February 24 - Chaos and Thuggery in Venezuela; Defense Budget Bloat Lives On; Will the Drug Lord Be Extradited to the U.S.

Full Program

Part 1

With major roads in Venezuela blocked by protestors, we will begin with the standoff between student protesters and the Maduro government. The author of “Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela”, Rory Carroll, who up until recently was the UK Guardian correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela, joins us to discuss growing opposition to an increasingly unpopular government and his article at The Guardian “Venezuela: Chaos and Thuggery Take the Place of the Pretty Revolution”.

Part 2

Then we analyze Secretary of Defense Hagel’s budget plan for 2015 that seeks to downsize the Army but increase Special Forces and spend more on Cyberwarfare.Winslow Wheeler, a 31 year veteran of Pentagon procurement at the U.S. Senate and General Accounting Office, joins us to discuss Hagel’s plans to keep most of the budget-busting weapons systems like the F-35 that is exorbitantly more expensive and less effective than the planes it is replacing, and the extent to which Hagel, who promised to fight waste, fraud and bloat, appears to have been captured by the pork-barrel politics of the Pentagon.

Part 3

Then finally, we go to Mexico City for a follow up on the capture of the drug lord El Chapo Guzman and speak with Dudley Althaus, the GlobalPost’s senior correspondent in Mexico. We look into the possible role of U.S. Special Forces and Intelligence agencies in the capture of Guzman and, while the cartel leader has been formally charged in Mexico, whether or not he will be extradited to the U.S. as top judicial officials in the U.S. are calling for.