Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of the media strategy of the Islamic State in terms of their displays of brutality on television and their choice of sites for executions that have significance in end-of-times Islamic prophesies. An expert on the Arab media, Marwan Kraidy, the Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture at the Annenberg School of Communication and a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, joins us to discuss the obvious attempt by the jihadists to bait the U.S. and the West into sending troops into Islamic lands for an apocalyptic showdown, and whether the disciplined ritual of mass slaughter they just conducted will recruit more fighters or turn off the larger Muslim audience.

Part 2

Then, with the reelection of Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House following the worst route of the Democrats in recent history where they now have their lowest numbers in the House since World War 11, we speak with a long time senior House and Senate staffer Mike Lofgren, the author of “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted”. We discuss how the Democrats could possibly revive their fortunes and whether the Tea Party will drag the Republicans back into intra-party fratricide resulting in another government shutdown.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the flagrant criminality and corruption inside of FIFA, the governing body of the soccer World Cup, whose recent internal report investigating payoffs from Russia and Qatar to get the World Cup tournaments in 2018 and 2022, were declared a clean bill of health and case closed by FIFA’s controversial head Sepp Blatter, even as the author of the report declared it contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of facts and conclusions”. The only reporter banned from Sepp Blatter’s press conferences, investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, the author of “Omerta! Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organized Crime Family”, joins us to discuss the possibility of the German Football League and the English Football Association uniting to boycott the next World Cup. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of the just-completed G-20 summit in Australia at which Vladimir Putin was the odd man out in terms of being ganged up on because of escalating Russian aggression in Ukraine, while the host, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott, was the odd man out in trying to keep global warming off the summit’s agenda while, based on racist ignorance, isolating Australia from global effort to combat Ebola as the only advanced nation refusing to allow its doctors and healthcare workers to go to west Africa. Salvatore Babones, an Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, Australia, joins us from China where he is just returning from Vladivostok in Russia’s far east where he was able to assess the reactions of Russians to their growing global isolation.

Part 2

Then we speak with Iraq expert, Juan Cole, about the latest beheading by the Islamic State of an American aid worker and the surprise visit of America’s top general Martin Dempsey who met with the new Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi in Baghdad before going on to Erbil to meet with the Kurdish Prime Minister Barzani. We discuss how much domestic American politics are shaping America’s strategy in Iraq that does not appear to make any sense as the U.S. becomes the Air Force of the Iranian-backed Shia.

Part 3

Then finally we get an update on the growing outrage in Mexico over the disappearance of 43 students at the hands of a drug gang with ties to local politicians of the leftist PRD Party in Guerrero State. Tim Johnson, the Mexico City bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers joins us to discuss how this latest atrocity in the on-going mayhem from the war on drugs in Mexico has turned into the last straw that broke the camel’s back and is now threatening the administration of President Pena Nieto as corruption scandals linked to him and his wife begin to surface.