April 24 – FCC About to Eviscerate Net Neutrality; Turkey’s PM Offers Condolences on Eve of 99th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide; Israel Suspends Peace Talks Over Fatah-Hamas Pact

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that the FCC’s new chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing new rules that would give the phone and cable monopolies and oligopolies who control our access to the Internet, the ability to negotiate payola agreements with content providers to fast track their content while degrading access for ordinary users, thus eviscerating the principle of net neutrality that has kept the Internet open to all on a level playing field. John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, a public interest digital rights group based in Washington DC joins us to discuss whether the public is about to lose the most important new medium in human history.

Part 2

Then we examine the significance of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan’s offer of condolences to Armenians over the World War 1 killings on the eve of the 99^th anniversary of what the Armenians and many others consider an act of genocide. David Phillips the Chair of the Turkey-Armenia Reconciliation Commission and author of “Diplomatic History: The Turkey-Armenia Protocols” joins us to discuss his efforts to bring about reconciliation over what happened in 1915 that since then has been denied by the Turks and festers a source of anger amongst the Armenian diaspora and in Armenia where its border with Turkey remains closed.

Part 3

The finally, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu suspending U.S.-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians over President Abbas’s unity pact with Hamas, we will speak with Leila Hilal who served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiations Department and acted as an external advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team at the Annapolis peace talks of 2008. We discuss what this means for the peace talks that were going nowhere and how the secular Fatah group in the West bank can form a working relationship with its Islamist rivals Hamas in Gaza, who refuse to recognize Israel and who Israel in turn considers a terrorist group.