February 3 - The Reaction Inside Jordan to the Burning Alive of Their Captive Pilot; How the Jordanian Pilot's Death Impacts the King's Rule; Putin's Gangster State

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the gruesome killing of a Jordanian pilot who was burned alive by the so-called Islamic State in a well-produced video that was apparently shot a month ago. An award-winning Palestinian journalist, Daoud Kuttab, joins us from Amman, Jordan for an update on the outrage that is felt in the Kingdom where a military spokesman has vowed on national television that “our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of all Jordanians.” We will discuss what likely retaliation will take place and what might be the possible strategy behind the Islamic State’s brutal displays of barbarism that now include tossing a man tied to a chair from a seven story building for an alleged “homosexual affair”.

Part 2

Then we look further into the possible motives and consequences behind the brutal death of the Jordanian pilot in a video shot on January 3rd that has just been released by the Islamic State when Jordan’s king was in Washington, apparently intended to show how the king is not minding the store and how impotent the regime has been in winning the pilot’s release. Jillian Schwedler, a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College joins us to discuss the importance of the Kasesbeh tribe, to which the pilot belonged, to the foundation and legitimacy of the Hashemite Kingdom’s rule.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the grandson of the leader of the American Communist Party who became the biggest American capitalist in post-Soviet Russia until he fell afoul of the Vladimir Putin. Bill Browder, the author of the new book, just out, “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice” joins us to discuss the gangster state that the boss of bosses Putin runs, and the inability of Western and European leaders to understand this grave new geopolitical phenomenon of criminal sovereignty, that in the Kremlin is a combination of national security and organized crime, the “mafiya” and nuclear weapons.