD CAFE
Singer-songwriter Yael Naim received her big break when her song “New Soul” was featured in a prominent MacBook Air 
commercial earlier this year. In the process, she became the first Israeli solo artist to enjoy a Top 10 hit in the U.S. Here, Naim visits World Cafe host David Dye to share music from her self-titled sophomore album. Born in Paris and raised in Israel, the multilingual singer crafts a mysterious and delicate sound which utilizes elements of folk and jazz, but her effortless blend of English, Hebrew and French is what makes her music irresistible. Accompanied by percussionist David Donatien, she plays folk-pop ballads that represent the best of three worlds.