Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the announcement at the APEC summit in Beijing of a new Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific that some see as a rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the U.S. is pushing which involves 12 countries but excludes China and Russia. An expert on the Chinese economy, Barry Naughton, the author of “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth”, joins us to discuss the possibility that the two treaties are not mutually exclusive and how efforts by China’s new leader to reassert Communist Party orthodoxy will likely come at the expense of increased trade and economic growth as President Xi Jinping dials up the anti-Western and nationalistic rhetoric.   

Part 2

Then we examine the growing ties between Russia and China whose two leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are pumping up anti-Western propaganda and stoking nationalistic fervor at home while cracking down on democratic aspirations and free expression in the press and on social media and the Internet. Gilbert Rozman, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University who specializes in studying the societies of China and Russia, joins us to discuss his article at The Huffington Post, “The Sino-Russia Partnership is Stronger Than the West Thinks” and how much the growing anti-Western nationalism in both countries is overcoming traditional suspicions between the two countries who share a long border with over a billion Chinese on one side and very few Russians on the other side in Russia’s vast under-populated Pacific region in the east.  

Part 3

The finally on Veterans Day we speak with Phillip Butler, a highly decorated combat veteran who spent 8 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He joins us to discuss veteran’s issues following Monday’s announcement by the new head of the VA that he would like to fire as many as 1,000 employees, and also assess why the U.S. has not won a war since 1945, yet has been involved in hundreds of small wars and is now going back to Iraq for a third war in that divided and devastated country.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s warning at the 25^thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that the world is on the brink of a new Cold War and trust should be restored by dialogue with Russia. Nina Khrushcheva, the granddaughter of another Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, joins us to discuss her article at Reuters “Building Berlin’s Wall Helped Avoid a Nuclear War” and her conversations with Gorbachev about the Berlin Wall, and how in Putin’s Russia today, Gorbachev is seen by many as an American spy while Putin accuses her grandfather of “robbing” Russia by handing Crimea over to Ukraine in 1954. 

Part 2

Then we examine the secret mission by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was able to obtain the release of two Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller from captivity in North Korea, and return with them on his plane to their families in the U.S. A former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Donald Gregg, joins us to discuss reports that one of the released prisoners planned to document brutal conditions inside the North’s extensive prison camp system and Ambassador Gregg’s exchanges with a top North Korean diplomat Jang il-Hun prior to the release, that indicated the North Koreans were very concerned that the United Nations report of human rights violations could lead to an indictment of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un before the International Court of Justice.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the hollowing out of the Democratic Party in Congress from two losses in a row in the midterm elections, and speak with John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for The Nation. He joins us to discuss the braindead nature of the Democratic campaigns in which candidates ran away from Obama and healthcare reform, while the president himself did nothing to refute his critics, refusing to use his considerable communication skills to extol his achievements and outline his vision for making life better for most Americans as the Republicans sabotage efforts to improve the economy for the 99% while backing policies that favor their backers, the 1%.