Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
2016 Programs
2016 Program Archive
February 14 - The Mysterious Death of Prisoner X; In the U.K. More Trouble for Murdoch; Nationwide Protests Against the KeystoneXL Pipeline
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin and go to Australia to speak with Vivien Altman, a Senior Producer on ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent program, who, along with Trevor Bormann, Steve Taylor and Nick Brenner, broke the story of Prisoner X who died two years ago in a secret Israeli prison where he was locked up under a false identity. Following extraordinary efforts by Prime Minister Netanyahu to muzzle the Israeli press from covering the story based on revelations from Australia’s Foreign Correspondent program, we discuss what is known about an Australian who was recruited by Mossad and apparently knew too many secrets that he took to his grave. |
 |
|
|
Then we go to London and speak with the Deputy Editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, Francis Wheen, about a new outbreak of scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire, following yesterday’s arrest of six former journalists with the now-defunct “News of the World” tabloid. We discuss the likelihood of additional hundreds of millions of pounds being paid out in settlements and whether new press restrictions that the police and parliament are pushing will set back freedom of the press in the UK, where journalists already operate under onerous and antiquated libel laws. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we discuss this weekend’s nationwide demonstrations against the controversial KeystoneXL pipeline with May Boeve, the Executive Director and co-founder of 350.org which is leading the largest climate demonstration in Washington DC at the National Mall on Sunday. Also joining me in the studio is the organizer of Tar Sands Action Southern California, Jack Eidt who, in conjunction with actions across the country, is leading a rally in downtown L.A. “Solve the Climate Crisis! Take a Stand Mr. President”. And a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Josh Mogerman, joins us as well. |
|
Tags:
February 13 - A Possible Iranian Role in the North Korea Bomb Test; The "Merchants of Doubt" Behind Global Warming Denial; Was the Pope's Resignation His Most Important Act?
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the fallout from the third and latest North Korean nuclear test and discuss the possibility of Iranian involvement. Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons” and “Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats”, joins us to assess how close North Korea is to deploying a nuclear-tipped missile that could target the United States. |
 |
|
|
Then we look into President Obama’s initiatives announced in his State of the Union address to meet the challenges of global warming and how they contrast with the Republican response issued by Senator Marco Rubio who, in his rebuttal, derisively dismissed climate change, saying “our government can’t control the weather”. Naomi Oreskes, a historian and scientist at the University of California, San Diego and author of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”, joins us to discuss what Obama can achieve in the face of Republican obstruction and denial. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we hear from a former priest, civil rights worker, anti-war activist and community organizer James Carroll, the author of “Practicing Catholic” and “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The Ancient City That Ignited the Modern World”. His latest column at the Boston Globe is “Pope’s Resignation Was His Most Important Act” and we discuss the significance of Pope Benedict’s resignation that places the Catholic hierarchy in, not above, the world of “the flesh and the devil” we all live in as mortals. |
 |
Tags:
February 12 - The Journalist who is Suing the President; Two Tea Party Rebuttals; Progressive Strategies for Obama's Second Term; How to Move an Implacably Hostile Republican House
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with veteran New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges who is suing President Obama in Federal Court challenging his powers under the National Defense Authorization Act. In advance of the president’s 2013 State of The Union address we discuss what Chris Hedges expects from the address and why he feels America is becoming a Corporate State that is seizing unchecked powers with a military system of justice that will criminalize dissent. |
 |
|
|
Then we hear from Adele Stan, Alternet’s Washington Bureau Chief who has followed the Tea Party since its inception. We discuss the two successive Republican responses to Obama’s State of the Union from two Tea Party Senators, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. We also look into whether the president will put the Republicans on notice as they are poised to let the sequester crash the barely recovering economy, thus throwing us back into recession and impoverishing millions of Americans. |
 |
|
|
Then we look into whether the president has taken on too many challenges in his second term with gun control, immigration, global warming, jobs and economic recovery. Mike Lux, the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies joins us to discuss what the president might be able to accomplish in his second term before the next mid-term election and whether the Democrats could re-take the House in 2014 and extend Obama’s ability to govern before he becomes a lame duck |
 |
|
|
Then finally we be joined by Tara McGuinness, the Executive Director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. We assess the likely impact of the president’s address on the public, and more importantly, the Congress that remains implacably hostile to Obama’s efforts to revive the economy and appoint his choices to his cabinet and fill the growing backlog of judicial appointments. |
 |
Tags:
February 11 - A Once in 600 Years Papal Resignation; Would a New Pope Consider Ordaining Women?; What Really Happened in Benghazi
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the resignation of the Pope, an unusual occurrence that has not happened for 600 years. Anthea Butler, a professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania joins us to discuss who might succeed Pope Benedict whose relatively brief tenure was beset by scandals and shrinking church attendance and finances in Europe and North America. |
 |
|
|
Then we discuss the issue that Pope Benedict most strenuously opposed, the ordination of women. Erin Saiz Hanna, the Executive Director of the Women’s Ordination Conference joins us to explain the Pope’s hostility to the idea of women being ordained into the Catholic priesthood and his crackdown on American nuns. She has been detained by the Italian police five times for peaceful protests against the Vatican. |
 |
|
|
Then finally, with Senator Lindsay Graham promising to block John Brennan’s nomination to head up the CIA unless the Administration comes clean on Benghazi, we examine what really happened in Benghazi with author and journalist Robert Young Pelton. And we discuss a new e-new book by two Special Forces veterans “Benghazi: The Definitive Report”, which claims to have the answers, along with who was behind the “palace coup” that ended David Petraeus’s career. |
 |
Tags:
February 10 - Climate Change and the State of the Union; Obama's Many Second Term Challenges; A Police Force Hunted by a Fugitive and Haunted by Its Past
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the latest super storm that has dumped record amounts of snow in New England and speak with Michael Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning founder and contributor to the award winning science website RealClimate.org. We discuss this latest extreme weather event in the context of the global warming challenge that President Obama will likely address in Tuesday’s State of the Union, while Senator Marco Rubio, who will offer the Republican rebuttal, may explain why he does not believe that global warming is real. |
 |
|
|
Then we look into how many challenges face the president and whether he can address them all in his State of Union and hope to achieve some legislative victory in his second term with a hostile and implacable House determined to impose austerity that will tank the economy and doom any hopes of recovery. Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore, the principal writer of the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog joins us to discuss whether the president has spread himself too thin and what advice the Democrats will take from Bill Clinton’s recent pep talk. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we speak with author and award-winning investigative journalist Joe Domanick, who is a leading authority on the Los Angeles Police Department. He has written “To Protect and Serve: The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams” and is writing “Road to Reckoning: The Collapse and Reformation of the LAPD”. With the LAPD now under siege from a former member of its ranks who is on a vengeful murder spree vowing to kill senior LAPD officers and their families, we discuss efforts by the fugitive to frame his grudge and blame his dismissal on racial injustice. |
 |
Tags:
RSS Latest Radio Programs
Pacifica App