November 28 - Why a Recount in Wisconsin is Needed; Will Trump Take Credit for Obama's Defeat of the Islamic State?; An Expert on Cuba Who Interviewed Castro at Length

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the claim by Donald Trump without any supporting evidence, that he would have won the popular vote but for the millions of fraudulent votes cast. Dan Wallach, a professor in the systems group at Rice University’s Department of Computer Science where he manages Rice’s computer security lab and does research on the security of electronic voting systems, joins us to discuss the recount underway in Wisconsin that was initiated by the Green Party’s Jill Stein which Donald Trump has condemned. We look into the reasons why a recount is needed, given the Intelligence Community’s concerns about Russian interference in our election, and that since a paper audit trail is available in Wisconsin and Michigan, a recount will provide a more accurate count and either confirm or dispel any outside interference in our recent close election.

Part 2

Then we speak with Wayne White, a former expert with the Iraq Study Group who was the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia. He joins us to discuss his article at Lobelog “Obama Brought the Islamic State to its Knees: Watch Donald Trump Take the Credit” and assess how much longer the Islamic State will survive in Mosul and Raqqa and the impact of a the likely fall of Aleppo in terms of a flood of refugees into Turkey where Erdogan, who is angry with the E.U. over its criticism of his purges, could unlock the doors to the camps and send refugees flooding into Europe. 

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Ann Louise Bardach, a PEN USA Award-winning journalist and author who is an expert on Cuba having written extensively about Fidel Castro in “Cuba Confidential” and “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington”. She interviewed Castro at length for Vanity Fair which she wrote about in The Guardian “Glory and my place in history do not worry me: My Interview with Fidel Castro” and we  discuss her interview in which, when asked what would happen to Cuba after his death, Castro replied “It’s not my fault that I haven’t died yet, it’s not my fault that the CIA failed to kill me”.