The Critical Hour

Trump Nominates Amy Coney Barrett to Fill US Supreme Court Seat of Late Justice Ginsburg

On this edition of The Critical Hour, co-hosts Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon talk to Dr. Linwood Tauheed about the signals being sent by US President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the US Supreme Court. Why is there such a rush to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Sputnik

It's been reported that Trump didn't interview any candidates for the seat apart from Barrett and that she would be similar to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, should she be confirmed to the US' highest court. What does this mean?

The New York Times reported on Sunday that it had "obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due" over the next four years. Is the cat now out of the bag with these revelations?

"Dozens of deaths were reported in battles between forces fighting for Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday," the BBC reported. "At the heart of the conflict is a dispute over control of the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh." Why is the control of this mountainous region so important and what’s at the heart of the dispute? 

Dr. Alan MacLeod writes in a Friday piece in MintPress News, "The extradition case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues in London. The US government is indicting the Australian living on the other side of the world under its own Espionage Act, with the case widely seen as setting an important precedent for freedom of speech and of the media worldwide. Yet as the case reaches its pinnacle, a number of press freedom groups have gone silent on the matter." 

A Monday headline in Sky News read: "Yemen: Evidence of potential war crime by Saudi coalition." The outlet "reports from the scene of a deadly airstrike that struck a remote village not far from the Yemeni-Saudi border." What happened to the village of Washah and the mud and stone home of the Mujali family who once lived there?

"Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that he highly values the unique friendship between China and Cuba and stands ready to help make the two countries good friends, good comrades and good brothers forever," Chinese state outlet Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. What signals is this sending?

"Syria's foreign minister accused US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday of attempting to suffocate Syrians with sanctions 'just like George Floyd and others were cruelly suffocated in the United States,'" Reuters reported Saturday. "New US sanctions that took effect in June under the so-called Caesar Act have further crippled the war-torn country’s already crumbling economy by prohibiting foreign companies trading with Damascus."

Guests:

Dr. Linwood Tauheed - Associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

Shane Stranahan - Co-host of Fault Lines on Sputnik Radio

Mark Sleboda - Moscow-based international relations and security analyst

Dr. Emmit Riley - Political scientist and assistant professor of Africana studies at DePauw University

James Carey - Editor and co-owner of Geopolitics Alert

Ray McGovern - Former CIA analyst and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Peace

Laith Marouf - Broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon

Obi Egbuna - Activist and US representative for the Zimbabwean newspaper The Herald

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