Day: August 1, 2022

Background Briefing: August 1, 2022

 

Ron DeSantis’s Nazification of American Education

We begin with Florida’s culture wars being waged by Governor DeSantis in schools where teachers are scrambling to remake lessons less than two weeks away from the first day of school in Florida to comply with DeSantis’s book-burning, abortion banning, gay bashing dogma. Joining us is Henry Giroux, a world renowned educator, author and public intellectual who currently holds the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and is also The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: Disposable Futures: Violence in the Age of the Spectacle; America at War with Itself, Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis and his latest book is Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance and we discuss his article at Counterpunch “The Nazification of American Education.”

 

When Russia Annexes Captured Territory, Will They Consider an Attack On It a NATO Attack on Russia?

Then we examine the likelihood that Putin will soon annex the territory Russia has captured in the Donbas along with the land bridge to Crimea and proclaim it a part of Russia so that any incoming rocket or artillery round supplied by NATO fired by Ukraine could be considered an attack on Russia by NATO. Joining us is Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum, a professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and a former senior fellow at The Atlantic Council. A member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, he worked as a Swedish Diplomat in Moscow and served as an economic advisor to the governments of Russia and Ukraine. His books include Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It and Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path From Market Economy to Kleptocracy.

 

The State of the US Economy and Relations With China

Then finally we assess the state of the economy and relations with China as House Speaker Pelosi is in Asia on a trip that is likely to include visiting Taiwan which the Chinese government has warned her against. Joining us is Matthew Klein, the founder and publisher of The Overshoot, a premium subscription research service focused on the global economy, financial markets, and public policy. He was previously the Economics Commentator at Barron’s, and has also written for the Financial Times, Bloomberg View, and the Economist and is the co-author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace. We discuss his latest articles at the Overshoot, “Most Americans Are Doing Well. For Now” and “China’s Unbalancing Is Going Into Overdrive.”