Loud & Clear

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.President Trump today announced the departure of National Security Advisor John Bolton. Trump said in a tweet that he told Bolton last night that his services were no longer needed and that Bolton resigned this morning. He added that he will name a new National Security Advisor next week. Washington is abuzz with news that the CIA had to exfiltrate a sensitive Russian source, according to CNN because the Agency didn’t trust Donald Trump with the secret. But it turns out that the story is far more complicated. The source was actually not as well-placed as has been reported. He was under pressure from former CIA Director John Brennan to produce intelligence that he didn’t have access to. And now he’s living openly--using his true name--in suburban Virginia. Aaron Maté, a journalist with The Grayzone and The Nation and the host of Pushback with

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, director of the Albert Gore Research Center, and one of only three experts who has testified against Big Tobacco, according to The Nation magazine.Hundreds of people across the country have been sickened by a severe lung disease linked to vaping, and at least five have died so far. Most were otherwise healthy young people in their teens and 20s. Scientists are only just beginning to study the phenomenon, and governmental regulation of e-cigarettes is sorely lacking. The situation sounds just like it did with tobacco decades ago. President Trump abruptly announced in a series of tweets last night that he had invited the Taliban leadership to Camp David to discuss peace terms and that he had CANCELED his invitation for the Taliban to go to Camp David. More importantly, the flip flop on Taliban talks points to major policy divisions within the Administrati

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California, author of “Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression,” and at jackrasmus.com. The Trump Administration is unveiling a plan to alter the very structure of the housing market, drastically reducing the federal government’s role in housing, and slashing regulations established in response to the 2008 housing market crash that caused financial devastation for millions of people around the world. At its core, the plan would release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government control. Hundreds of people are missing in the Bahamas and at least 30 are confirmed dead there as Hurricane Dorian moved north and now sits off the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks as a Category 1 storm. Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that stronger and more destructive storms will become more freque

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Alexander Mercouris, the editor-in-chief of The Duran.Yesterday we told you that British politics were in a state of chaos. That hasn’t changed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own brother this morning resigned both from parliament and from the Conservative Party and Johnson again was defeated in a procedural vote last night. It appears that there will be new elections, but nobody knows when. And it also appears that, in the event of those new elections, not much will change. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled yesterday that the federal terrorism watchlist violates the civil rights of those people listed on it. Judge Anthony Trenga said that the standard for inclusion on the list was unconstitutionally vague and he struck it down. Trenga is the same judge that has jailed whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter, a columnist for CounterPunch, and founder of ThisCantBeHappeni

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Neil Clark, a journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Week, and Morning Star.British politics are in a state of crisis. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost his parliamentary majority yesterday when, during his first Prime Minister’s Questions session, one of his members stood up, walked over to the Liberal Democrats, and switched parties. Johnson is now calling for new elections, but Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he won’t back a new election until a Brexit delay is voted on. Jeremy Hammond, an Anonymous hacker who was set up by law enforcement, is on his way back to the notorious Eastern District of Virginia, as authorities there apparently will try to force him to testify against Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange. Hammond’s supporters report that he was recently moved from a medium-security prison in Tennessee to a Bureau of Prisons transportation hub in Oklahoma City and is on

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Brian Terrell, a long time peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Taliban and U.S. negotiators have drafted an initial agreement paving the way for peace in the country and the withdrawal of U.S. troops. However, fierce fighting continues to take place across the country. As Hurricane Dorian bears down on the southeastern coast, what happens to prisoners who are in harm’s way? And with federal and state laws saying that convicted sex offenders--even those who have done their time--are not permitted in shelters, what happens to them. Paul Wright, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor and publisher of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines, joins the show. As tense negotiations over the future of the Iran nuclear deal continue, French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly offered a $15 billion loan to the country to compensate for the harm done

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell.Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on Space Command and the militarization of space, the reallocation of money from hurricane relief to immigrant detention beds, the broader discussion of global migration and where the planet is heading, the massive corporations that have marketed and profited off of opioid addiction and death, and lastly, Joe Biden’s new fake war story. After decades in prison, many of the MOVE 9 political prisoners have now come home. To many, the police attacks on the MOVE organization, including the infamous 1985 bombing of their house by Philadelphia police, crystallized the racism and brutality displayed by the Philadelphia Police Department towards African Americans. The fight to free Delbert and Chuck Africa conti

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of three books--“The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War.”The Justice Department’s Inspector General released a long-awaited report today saying that former FBI Director James Comey violated DOJ policy when he gave a sensitive memo of a conversation he had with President Trump to a friend, and then asked the friend to leak the memo to a journalist. The Inspector General said the memo contained the names of countries raised in the conversation with Trump, which automatically classified it at the “confidential level,” the lowest level of classification. But the violation was not serious enough to prosecute. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said on his show that a single source told him that Donald Trump’s loans with Deutsche Bank had been co-signed by unnamed Russian oligarchs. The report apparently was made up out of whole cloth, the White House threatened an i

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Aurora Santiago-Ortiz, Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellow and a Doctoral Student in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.Tropical Storm Dorian is expected to hit hurricane strength today and to make landfall in Puerto Rico. And this is as the island still hasn’t recovered from a devastating 2017 hurricane season. But what is the Trump Administration doing? The White House announced yesterday that it would divert $271 million in funds earmarked to help those affected by hurricanes and instead spend the money to add 1600 beds in immigrant detention facilities. Deutsche Bank confirmed yesterday that it has a copy of Donald Trump’s tax returns responsive to Congressional subpoenas. But MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell went further than that and made some brash accusations on his show yesterday. He said that other Deutsche Bank loan documents show that Donald Trump’s cosigners are

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, director of the Albert Gore Research Center, and one of only three experts who has testified against Big Tobacco, according to The Nation magazine.In a landmark decision yesterday, a state judge in Oklahoma ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay the state $572 million for intentionally playing down the dangers and overselling the benefits of opioids. The decision fell short of the $17 billion that Oklahoma was seeking as reimbursement addiction treatment, drug courts, and other costs of the epidemic. But it opens the company to similar suits in every other state in America. Senator Tom Cotton, a far-right wing senator from Arkansas, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times in which he says that the United States must purchase Greenland at all costs. Cotton adds that he even raised the idea with the Danish Ambassador to the US a year ago. The Danish governmen

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by John Ross, Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute, Renmin University of China, and an award-winning resident columnist with several Chinese media organizations.US-China trade is in a state of confusion this morning amid mixed signals and contradictory statements over the weekend from President Trump. First the President said that, perhaps, the trade war was a mistake. Then he said it wasn’t. He later said that he might get even tougher on China. And he finally said that the Chinese had called him to work out a deal, which Beijing adamantly denied. In the end, the stock market is convulsing, prices, especially of farm goods, are going up, and the US is exporting less and less to China. French President Emmanuel Macron pulled something of an end run around Donald Trump over the weekend when he invited Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to visit Biarritz, the location of the G-7 Summit, while the G-7 was still meeting. Macron an

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Richard Wolff, a professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and founder of the organization Democracy at Work. Prof. Wolff’s latest book is Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown. Fears are spreading around the world as a key recession indicator goes off in the United States and evidence of economic slowdown surfaces in other major global economies. The last economic crisis was an unusually long 11 years ago, raising fears that another major downturn is right around the corner. Parts of New York City have changed through the decades of white flight, neglect, and gentrification, but the massively wealthy elites who live in the Manhattan penthouses remain a constant. Award-winning author and commentator Lewis Lapham satirized them in his original 1988 book “Money and Class in America,” newly updated, which we talk about with him today. Brian and John speak with Lewis Lapha

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Miko Peled, the author of “The General’s Son - A Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and of "Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.” The Israeli government denied entry into the country for Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who are scheduled to make an official trip on Sunday. Before the official denial, President Trump tweeted about it, urging the Israeli government to deny the Representatives. The move was cheered by Republicans, but threatens to further drive a wedge between the conservative Israeli Prime Minister and Congressional Democrats. The New York Stock Exchange fell more than 800 points yesterday, it’s biggest loss of the year, on news that the economy was slowing and bond yields were inverted. Meanwhile, nine major global economies are either in recession or on the brink of recession. Couple that with multiple trade wars between the US and its partners and it spells trouble for the US e

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of “Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression,” whose work is at www.jackrasmus.com. An economic indicator that has a perfect record of predicting a recession is blinking red. The spread between the 2-year and 10-year U.S. government bond yield today turned negative for the first time since 2007. This has occurred before every recession in the last 50 years. Meanwhile, US mortgage debt hit an all-time high, eclipsing the record set in 2008. Police arrested five anti-government protesters after clashes at Hong Kong’s international airport yesterday in which officers used batons and pepper spray and demonstrators beat two men from mainland China. Several dozen protesters remain inside the airport, and airport officials say they’ve received an injunction limiting the permitted demonstration areas

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Isabel Garcia, co-founder of Coalición de Derechos Humanos.The White House announced a new policy yesterday whereby immigrants will be denied permanent legal status if they appear likely to apply for public assistance programs, including Medicaid, housing subsidies, or food stamps. The measure is set to take effect in October and will be challenged in court. Meanwhile, the State Department will close all but seven immigration application centers in American embassies around the world. Investigators say that only one of the three people who was supposed to be guarding Jeffrey Epstein was an actual prison guard, and none of the three checked on him every thirty minutes, as called for by Bureau of Prisons policy. Law enforcement officials say that Epstein was apparently dead for hours before he was found. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, joins the show. Jury selecti

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jacqueline Luqman, the co-editor-in-chief of Luqman Nation, which hosts a livestream every week on Facebook.Accused sex trafficker, pedophile, and friend of presidents Jeffrey Epstein apparently committed suicide in prison on Saturday, just a week after another suicide attempt. What will his death do in a case that threatened to implicate presidents past and present, a prince, senators and governors, a Harvard law professor, and others? And why was Epstein shielded from the consequences of his crimes for so long? Protests in Hong Kong continued to grow today with thousands of demonstrators raiding the international airport there and forcing the cancelation of all incoming and outgoing flights. Meanwhile, a Chinese government spokesman warned that Beijing was seeing increasing signs of terrorism in the protests. Mike Wong, the outreach coordinator for the San Francisco chapter of Veterans for Peace, joins the show. Hawaii Con

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, and Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell.An alarming new study by the World Resources Institute found that a quarter of humanity lives in areas that are under “extreme water stress.” As climate change intensifies, major metropolitan areas are on the brink of running out of water and the threat of mass displacement looms. What can humanity do to address this crisis? Jodi Dean, a professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and her latest book is Crowds and Party, and Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and the co-author of “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism,” joins the show. The Iowa State Fair is a big deal, not just as far as state fairs go, although it is the biggest and most famous. But it’s also a major stop on the campaign trail every four ye

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Mary Townsend, the director of El Pueblo Immigration Legal Services.In a coordinated operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents yesterday arrested 680 immigrants believed to be undocumented and working in several companies across Mississippi. The raids coincided with President Trump’s visit to El Paso, Texas in the aftermath of the anti-Latino terrorist attack that took place there last weekend, and were the biggest immigration raids since 2006. President Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden made competing speeches yesterday in the aftermath of the weekend’s massacres in El Paso and Dayton. The President, after meeting with people injured in the Dayton attack, harshly criticized Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley. Meanwhile, former Vice President Biden delivered a speech in Iowa, accusing Trump of coddling white supremacists, an accusation that raised eyebrows considering

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Georgia political activist Brad Lathem.Congressional Republicans are under intense pressure to approve some sort of gun control legislation in the wake of recent massacres in El Paso and Dayton and, according to the New York Times, so-called “red flag” legislation is gaining traction. Such legislation would make it easier for law enforcement to take guns away from people who may pose a danger to the public, but who have not yet committed a crime, raising concerns over civil liberties and police powers. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is the primary global body that looks at chemical weapons incidents. The hosts talk about potential biases in the OPCW’s investigation into alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria and the officials who carry them out. Scott Ritter, a former United Nations Weapons Inspector and former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, joins the show. A federal judge in the notorious Ea

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Lucas Koerner, an activist and writer for VenezuelAnalysis.com.President Trump yesterday issued an executive order freezing all Venezuelan assets in the United States and prohibiting transactions with the country. The Wall Street Journal reports that the action amounts to a total economic embargo. The move puts Venezuela on par with North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Iran as the only countries subject to such stringent US sanctions and is a direct challenge to Russia and China, which continue to trade with Venezuela. The Treasury Department yesterday labeled China a currency manipulator after the yuan weakened to less than seven to the dollar, pushing the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing to its most severe point yet. The US action came after China said it would institute a moratorium on the purchase of US farm goods. US stock markets fell three percent yesterday. Richard Wolff, a professor of Economics Emeritus, Un