Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the claim by Donald Trump without any supporting evidence, that he would have won the popular vote but for the millions of fraudulent votes cast. Dan Wallach, a professor in the systems group at Rice University’s Department of Computer Science where he manages Rice’s computer security lab and does research on the security of electronic voting systems, joins us to discuss the recount underway in Wisconsin that was initiated by the Green Party’s Jill Stein which Donald Trump has condemned. We look into the reasons why a recount is needed, given the Intelligence Community’s concerns about Russian interference in our election, and that since a paper audit trail is available in Wisconsin and Michigan, a recount will provide a more accurate count and either confirm or dispel any outside interference in our recent close election.

Part 2

Then we speak with Wayne White, a former expert with the Iraq Study Group who was the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia. He joins us to discuss his article at Lobelog “Obama Brought the Islamic State to its Knees: Watch Donald Trump Take the Credit” and assess how much longer the Islamic State will survive in Mosul and Raqqa and the impact of a the likely fall of Aleppo in terms of a flood of refugees into Turkey where Erdogan, who is angry with the E.U. over its criticism of his purges, could unlock the doors to the camps and send refugees flooding into Europe. 

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Ann Louise Bardach, a PEN USA Award-winning journalist and author who is an expert on Cuba having written extensively about Fidel Castro in “Cuba Confidential” and “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington”. She interviewed Castro at length for Vanity Fair which she wrote about in The Guardian “Glory and my place in history do not worry me: My Interview with Fidel Castro” and we  discuss her interview in which, when asked what would happen to Cuba after his death, Castro replied “It’s not my fault that I haven’t died yet, it’s not my fault that the CIA failed to kill me”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin on this Thanksgiving, with Judy Wicks, an author and activist who is leading a delegation at Standing Rock serving Thanksgiving dinner to those resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. For 15 years she has held an annual Native American Thanksgiving Dinner that gives thanks for the many foods in our diet first cultivated by Native Americans. Today she is cooking dinner for the Native American protesters and their supporters who have been attacked by dogs, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets and sprayed with water cannons in sub-zero temperatures, making a stand to defend their ancestral lands from what they call the “black snake”, an oil pipeline that will contribute to global warming and the further destruction of our planet.

Part 2

Then we speak with George Lakoff, the Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California at Berkeley and a founding senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute. We discuss his article at Common Dreams “A Minority President Trump: Why the Polls Failed and What the Majority Can Do” and assess the reasons the Republicans have ended up in control of the country in spite of not winning the popular vote, as well as what people can do to fight back without just showcasing Trump in the limelight, but rather highlighting the majority’s positive moral view in the frame of the majority’s positive worldview. 

Part 3

Then finally, as we head into a plutocratic future, accelerated by Trump’s election, we will examine what can be done to reverse the oligarchical takeover of the world where just 85 families control half of the planet’s wealth. A trend that resembles medieval duchies controlled by a few families and powerful multi-national companies, with a shrunken middle class of professionals and a vast global underclass. Stephan Schwartz, the editor of the daily web publication, Schwartzreport.net and author of “The 8 Laws of Change: How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social Transformation”, joins us to discuss the movement away from concentrated global power in the hands of a few towards local control and cooperative engagement of, by and for the many.