Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
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We begin with the worst terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11 that claimed 8 lives with 6 of the victims tourists, 5 from Argentina and one from Belgium. Hassan Hassan, a Senior Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Peace who was previously a fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program in London and is the author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror”, joins us. We discuss the extent to which the perpetrator, a green card holder from Uzbekistan Sayfullo Saipov, a 29 year old truck driver who worked for Uber and is married with 3 children, was “inspired” by ISIS as the Deputy New York Police Commissioner claims. We assess whether Saipov is another amateur jihadi like most of the previous terrorist attackers of the homeland or if, with the fall of Raqqa, ISIS will be exporting battle-hardened terrorists who could be more deadly as the homegrown terrorist in Las Vegas recently proved to be with a readily-obtained arsenal of assault rifles, instead of the paintball gun Saipov was brandishing. |
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Then we speak with David Schanzer, a professor of the Practice and Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in the School of Public Policy at Duke University. The former Democratic Staff Director for the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, he joins us to discuss Trump’s call to send Saipov to Gitmo and his attack on Senator Schumer for an immigration lottery program that George H W Bush signed into law, and the likely political mileage Trump will get out of demagoguing an immigration system that let Saipov and the Tsarnaev brother into the country. |
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Then finally we look into the role that Rupert Murdoch is playing in distracting up to half of the American population from the daily destruction of the disastrous Trump Administration as he and his media empire’s obedient junkyard dogs attack Hillary Clinton for colluding with Putin and James Comey, both of whom played a major role in electing Donald Trump president. Ruth Ben Ghiat, a Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, joins us to discuss how Murdoch has borrowed Berlusconi’s political/media business model and the propaganda tactics of Putin to create a fact-free alternative universe in the service of America’s Il Duce, mien Fuhrer, our own “dear leader” Donald J. Trump.
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