Full Program

Part 1

We begin with remarks by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckerbee who invoked the holocaust in criticizing President Obama’s deal with Iran, saying that Obama “will take Israelis and march them to the doors of the ovens”. Matthew Sutton, a Professor of History at Washington State University and author of “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism” joins us to discuss Huckerbee’s attempt to appeal to Christian Zionists who love Israel because it is central to bringing about the rapture at the end of times according to their interpretation of the Bible’s book of Revelation. We examine the relationship between American evangelicalism, apocalyptic thought, and political activism during times of national crisis and war.

Part 2

Then we look into the possible release of Jonathan Pollard who is coming up for parole after serving 30 years for spying for Israel. CIA veteran Melvin Goodman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and author of “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism”, joins us to discuss the damage that Pollard did to America’s national security and why this spy, who first tried to sell America’s most valuable secrets to Libya, then Saudi Arabia, has become a hero in Israel and a bargaining chip in U.S./Israeli relations.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the talks underway in Ethiopia with President Obama and leaders from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and the African Union over the future of South Sudan which is mired in a brutal fratricidal war between two warring tribal factions. Lako Tongun, a professor of International and Intercultural Studies and Political Studies at Pitzer College, who was born and raised in South Sudan, joins us to discuss what pressure can be brought to bear on South Sudan’s president and vice president whose personal war with each other has cost the world’s newest country tens of thousands of its citizens killed with 2.2 million displaced.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s trip to Kenya and go to Nairobi to speak with Kefa Otiso, a Professor of Geography and Director of the Global Village at Bowling Green State University who is the founding president of the U.S.-based Kenya Scholars and Studies Association. We discuss the country’s excited anticipation of Obama’s “homecoming” arrival on Friday which has heightened security concerns because of recent terrorist atrocities by al Shabaab leading to a rebuke of CNN by Kenya’s Interior Minister who has demanded they apologize for calling his country “a hotbed of terrorism”.  And, before heading on to meet with Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime, Obama will meet with Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta, who was up until recently facing trial at the International Criminal Court charged with orchestrating election violence in 2007-2008 that claimed over 1,100 lives.

Part 2

Then we go to Beirut, Lebanon and speak with a political analyst and commentator on Middle East geopolitics,Sharmine Narwani. She joins us to discuss the local reaction to Secretary of State Kerry’s efforts to sell the P5+1 deal with Iran to a skeptical if not insultingly disrespectful U.S. Senate where the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee opened the hearing by charging that Kerry had been “fleeced” by the Iranians. We will also get an update on the war next door in Syria where Turkey appears to be taking a more forceful stance against the Islamic State.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the consequences of a shift in Turkey’s policy towards the Islamic State following a terrorist bombing of Kurdish students inside Turkey near the Syrian border and Thursday’s clash on the border in which a Turkish soldier was killed by fire from Islamic State fighters inside Syria. The author of “The Kurdish Spring: A new Map for the Middle East’, David Phillips, the director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, joins us to argue that the decision by Turkey to allow the U.S. to use the Incirlik NATO airbase to strike the Islamic State is a game-changer.