Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the release of the 11 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, a massive data dump the should prove to be the single biggest blow to the offshore world of tax havens and clandestine webs of shell companies that hide the ill-gotten gains of dictators and kleptocrats along with the hidden wealth of the world’s elite of business moguls, celebrities and politicians. Gerard Ryle, the Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who organized the international effort to structure and release the “Panama papers” to more than 100 media outlets worldwide, joins us to discuss how the ICIJ handled this enormous trove of financial and legal documents going back decades that were reported to be leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm situated in Panama.

Part 2

Then we follow up with James Henry who is a Global Justice Fellow at Yale University and a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Investment and a Senior Economic Advisor to the Tax Justice Network. We will discuss the political resistance to going after tax havens and offshore and onshore shell companies and why it took whistleblowers and journalists to uncover this tip of the iceberg of global corruption and not governments or law enforcement, the answer being in large part because the rich and powerful have their money co-mingled with the scum of the earth.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Gabriel Sherman, the National Affairs Editor at New York Magazine and author of the New York Times best-selling biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes, “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country”. He joins us to discuss his latest article at New York Magazine “Operation Trump “Inside the most unorthodox campaign in political history” and the leverage that Donald Trump has over Fox News. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with what is not being discussed at the Nuclear Security Summit underway in Washington and that is the vulnerability of American nuclear weapons in Europe, with 20 or so B61 nuclear bombs about 60 miles from Brussels sitting in bunkers at a base that already a Tunisian-born terrorist tried to blow in 2003. William Arkin, the author of “Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare”, who is a national security consultant to the NBC News Investigative Unit and Vice News where he has an article “America’s Nuclear Weapons in Europe Are the Nuclear Elephant in the Room”, joins us.

Part 2

Then with the warning by the Secretary of Treasury that, while sanctions over the past decade have become the “Smart Power” of U.S. foreign policy because they are cheaper and more effective in compelling America’s adversaries than military power, there is a “risk of overuse”. James Henry, a lawyer and investigative journalist and the former chief economist at McKinsey and Company, who is the lead researcher for the Tax Justice Network, joins us to discuss the tools that the U.S. treasury has in going after the hidden wealth and offshore funds of dictators, kleptocrats and rogue states to alter their behavior short of going the war that usually results in the victims of tyranny being punished while the despots are often rewarded and their power consolidated.

Part 3

Then finally we follow up on Donald Trump’s remarks on punishing women who have abortions and the backlash from the pro-life community whose outrage appears highly hypocritical since, if abortion were to be outlawed, as most Republicans fervently wish, then surely both doctors and patients will be criminalized. Zoe Carpenter, The Nation magazine’s Associate Washington Editor joins us to discuss her article at The Nation “Women Are Already Punished for Trying to End Their Pregnancies” and the extent to which anti-choice groups have pushed women into a legal gray zone where fetal homicide laws are used to punish women for abortions and even miscarriages.