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2013 Program Archive
August 6 - The Real Causes of Instability in Yemen; Assessing Iran's New Leader; Arbitrating in Baseball's "Age of Prosperous Turmoil"
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We begin with the U.S. withdrawing its diplomatic personnel from Yemen as it urges its citizens there to leave for fear of an impending attack from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Charles Schmitz, the president of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies joins us to discuss the narrow focus the U.S. has on Al Qaeda when Yemen’s greatest security threats come from its own political and economic instability. |  |
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Then we look into the remarks that the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, made at his first press conference where he called for “serious and substantive negotiations” to end the standoff with the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program. Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver joins us to discuss the new face on the same regime beset by rampant inflation, shrinking foreign reserves and an expensive proxy war in Syria. |
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Then finally we speak with William Gould who arbitrated the 1992-93 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball owners. The author of “Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil”, we discuss Alex Rodriguez’s forthcoming appeal of his record suspension and possible lawsuits to come, as well as the apparent availability of illegal steroids and growth hormones that are readily accessible in the Dominican Republic where most of the 13 suspended players come from. |
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August 5 - When Monopolies Rule Our Access to Communications; Al Qaeda is in Iraq for Real This Time; The Lure of Performance Enhancing Drugs
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We begin with the growing public outrage over the standoff between the two corporate giants Time Warner Cable and CBS who in the last 12 months earned $7.65 billion and $3.65 billion in profits respectively. Susan Crawford, who served as Special Assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy and is the author of “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age” joins us. We discuss what recourse customers who are being denied service they are paying for, have, given the passivity of the FCC and the absence of a Congress more beholden to contributors than constituents. |
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Then we examine the irony that one of the lies Bush/Cheney sold to get us into the Iraq war, their claim that Al Qaeda was setting up a base in Iraq, is now becoming a grim truth as Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Sunni resurgence against Maliki’s corrupt and sectarian government gains momentum. Peter Van Buren, a 24 year veteran State Department official who served in Iraq and is author of “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People” joins us to look into the fragmentation of a country the Bush Administration liberated, that is now dominated by Iran. |  |
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Then finally, we speak with an expert on drugs in sports, Dr Gary Wadler, a physician and Chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List and Methods Subcommittee. We discuss today’s suspension of 13 baseball players, including three-time American League MVP Alex Rodriguez who will be sidelined for 211 games through the 2014 season. We discuss the problem that won’t go away and what can be done to clean up sports. |  |
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August 4 - The Time Warner and CBS Spat Over How Much to Gouge the Public; Are We Living in "1984"?; The U.K. Guardian and the Snowden-Wikileaks Affair
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We begin with the spat between Time Warner and CBS Viacom and look into the extraordinary arrogance of these giant multi-billion dollar corporations who are punishing the consumer they clearly don’t care about while they play chicken with each other over how much they can gouge the public. Derek Turner, a research and policy analyst at Free Press and author of “Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age” joins us to discuss the absence of competition and choice in the market place the uselessness of the FCC and the Congress as advocates for American citizens and consumers. |  |
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Then we examine the extent to which today we are living in George Orwell’s classic novel “1984”. Lewis Beale, who writes on culture and film for the Los Angeles Times and Newsday joins us to discuss his article at CNN “We’re Living ‘1984’ Today”, and the similarities between the contemporary American surveillance state with the novel’s “doublethink”, “newspeak” and “endless war” of the dystopian future Orwell predicted in 1948. |
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Then finally one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture and media, Toby Miller, joins us in the studio. He is the Chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California Riverside and has just returned from teaching at the City University of London. We discuss the role of the U.K. Guardian in the Snowden-Wikileaks affair and how the American surveillance state is viewed from abroad. |
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August 1 - Yemen's President's White House Visit and Empty Words on Guantanamo; Snowden's Asylum and Obama's Russian Trip; "China's Long March to the 21st Century"
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We begin with today’s White House visit by Yemen’s President Hadi and discuss the fate of the 56 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo who have been cleared for transfer with the lawyer for 14 of them, David Remes. Known for his litigation of human rights and civil liberties cases, including a First Amendment challenge to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, he just returned from Yemen. |  |
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Then we speak with an expert on post-communist Russia, UCLA professor of political science Daniel Treisman, the author of “Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev”. We discuss growing tension between Russia and the U.S. over the decision to grant Edward Snowden one year’s political asylum in Russia and whether this will lead to a cancellation of President Obama’s planned trip to Moscow in early September to meet with Putin after the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg. |
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Then finally, we speak with Orville Schell, the co-author of a new book “Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century”. He is the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley and is now the Director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. We discuss the leadership’s fear of political reform repeating what happened to the Soviet Union and the slowdown of China’s growth and efforts to move from an export economy to a domestic consumer economy, and how much corruption scares Chinese consumers from buying local products. |
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July 31- Sexting and Female Desires for Virtual Carnal Knowledge; "The Danger of American Apathy on NSA Surveillance"; Obama's "Grand Bargain" and the Dallas Fed Report
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We begin with the phenomenon of “sexting” and an analysis of the role of women in the Anthony Weiner affair who have been portrayed as victims when it is clear that they are active participants in what our first guest Susan Jacoby calls “a course and creepy Internet culture dedicated to male and female desires for virtual carnal knowledge”. She is the author of “The Last Men on Top” and has an article in Wednesday’s New York Times “Weiner’s Women” |  |
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Then we examine today declassification of secret NSA surveillance programs following the leaks by Edward Snowden. Former Counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice joins us to discuss the incremental assault on our civil liberties since 9/11 and her article at The Christian Science Monitor “The Danger of American Apathy on NSA Surveillance”. |
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Then finally we discuss President Obama’s “Grand Bargain” to revive the economy and the report just out from the Dallas Fed “How Bad Was It? The Costs and Consequences of the 2008 Financial Crisis” which conservatively estimates the damage at 14 trillion, the equivalent of one year’s U.S. GDP. The author of “Age of Greed: the Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present” Jeff Madrick, joins us. He contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and writes a column on economics for Harpers. |
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