Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the gathering storm surrounding the slumlord billionaire owner of the NBA franchise the Los Angeles Clippers, whose poisonous private racism has been exposed in a telephone conversation with his expensive mistress, overnight devaluing the millions Donald Sterling has spent over the years in self-promotion through paid advertizing in the Los Angeles Times for staged banquets headlined by D-list celebrities where he awarded himself honors such as “Humanitarian of the Year”. Ben Carrington, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Race, Sport and Politics” joins us to discuss the plantation mentality of billionaire owners of sports teams, some of whom look upon their players as personal chattel.

Part 2

Then we examine the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and The Philippines signed on the last stop of President Obama’s trip to Asia where he visited four countries involved in disputes with China. Joshua Kurlantzick, a former columnist for Time, correspondent for The American Prospect, writer for Mother Jones and author of “Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World”, joins us to discuss China’s displeasure at Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia that they increasingly see as an attempt to contain China.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Christopher Mitchell, the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance about the more than 400 towns and cities across America who have installed or a planning to install fiber broadband municipal networks as an alternative to the telecom and cable monopolies who appear to have captured Obama’s FCC which is poised to end the government’s commitment to net neutrality. We discuss the need to both support municipalities who are building networks to circumvent cable monopolies with high speed broadband that other advanced nations enjoy, at the same time, holding the FCC’s feet to the fire so they don’t sell out the public and abandon net neutrality. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that the FCC’s new chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing new rules that would give the phone and cable monopolies and oligopolies who control our access to the Internet, the ability to negotiate payola agreements with content providers to fast track their content while degrading access for ordinary users, thus eviscerating the principle of net neutrality that has kept the Internet open to all on a level playing field. John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, a public interest digital rights group based in Washington DC joins us to discuss whether the public is about to lose the most important new medium in human history.

Part 2

Then we examine the significance of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan’s offer of condolences to Armenians over the World War 1 killings on the eve of the 99^th anniversary of what the Armenians and many others consider an act of genocide. David Phillips the Chair of the Turkey-Armenia Reconciliation Commission and author of “Diplomatic History: The Turkey-Armenia Protocols” joins us to discuss his efforts to bring about reconciliation over what happened in 1915 that since then has been denied by the Turks and festers a source of anger amongst the Armenian diaspora and in Armenia where its border with Turkey remains closed.

Part 3

The finally, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu suspending U.S.-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians over President Abbas’s unity pact with Hamas, we will speak with Leila Hilal who served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiations Department and acted as an external advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team at the Annapolis peace talks of 2008. We discuss what this means for the peace talks that were going nowhere and how the secular Fatah group in the West bank can form a working relationship with its Islamist rivals Hamas in Gaza, who refuse to recognize Israel and who Israel in turn considers a terrorist group.