Loud & Clear

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by NSA whistleblower William Binney to discuss if the NSA was actually hacked and what kind of tools may have been acquired.A hacking group calling itself the Shadow Brokers says it has infiltrated the NSA's Equation Group and is now looking to sell off “cyber weapons” used by the agency, asking for a payment of $1 billion in bitcoin. Who could be behind the hack and what does it mean for the future of the NSA and cyber warfare?Former President Bill Clinton turns 70 today. Becker is joined by Kevin Akin of the Peace & Freedom Party and activist Jane Cutter to discuss Bill's real legacy: war against Yugoslavia, the end of welfare at home, millions of jobs sent overseas, prisons overflowing in record numbers with impoverished young people, and the destruction of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden visited Serbia this week where he was greeted by crowds of protesters. Now activists will erect a monument to the victims of the NATO bombing of Novi Sad. Becker is joined by human rights attorney Christopher Black to talk about the legacy of the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia and what comes next in the U.S.-Serbia relationship.

Is the Trump campaign at a crisis point? The Republican candidate has shaken up his campaign team once again, effectively the second overhaul in as many months. As his poll numbers slip, should we now expect a gentler and more mild mannered Trump to emerge, or will his shoot from the hip style continue -- and possibly cost him the election?Khalid Jabara, a 37 year old, has been murdered on his own front porch in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The suspect in custody has a history of racist harassment of violence. Brian is joined by Council on American-Islamic Relations Oklahoma Civil Rights Director Veronica Laizure and Robert McCaw, Director of Government Affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.Did the Obama administration give away $1 billion of taxpayer money to a private corporation to administer a nearly empty detention facility? The mass detention of Central American asylum seekers in 2014 was declared illegal by the federals courts, but the ink was already dry on a contract signed with the Correctional Corporation of America. Margaret Winter, the former Associate Director of the ACLU Private Prison Project, joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture and Raha Wala of Human Rights First to discuss the decision of the United States to send 15 Guantanamo detainees to the United Arab Emirates.The transfer is the largest such move under the Obama administration, but what will happen to the 61 prisoners still remaining at the Guantanamo detention center, and why did President Obama not fulfil his promise to close the facility? Is Guantanamo a step closer to closing or will the number of prisoners increase under the next president?Milwaukee was the scene of an uprising over the last few days after the police killing of 23 year old Sylville Smith on Saturday. But Milwaukee is far from a unique case. Black communities around the country are resisting as daily harassment and deprivation push people into the streets. Eugene Puryear, host of Radio Sputnik's By Any Means Necessary, joins the show.Hillary Clinton has been on an offensive to capture blue collar votes in swing states for her campaign for the White House. As she attempts to show herself to be the candidate for the working-class, the hypocrisy is deafening. Jeff Bigelow, a public sector worker's union representative, and Walter Smolarek, producer of Loud & Clear and co-author of an upcoming book on the Clintons, discuss why Clinton is far from a representative of workers around the country.

On today's special episode of Loud & Clear, Brian spends the full hour discussing the crisis inside the Republican Party, and the implications for the two-party system as a whole.Nearly one in five Republican voters say they want Donald Trump to drop out of the presidential race according to a new poll. The Republican Party is in chaos as the party ranks continue to be split on Trump’s surprise nomination. But the Democrats aren’t faring much better, as supporters of Bernie Sanders reject Hillary Clinton or turn to third parties. What’s led to the crises in the two major political parties? Is this the end of the two-party system as we know it? And will third parties soon challenge the Democrats and Republicans in a serious way?To address these issues, Brian is joined for the full hour by Dr. Jack Rasmus, professor of political economy at St. Mary’s College and the author of “Systemic fragility in the global economy” and the new book “Looting Greece: An Emerging New Financial Imperialism;” Anoa Changa, part-time volunteer staff with Brand New Congress, contributor to the Benjamin Dixon Show, and host of the weekly progressive talk show The Way with Anoa; and Walter Smolarek, producer for Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik.

On this special episode of Loud & Clear, we take a look at how Cuban society was fundamentally transformed under the leadership of this giant of history.Few individuals have had such a tremendous impact on history as former Cuban President Fidel Castro. He turned 90 on Saturday, despite literally hundreds of attempts on his life. All over the world, people celebrated his milestone birthday, especially in Cuba. Brian is joined by legendary actor and long­time activist in solidarity with Cuba Danny Glover; Gale Walker, Executive Director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization; and Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee and 2016 presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by political analyst Alexander Mercouris to discuss the strategy of the United States and Britain in Syria, Iraq and Libya. A congressional task force in the U.S. has found that the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) manipulated intelligence to paint a rosier picture of efforts to defeat Daesh. This comes as British special forces have been photographed on the ground in Syria, assisting a rebel group calling itself the New Syrian Army. Why would top level U.S. officials lie about the reality on the ground? Is Daesh actually far stronger than presented by CENTCOM?This week, tensions escalated between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea as Moscow hit the reset button with Turkey. How do these developments affect the rocky relationship between NATO and Russia? Are prospects for mending differences feasible? Becker is joined by Michael Klare, professor and defense correspondent for The Nation.The Philippines and China are on course to mend their relationship. The two countries have been fiercely at odds over the South China Sea since 2012, but new Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has heralded a new day in relations. How will the United States view the thaw? Eric Draitser, political analyst and founder of StopImperialism.org, joins Becker.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology Dr. Robert Epstein, as well as David Ahmad, President of Subgraph, an open source tech security company. Google’s parent company Alphabet has celebrated its one year anniversary. The conglomerate was created by Google’s founders to bring their companies under one roof - creating a behemoth that has its hands in a great many areas of our lives, from our health to our homes to our location, finances and more. Astonishingly, this could even include the presidential election, with Google serving as, in the words of Julian Assange, Hillary Clinton’s “secret weapon”. There is justified outrage at the NSA’s mass surveillance, but is Google essentially the same thing - just led by a CEO rather than a General?

The Syrian Army has sent thousands of reinforcements to the country's largest city after rebel groups including the former al-Nusra Front broke the siege in the east. But the Syrian government claims that they have retaken that ground. Are we witnessing a turning point, or even decisive moment, in Syria’s five year war?Turkish President Erdogan has met with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on his first trip abroad since last month’s attempted coup. Peter Lavelle, host of RT's flagship program Crosstalk, discusses if it's back to business as usual between Turkey and Russia, and if Turkey is moving to a new policy on Syria. Protesters for and against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff rallied outside of the Senate on Tuesday as lawmakers voted on moving her to within a step of losing office. But do her opponents have the two thirds needed in the Senate to oust her? Becker is joined by Aline C. Piva of Brazilian Expats for Democracy and Brazilian-British analyst Victor Fraga.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by international security and affairs analyst Mark Sleboda to discuss the thaw in relations between Turkey and Russia. The two countries may hit the re-set button in St. Petersburg today as President Erdogan arrives for a state visit where he will meet with President Vladimir Putin. What accounts for the sharp turnaround in relations, and is Turkey increasingly moving away from NATO after last month’s failed coup or is this a limited maneuver on the part of both governments. Donald Trump could barely finish a sentence as he delivered his vision for the U.S. economy over the objections of protesters in Detroit. His newly-unveiled team of advisers is packed with bankers, hedge fund managers and real estate sharks. Becker is joined by political cartoonist and analyst Ted Rall to assess Trump's economic policy.Nagasaki, Hiroshima: Hundreds of thousands of Japanese were slaughtered as guinea pigs in a huge weapons testing operation. Today is the anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on Nagasaki that instantly killed tens of thousands of people days after the bombing of Hiroshima and left future generations to suffer the after effects of radiation poisoning. 71 years later, the U.S. is updating its nuclear arsenal and the right-wing Abe government of Japan is intensifying its drive to remilitarize the country. Joining Becker is Kevin Kamps, the radioactive watchdog at Beyond Nuclear.

The general election campaign is in full swing. After a bruising and often absurd primary fight in both of the major parties, the political situation looks set to intensify even further. Historic numbers of people are planning on voting for a third-party, and the Democrats’ lesser-evil rhetoric is ramping up in response. There is no doubt that Trump is a reprehensible bigot and an open supporter of torture - banning muslims and more - but the lesser-of-two-evils argument conceals just how “evil” Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party really is. Today, we spend the show examining Clinton and her party - their foreign policy, their loyalty to Wall Street and the underhanded, essentially fraudulent methods they employed to extinguish the Sanders insurgency. Brian is joined for the full hour to discuss these issues by Dr. Anthony Monteiro, W.E.B. DuBois scholar and member of the Black Radical Organizing Collective, Jane Cutter, editor of Liberationnews.org, Derek Ford, Assistant Professor of Education Studies at DePauw University who is the co-author of Marx, Capital, and Education: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Becoming, and in studio by Walter Smolarek, producer of Loud and Clear.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Dr. Francisco Rodriguez, the head of Middlesex University's Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies to discuss developments in the ongoing coup against suspended President Dilma Rousseff.As the Olympics get underway in Rio de Janeiro, can the movement against the coup leverage this international spotlight? The National Nuclear Security Administration has given the go ahead for the upgrade of the B-61 nuclear airborne bomb. Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists discusses the implications.Donald Trump’s increasingly ridiculous attacks on the parents of a Muslim Army captain who died in Iraq have been attacked by both Republicans and Democrats. But what has been ignored all this week was the Iraq war itself.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker discusses the upcoming Green Party convention and the future of progressive third-party politics in the United States. In the aftermath of Bernie Sanders throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton, will his supporters flock to join Stein’s campaign? David Cobb, the 2004 presidential candidate for the Green Party, joins Becker to talk about the importance of this year's convention and prospects for the coming period.Becker is joined by political analyst Daniel McAdams to address comments made by one of Clinton’s foreign policy advisers that dealing with Syria would be a “first key task”. Would such a position only work to strengthen the so-called Islamic State?Attorney General Loretta Lynch just departed from Detroit, where she participated in the first of what is intended to be a series of “Justice Forums” sponsored by the Justice Department in the wake of police murders and individual attacks on police. To discuss if these justice forums have any real credibility in the community, Becker is joined by Professor Kali Nicole Gross and Kenneth Reed, spokesman for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to exmane new court rulings that have overturned some of the new laws that the courts ruled aim at disenfranchising Black African-American voters with "surgical precision." Purged voter rolls and tens of thousands of complaints indicate a massive effort to suppress the African-American community from participating in elections in the United States.Five years on from the NATO bombing campaign and overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi's government, the United States in once against launching airstrikes in Libya. Becker is joined by Zafar Bangash, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, to speak on how Daesh has been able to establish a foothold in Muammar Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, why western special forces operating in the country are not classified as "boots on the ground", and if the real objectives of the U.S. bombing campaign which may be also targeting the re-emergence of pro-Gaddafi political forcesThe first meeting between a senior U.S. military leader and Turkish authorities has seen a softer tone from Ankara, but will relations return to normal or will they continue to deteriorate? The Turkish media is blaming the U.S. for the failed coup attemt of July 15. Joining Becker to discuss the complex relationship between the U.S. government and President Erdogan's is Turkish journalist Kemal Okuyan.

On today's special episode of Loud & Clear, Brian spends the full hour dealing with the dramatic new developments in the Philippines, including a discussion with Communist Party founder Jose Maria Sison, where the new government of Rodrigo Duterte and the New People's Army are making moves to put an end to the country's civil war. The new President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has said it is his dream to end of the nearly fifty year armed conflict in the country. Last week, he declared a unilateral ceasefire with the New People’s Army, but withdrew it just days later. Still, the Communist Party has said that it expects to declare a truce along with the government on August 20th, the same day that peace negotiations are due to begin in Oslo.Brian is joined by Jose Maria Sison, who is the senior political adviser to the National Democratic Front, which is the organization that will begin peace talks with the Duterte government on August 20. Brian also speaks with Bernadette Ellorin, chairperson of BAYAN-USA, and Rhonda Ramiro, vice-chair of BAYAN-USA in addition to Anakbayan-USA chairperson Adrian Bonifacio and Nap Pempeña, Vice-Chairperson of Anakbayan-USA.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker looks at the strategic importance of the Syrian city of Aleppo.Becker is joined by political analyst Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, who comments on Russia and Syria opening three humanitarian corridors in Aleppo and how what unfolds there could dramatically change the course of the war that has raged on for over five years. South Korea has denied entry to and deported two Korean American peace activists who traveled to the country to participate in protests the deployment of THAAD, the US missile Defense shield in South Korea that has generated mass anger inside of south Korea and harsh condemnation from China and Russia. The activists, Hyun Lee and Juyeon Rhee, speak with Becker about their experience.While Korean authorities detained and deported Korean-American peace activists -- other Americans from Veterans for Peace were able to make it into the country and they are joining Koreans in protest all over the country including upcoming actions in Sonju -- the site of the THAAD missile deployment. One of these activists, Will Griffin, joins Becker to discuss why he traveled to Korea and the importance of international solidarity.