Full Program

Today on Veterans Day we present a special broadcast to commemorate the 100^th birthday of Benjamin Britten whose great work the Latin Mass for the dead “War Requiem” was commissioned to consecrate the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral that was destroyed by German bombers in World War II. As result of the destruction and the death of close friends in the war, Britten became a pacifist and his “War Requiem” was inspired by the poems of Wilfred Owen who was killed in World War I, one week before the armistice that ended The Great War, “the war to end wars”, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a day which was originally called Armistice Day, which today we honor as Veterans Day.

Today’s program is called “The Pity of War” and it was performed last night at the UCLA/Hammer museum in Los Angeles by British stage and screen actress Rosalind Ayers and her husband actor and director Martin Jarvis. They read a selection of poems from World War I and World War II that depict the horror and futility of war, not the jingoistic patriotic verse that accompanied these massive tragedies, the first of which ended in an Armistice ninety five years ago today, an armistice in which historians have observed the seeds of World War II were sown out of the punitive reparations imposed on Germany by the victorious allies, since at the very same spot the armistice was signed, 22 years later, Adolph Hitler staged the signing of France’s surrender to Germany in World War II.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with confirmation from Swiss scientists that PLO leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned by radioactive Polonium and assess what impact this will have on the already shaky peace talks underway between the Israelis and Palestinians. Khaled Elgindy, a Fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution who was an advisor to the Palestinian leadership from 2004 to 2009, joins us to discuss remarks by Secretary of State Kerry on Israeli TV where he warned of a bleak period ahead if peace is not achieved stating “I mean does Israel want a third Indifada?”

Part 2

Then we speak with Jared Bernstein the former Chief Economic Advisor to Vice President Biden and a member of President Obama’s economic team. He has an article in Thursday’s New York Times with Dean Baker “Taking Aim at the Wrong Deficit” and we discuss how the exaggerated fears that the sky is falling due to budget deficits, which are in fact going down, are distracting American from a real problem with the trade deficit, which if fixed, would help reduce the budget deficit.

Part 3

Then finally we look into a flagrant and callous hypocrisy and national disgrace as the House debates cutting $40 billion more from the food stamp program that was just cut, while they plan to increase subsidies for billionaire owners of farms and agri-business. We speak with Craig Cox, the Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the Environmental Working Group, who have just released a study revealing how billionaires with a collective wealth of $316 billion are receiving millions in tax-payer farm subsidies while poor families with children are having their already inadequate allotment of food stamps cut.