November 18 - The Islamic State's Use of the Media; Endangered House Democrats and a Possible Republican Shutdown; FIFA's Flagrant Corruption

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of the media strategy of the Islamic State in terms of their displays of brutality on television and their choice of sites for executions that have significance in end-of-times Islamic prophesies. An expert on the Arab media, Marwan Kraidy, the Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture at the Annenberg School of Communication and a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, joins us to discuss the obvious attempt by the jihadists to bait the U.S. and the West into sending troops into Islamic lands for an apocalyptic showdown, and whether the disciplined ritual of mass slaughter they just conducted will recruit more fighters or turn off the larger Muslim audience.

Part 2

Then, with the reelection of Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House following the worst route of the Democrats in recent history where they now have their lowest numbers in the House since World War 11, we speak with a long time senior House and Senate staffer Mike Lofgren, the author of “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted”. We discuss how the Democrats could possibly revive their fortunes and whether the Tea Party will drag the Republicans back into intra-party fratricide resulting in another government shutdown.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the flagrant criminality and corruption inside of FIFA, the governing body of the soccer World Cup, whose recent internal report investigating payoffs from Russia and Qatar to get the World Cup tournaments in 2018 and 2022, were declared a clean bill of health and case closed by FIFA’s controversial head Sepp Blatter, even as the author of the report declared it contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of facts and conclusions”. The only reporter banned from Sepp Blatter’s press conferences, investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, the author of “Omerta! Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organized Crime Family”, joins us to discuss the possibility of the German Football League and the English Football Association uniting to boycott the next World Cup.