Tag: moscow

Trump’s Orwellian Dictate to NOAA

We begin with the Orwellian nature of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, being forced to support an absurd claim by President Trump that Hurricane Dorian was about to strike Alabama in a craven act of fealty to our dear leader in a common form of adulation of the infallibility of dictators which has never been of a practice of any American president to refute reality in the service of his own ego. Monica Medina, who was principal deputy undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is now the founder and publisher of Our Daily Planet, and environmental email newsletter, joins us to discuss Trump’s assault on science in an infantile attempt to cover-up an obvious mistake he made which endangers the integrity of the important work NOAA scientists and weather forecasters do in warning the public about real and present dangers posed by worsening weather events caused by global warming. We will also assess whether Trump’s childish ego is getting in the way of a much-needed humanitarian response to the real devastation of the Bahamas caused by Hurricane Dorian where entire islands have been flattened and towns pulverized into splinters of rubble under which untold numbers of dead, perhaps in the hundreds or even thousands, have yet to be accounted for.

The Disastrous Legacy of Zimbabwe’s Mugabe

Then we look into the legacy of Robert Mugabe who died on Thursday in Singapore at the age of 95 after having been deposed as Zimbabwe’s only ruler by the current despot Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former henchman known as the “crocodile” because of the way he fed Mugabe’s political opponents to the crocodiles. Ambassador John Campbell, a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria who served as a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, joins us to discuss the attempts by much of the press to provide balance in their coverage of the liberator turned tyrant who has totally destroyed one of Africa’s most productive and prosperous countries now a terminal basket case.

Russia’s Rigged Regional Elections

Then finally we examine today’s regional elections in Russia which have been rigged by Putin to the point that the results are a forgone conclusion. We speak with Michael Khodarkovsky, a Professor of History at Loyola University, Chicago whose latest book just out is, “Russia’s 20^th Century: A Journey in 100 Histories.” He joins us to discuss the deadly and reckless test of a nuclear-powered missile and his recent article at The New York Times “Putin’s Nightmare: The Ballot Box” and the extent to which Putin is turning Russia into a military-police state.