Robert Scheer Speaking in West Los Angeles (Venice) this Sunday Afternoon, September 14, 2008

Robert Scheer will be speaking about his new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America this Sunday afternoon, September 14, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., at the Venice United Methodist Church, the West LA Democratic Club announced.

Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com (winner of the Webby Award for best political blog of 2007), and contributing editor to The Nation (nearly nine years of articles for The Nation appear here), writes a weekly syndicated column and, despite serving as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times from 1976 to 1993 and writing a weekly editorial column for The Times from 1993 to 2005, is perhaps best known in Los Angeles for his ongoing Friday afternoon appearances on KCRW's "Left, Right and Center."

Robert Scheer has written extensively on issues of arms control, military policy, national politics and international relations, and has interviewed numerous world leaders, including every U.S. President from Nixon through Clinton.

Publishers Weekly says of Robert Scheer's new book:

Scheer... takes aim at America's defense policy and bloated military budget in this pugnacious and rigorously researched polemic. "Tragedy can be opportunity," Scheer writes, and 9/11 provided the defense industry with the opportunity it had long been seeking. Unable to persuade the first Bush and Clinton administrations to invest in expensive, state-of-the-art weapons, the defense industry found fresh life as the current President Bush launched his "war on terror" and military expenditures swelled to the highest level in history. Scheer argues that war cannot defeat terrorism. What's required is simple police work-dogged, boring and not terribly expensive-not trillion-dollar bombers, submarines and nuclear arsenal-expenditures he contends are unrelated to defeating terrorists and of little use in Iraq. He soberly reminds readers that Americans have never objected to wasteful defense budgets, and antiwar elected officials fight as viciously as neoconservatives to bring money to their district's defense industries. Scheer's prose is as clear as his evidence; readers will be galvanized by his incendiary account.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation writes in the New York Times Book Review:

This indictment of the military-industrial complex explains why any president committed to preserving our Republic must end a policy of permanent war. It is also a reminder . . . of the insanity of our nuclear strategy and the arrogance of our hyper-militarized foreign policy.

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Robert Scheer will be speaking about the subjects raised in his book, and will take questions from the audience. The event, this Sunday from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., will be held in the sanctuary of the Venice United Methodist Church, located just northeast of the intersection of Lincoln and Venice, at 1020 Victoria Avenue, Venice, California (map.) Street and lot parking is available.

A $5.00 donation is requested, but the WLADC reports that no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. The public is welcome to attend. Partisan activity is prohibited in the santuary of the church.

The West LA Democratic Club, sponsor of this event, is the official Democratic club covering most of the west side of Los Angeles, including all or parts of Venice, Mar Vista, Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista, Palms, Brentwood and West Los Angeles. The group is a grass-roots force behind political campaigns and initiatives, and is active in service to the communities they represent.