July 16 – The Latest Ceasefire in Gaza; The New BRICS Bank and U.S. and E.U. Sanctions on Russia; Xenophobic, Racist and Absurd Claims of Central American Children Carrying Diseases

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza announced by Israel that starts on Thursday after Israeli raids that have killed 220 Gazans and wounded close to 1,800 in response to 1,200 rockets fired at Israel by Hamas that have killed one Israeli. Khaled Elgindy, a visiting fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution who previously served as an advisor to the Palestinian leadership on permanent status negotiations with Israel, joins us to discuss Hamas's acceptance of this ceasefire after having ignored the last one brokered by Egypt.

Part 2

Then we go to London to speak with economist Stephany Griffith Jones, the Financial Markets Program Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University and author of “Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis”. We discuss the testimony she gave on Wednesday to a committee of the UK Parliament on the new BRICS Development Bank and the EU summit underway in Brussels that will increase sanctions against Russia over Ukraine following the just-announced increased sanctions by the U.S. targeting major Russian banks, defense and energy firms.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Rachel Pearson, a sixth-year MD/PhD student at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Institute for the Medical Humanities. We  discuss the xenophobic, racist claims on Fox News that diseases are “carried across the border by this tsunami of illegals” and her article at the Texas Observer “Disease Threat from Immigrant Children Wildly Overstated”, as well as the FACT that the children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador crossing the border have a higher rate of immunization against mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria than children in Texas where one in six are uninsured.