Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
June 6 - Do We Have One Year Left to Save American Democracy?; Why Is Trump Undermining Alliances and Ceding American Leadership?; The Supreme Court to Test the Boundaries Between Technology and Privacy
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the proposition that we may only have one year left to save American democracy from an autocratic president who is increasingly isolated from reality as he and his tightening inner-circle of right wing zealots move to undo institutions and confront the truth in a fascistic approach to governance that indicates a fascist worldview. Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale who has researched and written extensively on Hitler and Stalin, joins us to discuss his latest book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” and how as the incompetence and crudeness of the Trump Administration drives down the popularity of the Republicans heading into the 2018 elections, Trump will try to stage a coup to overthrow American democracy. We will assess the extent to which American institutions already under attack from the Trump Administration like the judiciary, the military, the intelligence community, the press and now much of corporate America as well as an expanding majority of the American people, will fight back against Donald Trump’s incipient authoritarian regime.
|
 |
|
|
Then we speak with Thomas Wright a fellow and director of the Project on International Order and Strategy, as well as a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. He joins us to discuss his latest book “All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power” and explore the reasons why Trump is undermining America’s long-standing alliances while ceding global leadership to China on trade, the environment and now human rights. |
 |
|
|
Then finally, with the Supreme Court taking up a cell phone tracking case that will test the boundaries between technology and privacy, we examine the issues surrounding CSLI, Cell Site Location Information with Marc Rotenberg, the President and Executive Director of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He joins us to discuss how the current Third Party Doctrine which the government relies on to justify warrantless tracking and surveillance needs to updated in the digital age as smart phones now can provide precise location information on citizens similar to GPS tracking devices which in 2012 the Supreme Court ruled against allowing the police to place on vehicles on 4thAmendment grounds. |
 |
mp3audio:
June 5 - Is Trump Not Just Out of His Depth But Also Out of His Mind?; The Motives Behind the Blockade of Qatar
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the increasing attacks by Donald Trump on the Mayor of London who is dealing with the aftermath of a terrible terrorist attack which would normally elicit support and solidarity from allies not petty insults and unseemly opportunism. A CIA veteran Robert Baer, who is now the national security affairs analyst for CNN, joins us to discuss the possibility that the leader of the free world in not just out of his depth, but is out of his mind. We examine our tenuous reliance on the few adults in the room that we rely on to contain Trump’s erratic behavior as we learn that Generals Mattis and McMaster were overridden by Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller who edited Trump’s NATO speech at the last minute to remove America’s support for Article 5 of the NATO treaty. We also assess the pressure on the British PM Theresa May to release a secret report she oversaw as Home Secretary on Saudi funding and influence in jihadist groups inside the U.K. who just carried out a third attack with one of Saturday’s terrorists featured in a documentary shown last year on Britain’s Channel Four “The Jihadis Next Door” who was filmed holding up the ISIS flag in Regents Park complaining about the treatment of Muslims in the U.K. And now that six Arab states have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and are essentially blockading the country to bring about regime change, we will look into whether this confrontation is a step towards a war with Iran.
|
 |
|
|
Then we examine further the motives behind the growing crisis in the Gulf as a Saudi-led blockage of neighboring Qatar is underway cutting off transportation links and food supplies as well as isolating important American military bases in the Middle East. David Hearst, the Editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye where his latest article is “Three potential motives behind the spat between Qatar and Gulf neighbors”, joins us to discuss the subtexts beyond the Saudi charge that Qatar is too friendly towards Iran. We will look into whether this is a part of a U.S.-Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli strategy to defund and isolate Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and contain Iran and how much it is payback for the “Arab Spring” from reactionary monarchs and military dictatorships who were rattled by popular revolts and want to continue to hold onto power at any cost.
|
 |
mp3audio:
June 4 - Another Terrorist Attack and Blowback in the UK; Jared Kushner's Meeting With the KGB's Banker; Republican Resistance to Dealing with Domestic Terrorism
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with a second horrific terrorist attack in the U.K. that has left 7 innocents dead and 48 wounded and 3 terrorists shot dead by police with 12 more suspects arrested. Nafeez Ahmed, the editor-in-chief of Insurgeintelligence at medium.com and a weekly columnist for Middle East Eye, joins us from London to discuss his latest article at Insurgeintelligence “The Manchester Bombings as Blowback” and the role of the British Intelligence services in covertly supporting jihadist groups in Syria and Libya. We look into the handling of the 300 ISIS and Al Nusra jihadists who have returned to the U.K. after fighting in Syria and Iraq and how this latest terrorist attack is likely to impact Thursday’s election as the current Prime Minister Theresa May’s lead in the polls continues to shrink while she vows to clampdown after announcing that there has been “too much tolerance” of Islamic extremism in the U.K. Since before coming Prime Minister she was Home Secretary, Theresa May is particularly vulnerable to the same criticism that she herself is levelling. |
 |
|
|
Then we speak with Anders Aslund, a professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He served as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow and was an economic advisor to the government of Russia and joins us to discuss Jared Kushner’s December meeting with the head of Russia’s VEB bank that is both a private slush fund for Vladimir Putin and an asset of the Russian Intelligence services. We examine the Trump family and the Trump campaign’s murky ties to Russian money and who will emerge the winner from Trump’s war with the U.S. intelligence community. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we look into another stabbing that was not labelled as terrorism that took place recently in Portland and speak with Daryl Johnson, the former head analyst for domestic terrorism at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He joins us to discuss the political resistance he experienced from Republican lawmakers who thwarted efforts to identify and combat the growth of white nationalist militias and terrorist groups inside the United States which he wrote about in his book “Rightwing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorist Threat is Being Ignored”. |
 |
mp3audio:
Tags:
June 1 - Trump Joins Bannon's Dark Side to Trash the Planet; Hundred of Saudi Students in the US Have Joined ISIS; Living in Fear in Trump's America
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with today’s expected announcement by Donald Trump that he is taking the United States out of the 195-nation Paris Accords on combating climate change claiming he is fulfilling “my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens”. Without bothering to analyze the absurd and specious justifications Trump offered, we will speak with Bruce Bartlett, a former senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush administration. He joins us to discuss his concern that “the evidence is becoming overwhelming that Trump lacks the temperament, basic knowledge or intelligence to be a minimally competent president” and the deeper problem of a leader unable to absorb essential information who listens to the white nationalist world view of a bitter, failed Hollywood producer driven by hatred of liberals, rather than the only adults in his inner circle Gary Cohn and General McMaster, whose tenuous tenure lasts only as long as they are prepared to cover-up Trump’s alarming incompetence. We will assess the even greater danger to the nation if one of the adults quits in disgust, only to be replaced by another Bannon, as well as Bruce Bartlett’s forthcoming book “The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks” and his article at The Guardian, “Donald Trump’s incompetence is a problem. His staff should intervene”.
|
 |
|
|
Then we examine an alarming new report on the real terrorist threat facing the nation that the White House and the Washington political establishment is ignoring or covering up, and that is the fact that 400 Saudi and Kuwaiti students living in the United States mostly on government scholarships have joined terrorist groups, mainly ISIS, with some of them returning back to the United States. Ali Al-Ahmed, the co-author of the new report “From American College Campuses to ISIS Camps, How Hundreds of Saudis Joined ISIS in the U.S”, joins us to discuss how the Saudi government has blocked this information from the U.S. government and the failure of American intelligence and the lack of coordination among federal agencies. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we look into the impact that Trump’s immigration policies are having on migrant workers and their families, with American-born kids living in fear that their parents could be deported at any moment. Gabriel Thompson, a journalist who has worked with immigrant laborers in the lettuce fields of Arizona and the poultry plants of Alabama, joins us to discuss his latest book “Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture”. |
 |
mp3audio:
Tags:
May 31 - The Untimely Death of American Leadership; Trump to Allow Insurance Companies to Drop Contraception Mandate; Diplomats Desert Afghanistan Following Bombing Likely Directed By Pakistan
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the apparent intention of the Trump Administration to pull out of the 195-nation Paris Accords to deal with global climate change, leaving the U.S. in the company of the only other holdouts in the world, Syria and Nicaragua. Jody Freeman the Archibald Cox Professor at Harvard Law School and the founding director of the Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program who served as Counselor for Energy in the Obama White House, joins us. We will discuss this nail in the coffin for America’s global leadership since World War 11 now coming to an end as China and the European Union vow to step up and accelerate their effort to reduce CO2 emissions causing climate change. And while the once-respected United States is fast becoming an unpredictable, unreliable and even dangerous player on the world stage, we assess how the rest of the world will move ahead without the U.S. and whether Trump’s actions will in any way slow innovation and technological change underway to move us to clean and renewable energy.
|
 |
|
|
Then we look into another planned reversal by Trump as this unpopular president intends to kill the popular birth control coverage inviting insurance companies to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that requires employers to cover cost-free contraception in their health insurance plans. Gretchen Borchelt, the Vice President for Reproductive Rights and Health at the National Women’s Law Center joins us to discuss how the religious and moral objections of a minority will now trump the rights of a majority in terms of access to reproductive health care. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we analyze the impact of the huge explosion in front of the German and Turkish embassies in Kabul that killed 90 and wounded hundreds in a terrorist act that the Taliban insist they had no part in. Thomas Barfield, the President of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies whose office in Kabul suffered damage, joins us to discuss the exodus of diplomatic personnel underway that is a no-confidence vote in Afghanistan’s weak government and the likelihood that Pakistan is behind yet another act of destabilization. |
 |
mp3audio:
Tags:
RSS Latest Radio Programs
Pacifica App