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2013 Program Archive
March 26 - Reading the Supreme Court on Gay Marriage; The BRIC's Summit in Africa and China's Honeymoon with Africa; The Gulf Between Political Representatives and Fighters of the Syrian Opposition
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We begin with an analysis of today’s arguments before the Supreme Court on the overturning of California’s Proposition 8 by Judge Vaughn Walker of the US District Court in San Francisco. Elizabeth Wydra, Chief Counsel of the Constitutional Accountability Center, who was in the court today, joins us to discuss what can be interpreted from the blizzard of questions by the Supreme Court justices that might indicate that gay marriage could soon be legalized. |
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Then we speak with Deborah Brautigam, a professor and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University and author of “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa”. We discuss the new Chinese leader’s visit to Africa and the BRIC’s – that’s Brazil – Russia – India – China and South Africa - summit he is attending in South Africa and we also examine the extent to which Africa’s honeymoon with China is over. |
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Then finally we speak with the organizer of a recent conference in Paris where the Syrian opposition and representatives of the Kurdish minority met with senior American and French officials to design power-sharing arrangements in a post-Assad Syria. David Phillips, the Director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University joins us to discuss what is being done to close the gap between the political representatives of the Syrian opposition and the various factions of fighters in the field who are now starting to shoot at each other. |
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March 24 - Cyprus's Casino Economy on the Brink; A Jordanian Perspective on a Dangerous Neighborhood; "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now"
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We begin with the possibility of a financial meltdown in Cyprus if Monday’s deadline to avert a collapse of the island’s banking system is not met. James Henry, the Edward R Murrow Fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy joins us to look into whether a collapse of this “treasure island” of laundered Russian money could have broader ramifications for the Eurozone and why the lessons of the dangers of unregulated banks appear to have no impact on Wall Street’s push for deregulation and overturning Dodd-Frank. |
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Then we go to Jordan for a report on President Obama’s recent trip and the refugee crisis the kingdom is facing from the civil war next door in Syria. Daoud Kuttab, who established the Arab World’s first Internet radio station AmmanNet, joins us to provide a regional analysis of the likely impact of an increasingly desperate Assad regime in its last throes provoking a wider conflict and what domino effect the fall of the Syrian dictatorship will have on the neighborhood. |
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Then finally we speak with Douglas Rushkoff about his new book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”. An expert on the intersection of technology and culture who in 2004 predicted the current recession and coined the phrase “viral media”, Rushkoff argues that it’s not technology that is the problem, but our misunderstanding of time, where the priorities of the moment seem to be everything. |
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March 21 - Obama's Appeal for a Palestinian State and Justice for Palestinians; A CIA Analyst who was Pressured by Cheney; Obama's Contradictory Statements on Social Security and Medicare
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We begin with President Obama’s visit today to the West Bank and his call for a Palestinian state and justice for the Palestinians. A former member of the Palestinian negotiating team Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of “Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East’ joins us to discuss Obama’s meeting with the Palestinian president and his appeal for peace in an address to Israeli students. |
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Then, in a follow-up to recent interviews on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war, we speak with a member of the CIA team that was pressured by Vice President Cheney to provide bogus intelligence in support of the build-up to the Iraq war about Saddam’s non-existent WMD and his non-relationship with Al Qaeda. Former CIA analyst Nada Bakos, joins us. She has an article at Wired “I Tried to Make the Intelligence Behind the Iraq War Less Bogus”. |
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Then finally we speak with Max Richtman, the President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, about the letter he sent to President Obama today asking him about contradictions between his pledges on Social Security and recent contradictory statements on both the chained CPI and Medicare means testing that are apparently part of the White House’s deficit reduction proposal. |
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March 20 - Were Chemical Weapons Used in Syria?; Assessing Obama's First Day in Israel; Student Loan Debt Passes a Trillion Dollars
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We begin with conflicting accounts of whether or not chemical weapons have been used in Syria, crossing a red line that the Obama Administration has declared would invite a response. We speak with an expert on chemical weapons and a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, Raymond Zilinskas, who directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterrey Institute for International Studies.
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Then we speak about Obama’s state visit in Israel today with Dan Raviv, a national correspondent for CBS News and a veteran CBS Middle East correspondent who has written a number of books on Israel’s intelligence community and blogs about it at israelspy.com. His latest, co-authored with Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, is “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars” and we discuss why Israelis are mounting protests during the President’s visit demanding that Obama free the American who spied for Israel, Jonathan Pollard. |
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Then finally we look into the second largest debt in the U.S. after mortgage debt, and that is student debt, that has tripled since 2004 and last week passed the trillion dollar mark. David Halperin, who was the founding director of Campus Progress joins us to discuss the role of the for-profit college racket in indenturing students with worthless diplomas, and the impact of this growing burden on the millennial generation’s future as their prospects of saving for retirement or owning a house or car, grow increasingly dim. |
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March 19 - Insight into Our Imperial Hubris; One of 33 Who Presciently Warned Against the Iraq War; Repeating the Iraq Folly with Iran
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Today, on this tenth anniversary of the “shock and awe” beginning of the war with Iraq, we look into a number of stories and issues in the news. We begin with one of the most insightful chroniclers of the Bush/Cheney regime, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ron Suskind, the author of “The One Percent Doctrine”, and discuss the selling of the Iraq war, the utter failure of our political opposition to stand up to the campaign of lies and propaganda, and the dismal performance of the Press who became the cheer squad of the Bush Administration. |
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Then we speak with John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of “Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics”. He was one of 33 American scholars of international relations who signed a letter published in the New York Times six month before the Iraq war began, warning that a U.S. invasion of Iraq with no exit strategy will lead to occupation, urban combat, a victory for Al Qaeda and increased anti-Americanism around the globe. |
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Then finally, we examine a contemporary parallel of the rush to war with Iraq in the face of conflicting intelligence, a situation that is currently being repeated as the Press parrots lies and distortions about Iran, while failing to look at the actual intelligence data on Iran that the Director of National Intelligence presented to the Senate last Tuesday. Dr Trita Parsi, the co-founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and author of “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran” joins us. We discuss his article at The Huffington Post “3 Facts to Note in 2013 Worldwide Threat Assessment Report”. |
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