September 8 - Ebola Spreading Out of Control in Liberia; The Exaggerated Fear of the Islamic State; Latino Fury at the President Delaying Immigration Reform

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest reports from Liberia that suggest the Ebola epidemic is spreading exponentially and is largely out of control, with the World Health Organization warning Liberia “faces a huge surge” in Ebola. Steven Radelet, the Donald F. McHenry Chair in Global Human Development at Georgetown University who was formerly Chief Economist of USAID and has served as economic advisor to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf since 2005, joins us to discuss the extent to which the health crisis in Liberia is exacerbated by a governance crisis and devastated infrastructure as legacies of a brutal and destructive civil war.

Part 2

Then we assess the chances of the just-announced new Iraqi government in Baghdad stepping up to combat the Islamic State and heal the rift with the alienated Sunni minority who are unlikely to want to be “liberated” by the Shiite-dominated military that has oppressed and marginalized them. Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and the author of the new book “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the exaggerated and almost hysterical fear of 10,000 Islamic State fighters and his article at the History News Network “Americans are Worried About ISIS and Putin. What They Should be Worried About is Climate Change”.

Part 3

Then finally Antonio Gonzalez joins us in the studio. He is President of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the largest and oldest non-partisan Latino voter participation organization in the U.S. We discuss the growing disillusionment and fury in the Latino community expressed in Spanish-language media, against President Obama’s decision to delay executive action on immigration reform out of concerns that vulnerable Senate Democrats facing reelection will be punished at the polls in November by an anti-immigrant backlash and charges of executive overreach.