December 9 – An Apocalyptic Endgame in Syria?; A View from Palestine; The Empty-Handed U.N. Climate Conference

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Part 1	We begin with an overview of the tormented Middle East as turmoil in Egypt continues and a possibly disastrous endgame involving the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria looms. Egyptian-born veteran New York Times and Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent Youssef Ibrahim joins us to discuss the demise of democracy and the rise of fundamentalism as the “Arab Spring” is now being referred to as the “Arab Winter”.
Part 2	Then we go to Palestine and talk with Mark Danner who is a journalist and professor and a long-time writer for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books where he has an article in the last issue “The Politics of Fear” and an article in the latest issue “How and What Obama Won”. We discuss the triumphant return of the Hamas leader to Gaza and the upcoming reconciliation talks with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Part 3	Then finally we speak with Anne Petermann who is the Executive Director of the Global Justice Ecology Project who has been attending U.N. climate conferences since 2004 but was banned from the U. N. Climate Conference in Doha that just ended. We discuss the scant progress made where the Kyoto Protocols were extended to 2020 but no reduction in greenhouse gasses was agreed to in spite of the desperate pleas from the island nations who are disappearing as a result of global warming.