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2012 Program Archive
August 7 - Putin Punishes "Pussy Riot"; Assad's "Vital Partner" Iran; HCA Endangers Patients While Defrauding Taxpayers
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We begin with the expected conviction in the same Moscow court that railroaded oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of the three young women of the punk rock group “Pussy Riot”. Nina Khruscheva, a professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School and author of the forthcoming book “The Lost Khruschev: A Family Journey Into the Gulag of the Mind”, joins us to discuss a trial Khodorkovsky has described as a medieval inquisition. |
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Then we assess the meeting that took place today between the embattled Syrian dictator and Iran’s National Security Chief Saeed Jalili who pledged Iran’s support for its “vital partner”. Nader Hashimi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics joins us to discuss what Iran can do to save the Assad regime and what is likely to happen to the captured so-called Iranian pilgrims rumored to be members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. |
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Then finally we look into the world’s largest operator of private clinics and hospitals, the Hospital Corporation of America, HCA, that again is under scrutiny for performing unnecessary and expensive procedures that endanger patients and defraud the taxpayer. Dr Evan Weisman, a retired cardiologist joins us to discuss the latest charges against HCA who previously paid out $1.7 billion in fines for defrauding the government in 2000. |
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August 6 - Racism, Ignorance and Guns Kill Sikhs in Wisconsin; An Examination of Christian Terrorism; Scholars Explain the Sikh Religion
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We begin with a profile of the white supremacist gunman who shot up a Sikh temple killing six worshipers and gravely wounding three others and a police officer. Mark Potok, the Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project and editor of their quarterly investigative journal Intelligence Report and the Hatewatch blog, joins us. We discuss the lethal combination of permissive gun laws in Wisconsin and ignorant racists susceptible to Fox News propagandists spewing anti-Muslim distortions and diatribes as well as reckless hate speech from politicians like Michelle Bachman. |
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Then we examine the phenomenon of Christian terrorism that largely goes unreported. Mark Juergensmeyer, the Director of the Center for Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara and author of the best-seller ”Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence” and the recently-released “Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State”, joins us. |
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Then finally we learn about the Sikh faith, the seekers of truth, the world’s fifth largest religion, members of which in the United States have been subjected to a 1,600% rise in anti-Muslim violence since 9/11 according the FBI. Gurinder Singh Mann, professor of Sikh Studies and Director of the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies and Ami Shah, an expert on Sikh literature join us. |
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| MUSIC: Frank Zappa - Touble Every Day; Onward Christian Soldiers; Lupe Fiasco - American Terrorist; Against Me! - Bitter Divisions |
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August 5 - A Romney/Netanyahu Middle East Foreign Policy?; "Mitt Romney's Wimp Factor"; Did Romney Take an IRS Tax Amnesty in 2009?
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We begin and go to Israel to speak with Avraham Burg, the formed Speaker of the Knesset. He has an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, ”Israel’s Fading Democracy”, and we discuss the portent of a war with Iran that a Romney presidency might lead to, given Romney’s recent belligerent pronouncements in Israel and his closeness to Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister. |
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Then we speak with Michael Tomasky, a special correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. He has the cover story in the current issues of Newsweek, “Mitt Romney’s Wimp Factor; A Mouse in the White House” and we discuss whether a candidate who dodges reporters, fears his base and hides his taxes, is too insecure to be president. |
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Then finally we discuss the possibility that Mitt Romney is hiding his past income taxes that he refuses to make public because he participated in an IRS 2009 tax amnesty that 35,000 wealthy Americans, who had hidden their money abroad, took advantage of. Edward Kleinbard, a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California who served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, joins us to discuss his recent article at CNN, “Why Won’t Romney Release More Tax Returns?”. |
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| MUSIC: Jose Gonzalez - How Low; LCD Soundsystem - Time To Get Away; Titus Andronicus - Four Score and Seven; The Beatles - Taxman |
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August 2 - Kofi Quits UN-Arab League Syrian Peace Mission Impossible; Refugees in Lebanon Inflame Sectarion Fissures; The Filmmaker of "Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry"
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We begin with today’s resignation by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, who quit as the UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria. David Scheffer, who led the U.S. delegation in U.N. talks establishing the International Criminal Court, joins us to examine the human rights situation in Syria that continues to deteriorate while the U.N. Security Council remains paralyzed.
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Then we speak with Habib Battah, a Beirut-based journalist, media critic and author of the blog BeirutReport.com about the spillover into Lebanon from the war next door in Syria and what a defeat of the Assad regime will mean for Hizbollah’s influence in Lebanon. We also discuss Habib Battah’s article at Al Monitor “The Good and Bad Muslims of Western Media”. |
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Then finally we are joined in the studio by Alison Klayman, the film maker of the award-winning feature documentary “Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry” that opens nationwide on Friday. She lived in China from 2006 to 2010 and followed the artist and activist Ai Wei Wei for two years gaining unprecedented access to his life and work, resulting in an inspiring film about a great artist who almost single-handedly has taken on the ruthless regime of repression that keeps China’s corrupt and cruel Communist Party in power.
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| MUSIC: Xavier Rudd - Let Me Be; Bonobo - Kiara; Bob Marley - Get Up Stand Up |
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August 1, 2012 - An Emerging Superpower Goes Dark; The Tea Party Takes Texas; Gore Vidal Remembered
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We first go to New Delhi, India and speak with Dr. Sumit Ganguly, the Chair of Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, and discuss the apparent political paralysis in India where the politicians in charge do not seem to have any idea of what went wrong and why hundreds of millions of citizens lost power for days. |
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Then we speak with Miriam Golden, the Vice Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She is just back from India where she has been studying the power grid in India’s largest state and was there during the blackouts. |
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Then we look into the Tea Party victory in Texas where an ex-CIA officer and extremely conservative Republican Lieutenant Governor, running for the U.S. Senate, was defeated by a conservative extremist who was promoted by Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity and lavishly supported with outside money from Grover Norquist, Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers. Matt Angle, who directs the Texas Democratic Trust and the Lone Star Project, joins us to discuss whether the further purging of the GOP establishment gives Democrats an opening with rejected refugees from the Republican Party. |
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Then finally we pay tribute to Gore Vidal who passed away yesterday in Los Angeles at the age of 86. Over the decades the Pacifica Archives have captured Gore Vidal’s acerbic critiques of the life and times of the American Republic as it struggles to survive the American empire, and we play some excerpts of his speeches and interviews. |
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| MUSIC: Das Racist - Sit Down People; M. Ward - Requiem; Pete Seeger - Down By The Riverside; |
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