Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the gruesome killing of a Jordanian pilot who was burned alive by the so-called Islamic State in a well-produced video that was apparently shot a month ago. An award-winning Palestinian journalist, Daoud Kuttab, joins us from Amman, Jordan for an update on the outrage that is felt in the Kingdom where a military spokesman has vowed on national television that “our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of all Jordanians.” We will discuss what likely retaliation will take place and what might be the possible strategy behind the Islamic State’s brutal displays of barbarism that now include tossing a man tied to a chair from a seven story building for an alleged “homosexual affair”.

Part 2

Then we look further into the possible motives and consequences behind the brutal death of the Jordanian pilot in a video shot on January 3rd that has just been released by the Islamic State when Jordan’s king was in Washington, apparently intended to show how the king is not minding the store and how impotent the regime has been in winning the pilot’s release. Jillian Schwedler, a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College joins us to discuss the importance of the Kasesbeh tribe, to which the pilot belonged, to the foundation and legitimacy of the Hashemite Kingdom’s rule.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the grandson of the leader of the American Communist Party who became the biggest American capitalist in post-Soviet Russia until he fell afoul of the Vladimir Putin. Bill Browder, the author of the new book, just out, “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice” joins us to discuss the gangster state that the boss of bosses Putin runs, and the inability of Western and European leaders to understand this grave new geopolitical phenomenon of criminal sovereignty, that in the Kremlin is a combination of national security and organized crime, the “mafiya” and nuclear weapons. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest beheading of a Japanese journalist by the so-called Islamic State that is putting enormous pressure on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to engage in a prisoner swap for a captured Jordanian pilot in exchange for an Iraqi suicide bomber. A specialist on the region with extensive field experience in Jordan, Nicholas Heras, a researcher at the Center for a New American Security joins us to discuss the important connection between the Jordanian king and the tribe to which the pilot belongs, and the political strategy behind the Islamic State’s barbarism that is roiling the already fragile cohesion of the Jordanian kingdom which is facing multiple challenges from the wars in the neighborhood and the flood of refugees from Syria and Iraq

Part 2

Then we get an analysis from a leading expert on oil and gas on the major shakeup underway in Saudi Arabia as the new king reshuffles ministries and fires ministers while giving his subjects a present of a $20 billion bonus payout to government workers at the same time keeping the price of oil low as the Saudis flood the market driving the “frackers” out of business while causing American oil giants like Chevron to post 30% losses in quarterly earnings. Fadel Gheit, Managing Director for Oil and Gas at Oppenheimer and Company joins us to discuss the shake-up in the oil patch and its implications for the future.

Part 3

Then finally, with Senator Lindsey Graham condemning the president for not calling the U.S. confrontation with the Islamic State a “religious war”, while Obama counters that the problem is not with the 99% of Muslims but an element within the religion that “have embraced a nihilistic, violent, almost medieval interpretation of Islam”, we discuss political Islam with Arabic-speaking scholar.  Graham Fuller, the former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council joins us to explore the deeper historic, cultural and religious strains of political identity beyond nationalism in Muslim political thinking where the Muslim level of political consciousness contrasts sharply with the western ideas of nation-state.