Category: Briefings

Background Briefing: August 4, 2024

Evidence the US Government Has Buried For 23 Years Appears Poised to Blow the Lid Off Saudi Involvement in 9/11

We begin with the plea deal with the 9/11 hijackers to avoid the death penalty that was reversed by the Secretary of Defense and look into the startling piece of evidence the US government has buried for 23 years in the form of a video handed over by the British to lawyers for the 9/11 families suing the Saudi government. We will discuss the video which appears to be a scouting exercise of the US Capitol for the 9/11 planners scoping out the Capitol as a target for Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. The video was recorded by Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi official who handled the two hijackers who flew into the Pentagon andx who was working for the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency known as GIP. Joining us is Brett Eagleson whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks. He is the President of 9/11 Justice and we assess how this explosive evidence that will soon be released to the public and shown on “60 Minutes” might force the US government to come clean on what it has known about Saudi involvement in 9/11 at the highest level since the father of the de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman was in charge of overseeing the takfiris, the Saudi jihadis.

 

Will Trump’s Revival of the “Birther” Dog Whistle Work Against Kamala Harris?

Then we examine Trump’s revival of the “birther” movement now that he is going after Kamala Harris with the same racist dog whistles he used against Obama and speculate whether a Harris/Shapiro ticket could take on the ugly residue of racism in America head on. Joining us is Ian Haney López, a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. An incisive voice on white identity since the publication of his path-breaking book White by Law, he remains at the forefront of conversations about race in modern America. He is the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class and Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America.

 

The Noble Lie, J.D. Vance and the New Right

Then finally we speak with Katherine Stewart, a journalist who is the author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children and her latest book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism upon which the new feature documentary “God and Country” by Rob Reiner is based. Her forthcoming book is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy and we discuss her article at The New Republic, “The Weird Intellectual Roots of J.D. Vance’s Hatred for ‘Cat Ladies’.”