Month: September 2023

A Member of a Delegation of Australian Politicians in Washington Urging the US Not to Extradite Julian Assange

We begin with a delegation of six Australian politicians from across the political spectrum delivering a message from 63 members of the Australian parliament that the vast majority of the Australian population feel strongly the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act but should instead be set free in Australia. Joining us is Dr. Monique Ryan, the former Director of Neurology at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne who currently serves as an independent Member of Parliament in Australia representing the federal district of Kooyong in Melbourne. She is part of a team of six Australian Members of Parliament who are visiting Washington DC this week to meet with members of Congress, the White House, and the State Department to discuss the US dropping charges against Julian Assange.

How To Stop Doing Business With Dictators and Undo the Trade Trap We Built

Then as kleptocracies and autocracies increasingly encroach on democracies and the rule of law, we look into how to stop doing business with dictators and undo the trade trap we build which has weakened the West and empowered its enemies. Joining us is Mathias Döpfner, the chairman and CEO of Axel Springer SE, owner of the US media brands Politico, Insider, and Morning Brew, and the largest digital publisher in Europe active in over forty different countries. He is the author of the new book, just out, The Trade Trap: How To Stop Doing Business with Dictators and we discuss his op-ed at The Wall Street Journal “What the West Loses by Trading With Dictatorships.”

An Update on the Tense Armenia/Azerbaijan Confrontation as a Ceasefire is Reached

Then finally we get an update on the increasingly tense situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan as the Aliyev dictatorship tightens their squeeze on the Armenian enclave in Nagoro-Karabakh in what appears to be ethnic cleansing while Russian peacekeepers ignore the plight of 120,000 starving Armenians trapped inside. Joining us is Houri Berberian, Professor of History and Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, and Director of Armenian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911: “The Love for Freedom Has No Fatherland” and Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds.