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2013 Program Archive
February 18 - Chavez Comes Home Under Wraps; Mudslinging Ahead of Iran's June Elections; Syria's Increasingly Sectarian War
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We begin and go to Caracas, Venezuela for an update on the return of President Hugo Chavez from Cuba where he underwent a fourth round of cancer surgery. Virginia Lopez, who covers Venezuela and Latin America for the UK Guardian and Sky Television, joins us to discuss the lack of details about the health of Venezuela’s president, who was supposed to be inaugurated last January, and the lack of press access to Chavez’s secret arrival, except for his personal tweets to his 4 million twitter followers. |
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Then we speak with Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver. We discuss what can be interpreted from the mudslinging ahead of Iran's June elections coming out of the rival camps of the out-going president and the speaker of Iran’s parliament. Rhetoric so heated that it forced the Supreme Leader to publically rebuke President Ahmadinejad and Speaker Ali Larijani. |
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Then finally we examine the latest UN report on Syria that finds the war that has cost 70,000 lives so far, is becoming increasingly sectarian, prompting Carla del Ponte, the UN Human Rights investigator to tell the UN Security Council it is time to refer the issue of war crimes to the International Criminal Court. Joshua Landis, who writes the daily newsletter and blog on Syria “Syria Comment”, joins us to discuss the war within the war between the Sunni extremist Al Nusra militia and the extremist Shiite militia Hezbollah. |
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February 17 - The President's License to Kill; Texas's Reincarnation of Senator Joe McCarthy; Republicans Defend Crimes Against Native Women
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We begin with an analysis of the extraordinary presidential powers to assassinate that are represented by the drone program and are at issue with the confirmation of John Brennan to head up the CIA. Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer who was Assistant Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration and helped write the articles of impeachment for both President Nixon and President Clinton, joins us to discuss the kill list and the unchecked powers of the president. |
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Then we look into the efforts to block Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense and the incendiary but baseless accusations made by freshman Senator Ted Cruz that Hagel received money from North Korea and that the Iranian government is celebrating his nomination. Matt Angle, who directs the Lone Star Project and was the Executive Director of the House Democratic Caucus joins us to discuss the reincarnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Texas’s junior senator Ted Cruz and whether the nastiness of this Tea Party bomb-thrower represents the future of Texas politics. |
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Then finally we examine the prosecutorial loophole that the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act seeks to close, which has 22 Republican Senators and a majority of House Republicans siding with the abusers of women as they defend the status quo that allows non-native Americans to rape and even murder Native American women on tribal land and get off Scott free. Sarah Deer, an expert on violence against Native women, where 86% of rapes reported by Native women on tribal lands are perpetrated by outsiders, joins us. She is the author of “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota. |
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February 14 - The Mysterious Death of Prisoner X; In the U.K. More Trouble for Murdoch; Nationwide Protests Against the KeystoneXL Pipeline
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We begin and go to Australia to speak with Vivien Altman, a Senior Producer on ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent program, who, along with Trevor Bormann, Steve Taylor and Nick Brenner, broke the story of Prisoner X who died two years ago in a secret Israeli prison where he was locked up under a false identity. Following extraordinary efforts by Prime Minister Netanyahu to muzzle the Israeli press from covering the story based on revelations from Australia’s Foreign Correspondent program, we discuss what is known about an Australian who was recruited by Mossad and apparently knew too many secrets that he took to his grave. |
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Then we go to London and speak with the Deputy Editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, Francis Wheen, about a new outbreak of scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire, following yesterday’s arrest of six former journalists with the now-defunct “News of the World” tabloid. We discuss the likelihood of additional hundreds of millions of pounds being paid out in settlements and whether new press restrictions that the police and parliament are pushing will set back freedom of the press in the UK, where journalists already operate under onerous and antiquated libel laws. |
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Then finally we discuss this weekend’s nationwide demonstrations against the controversial KeystoneXL pipeline with May Boeve, the Executive Director and co-founder of 350.org which is leading the largest climate demonstration in Washington DC at the National Mall on Sunday. Also joining me in the studio is the organizer of Tar Sands Action Southern California, Jack Eidt who, in conjunction with actions across the country, is leading a rally in downtown L.A. “Solve the Climate Crisis! Take a Stand Mr. President”. And a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Josh Mogerman, joins us as well. |
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February 13 - A Possible Iranian Role in the North Korea Bomb Test; The "Merchants of Doubt" Behind Global Warming Denial; Was the Pope's Resignation His Most Important Act?
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We begin with the fallout from the third and latest North Korean nuclear test and discuss the possibility of Iranian involvement. Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons” and “Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats”, joins us to assess how close North Korea is to deploying a nuclear-tipped missile that could target the United States. |
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Then we look into President Obama’s initiatives announced in his State of the Union address to meet the challenges of global warming and how they contrast with the Republican response issued by Senator Marco Rubio who, in his rebuttal, derisively dismissed climate change, saying “our government can’t control the weather”. Naomi Oreskes, a historian and scientist at the University of California, San Diego and author of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”, joins us to discuss what Obama can achieve in the face of Republican obstruction and denial. |
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Then finally we hear from a former priest, civil rights worker, anti-war activist and community organizer James Carroll, the author of “Practicing Catholic” and “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The Ancient City That Ignited the Modern World”. His latest column at the Boston Globe is “Pope’s Resignation Was His Most Important Act” and we discuss the significance of Pope Benedict’s resignation that places the Catholic hierarchy in, not above, the world of “the flesh and the devil” we all live in as mortals. |
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February 12 - The Journalist who is Suing the President; Two Tea Party Rebuttals; Progressive Strategies for Obama's Second Term; How to Move an Implacably Hostile Republican House
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We begin with veteran New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges who is suing President Obama in Federal Court challenging his powers under the National Defense Authorization Act. In advance of the president’s 2013 State of The Union address we discuss what Chris Hedges expects from the address and why he feels America is becoming a Corporate State that is seizing unchecked powers with a military system of justice that will criminalize dissent. |
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Then we hear from Adele Stan, Alternet’s Washington Bureau Chief who has followed the Tea Party since its inception. We discuss the two successive Republican responses to Obama’s State of the Union from two Tea Party Senators, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. We also look into whether the president will put the Republicans on notice as they are poised to let the sequester crash the barely recovering economy, thus throwing us back into recession and impoverishing millions of Americans. |
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Then we look into whether the president has taken on too many challenges in his second term with gun control, immigration, global warming, jobs and economic recovery. Mike Lux, the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies joins us to discuss what the president might be able to accomplish in his second term before the next mid-term election and whether the Democrats could re-take the House in 2014 and extend Obama’s ability to govern before he becomes a lame duck |
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Then finally we be joined by Tara McGuinness, the Executive Director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. We assess the likely impact of the president’s address on the public, and more importantly, the Congress that remains implacably hostile to Obama’s efforts to revive the economy and appoint his choices to his cabinet and fill the growing backlog of judicial appointments. |
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