Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing possibility that a new intifada is brewing in Israel and Palestine as stabbings of Israelis by Palestinians in Jerusalem have put the holy city on edge. Kate Gould, the Legislative Associate for Middle East Policy at the Quaker lobby, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, joins us. She lobbies Capitol Hill and the White House on Israel-Palestine peace and we will discuss the difficult job she has as Palestinian frustration over a phony peace process that is stalled while Jewish settlements continue to expand on the West Bank, appears to have reached a boiling point.

Part 2

Then we examine last night’s first Democratic presidential candidates’ debate and speak with Lawrence Jacobs, who is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies at the University of Minnesota where he also directs the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Political Affairs. The author of “Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation”, he joins us to discuss his research from confidential documents in presidential archives that indicates both Republican and Democratic presidents, while claiming to speak for the “people” and serve the “public good”, actually serve and are guided by America’s wealthy elites. We assess whether, if elected, Bernie Sanders would break that tradition.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Dr. Anna Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster with Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner about the possibility, since Bernie Sanders rebuked the press for perpetuating the phony scandal by beating up on Hillary over her emails, that Bernie Sanders could end up being Hillary Clinton’s Vice-Presidential running mate.  A seasoned campaign professional offers her opinion that Bernie Sanders will go the way of Howard Dean and be a footnote since he lacks the campaign ground game and therefore without a national infrastructure, would have no traction in the general election.

Full Program

Part 1

On this Columbus Day holiday we begin with the nine cities in the United States which include Albuquerque, Portland Oregon, St. Paul, Seattle and Olympia that are celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day today in honor of the Native Americans whose lands we live on and whose cultures we largely decimated. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an author and editor of seven books including the recently-released “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”, who taught in the Native American Studies Program at California State University, Haywood joins us to discuss the real history of Native Americans which has been largely overlooked or buried because it raises questions of genocide in a country founded on settler colonialism.

Part 2

Then we speak of another genocidal war underway in Syria today that is largely a war by a ruling family against its own citizens who rose up in the “Arab Spring” to demand freedom and justice only to met by brutal repression that has led to civil war. Wendy Pearlman, a Professor of Comparative Politics of the Middle East at Northwestern University who has interviewed more than 150 Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey about their experiences in the Syrian uprising and the subsequent war joins us to discuss how individuals deal with high risk protest and defy political fear in a country where half the population has been driven into exile after experiencing unimaginable atrocities.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the conviction of the Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian by an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Court in a secret trial on trumped up charges extracted from torture by the IRGC’s Intelligence agency run the Supreme Leader’s Son Moshtaba Khamenei that are meant to embarrass Iran’s President Rouhani. One of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Dr. Mohsen Sazegara joins us to discuss how the American reporter has become a hostage and a pawn in a political power play underway in Iran over the succession to the ailing Supreme Leader.