Full Program

Part 1

With the increasing likelihood of a military conflagration in Ukraine as armed Russian political tourists occupying government buildings clash with Ukrainian riot police, we look into the nightmare scenario of Ukraine’s civilian nuclear power reactors becoming military targets in the event of a Russian invasion. Bennett Ramberg, who was a foreign policy analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and is the author of “Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons For The Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril” joins us. He did extensive investigations following the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine and has an article at Project Syndicate, “The Chernobyl Factor in the Ukraine Crisis”.

Part 2

Then we will speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, about her provocative new book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001 – 2014”. Since 2001 she has spent longer than any other Western reporter in Afghanistan and we will discuss some of the explosive revelations in her book that indicate Pakistan, a country that has received close to $30 billion in taxpayer money since 2001, has been America’s real enemy in Afghanistan, largely responsible for the 1,000 NATO troops killed as well as the 2,300 American soldiers who have died in America’s longest war.

Part 3

Then finally with tax day upon us, we will examine how our tax dollars are spent with Jasmine Tucker, a research analyst at the National Priorities Project, where you can get your own personalized tax receipt of where your money goes at nationalpriorities.org  She will break down who get’s what from our tax dollars, with the military at the head of the line with 27 cents of every dollar, followed by 22.7 cents for Medicare and health programs, all the way down to education that gets a measly 2 cents and energy and environment, a mere 1.9 cents.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Senate hearing considering the Time Warner/Comcast megamerger and get an assessment of whether monopoly power will trump citizen and consumer opposition from Michael Copps, an FCC Commissioner from 2001 to 2011 who now heads the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause. We discuss this test case of hypocrisy that exposes champions of the free market in support monopoly capitalism, and see if consumers will stand up to monopolies and force their elected representatives, who receive campaign cash from Time Warner and Comcast, to act in the interests of their constituents instead of serving their paymasters.

Part 2

Then  we look into what is going on behind the scenes at the U.N. since the U.S Senate and now the House have voted overwhelmingly to deny an Iranian diplomat his seat at the U.N. representing Iran, an appointment the White House has labeled as “not viable”. Former New York Times U.N. correspondent Barbara Crossette, who now covers the United Nations and writes on international affairs for The Nation, joins us to discuss whether this will lead to the State Department denying Ambassador Aboutalebi a visa to enter this country, a move likely to complicate nuclear negotiations underway and undercut Iran’s president Rouhani’s authority, since Rouhani is close to this Iranian diplomat who has already served as Iran’s ambassador to Belgium, the European Union, Italy and Australia.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Christine Fair, a Professor in Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, about revelations by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall that the head of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence General Pasha knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan and examine the decades of duplicity by an ally responsible for the deaths of thousands of American and NATO soldiers and the disastrous and dysfunction relationship the U.S. has with our other so-called ally the Afghan president, who Obama inherited from Bush, but nevertheless Karzai was allowed to “win” the rigged 2009 election after having lost the first round.