With Trump as president, it would be a major effort to just move back to the center. With Hillary Clinton, and sustained  pressure from progressives, forward motion is possible, if difficult. This is for progressives thinking about the election. Michael

Seemingly out-of-the-way Turkey was central to a world war a hundred years ago, and after the July 15th attempted military coup, democracy looks to be quite thoroughly killed and President Erdogan is loving it. He’s a faithful American ally but

Recently released emails reveal that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enabled the success of the military coup in Honduras in 2009 which overthrew a democratically elected president. Instead of “hope,” it was the same old American heavy-handedness which has created

From ruthless cold warrior to taking on his nemesis LBJ over the war in Vietnam, was Bobby Kennedy an opportunist? Who was the “runt” of the Kennedy litter?  In this remarkable interview, bestselling author Larry Tye tells us how Bobby’s

Independence day: Many Americans see our freedom to choose as consumers as what independence is all about. But recovering corporate CEO and Huffington Post columnist Richard Eskow on this show shines a light on how far we’ve veered from what

They used to be on top of the world. Remember the mighty OPEC countries? With the fall of the price of oil, countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela are reeling. Professor Michael Klare looks at the nightmares unfolding and

It’s not the fifties, the Cold War is over, yet neo-cons continue to push NATO expansion on Russia’s borders backing them into a wall. As Russia and Syria fight ISIS, American leaders like Hillary Clinton call for a No-Fly Zone

Of course the North beat the South but Southern Values also won. Northern collusion with slavery, annexing Cuba, the 1% vs the 99%, and the wisdom of Phineas T. Barnum are all entertainingly discussed in Ecstatic Nation: Confidence Crisis and

Are we watching a train wreck in progress? Journalist Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories, offers his insight into how the 2016 Democratic Party may have ignored important lessons from the 1968 crack up. There will be

Adam Hochschild has written best selling books about a Belgian King’s holocaust in the Congo and another about the brave British women who fought against the insanity of the first world war. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts:

It’s the year of the anti-establishment candidates: in both parties. Jim Rubens is certainly the underdog against incumbent Kelly Ayotte, a Washington favorite. While Rubens is no liberal, he does take on issues such as the power of money in

They’ve been the big boys ruling their neighborhood for half a century. They really don’t want to give it up, but with their war in Yemen hurting their standing (and America’s) and the dropping price of oil, they are being

America Aflame is a major new interpretation of the civil war era. In this interview with author David Goldfield, light is shed into important dark corners, such as the tragic role played by evangelicalsm on both sides, why a post-war

Politics is theater and yet the mainstream media is missing the real drama. It’s not on the Republican side: the genuinely close race is for the Democratic nomination. On this podcast, Robert Borosage, founder and president of Institute for America’s

Gregory Foster is a decorated Vietnam vet who teaches at National Defense University. He is dedicated to an efficient and effective defense of our country and argues what we most need to achieve that end is a demilitarization of the

How significant a change in policy toward Latin America does Obama’s trip to Havana mean? As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research explains, while the opening to Cuba is beneficial, it seems the American tradition

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48358971/Brexit.mp3The European Union was supposed to mean a continent of nations united by democratic ideals. Instead power and decision making has become more concentrated and centralized. First it was Greece, then Spain threatening to pull out of the EU, now

She may not be trusted on many things, but at least she never claimed to be a peace candidate. If you liked the Bush/Cheney policy of selective “humanitarian intervention,” you’ll be fine with Hillary Clinton’s positions. Researcher and author Nicolas

From the point of view of foreign policy and pentagon insiders, the candidate with the most realistic platform to ensure our national security is Bernie Sanders. Guest Robert English, former Pentagon insider and expert on Russia and the USSR, explains

He’s a leading contender, surging in the polls but the Democratic Party is wielding a real war on Bernie Sanders. According to Princeton history professor Matt Karp, it’s without precedent. Bernie Sanders is clearly carrying on FDR and LBJ Democratic

When Americans hear the word socialism, they feel frightened. Bernie Sanders has looked to the nations of Scandinavia for models, while Hillary Clinton runs away from that. What is reality? On this show, Ann Jones (author of Kabul in Winter

Of course our democratic system of government comes from Italy. So do chocolate, cigars, and hammocks. Instead of simple brute force, the Italian style of empire building relied on commerce and culture. Guest Christopher Kelly (Italian by marriage) talks about

On January 2, 2016, our great ally, the Saudi government, cut the heads off 47 prisoners, including the revered Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Shiite Iran was none too pleased. Tensions between them are at an all time high. Guest on

In the Christmas Truce at the beginning of what was then The Great War, and other lesser know fraternizing between “enemies,” it took courage to question the madness. Still today, Christmas is the one day of peace, while we feel

All the presidential contenders and all of Washington’s top brains repeatedly call for the wealthy Arab states to lead the war on ISIS. Why aren’t they doing it? Former State Department whistle-blower Peter Van Buren explains why.

Of course President Roosevelt knew the Japanese would do something, their oil had been cut off, yet we can conclude he did not know about the specific attack. What no one expected was the transformation of America from a nation

The mainstream media paints a simple picture: Turkey was merely defending itself. But America’s ally, Turkey’s Erdogan, sees his greatest enemy as the Kurds as he works behind the scenes with ISIS. He doesn’t want Russia attacking ISIS and its

On the first half, international relations and military history professor Andrew Bacevich on why western belligerence can not be successful against ISIS, and suggests what can work. And on part two, there is a move to once again prohibit those

The horror of ISIS terrorism today grew from the “peace” imposed by the most powerful Western nations on the former Ottoman Empire at the finish of the first world war, a war that never ended. Many more civilians were killed

In their chilling and intense new novel Broken! , authors Michael Kearns (who taught “enhanced interrogation”) and Ronald Solomon, former TV producer and creator, paint a vivid picture of a world only slightly different from today, filled with swarms of