January 23 - Cracking the Gingrich Code; China's Iran Dilemma; Arab League Flounders on Syria

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Part 1	We begin with an analysis of the code used successfully by Newt Gingrich in his South Carolina win that he himself attributed, not to his superior debating skills but, quoting “I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people”. Alternet’s Washington Bureau Chief Adele Stan joins us to decipher Gingrich’s race-baiting code and discuss what she sees as the likely rhetorical re-fighting of the Civil War with a black Democrat doing battle with a white Republican for president of what is supposed to be the post-racial United States.
Part 2	Then with today’s announcement that the European Union is joining the U.S.-led embargo against Iran, we examine the role of Iran’s largest trading partner, China, in avoiding another Gulf war and the closure of the Straights of Hormuz. Minxin Pei, the director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College joins us. He has an article at the BBC, “China’s Iran Dilemma”.
Part 3	Then finally, Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the author of “Syria Comment” a daily newsletter and blog on Syrian politics, joins us. We discuss Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal from the ineffective observer mission and the Arab League’s demand that Syria’s bloody dictator Basher Assad hand power to a transitional government, a demand that the regime has already rejected as a “foreign conspiratorial scheme”.
	MUSIC: Sun Airway - Waiting On You; Bonobo - Kiara; Dirty Projectors - Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie; Syrian Protestors - Bashar Must Go