August 5 - Panic Over Ebola Generated by Ignoramuses Like Donald Trump; An American General Killed at Afghanistan's Equivalent of West Point; Africa's Corrupt and Entrenched Leaders at the Africa Summit

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the irrational and unwarranted panic generated by prominent ignoramuses like Donald Trump, that treating Americans infected with Ebola on American soil, as opposed to letting them die in Africa, somehow exposes the American people to unnecessary risk. A leading expert on rare and deadly viruses like MERS, SARS, Marburg and Ebola, Dr Ian Lipkin, the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, joins us to discuss how these lethal viruses spread and what is done to contain them, as well as addressing the spread of unscientific and anti-intellectual medical disinformation in the country at large that has led to the re-emergence of all but eradicated diseases as a result of parents not immunizing their children based on bogus and discredited theories.  

Part 2

Then we get an assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan following the killing of an American general and the wounding of a German general and 14 others by a soldier in the Afghanistan National Army at Afghanistan’s equivalent of West Point. Marvin Weinbaum, who served as an analyst on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, joins us to discuss the impending withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces at a time when the result of the recent election to succeed the corrupt and erratic Hamid Karzai is in dispute with no clear way to settle the country’s latest rigged presidential election.

Part 3

Then finally, we examine the Africa summit underway in Washington with Sasha Lezhnev, Associate Director and Senior Policy Analyst at the Enough Project. He is the author of “Crafting Peace: Strategies to Deal With Warlords in Collapsing States” and has an article at The Daily Beast co-authored with John Prendergast, “Obama’s Africa Summit and the New Danger in Congo”. We discuss what it will take to end the most deadly war since World War II in eastern Congo, the need for many corrupt and entrenched African leaders to give up power, accept opposition politics and allowfree elections.