November 4 - Was the Downing of the Russian Passenger Plane Blowback From Putin's Intervention in Syria?; The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin"; How the Oil Industry Killed California's Climate Bill

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing likelihood that the Russian airliner that crashed into the Sinai was brought down by a bomb aboard, making early claims by the Islamic State that they blew up the plane in retaliation for the Russian bombing of their fighter in Syria, increasingly credible. Gordon Hahn, a Professor and Researcher in the Monterrey Terrorism Research and Education Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterrey and author of “Russia’s Islamic Threat”, joins us. We will discuss the possible blowback that Putin is facing from his intervention in Syria at home, where there is already an on-going war with Islamist insurgents in the Caucasus.

Part 2

Then the author of the new book “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin”, Steven Lee Myers, joins us in the studio. He has worked for The New York Times for twenty six years, seven of them in Russia during the period when Putin consolidated his power and we discuss how Putin and the Russian media he controls will handle the terrorist downing of the Russian passenger jet as well as try to understand what motivates Russia’s new tsar who Forbes magazine just listed as the most powerful man in the world.

Part 3

Then finally we examine how the oil industry pumped money into the California Legislature to kill a bill that would have halved petroleum consumption by cars and trucks in the state by 2030. Adrienne Alvord, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ California and Western States director joins us to discuss Governor Brown’s angry retort that “oil won the skirmish, but they’ve lost the bigger battle” and her article at the Union of Concerned Scientists “Oil Industry Money Buying Too Much Influence in California”.