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 the ongoing situation in Venezuela, the power of labor and teachers recent successes, and the new announcement that 200 "peacekeeping" troops will now stay in Syria.
As the US effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government has run into obstacles within Venezuela, there appears to be a growing danger of a US orchestrated military intervention in alliance between the Pentagon and the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil. US-corporate owned media today were dominated by headlines related to an incident at the Venezuela-Brazil border. The New York Times headline for instance reads, "Deadly Violence Erupts on Brazil Border in Venezuela Aid Showdown: Venezuelan security forces fired on those protesting the government's determination to block aid." Meanwhile, competing concerts are still scheduled to take place today and tomorrow on both sides of the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Paul Dobson, a writer for VenezuelAnalysis.com, joins the show.
Hoda Muthana is an American woman. She was born in the United States, the daughter of a former Yemeni diplomat and she went to college in Alabama. But in 2014 she told her parents that she was going to attend a university event. Instead, she went to Syria and joined the Islamic State. Now she wants to come home. But President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo won't allow her. Indeed, Pompeo says she isn't even really a US citizen. Brian and John speak with Hassan Shibly, the Muthana family attorney and the Executive Director of the Florida Council of American Islamic Relations at Tampa.
A court in North Carolina has ordered a rerun of the congressional election in the state's 9th district. A firm hired by Republican candidate Mark Harris was found to have committed egregious election irregularities, invalidating the result. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist, whose work is at www.rall.com, joins the show.
The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged yesterday that it had issued a passport to Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange in September 2018 as a result of extended negotiations. It is not clear what Assange would be able to do with the passport. He has sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and would likely be extradited to the United States if he leaves. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, joins Brian and John.
It's Friday! So it's time for the week's worst and most misleading headlines. Brian and John speak with Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose critiques of the mainstream media have been a feature of his site Left I on the News and on twitter @leftiblog, and Sputnik producer Nicole Roussell.
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