July 9 – Is Venezuela Laying Out the Red Carpet for Snowden?; Media Proxy Wars in Egypt; Bringing the War “Home” to Hezbollah

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Full Program	LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM
Part 1	We begin with the possibility that Venezuela will be laying out the red carpet for Edward Snowden and go to Caracas, Venezuela to speak with David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office of Latin America who has taught at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. We discuss the likely impact of Venezuela taking in Snowden at a time when there were signs of improvement in relations between the U.S. and the Maduro government.
Part 2	Then we speak with an expert on the Arab media, Marwan Kraidy, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Arab Television Industries”. With Al Jazeera banned from press conferences by Egyptian journalists and the Saudi’s Al Arabiya the mouthpiece for Egypt’s Salafist Al Nour party, we discuss the outside influence of rival Saudi-backed and Qatari-backed TV networks in shaping and covering the coup underway in Egypt.
Part 3	Then finally, following today’s car bombing in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, we look into the possibility of the proxy war next door in Syria spreading into Lebanon, in retaliation to Hezbollah’s brigades joining in the Syrian civil war. Beirut-based freelance writer and editor Emily Dische-Becker joins us to discuss whether the Free Syrian Army is making good on its threat to bring the war “home” to Hezbollah.