March 19 - Netanyahu's Day-After Backtracking; Anti-Austerity Riots at the Opening of the ECB; Compulsory Voting in the U.S.A. to Counteract Money in Politics

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the just-elected Prime Minister of Israel backtracking on his last-minute election pledge to right wing voters that there would never be a Palestinian state on Netanyahu’s watch. Award-winning investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, the author of “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” joins us to discuss Netanyahu’s flip flopping and the warning by Britain that they would support a Palestinian state at the U.N. if Israel abandoned peace efforts with the Palestinians, a threat echoed in a similar statement by the White House.

Part 2

Then we go to Germany where anti-austerity riots at the opening of the new European Central Bank in Frankfurt resulted in the arrest of 500 “Blockupy” protesters and the burning of police cars. We speak with former Financial Times correspondent, Daniela Schwarzer, the Director of the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund about the make up of the 10,000 strong demonstrations that included protesters from all over Europe as well as from Germany, whose rallying cry was “they want capitalism without democracy, we want democracy without capitalism”.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the idea of compulsory voting in America floated by President Obama at a town hall meeting in Cleveland. Myrna Perez, the Director of the Voting Rights and Election Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, who works on voting rights issues such as redistricting, list maintenance and access to the ballot box, joins us to discuss Obama’s suggestion of compulsory voting made in the context of counteracting the growing role of money in politics, that 26 countries have adopted where turnout is over 90% compared to the 37% of eligible voters who participated in the 2014 midterm elections.