May 19 - The Ghosts of Iraq Haunt Republican Presidential Candidates; How Governor Scott Walker Bought Wisconsin's Supreme Court; "The Misfires in Hersh's Big Bin Laden Story"

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We begin with the ghosts of the Iraq war haunting the Republicans in the 2016 presidential race, following Jeb Bush’s stumbles and now the impending entry of Senator Lindsey Graham into the race with his call to send an additional 10,000 American troops into the latest Iraq quagmire. Roger Morris, who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, joins us to provide a perspective on what happened to the monopoly that Republicans had over competence and leadership in foreign policy from Eisenhower through to George Bush senior, compared to the current crop of neophytes and ignoramuses recklessly trying to prove who is the most hawkish.

 

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Then we speak with John Nichols, the Nation magazine’s Washington correspondent and associate editor of the Capitol Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. We will look into the man who might end up as the Republican front-runner for president and the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Governor Scott Walker campaign finance case that is now in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a body that Scott Walker has stacked with conservative judges elected on a torrent of campaign money from similar sources that prompted the original criminal investigation into the Walker campaign’s illegal coordination with the Wisconsin Club for Growth and other big Republican donors.

 

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Then finally we speak with independent investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter who specializes in U.S. national security policy. He has an article at Truthout “The Misfire in Hersh’s Big Bin Laden Story” and we discuss what parts of Seymour Hersh’s explosive challenge to the official narrative of the Bin Laden raid stand up, and what aspects of his controversial account of the SEAL’s killing of Bin Laden misfire.

 

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May 18 - Curbing The Pentagon's Military Weaponry to Police Forces; Chasing Ghosts in the War on Terror; The Fall of Ramadi and Historical Amnesia Over Iraq

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We begin with President Obama’s actions on Monday to limit military-style equipment for police forces, banning some types of heavy weaponry and restricting the availability of other equipment supplied under a Pentagon program. Elizabeth Beavers, the Legislative Associate for Militarism and Civil Liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, who lobbies Congress to end the Pentagon giveaway of military weaponry to America’s police forces, joins us. We discuss the significance of Obama’s executive order and what pushback it is likely to meet.

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Then we speak with Dr. John Mueller, the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security at Ohio State University and the author of “Terror, Security and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security”. He joins us to discuss the millions of false terrorist leads the FBI has tracked down since 9/11 in a futile activity known as “chasing ghosts”, and why in the most recent so-called terrorist attack attributed to ISIS in Garland, Texas, the tip-off by the “hacktivist” group Anonymous to the Garland police two days earlier, was ignored.  

 

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Part 3

Then finally we examine the latest setback by the Iraqi army and Shia militias with the loss of Ramadi to the self-declared Islamic State. Iraq expert Juan Cole, a Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East” joins us to discuss why the fall of Ramadi is significant in spite of protestations by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the contrary.

 

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May 17 - As the Right Wing Revolution Runs Out of Steam, Where is the Left?; Desperate Stateless Migrants Adrift In Southeast Asia's Andaman Sea; Republican Tactics to Drive a Wedge Between Hillary and Liberal Democrats

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We begin with the looming challenges of income inequality, corruption, global warming, and the big data surveillance state that we face and discuss the absence of a progressive agenda to deal with these challenges as America and most of the developed nations move to the right politically, digging the hole deeper. Richard Parker, who teaches economics and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, joins us to look into where the likely change will come from as the Reagan/Thatcher right wing revolution runs out of steam leaving the bankrupt political landscape open.

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Then we look into the humanitarian disaster in Southeast Asia as persecuted Rohingya Muslims flee Burma/Myanmar in rickety boats that are adrift in Andaman Sea after being turned away by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Juliane Schober, an anthropologist who studies Buddhist practice in Burma/Myanmar, joins us to discuss the unfolding tragedy and the forced statelessness of the Rohingya who are fleeing to neighboring Muslim countries which don’t want to take them in.

 

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Then finally we examine tactics Republican political operatives are using to drive a wedge between liberal Democrats and Hillary Clinton with Ken Goldstein, a Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco who is one the country’s premier experts on the use and impact of political advertising. He joins us to assess Hillary’s vulnerabilities and the meltdowns on the Republican side as their leading presidential candidate ties himself in knots trying to explain his position on the Iraq war. 

 

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May 14 - The Glaring Need to Invest in Transportation Infrastructure; The House Ends the NSA's Bulk Collection of Data on Americans; Assuaging the Nervous Saudi and Gulf Monarchs

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We begin with the the fallout from the Amtrack derailment in Philadelphia which could have been prevented by a speed-control system known as  PTC, Positive Train Control, and speak with Robert Puentes, a Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program and Director of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative. He joins us to discuss the lack of any overall national plan to link rail, air and road networks and the desperate need for investment in transportation infrastructure at a time of record low interest rates when money is cheap to borrow.     

 

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Then we examine the fate of the USA Freedom Act in the Senate after an overwhelming vote in the House of 338 to 88 to end the NSA’s bulk collection of data on American citizens. We speak with a 37 year veteran with the National Security Agency, William Binney, who rose to the rank of Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting Group at the NSA, and we will discuss how the data that has been collected so far is not just metadata but personal content that violates the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution.

 

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Then finally, as the U.S. and the P5+1 move closer to ending Iran’s isolation with the nuclear deal, we look into the assurances against potential missile, maritime and cyber attacks from Iran that President Obama offered to nervous Saudi Arabian and Gulf State monarchs and princes gathered at Camp David.  Iranian/American historian Maziar Behrooz, a Professor of History at San Francisco State University joins us to discuss what the Wahabbis and the Sunni monarchs.find most unsettling, the revival of the underdogs in the region, the Shia.
 

 

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May 13 - Cutting Amtrak's Funds Hours After a Tragic Derailment; The Double Standard with CIA Leakers; The Big Lies About Education "Reform"

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We begin with the Amtrack derailment in Philadelphia that killed seven people and injured 200 and look into why within a day of the tragedy the Republican House voted to slash Amtrack’s funding by $251 million from its previous paltry funding of $1.14 billion, less than half of the $2.45 billion President Obama had requested. Andy Kunz, the President and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association joins us to discuss the reasons why America is the only developed country without a modern rail system that is now being further starved of funds while China is spending $128 billion a year on its nationwide high speed rail system.

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Then we speak with Jesselyn Radack, the head of the Government Accountability Project’s National Security and Human Rights Project about the sentencing of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for leaking classified information to The New York Times’ James Risen. We discuss the glaring double standard of jailing Sterling for revealing information about Operation Merlin, a botched attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, while allowing former CIA chief General Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor for giving highly classified information to his biographer and lover.


 

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Then finally we examine what is behind the privatization of education in the name of “reform” that is turning America’s students into profit centers to be saddled with a lifetime of debt for education without knowledge. The author of the new book “Sixteen for ’16: A Progressive Agenda for a Better America”, Salvatore Babones, joins us. He is a professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and we discuss his article at Salon “Education ‘reform’s’ big lie: The real reason the right has declared war on our public schools”.

 

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