Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
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Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
2013 Program Archive
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| We begin with the second inauguration of President Obama that coincided with Martin Luther King Day and get an appraisal of the 44th President from James Kloppenberg professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Harvard University. He is the author of “Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition” and we discuss the apparent comfort most Americans have with their first black president. |
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Then we look into the president’s second inaugural speech with a former chief speechwriter for the U.S. Representative to the United Nations and author of “Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America”. Michael Cohen joins us to discuss today’s speech and how much it spelled out Obama’s vision to address the challenges ahead as he enters his second term with a gridlocked Congress and a divided country. |
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Then finally we look into the roiling region of North Africa where the residue of terrorism from Algeria and arms from Libya are turning the Sahel into a new front in the war on terror. The former U.S. Ambassador to Mali, Vicki Huddleston joins us. She had a recent article in the New York Times, “Why We Must Help Mali” and we discuss how neglect towards the region led to a belated effort to address a deteriorating situation that could have been more easily solved earlier. |
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| We begin with next Tuesday’s election in Israel that is likely to bring back a right wing government in coalition with a far right wing party that will be increasingly out of step with the largely liberal American/Jewish community who support Israel, a government with a more combative relationship with America’s president, who already has trouble dealing with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Gideon Levy, a journalist and member of the Editorial Board of Ha’aretz joins us from Jerusalem to discuss Israel’s march to the right. |
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Then we hear a speech that President Obama will not give at Monday’s inauguration but should. Paul Ehrlich, the President of Center for Conservation Biology and Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University joins us to speak about how climate change is baking Australia and flooding America’s east coast and that climate disruption with wreak havoc on our food supply already heavily dependent on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuel. He calls for a new Manhattan or man-on-the-moon project to address global warming that the president should enunciate before it is too late. |
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Then finally Sam Tanenhaus, the Editor of the New York Times Book Review joins us. He is the author of “The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences” and we discuss how much President Obama’s second term might be rewarded by the growing fratricide within the conservative movement between what David Brooks calls the Tea Party /Talk Radio base of the Republican Party and its less ideological corporate and managerial class. |
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We begin with the overheated reaction to the President’s gun control initiative from members of Congress and speak with Jonathan Lowy, the Director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, to assess the chances of Congress passing any measures that would curb the epidemic of gun violence in America.
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Then, with the arrival of West African troop in Mali following a military deployment by the French, we discuss an intervention that the West sees as a war against Al Qaeda and Malians see as a war against the Tuareg. Nii Akuetteh, an independent African policy researcher joins us to discuss what is at stake in the region where an attempt by the Algerian military to rescue Western hostages taken in retaliation against the French, resulted in many killed in the crossfire and some missing. |
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Then finally we are joined in the studio by three campaign finance reform activists who are part of this weekend’s “Money Out/Voters In” “Day of Action” that will take place in 76 cities and 33 states on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Mary Beth Fielder, the founder of the Los Angeles Money Out/Voters In Coalition and Kai Newkirk, a founding organizer of 99Rise and Lauren Windsor the host of The Undercurrent, a grassroots political TV web-show on the Young Turks Network, discuss the upcoming day of action.
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| We begin with the president’s unveiling today of an expansive gun-control initiative involving 23 separate executive actions in an attempt to get around a Congress in the pocket of the NRA. A former special agent with the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, William Vizzard, professor emeritus and Chair of the Division of Criminal Justice at California State University, Sacramento joins us to discuss whether the president’s end-run around the NRA will reduce the epidemic of gun violence in America. |
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Then we speak with the author of a new book on Lance Armstrong, “The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France; Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Cost”. New York Times best-selling author Daniel Coyle joins us to discuss the fate of the popular athlete whose fall from grace into a swamp of costly litigation is just beginning as we wait to learn about the extent of his contrition in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to be broadcast Thursday and Friday. |
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Then finally Richard Wolff joins us. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author of “Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism”. We discuss the on-going battle between the power of money that has captured our money-driven politics and the power of people who may or may not, rise up to assert their ownership of their government and their economy. |
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| We begin with a perfect storm of political dysfunction brewing in Pakistan where the Supreme Court has just called for the arrest of the prime Minister and a fundamentalist preacher is leading a horde marching on the capitol, while all around the country, minority Shia are conducting sit-in protests against a government that does not protect them from religious violence meted out by murderous Sunni fanatics. An expert on Pakistan who speaks the local languages Christine Fair, joins us to discuss a country whose neighbor India is accusing of trying to start another war. |
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Then we look into the warning by the rating agency Fitch that it may downgrade U.S. debt in another self-inflicted crisis over the debt ceiling that calls into question the predictability and reliability of the handling of the nation’s fiscal affairs. William Cohan, a contributing editor at Fortune and the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” joins us to discuss whether Wall Street, who gave the bulk of their money to Republicans in the last election, will be able to exert enough pressure on their political hirelings to ensure enough adult behavior to avoid a government default. |
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Then finally, following the president’s re-election victory helped by an overwhelming vote from women, we discuss the deficit of women in the new Obama cabinet with Michelle Kinsey Bruns, the online manager for The Women’s Media Center. They have launched a petition to urge Obama to appoint more women to senior positions, particularly at the FCC to address the paucity of women in the all-white, all-male top management circles of America’s mainstream media. |
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