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2016 Programs
2016 Program Archive
November 7 - The Congressman Who Walked Out of the House's Moment of Silence Today; Trump's NRA Talking Points; Oil-Rich Venezuela Teeters on Default; Election Results in the Bellwether Virginia Governor's Race
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We begin with President Trump’s remarks in response to the latest mass shooting at a Texas church where he blamed the problem on mental health, not access to military-style assault rifles, and rejected the idea of improving background checks when clearly the Texas shooter would have failed a background check had the Air Force not screwed up and passed on the shooter’s criminal record of domestic abuse into the FBI’s database. Congressman Ted Lieu joins us first. He currently serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee and today walked out of the moment of silence on the House floor to protest inaction on a universal background check law and a ban on assault rifles and on bump-fire stocks. |
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Then Paul Helmke, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Health at Indiana University who was formerly the President of the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence, joins us to refute Trump’s NRA talking points, in particular his claim that Chicago has the strongest gun laws in the country yet is a disaster when in fact it was the NRA who weakened Chicago’s gun laws. Furthermore many of the guns used in crimes in Chicago come from Indiana next door where gun laws are weak and straw purchases are commonplace. |
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Then we look into the impeding default by oil-rich Venezuela following last Thursday’s announcement by President Maduro that the country he has brought to its knees with a combination of corruption, mismanagement and mindless ideology, can no longer pay its debts. The founding Director at the Center For Energy and the Environment at IESA in Venezuela, Francisco Monaldi, now a fellow in Latin American energy policy at the Center for Energy Studies in the Mexico Center and the Latin America Initiative as well as a lecturer in Energy Economics at Rice University, joins us to discuss how Maduro has mortgaged bankrupt Venezuela’s $15 trillion in oil wealth first to China and now to Russia and how much Trump’s threat of an invasion has helped Maduro cling on to power. |
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Then finally, as results come in on the critical bellwether race for governor in Virginia, we speak with Quentin Kidd, Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. We will discuss the ruthless and shameless campaign that the Republican Gillespie has run and the feckless campaign the conservative Democrat who voted for George W Bush in 2000 and in 2004 Lieutenant Governor Northam ran, after narrowly beating a progressive Democrat in the primary. |
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November 6 - The Global Elite's $10 Trillion Exposed in the Paradise Papers; The Latest Mass Shooting at a Church in Texas; Trump Leans on Japan to Buy US Weapons
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We begin with the release of 13.4 million secret files of hidden offshore accounts by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists whose previous release of the Panama Papers caused consternation amongst the global elite of billionaires, oligarchs and kleptocrats. This time it is the Paradise Papers that has everyone from members of Trump’s cabinet to the Queen of England ensnared in tax-dodging schemes along with giant corporations like Nike and Apple. Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Michael Hudson, a senior editor for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists joins us to discuss the price average citizens around the world pay because of the $10 trillion hidden offshore by the wealth defense industry of lawyers, accountants and lobbyists, in collusion with politicians, which pushes the tax burden onto everyone else below the super-rich, starving governments of funds for health, education and welfare. We also examine the impact of this expose on the on-going investigations into Trump’s ties to the Russians given how much Trump’s Secretary of Commerce and his son-in-law are swept up in the Paradise Papers scandal.
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Then we look into the role of domestic violence, the gun culture and lax guns laws that played a role in the latest gun massacre which the Governor of Texas is calling “the largest mass shooting” in the state’s history with 26 dead and 20 wounded, 10 in critical condition. Robert Jensen, professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the new book, just out “The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men”, joins us to discuss the links between guns and masculinity in American culture. |
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Then finally we examine the presidential trip underway in Japan where Donald Trump is urging the Japanese to buy American weaponry to shoot North Korean missiles “out of the sky”, pressing his hosts to buy more U.S. military hardware to lower the trade deficit. Takako Hikotani, a Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Columbia University and author of an article at Foreign Affairs “Trump’s Gift to Japan: Time for Tokyo to Invest in the Liberal Order”, joins us to discuss Trump’s summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Abe.
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November 5 - The Ruthless Purge of Princes by the Saudi Boy King; The Reaction in Lebanon to Their PM's Sudden Exit; A New Round of Democratic Party Fratricide
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We begin with the arrest of 7 princes in Saudi Arabia by MBS the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who, with the takeover of the Saudi National Guard, is completing a consolidation of his total control of the military after having already taken over Saudi foreign, economic and social policies and ministries. David Hearst, the Editor of Middle East Eye, joins us to discuss the Trump family role in this major shakeup of a corrupt ruling family with the arrest of the outspoken critic of Trump, the billionaire Prince Alaweed bin Talal, following Jared Kushner’s recent secret trip to the kingdom to meet with his new friend MBS. We analyze the links between Trump’s call on the Saudis for the Aramco IPO to be listed on the New York Stock exchange, the sudden resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister who fled to Saudi Arabia and the missile attack on the airport in the Saudi capitol launched from Yemen, and Iran’s fingerprints on the missile attack which has led to speculation that the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is heating up.
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Then we look further into the sudden exit of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri who announced his resignation on the Saudi Al-Arabiya channel, speaking for Riyadh, not Beirut. Thanassis Cambanis, who writes “The Internationalist “column for The Boston Globe and is the author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel”, joins us from Beirut, Lebanon to discuss Hariri’s claim that he was escaping an assassination planned by Hezbollah and how this crisis is impacting the already shaky political order is a country overwhelmed by refugees from the war next door in Syria. |
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Then finally we examine the new round of fratricide going on within the Democratic Party prompted by the forthcoming book by former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager responsible to getting Joe Lieberman on the ticket as Gore’s VP. David Halperin, a former policy advisor to Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and a White House Speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, joins us. We discuss the pantheon of prominent Democrats who have made careers out of losing campaigns and the possibility that the Democrats could lose Tuesday’s critical race for governor in Virginia. |
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November 2 - Trump's Trickle-Down Tax Plan; The Alt-Right Prepares for a Civil War in America That Starts on Saturday; The Tech Giants Who Allowed Russia to Help Elect Trump
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We begin with an analysis of the Trump tax plan hailed today by House Speaker Paul Ryan as “a very important and special moment” for the middle class when it is clear that the main beneficiaries are the super-rich and corporate America. Pavlina Tcherneva, a professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at Bard College who is a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, joins us to discuss the Republican sleight of hand as they do the bidding of their donor class while selling a bill of goods to their voters who will bear the increased burden as they pay more taxes while the debt and deficit explode. We also examine the choice of Jerome Powell as the new Fed Chairman which appears to be an unusually reasonable choice by Trump whose previous picks for high government posts are all hostile to the notion of government itself and are destroying the government departments they head up as they “deconstruct” Steve Bannon’s mythical “administrative state”.
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Then finally with a civil war poised to break out in America on Saturday November the 4th, a violent insurrection led by Antifa “super soldiers” out to kill Trump voters, conservatives and gun-owner, all this according to alt-right websites and conspiracy-monger Alex Jones, we speak with Spencer Sunshine, a researcher and activist whose research interests include U.S. white nationalism, post-war fascism, left/right crossover movements, and left wing antisemitism. He joins us to explore this paranoid fantasy that could have real world consequences since so many right wing gun nuts in the country believe this nonsense. We discuss how a demonstration by Chairman Bob Avakian’s Revolutionary Communist Party that blocked a Los Angles freeway with a sign that said “November 4 it begins”, has morphed into an apocalyptic call for right wing vigilantes to kill leftwing activists trying to spark a civil war. |
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Then we examine the hearings that took place in the last few days on Capitol Hill in which representatives of Facebook, Google and Twitter were grilled by lawmakers concerned that the tech giants allowed Russian fake news to influence the last election and unless something is done, the Russians will interfere even more with the next election. Jonathan Taplin, the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Innovation Lab at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC and author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy” joins us along with Marc Rotenberg, the President and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC, in Washington DC.
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November 1 - Was the Latest Amateur Jihadi "Inspired" By ISIS?; Trump Demagogues Our Broken Immigration System; How Rupert Murdoch Has Created a Fact-Free Universe in Service of Trump
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We begin with the worst terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11 that claimed 8 lives with 6 of the victims tourists, 5 from Argentina and one from Belgium. Hassan Hassan, a Senior Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Peace who was previously a fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program in London and is the author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror”, joins us. We discuss the extent to which the perpetrator, a green card holder from Uzbekistan Sayfullo Saipov, a 29 year old truck driver who worked for Uber and is married with 3 children, was “inspired” by ISIS as the Deputy New York Police Commissioner claims. We assess whether Saipov is another amateur jihadi like most of the previous terrorist attackers of the homeland or if, with the fall of Raqqa, ISIS will be exporting battle-hardened terrorists who could be more deadly as the homegrown terrorist in Las Vegas recently proved to be with a readily-obtained arsenal of assault rifles, instead of the paintball gun Saipov was brandishing. |
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Then we speak with David Schanzer, a professor of the Practice and Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in the School of Public Policy at Duke University. The former Democratic Staff Director for the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, he joins us to discuss Trump’s call to send Saipov to Gitmo and his attack on Senator Schumer for an immigration lottery program that George H W Bush signed into law, and the likely political mileage Trump will get out of demagoguing an immigration system that let Saipov and the Tsarnaev brother into the country. |
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Then finally we look into the role that Rupert Murdoch is playing in distracting up to half of the American population from the daily destruction of the disastrous Trump Administration as he and his media empire’s obedient junkyard dogs attack Hillary Clinton for colluding with Putin and James Comey, both of whom played a major role in electing Donald Trump president. Ruth Ben Ghiat, a Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, joins us to discuss how Murdoch has borrowed Berlusconi’s political/media business model and the propaganda tactics of Putin to create a fact-free alternative universe in the service of America’s Il Duce, mien Fuhrer, our own “dear leader” Donald J. Trump.
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