July 21 - A Highly Decorated Former POW on Donald Trump; The Damage Done to Planned Parenthood by an Anti-Abortion Sting; Tariq Ali on his New Book "The Extreme Centre: A Warning"

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the extraordinary rise of Donald Trump in the polls where the just-released Washington Post/ABC national poll has Trump on top as the first choice of Republican primary voters at 24% with Scott Walker coming in second with 13% and Jeb Bush third with 12%, this in spite of the universally-condemned remarks Trump made about Senator John McCain. A highly decorated former POW who spent 8 years in captivity in North Vietnam, Phillip Butler, joins us to discuss Trump’s insult to POW’s which he likens to Jeb Bush’s praise of the Swift Boat Republican operatives who lied about and demeaned John Kerry’s service in Vietnam for which Kerry was decorated.

Part 2

Then we examine the damage to Planned Parenthood from a sting operation carried out by actors hired by the anti-abortion group the Center for Medical Progress posing as representatives of Biomax, a fictitious biomedical procurement company. Francis Kissling, the president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy, who is a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, joins us to discuss the possible damage that could be done to vital research on cures for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and Cystic Fibrosis if anti-abortion activists are able to prevent fetal tissue donation.

Part 3

Then finally we go to London and speak with Tariq Ali, the editor of the New Left Review, about his latest book “The Extreme Center: A Warning”. We discuss how most of the world’s governments are moving to the right as the extreme right gets stronger in Europe, which Tariq Ali argues is happening because of the extreme center and the failure of the “suicidal Western politics” of neoliberalism.