October 4 - Crude Cronyism in Pipeline Approval; India and Afghanistan's Strategic Agreement; Chavez Faces Mortality and Elections

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Part 1	We begin with incriminating emails between the State Department and a Canadian oil company which plans to build an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta across the U.S. to Texas. Kim Huynh, the Director of the Dirty Fuels Program at Friends of the Earth, who obtained these emails through a Freedom of Information request, joins us to discuss a cozy relationship where the State Department instead of exercising oversight, is facilitating the oil pipeline.
Part 2	Then on the first day of a two day meeting between Afghan President Karzai and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, we examine the strategic agreement just announced between India and Afghanistan that is bound to antagonize Pakistan. Ashley Tellis who served on the National Security Council staff as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Strategic Planning and Southwest Asia joins us to discuss the contents of the agreement and its implications as India tries to fill a strategic vacuum with the impending withdrawal of NATO and the US from Afghanistan in 2014.
Part 3	Then finally we try to assess the health of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and the likely power struggle that will follow his incapacitation if it comes to that. Javier Corrales, the co-author of “Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chavez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela” joins us to discuss possible succession and the internal politics of this volatile and polarized country.