April 10 - Will the Public Mobilize to Stop the Time Warner / Comcast Megamerger?; Is Blocking Iran's Envoy to the U.N. Meant to Humilate Obama and Rouhani?; Exposing the Real Enemy to the U.S. in Afghanistan

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.