Background Briefing: October 8, 2024

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A Former State Department Official on Why Biden and Harris Appear Helpless as Netanyahu Pushes the Middle East to the Brink

We begin with a region on edge as the Middle East waits for PM Netanyahu to respond to Iran’s missile attack which could sway the upcoming US election if oil prices spike as a result of a pending and possible Israeli strike on Iran’s oil infrastructure. Joining us to discuss how Biden and Harris appear powerless and Netanyahu is in the driver’s seat is Dr. Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East and North Africa. She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and Yemen, is currently completing a book on the strategic use of religious authority in the Arab monarchies since 9/11, focusing on the cases of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman. She served for a year as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor until resigning over US policy on the war in Gaza and she just returned from Jordan.

 

Bob Woodward’s Latest Revelations of Trump’s Continuing and Treasonous Contacts with Putin

Then with Bob Woodward’s new book revealing Biden’s fury as he cussed out Netanyahu, we look instead into Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin Woodward reveals as Trump secretly sent Putin Covid test kits and had 7 private conversations with him since Trump left the White House. Joining us to discuss the covert ties Trump has with his favorite dictator is Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum, a professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and  a former senior fellow at The Atlantic Council. A member of the Russian academy of Natural Sciences, he worked as a Swedish Diplomat in Moscow and served as an economic advisor to the governments of Russia and Ukraine. His books include Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It and Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path From Market Economy to Kleptocracy.

 

As Global Warming Drives Superstorms, How We Can Restore the Atmosphere

Then finally with a superstorm bearing down on West Florida whose intensity is fueled by the water in the Gulf heated by global warming, we speak with Rob Jackson, the Chair of the Global Carbon Project, a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy, and a professor of earth science at Stanford University. Through global scientific leadership and groundbreaking research, communications, and policy activities, his work has reduced millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and improved human health, safety, and air and water quality. One of the top five most-cited climate and environmental scientists in the world, his new book, just out, is Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere.