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2016 Programs
2016 Program Archive
April 30 - Dragging Obama into Syria; How Republicans Block Obama's Judicial Nominations; What is Killing off the Honey Bees?
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We will begin with Syria which dominated today’s press conference by the president who was asked whether his red line had been crossed by the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. An expert on Syria, Henri Barkey, who was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department joins us to discuss the mounting pressure on a reluctant president to intervene in the Syrian disaster. |
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Then we will examine why there is a record backlog of judicial appointments the Obama Administration is trying to fill. Michelle Schwartz, the Director of Justice Programs at the Alliance for Justice, joins us. Her organization just issued a report on how Republican Senators are not only blocking Obama’s judicial nominations by the arbitrary use of the filibuster, they are refusing to recommend potential federal judges in the first place. |
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Then, following a European Commission ban on a class of pesticides, neonicotinoids, which are believed to be the cause of the alarming Colony Collapse Disorder that is killing off bees that pollinate most of the fruits and vegetables we eat, we will look into what is causing the die-off of over 50% of America’s bees. Paul Towers, a spokesman for the Pesticide Action Network and Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources join us to examine what is killing off the world’s honey bees. |
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April 29 - The CIA as Karzai's Bagman; Riling up one Billion Muslims; The Latest Anti-intellectual Assault on Science
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We begin with revelations in Monday’s New York Times that for decades Afghan President Karzai has been receiving tens of millions in secret monthly cash payments from the CIA. Christine Fair, a former United Nations political officer in Afghanistan, who is a Senior Fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point, joins us to discuss where the money went and what the U.S. got in exchange for these payments of taxpayer money. |
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Then we speak with a former CIA Station Chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, Graham Fuller, who is the author of “The Future of Political Islam” and “A World Without Islam”. We discuss the legacy of our recent intervention in Iraq, which appears poised to resume a civil war, and Afghanistan, where, after the U.S. withdrawal in 2014 the country will likely revert to civil war. Having riled up one billion Muslims from our failed and futile interventions in Muslim lands, we examine the possibility of future blowback. |
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Then finally, in remarks today on the 150th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences, President Obama promised to protect science research from politics at a time when Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is demanding that the National Science Foundation justify its research. Jon Cohen, who is a correspondent with Science Magazine and author of “Almost Chimpanzee: Searching for What Makes us Human, in Rainforests, Labs, Sanctuaries, and Zoos”, joins us to discuss the latest anti-intellectual assault on science. |
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April 28 - Did Syria Cross Obama's Red Line?; The Bush Legacy Selectively Revised; Angry White Men Get Their Way
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We begin with the president’s red line with Syria which may have been crossed with a limited use of the chemical weapon Sarin. A former UN Special Commission chemical and biological inspector in Iraq, Raymond Zilinskas, who directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies, joins us. We discuss UN efforts to get a team of inspectors into Syria that the Assads are blocking, and what might be done to secure Syria’s substantial WMD arsenal from use by either the regime or the rebels. |
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Then we look into the historical legacy of George W. Bush that his former spokesperson and Fox News pundits are now revising, to suggest that Bush kept us safe from terrorists while Obama did not. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff who served in the Bush White House, joins us to discuss the glaring omission of 9/11 from this latest revisionist history and how much Bush and Cheney are helped by the 9/11 “truthers” propagating conspiracy theories shared by the Boston bombers, that serve to cover up Bush and Cheney’s reckless endangerment of the United States for failing to prevent 9/11. |
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Then finally we are joined by Joan Walsh, editor-at-large for Salon.com and an MSNBC analyst. She is the author of a new book just out in paperback “What’s the Matter With White People? Finding our Way in the Next America”. We discuss the domination of our politics by a minority of angry white men who have prevented sensible gun safety measures that 90% of Americans favor, and what can be done to restore majority rule in the United States government. |
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April 25 - What Can We Praise About George W. Bush?; Hysteria Over Terror While Accepting Daily Gun Deaths; The Corporate Takeover of Food
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We begin with today’s opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas attended by five living U.S. presidents. We discuss the legacy of the 43rd president and recent attempts at revisionist history by some Republicans suggesting that he wasn’t all that bad. Paul Glastris, the editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly joins us to discuss his new ebook “Elephant in the Room: Washington in the Bush Years”. |
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Then we speak with Michael Cohen who is a columnist for the UK Guardian and the Observer where he has an article “Why Does America lose its head over ‘terror’ but ignore its daily gun deaths?” We examine the paradox of our inordinate fear of random violence from terrorists, compared to our acceptance of the daily death toll from guns and the preventable workplace deaths of 14 Americans every day. As well as try to understand why 3,531 Americans, more than were killed on 9/11, have died from guns since Newtown, yet a majority of Americans are not as motivated to do something about it as the 1% who belong to the NRA, who are highly motivated to ensure that America’s criminals and terrorists are the best-armed in the world. |
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Then finally we discuss the corporate takeover of food as powerful corporations like Monsanto are able to show how they can flex their political muscle in Congress and shut out the judicial branch of government. Frederick Kaufman, a contributing editor at Harper’s joins us to discuss his new book “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food” and, while our food gets less healthy and more expensive, explain the hidden connection between global food and global finance. |
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April 24 - The Backlash Against American Muslims; Other Religions and Terrorism; Sweatshop Deaths and Designer-Label Profits
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We begin with a reaction to the outbursts of Islamophobia on Fox News and elsewhere in response to the Boston bombings. Amjad Mahmood Khan, the National Director of Public Affairs for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community joins us. He has testified three times before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at the U.S. House of Representatives about persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic world and we discuss the backlash America’s Muslims are experiencing to the bombings.
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Then we speak with Middle East expert Juan Cole who writes the popular blog Informed Comment at JuanCole.com where he has an article “Terrorism and Other Religions” in which he compares the casualties of political violence in the 20th Century wars where Muslims killed 2 million people compared to Christian Europeans who killed 100 million. We discuss further the backlash of Islamophobia against America’s Muslims who live in a country where murder rates are sky high compared to those in the Muslim world. |
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Then finally we examine the collapse of an eight story building in Bangladesh that killed up to 250 low-wage garment workers making clothes for European and U.S. high-end brands. Charles Kernaghan, the Executive Director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights joins us to discuss this latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s second-biggest garment exporter and the anti-sweat-shop movement in the U.S. that he has launched. |
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