January 30 - What Motivated the Canadian Mass Shooter?; Trump Puts a Target on the Back of US Soldiers in Iraq; Trump's Radical and Unworkable "Two Out, One In" Executive Order

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the unusual mass shooting in Canada at a mosque in Quebec City that left six worshipers dead, five in critical condition and 12 others injured. Mubin Shaikh, the author of “Undercover Jihadi: Inside the Toronto 18 – Al Qaeda Inspired, Homegrown Terrorism in the West”,  joins us. A former jihadist, Mubin came to see how his extremism was inconsistent with the teachings of the Quran and he became an undercover counterterrorism operative for the Canadian security intelligence service. We discuss what motivated the suspect, Alexandre Bissonnette, who on his Facebook page says he “likes’” Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, France’s anti-immigrant right wing political leader, and how the shooter got hold of an AK-47 assault rifle which is banned in Canada but readily available across the border in the U.S.

Part 2

Then we look into the extent to which Donald Trump’s remarks about redoing the Iraq war and this time stealing Iraq’s oil, as well as his Muslim ban that named Iraq as one of the seven Islamic countries whose citizens are banned from entering the U.S., are going down with Iraqis and how it is effecting the seven thousand U.S. soldiers and contractors who are fighting alongside Iraqis against the Islamic State. Iraq expert Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, joins us to discuss the blowback in the Islamic world from Trump’s Muslim ban and how much it plays into the hands of the Islamic State.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with an expert in administrative procedure and regulatory policy, Sidney Shapiro, the Vice-President of the Center for Progressive Reform and Chair of Administrative Law at Wake Forest University. He joins us to attempt to understand Trump’s latest “Two-out, One-in” Executive Order to scrap two regulations for each new one which appears to be as radical as it is unworkable. We discuss the coming legal entanglement and the arbitrary “Sophie’s Choice” aspect of enacting a new regulation to protect public health which means you are forced to get rid of two older regulations that have protected public health.