Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
2012 Program Archive
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We begin with an analysis of the 5 million internal emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that was hacked into by Anonymous who passed them on to Wikileaks who released them today along with a press conference in London featuring the Yes Men who were the target of an investigation by Stratfor on behalf of their client, Dow Chemical. Mark Perry, an intelligence and foreign affairs analyst joins us to discuss the quality of this data dump. |
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Then we look into the Obama Administration’s proposed overhaul of corporate taxation and how much of corporate America’s record profits are being hidden abroad in tax shelters. Scott Klinger, the Tax Policy Director of Business for Shared Prosperity joins us to discuss why corporations are sitting on piles of cash as their political hirelings beat the drum for more corporate tax cuts while the economy remains stalled because of the lack of demand by consumers who don’t have purchasing power because they are being downsized. |
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Then finally we discuss the Republican primary campaign in Michigan where Mitt Romney is making appeals to restore the endangered middle class while bashing unions. Al Benchich, the former president of UAW local 909 who retired from GM after 36 years, joins us to discuss how the denigration of unions has accompanied the downsizing of the middle class and how the concessions the UAW made in the so-called “government bailout” have helped revive General Motors at the expense of providing new workers with a living wage. |
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We begin with an update on rioting in Afghanistan following the burning of Korans at a U.S. base and look into the selective nature of the outrage, since the same rioters routinely sack Shiite mosques and burn Korans, along with people. Chris Fair, a former United Nations political officer in Kabul, Afghanistan joins us to analyze why the people whose nation we are trying to build, appear to hate us and want us out of their country. |
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Then Senator Russ Feingold joins us. He is the author of a new book, “While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era”. The only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act, we discuss how much we have waged the “war on terror” on ourselves and our own values, and how we are alienating the Islamic world by demonizing Muslims who want the freedoms we have and want to be free of the dictatorships that we have supported. |
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Then finally with tonight’s Academy Awards broadcast expected to reach a record global audience, cultural critic and media expert and Chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, Toby Miller joins us. We discuss the global influence of Hollywood movies in an era when piracy is diminishing box office returns and big budget special effects-laden comic book blockbusters have driven lower budget higher brow movies towards extinction. |
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| We begin with an analysis of what is really driving up the price of gas at a time when OPEC is producing more oil than global demand, and gasoline demand in the U.S. is the lowest its been for decades, so much so that oil companies are exporting record amounts of refined products. The former head of the Division of Markets and Trading at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Michael Greenberger, joins us to look into how much Wall Street speculators are driving up the price at the pump. |
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Then author and journalist Eyal Press joins us. He is the author of a new book “Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscious in Dark Times”. We examine the psychology of resistance and the courage of those who choose principal over loyalty, as well as the fate of whistleblowers who we all admire, but more often than not, do not emulate. |
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Then finally, Deanne Loonin, an attorney and Director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project joins us. We discuss the student loan debt bomb waiting to explode, with student loan debt in the United States now totaling more than a trillion dollars, more than all of the outstanding credit card debt in the country. |
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We begin with an analysis of what Republican presidential candidates are calling “Obama’s war on religion” and what a growing number of women in America are calling the Republican war on women. Stephanie Sequino, a professor of Economics at the University of Vermont, who has done research on the role of religiosity in resisting and retarding gender equality, joins us. |
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Then we speak with Saul Alinsky’s protégé Nicholas Von Hoffman about his mentor who he worked along side of for a decade as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago. Since Newt Gingrich continually calls Obama “a Saul Alinsky radical”, we discuss Nicholas Von Hoffman’s new book “Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky” to determine what it is about this mother of all community organizers that has Cesar Chavez, Dick Armey, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Tea Party studying his tactics and strategies. |
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Then finally, following a recent visit to Israel by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, we speak with author and Middle East expert Juan Cole about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insulting remarks leaked to the Israeli press where Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak accused an American war hero and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dempsey as “serving Iranian interests”. |
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We begin with a discussion of the bizarre politics in the state of Arizona, where tomorrow the remaining Republican presidential candidates will be holding a crucial debate before next Tuesday’s Michigan and Arizona primaries. Rudolfo Espino, a professor of Political Science at Arizona State University joins us to explain how a right-wing anti-immigrant Sherriff running for Congress who was exposed for threatening to deport his gay Mexican lover and has since “outed” himself, became the State co-chair of Mitt Romney’s Arizona campaign. |
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Then we talk with David Brock, the founder and chairman of Media Matters and the author of a new book out today, “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network Into a Propaganda Machine.” We discuss the un-American phenomenon of a so-called news network that acts as the Ministry of Information for Republican Administrations and the “Pravda” of the Republican Party, all the while posing as paragons of American patriotism. |
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Then finally we discuss the moral disconnect between the “holier-than-thou” religious agenda of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who have all accused President Obama of waging a war on religion, while they themselves compete over who will be the first to bomb Iran. David Cortright, the Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame joins us to explain how apparently the sanctity of life and the defense of the unborn does not apply to the killing of thousands of people living in foreign lands. |
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