November 20 – Is Lebanon Being Sucked into Syria’s Civil War?; Rescuing Venezuela’s Economy by Emergency Decree; The Phony Crisis of Obamacare

Full Program
 

Part 1

We begin and go to Beirut, Lebanon for an update on the repercussions from the bombings at the Iranian embassy and speak with Thanassis Cambanis who writes “The Internationalist” column for the Boston Globe and is the author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel”. We discuss Lebanon’s shaky stability and how much it is being sucked into the vortex of the brutal civil war next door in Syria.

Part 2

Then we go to Caracas, Venezuela and speak with Virginia Lopez who covers Latin America and Venezuela for the UK Guardian where she has an article “Nicholas Maduro promises to use new powers to rescue Venezuela’s economy”. We discuss the twelve month emergency decree granted to President Maduro ahead of the December 8 municipal elections, to rescue the economy from what he calls “bourgeois parasites” and the “economic warfare” being waged by the ever-present Yankee imperialists.

Part 3

Then finally we discuss the frenzied exaggerations in the media of the impending doom of Obamacare that has The New York Times comparing a faulty website to President Bush’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina in which 1,900 people died. Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research joins us to discuss his article at The Huffington Post “No One Died at Healthcare.gov: The Phony Crisis of Obamacare”.