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2013 Program Archive
April 25 - What Can We Praise About George W. Bush?; Hysteria Over Terror While Accepting Daily Gun Deaths; The Corporate Takeover of Food
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We begin with today’s opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas attended by five living U.S. presidents. We discuss the legacy of the 43rd president and recent attempts at revisionist history by some Republicans suggesting that he wasn’t all that bad. Paul Glastris, the editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly joins us to discuss his new ebook “Elephant in the Room: Washington in the Bush Years”. |
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Then we speak with Michael Cohen who is a columnist for the UK Guardian and the Observer where he has an article “Why Does America lose its head over ‘terror’ but ignore its daily gun deaths?” We examine the paradox of our inordinate fear of random violence from terrorists, compared to our acceptance of the daily death toll from guns and the preventable workplace deaths of 14 Americans every day. As well as try to understand why 3,531 Americans, more than were killed on 9/11, have died from guns since Newtown, yet a majority of Americans are not as motivated to do something about it as the 1% who belong to the NRA, who are highly motivated to ensure that America’s criminals and terrorists are the best-armed in the world. |
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Then finally we discuss the corporate takeover of food as powerful corporations like Monsanto are able to show how they can flex their political muscle in Congress and shut out the judicial branch of government. Frederick Kaufman, a contributing editor at Harper’s joins us to discuss his new book “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food” and, while our food gets less healthy and more expensive, explain the hidden connection between global food and global finance. |
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April 24 - The Backlash Against American Muslims; Other Religions and Terrorism; Sweatshop Deaths and Designer-Label Profits
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We begin with a reaction to the outbursts of Islamophobia on Fox News and elsewhere in response to the Boston bombings. Amjad Mahmood Khan, the National Director of Public Affairs for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community joins us. He has testified three times before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at the U.S. House of Representatives about persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic world and we discuss the backlash America’s Muslims are experiencing to the bombings.
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Then we speak with Middle East expert Juan Cole who writes the popular blog Informed Comment at JuanCole.com where he has an article “Terrorism and Other Religions” in which he compares the casualties of political violence in the 20th Century wars where Muslims killed 2 million people compared to Christian Europeans who killed 100 million. We discuss further the backlash of Islamophobia against America’s Muslims who live in a country where murder rates are sky high compared to those in the Muslim world. |
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Then finally we examine the collapse of an eight story building in Bangladesh that killed up to 250 low-wage garment workers making clothes for European and U.S. high-end brands. Charles Kernaghan, the Executive Director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights joins us to discuss this latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s second-biggest garment exporter and the anti-sweat-shop movement in the U.S. that he has launched. |
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April 23 - The Anti-Terrorism Boondoggle; "The Guantanamo Mess"; Will Immigration Reform be Derailed?
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We begin with the possible motivations behind the bombings in Boston as indications emerge that the terrorists might have acted out of hatred, not of America, but of American Foreign Policy. Dr John Mueller, the author of “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them” and “Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security”, joins us to discuss the trillion dollar anti-terrorism boondoggle that once again failed to stop a terrorist act. |
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Then we look into the push to try the surviving terrorist as an enemy combatant and what is behind the efforts to keep Guantanamo going even though the president has vowed to close it and it has become a symbol of our international disgrace as America’s gulag. Admiral John Hutson, the former Judge Advocate General for the United States Navy, joins us to discuss his article at the Huffington Post “The Guantanamo Mess”. |
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Then finally we examine the fate of immigration reform that could be derailed by Republican calls to halt debate on a bi-partisan immigration reform bill in the Senate until issues relating to national security are answered. Shannon O’Neil, a Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead: joins us to discuss President Obama’s upcoming trip to Mexico and why immigration policies have failed so far. |
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April 22 - How the Troubled War-Torn Caucasus Might Have Influenced Tamerlan Tsarnaev; An Earth Day Call to Replace the GDP with the Genuine Progress Indicator
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We begin with an examination of the troubled regions of the Caucasus that the accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited for six months last year after Russian Intelligence had flagged him and asked the FBI to look into his possible ties to radical Islam. One of the country’s leading experts on Russian/Chechen relations and the Caucasus, Gordon Hahn, joins us to discuss the extent of cooperation between Russian and American Intelligence Services and the history of this troubled war-torn region and how it might have influenced the actions of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. |
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Then on Earth Day we look into how none of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use. We speak with Daphne Wysham, the director of the Genuine Progress Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is working on ways to build a more sustainable society by using the Genuine Progress Indicator which Maryland and Vermont have adopted as an alternative metric to the Gross Domestic Product or GDP, to move beyond a system that “simply steals from the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP”. |
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April 21 - Blurring the Line Between the Soldier and the Spy; How Cell Phones are Contributing to the Extinction of Our Closest Relatives; The Insiders Who Took on Big Pharma
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We broadcast from the Los Angeles Times Book Festival on the campus of the University of Southern California and we begin with the issue of the day following the bombings in Boston, and the possibility that they may be “blowback” from the “War on Terror". Mark Mazzetti, a national security correspondent for The New York Times and author of the explosive new book “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth”, joins us. In 2009, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the intensifying violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Washington's response. And the previous year, he was a Pulitzer finalist for reporting on the CIA's detention and interrogation program
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Then we examine how cell phones are threatening our closest living relatives, the great apes, with Craig Stanford who is the co-director of the Jane Goodall Research Center at USC. His latest book, "Planet Without Apes," is about a tragic extinction that does not have to happen. The four living great apes are all precariously close to disappearing from the Earth, under threats, from forest loss, emerging diseases, and the demand for Coltan in electronic gadgetry. We discuss solutions that can help save the apes' existence on Earth into at least the next century. |
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Then finally we speak with Kathleen Sharp about her book, "Blood Medicine: The Man Who Blew The Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever". We look into the power of big Pharma in a ruthless pursuit of corporate profit at the expense of innocent patients. And the role, or lack thereof, of the Justice Department, whose current head, is a former partner in the law firm who defended the villain in Blood Medicine, Johnson & Johnson. |
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