Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Amtrack derailment in Philadelphia that killed seven people and injured 200 and look into why within a day of the tragedy the Republican House voted to slash Amtrack’s funding by $251 million from its previous paltry funding of $1.14 billion, less than half of the $2.45 billion President Obama had requested. Andy Kunz, the President and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association joins us to discuss the reasons why America is the only developed country without a modern rail system that is now being further starved of funds while China is spending $128 billion a year on its nationwide high speed rail system.

Part 2

Then we speak with Jesselyn Radack, the head of the Government Accountability Project’s National Security and Human Rights Project about the sentencing of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for leaking classified information to The New York Times’ James Risen. We discuss the glaring double standard of jailing Sterling for revealing information about Operation Merlin, a botched attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, while allowing former CIA chief General Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor for giving highly classified information to his biographer and lover.

Part 3

Then finally we examine what is behind the privatization of education in the name of “reform” that is turning America’s students into profit centers to be saddled with a lifetime of debt for education without knowledge. The author of the new book “Sixteen for ’16: A Progressive Agenda for a Better America”, Salvatore Babones, joins us. He is a professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and we discuss his article at Salon “Education ‘reform’s’ big lie: The real reason the right has declared war on our public schools”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the explosive expose by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that challenges the official White House story of the SEAL’s raid into Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden. Veteran CIA operations officer Robert Baer joins us to discuss the new information that Seymour Hersh has revealed in his article at The London Review of Books “The Killing of Osama bin Laden” and we replay some of an interview I did shortly after President Obama’s announcement that Bin Laden was dead on May 2, 2011 with a very skeptical Robert Baer who outlines a scenario almost identical to the one that Seymour Hersh just published.

Part 2

Then we look further into the possibility that Pakistan’s military intelligence service the ISI was sheltering Bin Laden and that someone on the inside walked into the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad with the embarrassing truth to claim the $25 million reward. Shuja Nawaz, a Senior Scholar at the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council and author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within” joins us to discuss what he finds credible about the new information about the killing of Bin Laden and what he doesn’t.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the conditional approval the White House has given to Shell Oil to drill for oil in the Arctic waters off Alaska this summer. Lois Epstein, the Arctic Program Director for The Wilderness Society who serves on the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement joins to discuss her concerns and her article at Alaska Dispatch News “Shell hasn’t earned enough trust to drill in Alaska’s Arctic seas”.