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Senator Bernie Sanders on Running for President; Is Russia Laying the Groundwork for an Invasion of Eastern Ukraine?; Can Obama Buck the Midterm Election Trend?
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We begin with the longest serving independent member of Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders, and discuss the all-nighter he and 28 senators are about to engage in all Monday night on the Senate floor ending at 9 AM Tuesday, in an effort to raise awareness and confront the reality of climate change. Senator Sanders is the Chair of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee and was recently interviewed by John Nichols at The Nation in an article “Bernie Sanders: ‘I am Prepared to Run for President of the United States’”.
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Then with Russian propaganda ramping up to a fever pitch inventing claims that the new Ukrainian government is oppressing Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the East, we will speak with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, Paul Magocsi, to find out whether Putin is laying the groundwork for an invasion of Eastern Ukraine. The author of “The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism” and the forthcoming “Crimea: And The Crimean Tatars”, Paul Magocsi researches nationalism, in particular among ethnic groups living in border areas, and he will describe the new government in Ukraine that Putin is demonizing. |
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Then finally we be joined by Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, the author of “Governing America: The Revival of Political History” and discuss his latest article at CNN, “Obama may hate the midterm results”. We discuss recent polls that indicate that the Republicans are likely to take back the Senate and hold the House in November’s midterm election and what strategies Obama and the Democrats can employ this year to buck the historical trend that had presidents Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan and George W. Bush all suffering reversals in their second terms, hastening their lame duck status. |
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March 9 - The Economic Hits Russia is Taking Now and Could Take in the Future; The Granddaughter of the Soviet Leader Who Gave Crimea to Ukraine; Exposing "The Deep State"
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We begin with an analysis of the economic fallout from Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea that has caused the Russian stock market to plummet and the rouble to lose 10% of its value. Paul Sullivan, a professor of economics at the National Defense University and a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists where he specializes in global energy and resource threats, joins us to discuss the economic hits Russia is taking now with much more to come if the situation escalates. |
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Then we speak with the granddaughter of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who gave Crimea to Ukraine is 1954, Nina Khrushcheva, a professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School. We discuss rising nationalist fever in Russia inflamed by the Putin-controlled media’s propaganda that Ukrainian rightwing nationalists are threatening Russian-speakers in Ukraine and that the new government in Kyiv is controlled by neo-Nazis and Anti-Semites, even though Ukraine’s new Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is Jewish. |
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Then finally we speak with Mike Lofgren, a 28 year veteran House and Senate senior staffer who just wrote an essay published at BillMoyers.com, “Anatomy of the Deep State”, which outlines a hybrid of Corporate America and the national security state which is out of control and unconstrained. We discuss the “Deep State” as the thread that runs through the history of the last three decades, explaining how we have deregulation, the financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion of civil liberties and perpetual war. |
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March 6 - Energy as a Weapon in Russia's War with Ukraine; The Ramifications of the Upcoming Referendum in Crimea; The Senate's Shameful Act
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We begin and look into the standoff between Russia and the Ukraine in terms of energy being used as a weapon by Russia to squeeze Ukraine and the U.S. in turn retaliating by ramping up exports of natural gas to Ukraine and the E.U. Michael Klare, a Five College professor of peace and world security and author of “Blood and Oil” and “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources” joins us to discuss his article at The Nation “Petro-machismo” and how much the U.S. “fracking” boom has effected geopolitics. |
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Then we discuss the ramifications of the upcoming referendum in Crimea that will effectively place the Ukrainian territory just occupied by Russian forces under the Kremlin’s control. John Quigley who was a research scholar at Moscow University and has dealt with conflicts between Russia and Ukraine after the breakup of the USSR on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, joins us to discuss his article at the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law, “Finding a Way Forward for Crimea”. |
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Then finally we examine the shameful vote in the U.S. Senate in which seven Democratic Senators joined the Republicans in blocking the nomination of Debo Adegbile to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Will Bunch, an award-winning senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News joins us to discuss the role of Pennsylvania’s Senators, including the Democrat, Senator Bob Casey, in scuttling Obama’s appointment because his nominee represented a client considered a “cop-killer” in Pennsylvania, thus establishing a dangerous precedent that makes attorneys responsible for the acts of the clients they are sworn to defend. |
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March 5 - A Report from Crimea on the Volatile Standoff Between Russian and Ukrainian Forces; Has the CIA Been Spying on the Senate?; An Analysis of Obama's 2015 Budget
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We begin and go to Crimea in Ukraine and speak withSimon Shuster who is Time magazine’s correspondent covering Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has just witnessed the volatile and potentially explosive standoff between Ukrainian solders under siege in their bases and Russian Special Forces surrounding them, and the massing of Russian forces on the Crimean border with Ukraine, with Ukrainian forces mobilizing on the other side in a tense confrontation where one shot could spark a war.
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Then we examine the possibility the CIA has been spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee following the CIA Inspector General’s Office’s request to the Justice Department to investigate malfeasance by the agency which is holding up the release of a 6,300 page report on the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program. Someone with firsthand knowledge of the shameful Bush/Cheney torture regime, Glenn Carle, who was a member of the CIA’s clandestine Service for 23 years, retiring in 2007 as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for transnational threats and is the author of “The Interrogator: An Education”, joins us to discuss why the CIA does not want this report released. |
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Then finally we look into Obama’s 2015 budget with Joel Friedman, the Vice President for Federal Fiscal Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. We will discuss the extent to which the budget is a wish list, given predictable Republican opposition to closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, and where there might be some common ground between the White House and House Republicans, as well as examining the real numbers involved in the defense budget that appears not to be undergoing any meaningful reduction. |
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March 4 - Is Putin Delusional, Cynical or Both?; The Prospects of a New Cold War; How a Victory or Defeat of Putin in Ukraine Effects the Middle Class
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We begin with the volatile standoff between Russia and Ukraine, made even more unsettling by Vladimir Putin’s press conference which was so full of contradictions and fabrications that many wonder what kind of advice and information the Russian president is getting. Kathryn Stoner, the Deputy Director of the Center for Democratic Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and author of “Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia” joins us to discuss the extent to which Putin is delusional or cynical, or both. |
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Then we look into the prospect of a new Cold War with Russia, in particular if the crisis in Ukraine goes from bad to worse, with Putin becoming more isolated and defiant. Roger Morris, who served in the United States Foreign Service and on the senior staff of the National Security Council under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, who is completing a book on a comparative history of the United States and Soviet Russia, joins us to discuss how much the unraveling events in Ukraine could turn back the clock. |
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Then finally, following Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, we examine the likely impact of worsening relations between the U.S. and Russia on the faltering efforts to end the murderous and destructive war in Syria. Aaron David Miller, who has been an adviser to six Secretaries of State, and has an article at CNN “Putin’s move could be costly to U.S., Middle East”, joins us to discuss the consequences for the Middle East of both a Putin victory and a Putin defeat in Ukraine. |
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