Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the arrest of a 14 year old Muslim boy who is a member of the Robotics Club at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He brought a home-made digital alarm clock to school that a teacher decided was a bomb and young Ahmed Mohamed soon found himself handcuffed and fingerprinted by police who ignored his pleas that he had built an alarm clock, insisting “so you tried to make a bomb?” Mike Ghouse, the Executive Director of the American Muslim Institution in Washington D.C. and the former President of the Together Foundation in Dallas, Texas joins us to discuss this overwrought example of Islamophobia that has provoked outrage with Facebook’s head Mark Zuckerberg tweeting “Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you. Keep Building.” And has President Obama tweeting, “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

Part 2

Then Victoria Sanford joins us in the studio to do a follow-up on people power in Guatemala, following the popular uprising that ousted Guatemala’s corrupt president who is now in jail. We will examine how a young generation of activists using social media, are challenging the oligarchical power structure whose long history of being in league with a brutal military in bed with drug traffickers, has turned Guatemala into a narco-democracy. We look into whether the upcoming election could end the loss of 30% of the country’s budget to corruption and deal with the shameful fact that 50% of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition in a country with Central America’s biggest economy.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Henry Giroux, the current Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada and the co-author of “Disposable Future: Violence in the Age of Spectacle”. We will discuss his article at Truthout “Political Frauds and Ghosts of Totalitarianism” and the lack of civic literacy in the U.S., combined with celebrity worship in the Press, that has led to a casino-capitalist’s terrifying rise to the top of the GOP in what is an emerging form of new totalitarianism.   

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the ousting of Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott by his own Liberal Party (that is in fact the conservative party), in an internal ballot that elected Malcolm Turnbull as its new leader. Frank Stilwell, a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney joins us to discuss the second challenge in seven months to Abbott’s leadership that has been widely lampooned at home and abroad for maladroit slips of the tongue and bone-headed decisions such as awarding the Queen’s husband Prince Phillip an Australian knighthood.  We also discuss the difference that Malcolm Turnbull brings to Australia’s leadership since unlike his predecessor, he believes in global warming which has severely impacted Australia.

Part 2

Then we examine the circumstances surrounding the killing of 12 tourists, eight of whom were from Mexico, by the Egyptian military using an Apache helicopter supplied by the U.S. who have resumed military ties with Egypt’s ruling military junta after a boycott in response to the military coup that overthrew Egypt’s first elected government. Bruce Rutherford, a professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic Civilization Program at Colgate University and author of “Egypt After Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam and Democracy in the Arab World” joins us.

Part 3

Then finally we discuss the deep denial at the top of America’s leadership that has been unable to confront the reality that Pakistan takes our money and kills our troop in Afghanistan. Christine Fair, a former United Nations political officer in Afghanistan who is a professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program joins us to discuss her article at The National Interest “When it Comes to Afghanistan: America Should Ditch Pakistan for Iran” and the possibility that the Iran deal affords the U.S. an opportunity to get right what we’ve gotten wrong in Afghanistan ever since 9/11.