Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the tectonic shifts underway in the U.S. political landscape that are also occurring in Europe where both the far left and the far right are peeling away from the traditional socialist and conservative parties in the form of more radical left parties like Podemos and Syriza and more radical right parties like the National Front in France gaining ground. Michael Lind, a co-founder of the New America Foundation whose latest book is “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States” joins us to discuss how the same dynamic is underway in the United States with the traditional Republican moderates all but extinct as the GOP, which now has Ronald Reagan at its center, moves further to the right with a populist demagogue Donald Trump competing against a far-right ideologue, Ted Cruz, for leadership. While on the Democratic side Hillary Clinton is barely holding the center as a Democratic Socialist moves the party to the left.

Part 2

Then we look into Michael Bloomberg’s possible entry into the presidential race which means that not only do we have billionaires in the backrooms deciding who will be president, we have them up front, with another billionaire considering joining Donald Trump in the race. Jeffrey Winters, a professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and author of “Oligarchy” joins us to discuss the brazen nature of America’s oligarchs who have not only captured the economy but are now moving not just to buy our politician, but to buy the White House itself.

Part 3

The finally, on the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square that ousted the Mubarak dictatorship, we  discuss the fate of the pro-democracy activists now that euphoria has turned to despair with Egypt firmly in control of an even more repressive military regime under General Sisi, while those who led the revolution are either in jail or in exile. Nancy Okail, the Executive Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy joins us to discuss how and why the revolution failed and what the nature of the next revolution will be. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the role of a whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency Miguel Del Torel, who first revealed the toxic nature of the water in Flint, Michigan only to be silenced and gagged for doing his job by the EPA’s Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman, a political appointee. Investigative journalist Curt Guyette, who heads the Michigan Democracy Watch Project with the ACLU of Michigan, who previously worked in Detroit with the Metro Times as an investigative reporter, columnist and new editor for 18 years, joins us for an update. He was the first to publish the EPA memo leaked by Miquel Del Torel that first recognized the extraordinarily high levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water and called for phosphate treatment for corrosion control by the MDEQ, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Inexplicably Susan Hedman decided not to have the EPA compel the MDEQ  to apply the $100 a day phosphate treatment to protect the Flint water infrastructure from leaching lead but instead silenced Miguel Del Torel.  

Part 2

Then we look into the report issued today in the U.K. by Sir Robert Owen, the chairman of the public inquiry into the poisoning by radioactive Polonium of the exiled Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London ten years ago. First Karen Dawisha, a Professor of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio joins us. She is the author of “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?” and we discuss the break between Litvinenko and his boss Putin who was then the head of the successor agency to the KGB, the FSB, over the Russian intelligence service’s complicity in the bombing of apartment buildings on the outskirts of Moscow in 1999 that were blamed on Chechen rebels and were used by Putin as an excuse to go to war and thus rise to power.

Part 3

Then we hear from an expert on U.S. relations with the states of the former Soviet Union, Matthew Rojansky. He is the Director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center and we discuss what diplomatic fallout might follow from the report that points a finger at Putin for “probably” approving the assassination but, since the Russian leader has now made himself indispensable to solving the war in Syria, it is likely that Putin will get away with what amounts to nuclear terrorism on the streets of London.