August 31 - Obama's Mixed Message in Alaska; Behind the Sentencing of Journalists in Egypt; The Ugly Face of Ukrainian Nationalism

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s three day trip to Alaska which is meant to highlight how much the United States is being affected by global warming and rising oceans and go to Alaska to speak with Lois Epstein, the Arctic Program Director for the Wilderness Society. She currently serves on the ocean, energy and safety advisory committee for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. We will discuss Obama’s mixed message of warning about global warming while allowing Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic.   

Part 2

Then we examine what is behind the sentencing of the three al-Jazeera journalists by an Egyptian court that appears to be petty, cruel and vindictive and based on absurd charges and laughable evidence.  An expert on the Arab media, Marwan Kraidy, the Anthony Shadid Chair of Global Media, Politics and Culture and the Director for Advanced Research in Global Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania joins us. We discuss the sentencing of journalists for practicing journalism that has been widely condemned and examine the broader issue of the many more victims of injustice in Egypt.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the ugly violence that took place in front of the Ukrainian parliament where members of the far-right nationalist Svoboda Party tossed smoke bombs then grenades into the crowd killing one national guardsman and wounding 122 others, 11 critically. Alexander Motyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers University and the author of “The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism 1919-1929” joins us to discuss the difficulty Ukraine’s President Poroshenko is having selling the Minsk agreement to the country’s restive pro-government paramilitary groups.