June 29 - Buyer's Remorse for Supporting Radical Islam; The Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin on Reviving Postal Banking; Khrushchev's Great-Granddaughter's Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind

Ful Program

Part 1

We begin with an apparent buyer’s remorse amongst Middle East leaders for their prior support of ISIS with the Saudi king in his Ramadan message denouncing the religious extremists now threatening Iraq and Jordan, vowing “we will not allow a handful of terrorists, using Islam for personal aims, to terrify Muslims or undermine our country”. Henri Barkey, a professor of International Relations at Lehigh University who served on the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, joins us to discuss blowback in the region as reports emerge that ISIS crucified 8 rival fighters from the “moderate” Syria opposition to whom President Obama recently pledged $500 million in aid.

Part 2

Then we speak with the Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin Paul Soglin, who along with seven other mayors from eight states sponsored a resolution adopted by the U.S. Council of Mayors at their recent annual meeting, to endorse a return of post office banking as a trillion dollar job-creating economic stimulus and revenue-generator. We will discuss the mayors’ move to allow the U.S. Postal Service to offer banking services to the 68 million Americans with limited or no access to basic financial services who often fall prey to predatory payday lenders charging exorbitant interest rates that extract $89 billion in interest and fees from low-income Americans.

Part 3

Then finally Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who “gave’ Crimea to Ukraine, joins us to discuss her latest book, just out, “The Lost Khrushchev: A Family Journey Into the Gulag of the Russian Mind’. With E.U. leaders spending hours on the phone today with Ukraine’s leader Poroshenko and Russia’s President Putin, who continues to destabilize Ukraine while avoiding increased E.U. sanctions, we look into the cycles of repression and reform in recent Russian history; from Stalin’s terror, to Khrushchev’s thaw, to Brezhnev’s re-Stalinization, to Gorbachev’s reforms, to Putin’s renewed repression.