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January 1 - A Year-End Review and a Preview of Our Foreign Policy; The Domestic Political Landscape Ahead After a Year of Gridlock, Extortion and Dysfunction
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On this New Year’s Day we examine both our foreign policy, looking back to 2013 and ahead to 2014, and our domestic policy over the past turbulent year and into this election year of 2014 just beginning. The author of a new book on the history of U.S.- Afghan relations and a comparative history of the inner politics of the U.S. and Soviet Russia, 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, joins us to analyze the events of last year and the global landscape ahead, from Russian to China, the Middle East to Europe and Brazil to Africa. We assess our foreign policy, past and future, in a world of rising and falling powers, with much of the first world moving from democracy to oligarchy and the second and third world beset by criminal leadership, as global inequality increases and ecological plunder continues. |
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Then we look at the domestic political arena with Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas and the author of “Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue”. We discuss divisions within the Republican Party with the influence of the Tea Party receding as the GOP enters an election carrying the baggage from the destructive antics of the far right in 2013. And we also explore emerging divisions in the Democratic Party between the corporate wing and the economic populists who want to campaign against the nation’s growing income inequality, while the more business-friendly centrists are concerned about a repeat of the McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry disasters that caution them to want to be more like the Republicans. |
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December 22 - The Congressional Dysfunction; A Closer Look into the Housing Scandal; The Pentagon Owns Up to Pakistan
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We begin with an analysis of what is behind the House Republicans political brinkmanship. American University historian Allan Lichtman, the author of “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement” joins us to explain the source of the dysfunction on Capitol Hill which appears to be the blind and unbridled ambition of Eric Cantor who wants to become the next speaker. |
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Then we look into the appalling foreclosure scandal that has millions of Americans homeless while millions of homes sit empty. William K. Black joins us. He was the chief litigator who put hundreds of bank fraudsters in jail after the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980’s and we look into the effort by the Obama Administration and State’s Attorneys Generals to indemnify the banks involved in the recent sub-prime housing fraud that almost tanked the global economy. With the Attorney Generals of California, New York and Delaware still resisting this trillion dollar slap on the wrist, we attempt to find out why people who could pay a fair price for housing are kept out of empty and abandoned homes they once occupied. |
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| MUSIC: Nina Simone - Funkier Than A Mosquitos Tweeter; Dirty Projectors - Temecula Sunrise; Arcade Fire - Half Light 2; Hadiqa Kiyani -Nishta Nishta |
December 21 - Eric Cantor's Reckless Power Play; Syria on the Brink; Obama Poised to Sign Away the Bill of Rights
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We begin with the standoff in Washington as the House refuses to go along with a Senate compromise that will extend the payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans as well as unemployment insurance for millions out of work. With Republican leaders worried this fiasco could help re-elect President Obama, Craig Holman the legislative representative for Public Citizen joins us to talk about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s role in this latest legislative intransigence and his efforts to block the Stock Act that would prevent the Congress from engaging in lucrative insider trading. |
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Then we examine the latest massacres in Syria and the regime’s acceptance of the Arab League observers that the Syrian opposition considers a ploy by the ruling Assad clan. Dr David Lesch, an expert on Syria who has interviewed many top Syrian officials including Bashar al-Assad, joins us to discuss how a civil war can be avoided without the removal of the Assads who promise reform while they ruthlessly murder their own citizens |
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Then finally we analyze the threats to civil liberties in the National Defense Authorization Act the President is about to sign into law. Human Rights First’s Daphne Eviatar, who investigates and reports on U.S. national security programs and practices and their human rights implications, joins us to discuss the militarization of our judiciary as a result of this new law. Senior officials in the national security community, along with civil libertarians opposed it, yet in spite of the bill’s dire threat to the Bill of Rights, the NDAA is about to become the law of the land. |
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| MUSIC: Fionn Regan - Lord Help My Poor Soul; Fugazi - The Argument; Titus Andronicus - ..And Ever; Leftover Crack - So You Wanna be a Cop? |
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December 20 - The House Plays Poker; The Real North Korea; The Man Who Conned America Into War
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We begin with an analysis of the latest deadlock in Washington as House Republicans refuse to go along with a bi-partisan Senate bill passed 89 to 10 that would extend the payroll tax cut for two months. Washington Post columnist and executive editor of “The American Prospect” Harold Meyerson joins us to explore the motives of House Republican who once again will not accept compromise unless all of their demands are met. |
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Then, with our intelligence community knowing very little about North Korea’s leadership, and uninformed speculation continuing in the Press, we get a very different analysis of North Korea from B.R. Meyers who is a professor of International Studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea and the author of “The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters”. He argues that the dynastic dictatorship in North Korea is not a far left communist regime, but is in fact more of a right wing fascist monarchy like Imperial Japan was under Emperor Hirohito. |
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Then finally we look into what the Iraq war was all about and how one foreigner who was all the while working for America’s most ardent enemy, conned the world’s greatest power into a war that it will always regret and continue to lose. Richard Bonin a five-time Emmy award-winning producer for “60 Minutes” and author of “Arrows in the Night: Ahmad Chalabi’s Long Journey to Triumph in Iraq” joins us to tell the tale of the real architect of the Iraq war who the neocons championed as he manipulated America into an unnecessary and counter-productive war that only he and his Iranian masters benefited from. |
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| MUSIC: M. Ward - Cosmopolitan Pap; The Libertines - The Man Who Would Be King; Titus Andronicus - Four Score and Seven; Arcade Fire - Intevervention |
December 19 - A New Presidential Candidate; The "Dear Leader's" Successor; Arming an Iraq Allied to Our Enemy
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We begin with a new candidate running for President of the United States in the 2012 election representing a newly-formed party, the Justice Party. The former mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, joins us to lay out his populist, progressive third party platform that does not rely on corporate money or the mainstream media, but instead plans to energize grassroots people power that has emerged with the occupy movements. |
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Then we look into the dynastic communist succession in North Korea, with the death of the “dear leader” and the ascension of his youngest son Kim Jong-Eun to head the world’s most isolated country which managed to develop nuclear weapons while a tenth of its population died of starvation. Christine Ahn, the Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute joins us. She has participated in several peace and humanitarian delegations to North Korea and we discuss whether a recent thaw in U.S./North Korea relations will be sidetracked by tensions surrounding this leadership transition. |
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Then finally we look into political rifts already emerging in Iraq following the recent final exit of U.S. troops. David Phillips, the author of “Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco” joins us. He is the Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Project on the Future of Diplomacy. We discuss the scope of the strategic setback for the U.S. as Iran emerges as the winner of the Iraq war, and the wisdom of selling F-16’s and laser-guided bombs to a corrupt Iraqi regime that appears to be allied with America’s enemies. |
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| MUSIC: Velvet Underground - I Found A Reason; The Libertines - The Man Who Would Be King; Kurt Vile - Puppet to the Man; The Shins - So Says I |
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