Discussion on The Crirical Hour of Upcoming Senate Impeachment Trial (1/14/2020)

Another Democratic Debate, Less Diverse And More Polarizing - Why This Matters

On Tuesday night, Democratic presidential candidates will gather for their seventh debate, the last before the Iowa caucuses. The event is set to be the smallest and least diverse debate thus far. Between impeachment, the recent assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and US President Donald Trump planning to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funds for a border wall, not to mention the infighting within the Democratic Party itself, there are a lot of new challenges for the Democratic presidential field. What are we to make of all of this?

Week in Review on Loud & Clear (1/10/2020)

Shifting Narratives: What Caused the Ukrainian Plane Crash in Iran?

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, and 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 the many dimensions of the crisis between the United States and Iran.
[Related articles: The Polemicist: Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back,
The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible, Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?]

Listen to "Shifting Narratives: What Caused the Ukrainian Plane Crash in Iran?" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Iran Discussion on The Critical Hour (1/10/2020)

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time.

"Taiwan votes in presidential and parliamentary elections on Saturday, which will set the course for the democratic island’s ties with its giant and autocratic neighbor China, which claims Taiwan as its territory," Reuters reported Friday. Why does this matter, and how does it affect the US?

Discussion of Iran Retaliation on The Critical Hour (1/7/2020)

Iran Vows Proportional Retaliation for US Soleimani Murder - This Isn't a Threat!

In response to Friday’s assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the military commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a rare appearance at a meeting of the government’s National Security Council to lay down the parameters for any retaliation. It must be a direct and proportional attack on American interests, he said, openly carried out by Iranian forces themselves," the New York Times reported Monday. Meanwhile, "Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the US for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week," AFP reported. What are we to make of this, and what signals are being sent by both sides?
[Related articles: The Polemicist: Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back,
The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible, Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?]

Discussion of the Soleimani Assassinaton on The Critical Hour (1/3/2020)

Is the US on the Brink of War With Iran? US Airstrike Kills Top Iranian General

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time.

Qasem Soleimani, the son of a laborer who became Iran’s most revered military commander, was assassinated Friday in a targeted US drone air strike at the airport in Baghdad, Iraq. "Iranian politicians said, after his death, it would have been Soleimani’s dream to be 'martyred' by the US, Iran’s 'arch foe,' which he had relentlessly battled in the Middle East for the more than the two decades that he led the elite Quds force," the Financial Times reported. One of the fiercest military commanders in Iran in recent decades, the 62-year-old had long masterminded Iran’s support for Shia militant groups. "He was so close to Iran’s supreme leader that he saw him as a son.