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November 20 - Super Committee Deadlock and Congressional Kabuki; Turkey Steps Up; Obama and The Asian Pivot
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We begin with the deadlocked Supercommittee that has to agree on 1.2 trillion in cuts by Monday to meet the Wednesday deadline before the sequester happens and automatic across-the-board cuts take place. Former six-term Congressman Bob Edgar, who is now head of Common Cause, joins us to talk about our broken Congress, corrupted by lobbyists and special interests to the point where they have exempted themselves from insider trading laws on stock transactions. We will follow up on whether, as a result of the recent “60 Minutes” expose and citizen outrage it provoked, the Stock Act aimed at cleaning up Congress will be revived. |
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Then we examine Turkey’s more assertive role in the Middle East as it emerges as the best hope to facilitate the removal of the bloody Assad regime next door in Syria, avoid civil war and help stabilize a post-Assad Syria. Asli Bali, a specialist on International Human Rights and the Laws of War joins us. We discuss what motivates Turkey’s leader and the behind-the-scenes reasons for Turkey’s alienation from Israel and the reversal of its support for the Assad regime. |
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The finally Susan Shirk joins us. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs and we will discuss President Obama’s trip to Australia and the APEC Summit in Indonesia and the so-called pivot towards Asia in terms of the Obama Administration’s new foreign policy doctrine that promises to look more towards Asia and China and away from the traditional primary focus on Europe. |
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| MUSIC: James Blake - Limit To Your Love; The National - Start A War; Africa Hitech - Do You Really Wanna Fight; M. Ward - Shangri-La |
November 17 - "Patriotic Millionaires" Occupy Capitol Hill; "Is Europe Over"; A Former CIA Covert Operative On the Oligarchy
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As demonstrations marking the second month of the founding of the Occupy Wall Street movement take place across the country and around the world, we begin with occupy Capitol Hill and speak with the organizer of a group of “Patriotic Millionaires” who descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to ask members of Congress to raise their taxes. Erica Payne the founder of the Agenda Project joins us. |
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Then John Feffer joins us. He is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and currently has an article at the Huffington Post “Is Europe Over?” We discuss the on-going Eurozone crisis and the extent to which President Obama’s re-election fortunes are in the hands of Angela Merkel, as well as the potential rise of fascism in Europe if the Euro collapses. |
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Then finally we are joined in the studio by Barry Eisler who served for three years as a CIA covert operative and is now a best-selling author. His latest book is “The Detachment” in which the antagonists are a powerful cabal called the oligarchy. We discuss the real oligarchy, the one that represents the one percent, from the perspective of one who served the oligarchy, working inside the enforcement arm of the American Empire. |
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| MUSIC: Modest Mouse - Dark Center of the Universe; The Strokes - Is This It?; M. Ward - Post-War; James Blake - I Only Know (What I Know Now) |
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November 16 - The One Percent Strikes Back; Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act; Blowback in Wisconsin
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We begin with an analysis of the Occupy Movement with Arun Gupta who has been at 16 occupy sites around the country and is the co-founder of the Occupy Wall Street Journal. He is covering the occupy movement for Salon.com and Alternet and we discuss the impact of the movement so far and its future direction. |
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Then we examine the Stop Online Piracy Act that is now being debated in Congress with Gigi Sohn, the co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington D.C.- based public interest group working to defend citizen’s rights in the emerging digital culture. We discuss the dangers posed by this bill to Internet freedom, its embrace of censorship, and the extent to which it is a “stealth” attack on net neutrality. |
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Then finally we speak with the Mayor of Madison Wisconsin, Paul Soglin, who joins us to discuss the recall now underway in Wisconsin to remove the divisive and polarizing governor Scott Walker who is personally feeling the heat as 1,000 protesters surrounded his home on Tuesday night soliciting signatures for the recall petition. |
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| MUSIC: Shabazz Palaces - Are You, Can You, Were You (Felt); Yacht - We Have All We've Ever Wanted; Mount Kimbie - Mayor; Bon Iver - Blindsided |
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November 15 - Evicted But Not Vanquished; How Lawmakers Enrich Themselves; "The Unmaking of Israel"
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We begin with the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park and speak with the anti-corporatist activist Reverend Billy who is near the scene of the police invasion and gives us an update on local reactions and the next move for the occupy movement. Although the New York Mayor has favorable ratings among liberals, several months ago in an interview with me, the Reverend Billy accused Michael Bloomberg of being hostile to the First Amendment. |
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Then we speak with the author of a study of investments made by Congressmen and Senators that indicates lawmakers benefit from rules that they wrote to exempt themselves from insider trading laws. Alan Ziobrowski, a professor of Business at Georgia State University joins us to explain how U.S. Senators beat the market by 12 percentage points annually and House members beat out the average investor by six percent due to their unique access to privileged information. |
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Then finally Gershom Gorenberg joins us in the studio. He is an Israel historian and the author of a new book “The Unmaking of Israel” which argues for choices Israel must make now, to ensure a successful democracy and avoid being a failed state. Arguing for changes that are not only possible, but are essential, to start remaking Israel. Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent with The American Prospect and blogs at SouthJereusalem.com |
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| MUSIC: LCD Soundsystem - New York I Love You, but You're Bringing Me Down; Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band - Roosevelt Room; Mala - Changes; Berry Sakharof - Making Room |
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November 14 - Insider Traders in Congress; Jordan's King Urges Assad to Step Down; How the GOP Became the Party of the 1%
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We begin with the shocking revelations uncovered by “60 Minutes” that members of Congress enjoy a unique privilege exempting them from insider trading laws which they use to make millions from stocks trades that would land an ordinary citizen or a Wall Street banker in jail. The Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy Lisa Graves joins us to explain this legalized larceny and whether the Stock Act that has languished in Congress could be revived by citizen outrage |
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Then we discuss the mounting pressure from the Arab League and Jordan’s King Abdullah on the Assad regime to step down and stop murdering the Syrian people. Bassam Haddad, the Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University joins us to discuss whether the increasingly isolated Assad clan will respond to outside pressure or whether an armed rebellion is the only way to remove them. |
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Then finally, we talk about how the GOP became the party of the rich, the title of a special report in the latest edition of Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson, who joins us to explain how the party of Lincoln became the party of the Koch Brothers. And how Grover Norquist, the den mother of young conservative activists, who has been described as “Liberace with a wife”, became the most powerful lobbyist in Washington responsible for the greatest transfer of wealth in history from poor and middle class Americans to the top one percent. |
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| MUSIC: Modest Mouse - Beach Side Property; Syrian Protesters - Bashar Must Go; Built to Spill - Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss; Shabazz Palaces - Yeah You |
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