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August 25 - A Showdown in Syria Looms; A Political Use of Military Force in Syria; "The United States of Paranoia"
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We begin with the almost certain military response to the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria and speak with Robert Baer, a veteran CIA operations officer who worked for decades in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. The author of a number of best-sellers, Robert Baer is now an Intelligence Analyst on CNN and he joins us to discuss why military intervention in Syria is a bad idea, even if it is all but inevitable. |  |
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Then we get further analysis on a likely U.S. strike from Henri Barkey, a professor of International Relations at Lehigh University who served on the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department. We discuss growing international pressure on President Obama to act in response to the use of weapons of mass destruction and how a punitive political, as opposed to military use of force, will do little to change the outcome of Syria’s agonizing civil war that the majority of American want the U.S. to stay out of. |
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Then finally we speak with Jesse Walker, a Senior Editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com. He is the author of a new book “The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory” that traces the history of political paranoia in America and explores the reasons why people are attracted to conspiracy theories, that may be harmless when ordinary citizens believe them, but can be a lot more dangerous when those in power act on those beliefs. |
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August 22 - Crossing the Red Line in Syria; Restoring the Old Order in Egypt; Obama Calls for Cutting College Costs While Ignoring the For-Profit College Racket
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We begin with the latest apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria that has both the French government and Senator John McCain calling for the use of force against the Assad regime. Raymond Zilinskas, a former U.N. chemical and biological weapons inspector in Iraq, who directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies joins us to discuss the evidence so far that might indicate Assad has crossed President Obama’s red line.
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Then we look into why the Egyptian military decided to release the former dictator Hosni Mubarak from jail at a time when they are claiming that their month-long imposition of martial law and the bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is not a coup and that they want to return democracy and civilian rule to Egypt. Egyptian journalist Emad Mekay, a senior fellow in the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, who writes for Al Jazeera and Inter-Press Service, joins us to discuss whether the army is restoring the old order. |
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Then finally we assess the president’s proposed college-rating system that he is rolling out on his bus tour of the northeast to promote lowering the cost of college. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” and a new book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Public Schools”, joins us to discuss how Obama could claim to want to lower college cost while not dealing with the taxpayer-funded for-profit college racket that is saddling students with worthless diplomas and mountains of debt. |
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August 21 - Why Manning and Not Cheney?; Why is Pacifica Radio Losing Audience and Going Broke?; The Journalist Booted Off RT - Russia's English-Language Cable Network
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We begin with the 35 year sentence that Bradley Manning received and speak with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff who went public in 2005 with his knowledge that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the “guidance” that led to America’s torture disgrace. We discuss how much Manning hurt the United States compared to Cheney and why others convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, Cuba and Russia received much lesser sentences.
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Then we look into The New York Times article “Democracy May Prove the Doom of WBAI” and examine the reasons why the Pacifica network is losing listeners with two of its five stations facing bankruptcy. John Dinges, a professor and director of radio at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of “A Guidebook for Public Radio Journalism” joins us to discuss the expensive elections listeners are boycotting and the top-heavy governance, about which the article states, “unless Pacifica reforms it will simply govern itself to death”. |
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Then finally we speak with James Kirchick, a journalist and foreign correspondent who is a leading voice on American gay politics and international gay rights. He was booted off RT, Russia’s English language cable network for attacking Putin’s anti-gay crackdown, accusing the RT hosts and guests of being paid propagandists for their paymaster Vladimir Putin. We discuss Russia’s assault on gay rights and James Kirchick’s article at The Daily Beast, “Why American Social Conservatives Love Anti-Gay Putin”. |
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August 20 - Firing Up the Financial Regulators; Egypt's Avoidable Massacre; Area 51 Exposed
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We begin with Obama’s renewed focus on Wall Street reform following a White House meeting on Monday with the nation’s top financial regulators. Dennis Kelleher, the president and Chief Executive Officer of Better Markets Inc, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in U.S. and global financial markets, joins us to discuss why regulators have missed 60% of the rule-making deadlines, as the Dodd-Frank bill, which has been under relentless attack from Wall Street, tries to implement rules to prevent another crash. |  |
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Then we examine how the massacre in Egypt could have been avoided and why it was not with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde, a columnist for Reuters who was kidnapped and held captive by the Taliban which he wrote about in a memoir “A Rope and a Prayer”. He joins us to discuss his latest article at Reuters “A Feckless Response to Egypt’s Avoidable Massacre” and the growing alienation amongst the young, who are a majority in the Middle East, towards the United States which he argues is more hated and less secure across the region. |
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Then finally, we speak with Dr. Jeffrey Richelson, a Senior Fellow at the National Security Archive, who obtained a 322-page declassified history of the CIA’s super-secret Area 51 under the Freedom of Information Act. We discuss what has been revealed about decades of secret activity at a site many believe houses the remains of aliens and an extra-terrestrial spacecraft, and how the CIA’s turf battles with the Air Force over control of spy platforms has led to the cancellation of successful programs. |
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August 19 - A NSA Whistleblower on Glenn Greenwald's Threats; The 60th Anniversary of the Now-Acknowledged CIA Coup in Iran; San Diego's Embattled Mayor "Filthy Filner"
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We begin with threats made by Glenn Greenwald that he would publish secrets about England’s spy system that would make the British government “sorry for what they did” for detaining his partner at London’s Heathrow Airport. NSA whistleblower William Binney, who served 37 years at the National Security Agency rising to the rank of Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting Group, joins us to talk about the escalating war between the leakers and the governments.
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Then on the sixtieth anniversary of the 1953 coup in Iran, we discuss what the CIA finally admitted to in a declassified report that states “the military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government”. Iranian/American historian Dr. Maziar Behrooz joins us to analyze the legacy of this less-than surprising secret American coup that placed the Shah on the peacock throne. |
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Then finally, we assess the fate of San Diego’s embattled Mayor Bob Filner, now know as “filthy Filner”, against whom a recall election had just been announced. Steven Erie, a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego and author of “Paradise Plundered: Fiscal Crisis and Governance Failures in San Diego”, joins us to discuss the serial sex scandal enveloping America’s eighth largest city. |
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