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Jimmy Carter speaks.....

It will be recalled that former US President, Jimmy Carter, unleashed something short of a storm when he claimed in his latest book that Israel was pursuing policies in many ways akin to South African's former apartheid laws. Needless to say the usual suspects were in the forefront in their accusations that Carter was anti-Zionist, anti semitic, etc. etc.

Now, John Nichols, who writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent and who is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, in a piece in The Nation interviews the former President - dealing with the response to that book:

"Since the publication of his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter has courted the sort of controversy that most ex-Presidents, and all would-be Presidents, avoid. Jonathan Demme's exceptional new documentary, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains, highlights that controversy, providing an intimate portrait of a man on a mission. The Nation's John Nichols spoke with Carter about the book, the film and the 2008 presidential campaign.

Q: There is an intensity to this documentary that is not usually associated with someone a quarter-century out of the White House.

A: This was my twenty-fourth book, and I've been on book tours on just about all of them. This is the first time that there has been that degree of intensity and drama and unpredictability--almost an urgency. I wanted to meet as many critics as I could and...it turned out to be quite a remarkable journey."

Read the complete interview here.

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