Three professional influence peddlers, including a registered corporate lobbyist, have been chosen by Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., to serve on the committee responsible for drafting the party’s platform.

The 15-member panel has six members chosen by Clinton, five chosen by Bernie Sanders and four chosen by Wasserman Schultz.

Wendy Sherman and Carol Browner, two of the representatives chosen by Clinton, work at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “government affairs” firm that was created in 2009 through a merger with Madeleine Albright’s consulting company and Stonebridge International, a defense contractor lobbying shop.

The website for the company touts its ability to win favors and influence with government officials throughout the world on behalf of corporate clients, from shaping regulatory standards in the U.S. for a European automotive business to engaging “with the highest levels of the Saudi government.” H.P. Goldfield, vice president at the firm, is a registered lobbyist for the Saudi Arabian government.

The Albright Stonebridge Group did not respond to a request to provide a client list. But recent reports reveal that the firm has been tapped in recent months to work for Elliott Management, the hedge fund run by billionaire Paul Singer, one of the most prolific donors to Republican Super PACs.

Sherman, who took a hiatus from her work at Albright Stonebridge to work at the State Department, filed an ethics disclosure in 2011 that revealed many of her former clients, including Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Dow Chemical, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Wasserman Schultz appointed Howard Berman, a former congressman who now works at Covington & Burling as a lobbyist. Disclosures show he currently represents the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group for the movie industry, on “intellectual property issues in trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, copyright, and related legislation.”

The picks stand in contrast to the slate chosen by the Bernie Sanders campaign, which included environmentalist Bill McKibben, philosopher Cornel West, and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.

Related:

• Democratic Convention Hosted by Republican Donors, Anti-Obamacare Lobbyists

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The post Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz Pick Influence Peddlers to Guide DNC Platform appeared first on The Intercept.

Author (Photo: Los Angeles, circa 1875 ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles by John Mack Faragher. Part 1 of 2. “Groundbreaking … if you read Professor Faragher’s Eternity Street you will be enlightened to discover the violent story of the West―real and imagined―today’s and yesterday’s―begins and ends in Los Angeles.” (Stuart Rosebrook - True West Magazine) “Faragher’s stories evoke Cormac McCarthy. In a grim but riveting narrative, languid preconceptions of Edenic California’s birth give way to murder and mayhem, carnage and cruelty. Eternity Street describes human beings at their worst, but this is American history at its best.” (Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World) “Gripping and authoritative, this is a masterwork of scholarship and literary grace. Faragher’s dark portrait of L.A. pulls no punches and asks us to consider what grim DNA yet lurks in the City of Angels.” (William Deverell, University of Southern California, author of To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds) “In Eternity Street, John Mack Faragher has unearthed a blood-soaked history of nineteenth-century Los Angeles that blows away ‘Wild West’ fantasies. Faragher’s masterwork should be read by all who wish to understand more about the violence that has shaped the American past.” (Stephen Aron, UCLA, author of The American West: A Very Short Introduction) “Through chilling anecdote and skilled storytelling, John Mack Faragher explores the experience of frontier violence for L.A.’s Mexican, Anglo, Indian, Black, and Chinese residents. This may just be the true origin story for L.A. noir.” (Amy Greenberg, Penn State University, author of A Wicked War) “Eternity Street will be an enduring landmark. Faragher’s stories are not happy ones, but they are ones we need to remember if we hope to embrace the West’s full history and cope with the legacy that continues to bedevil us.” (Elliott West, University of Arkansas, author of The Last Indian War) http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Street-Violence-Justice-Frontier/dp/0393051366/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464050397&sr=1-1&keywords=John+Mack+Faragher

Author (Photo: Los Angeles circa 1880 at the produce market. ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles by John Mack Faragher. Part 2 of 2. “[A] fascinating account of the twisted threads of murder, ethnic violence and mob justice in 19th century Southern California. . . . The sheer power of these events. . . burn up these pages. . . . The insights gained may help dissect gang violence, drug violence, honor killings, witch killings ― even the unseen internal disputes of the various peoples subjected to recent counter-insurgency and state-building projects.” (Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America - Los Angeles Times) “Hugely readable ... Faragher is one of the great living American historians, and his area of expertise is the American frontier. His 1992 biography, “Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer,” is a modern classic, and “Eternity Street” is destined to become one.” (Allen Barra - Chicago Tribune) “Eye-opening … As you read, you may regret that There Will Be Blood was already taken, but Faragher’s book is the ideal prequel to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 epic about SoCal’s formative years in the early twentieth century.” (Tom Carson - Bookforum) “Groundbreaking … if you read Professor Faragher’s Eternity Street you will be enlightened to discover the violent story of the West―real and imagined―today’s and yesterday’s―begins and ends in Los Angeles.” (Stuart Rosebrook - True West Magazine) http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Street-Violence-Justice-Frontier/dp/0393051366/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464050397&sr=1-1&keywords=John+Mack+Faragher

Democracy Now! 2016-05-23 Monday

• Headlines for May 23, 2016
• Exclusive: Meet the Pentagon Official Who Blew the Whistle on Mistreatment of Other Whistleblowers
• Pentagon Whistleblower's Disclosures Put a Lie to Obama, Clinton Claims About Snowden
• Pentagon Whistleblower John Crane: "I Was Inspired by My Grandfather's Stand Against Hitler"

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Oil and gas companies are spending heavily to crush three Colorado ballot initiatives that would limit fracking. And some of the state’s most powerful Democrats are helping them.

The stakes are particularly high for several Colorado communities that have voted to limit or ban oil and gas development locally. Those limits were nullified in two cities by state Supreme Court decisions earlier this month. So the ballot initiatives may be their last best chance to slow development whose speed has surprised even cities that initially supported oil and gas projects.

“We feel it is a last ditch effort,” said Tricia Olson, director of Coloradans Resisting Extreme Energy Development, or CREED, which is pushing to get two of the measures on the ballot.

One measure would allow cities to pass rules to limit or even ban oil and gas development locally; the other would disallow companies from building oil and gas facilities closer than 2,500 feet from “occupied structures.” A third, supported by a separate group called Coloradans for Community Rights, would empower communities to make all kinds of decisions, including whether to frack. The groups are currently in the process of gathering the 98,000 signatures required to get on the ballot.

Campaign finance filings released this month indicate just how much oil and gas companies are willing to pony up to drill freely.

An industry-backed committee created just to defeat fracking ballot measures in Colorado, called Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy, and Energy Independence, collected more than $6.3 million in the first five months of this year.

Most of the pro-fracking group’s money came from two $2.5 million donations, one each from Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy. Smaller contributions came from a dozen or so other oil and gas companies and industry groups.

Karen Crummy, who is a spokesperson for the group, said the measures would wreck the economy and strip farmers and ranchers of mineral rights that help them get by in tough times.

By comparison, on the anti-fracking side, CREED’s issues committee raised only $56,000. The total for Coloradans for Community Rights barely surpassed $5,700. The biggest anti-fracking donor, to CREED, was Tricia Olson, a retiree.

The fight for community control took off four years ago in a town named Longmont, when the industry spent more than $500,000 attempting to stop local voters from enacting a citywide ban. But the pro-ballot campaigners, who raised less than $30,000, won.

There was similar voter approval in 2013 in Lafayette, Fort Collins, Broomfield, and the city of Boulder. (Boulder County commissioners had passed a moratorium on fracking in early 2012.)

Ever since, the industry has dedicated itself to defeating the rules in court, an effort that climaxed on May 2, with a pair of Supreme Court decisions against Longmont and Fort Collins.

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton claim they support locally enacted fracking limits. Sanders wants to ban the technique altogether, while Clinton says she would not support fracking “when any locality or any state is against it.”

But top Democrats in Colorado have warmed to the frackers.

Consider the case of Ted Trimpa, a registered lobbyist for Noble Energy and Encana oil and gas, who sits on the advisory committee of Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, another front group for Anadarko and Noble that is fighting the proposals.

If anyone knows the power of Colorado cash to swing local politics, it’s Trimpa. He was an architect of Colorado Democrats’ surprise take-back of state politics from Republicans in 2004. The scheme involved aiming the cash of four wealthy donors, known as the “Gang of Four,” at key races, and later evolved into an infrastructure for coordinated Democrat donations through a network of non-profits.

The “Colorado miracle” became a model for Democrats nationwide. Trimpa has since served as a board member of some of the national Democratic Party’s most important funding and policy appendages, including Democracy Alliance and ProgressNow, as well as the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, which supports the Clinton campaign through a Super PAC of the same name.

He’s joined on the Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development advisory committee by Democratic superdelegate and former Gov. Roy Romer. And Trimpa’s old pal Tim Gill, one of the Gang of Four, is now chairman of another group, Colorado Concern, that has put money down to halt the initiatives.

Watch the video from the anti-fracking group Protect Colorado:

In 2014, two fracking ballot measures very similar to the ones being pushed now were bankrolled by America’s fifth-richest member of Congress (and another of the Democratic Gang of Four), Rep. Jared Polis.

But the measures were apparently too threatening to the political ambitions of too many Democrats. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper was facing re-election, as was Sen. Mark Udall — and Polis himself happened to be running to become chair of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign Committee.

So at the last minute, Polis made a deal with Hickenlooper and oil and gas representatives to kill the measures before they made it to the ballot, despite the fact that the campaign had already collected 200,000 supporter signatures, more than enough to qualify for a vote. In exchange, oil and gas companies threw out a pair of pro-fracking measures, and Hickenlooper agreed to create a panel to recommend policies to hand more control and protection to communities where fracking was taking place. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who is up for re-election this year, had also pushed for the compromise.

Hickenlooper was re-elected — attracting nearly three times more oil and gas cash than his Republican opponent. Polis lost his bid for DCCC chair, and Udall lost, too. As for the promised panel, although Hickenlooper appointed six representatives from the oil and gas companies, he included not a single grassroots organizer that had been pushing for more local control. The panel’s recommendations failed to give significant new decision-making powers to communities.

Hickenlooper recently spoke at a luncheon alongside American Petroleum Institute head Jack Gerard, stating that this year’s ballot initiative to increase distances between homes and gas wells could invite lawsuits costing billions. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all,” he said.

The anti-fracking campaign says it won’t get fooled again. “CREED is very sensitive to the fact that our Democrats had a large hand in the initiatives being pulled last time, because they had so much control,” said Lauren Petrie, a senior organizer for Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit backing the Colorado campaign. This time around, she said, they’re “making sure that this is remaining a grassroots-led effort.”

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In a world awash with big data and struggling with the questions it poses, a new history of our statistical foundations could hardly be more timely

Author (Photo: ‪File:17th-century Netherlandish artist - Democritus with a skull. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:17th-century_Netherlandish_artist_-_Democritus_with_a_skull.jpeg) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh. How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European #Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. “#Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient #Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: #Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; #Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; #Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist #Lucian of #Samosata. “Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. “As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.” “A seminal work . . . to be studied, reread, and referenced . . . With a nonprofessorial, relaxed style . . . Whitmarsh delves deeply into the many philosophers who felt gods were invented by humans or saw laws, in addition to religion, as merely imposition of order . . . The author’s erudition is impressive.”—Kirkus (starred review) “Battling the Gods is a timely and wonderfully lively reminder that atheism is as old as belief. #Skepticism, Whitmarsh shows, did not slowly emerge from a fog of piety and credulity. It was there, fully formed and spoiling for a fight, in the bracing, combative air of ancient Athens. That the fight was never decisively won -- or lost -- only makes its history, as this book shows, all the more gripping.” —Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern "If you have ever wondered about premature skeptics who questioned beliefs held sacrosanct in their own time--such as religion or slavery in the ancient world--this is the book for you. In plain English, classics scholar Tim Whitmarsh explores the minds of those who doubted the existence of gods more than 2500 years ago and got into trouble because of their doubts. It is a pure delight to be introduced to people who questioned the supernatural long before modern science provided physical evidence to support the greatest insights of human reason." —Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism “In the face of many crude modern discussions of atheism (both pro and anti), it's great to have Tim Whitmarsh's sophisticated exploration of various versions of ancient disbelief. It brilliantly opens up all kinds of issues, from the roots of religious conflict and the alliance of religion and politics to (some) virtues of old-fashioned #polytheism.”—Mary Beard, author of Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations “Erudite and sweeping, graceful and entertaining, Battling the Gods relates the fascinating history of atheism in #Greco-Roman antiquity, setting contemporary debates about religion and secularism in much needed context.—Danielle Allen, author of Why Plato Wrote http://www.amazon.com/Battling-Gods-Atheism-Ancient-World/dp/0307958329/ref=la_B001HMLNTM_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463181629&sr=1-1

Author (Photo: ‪Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group arrested‬) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Inside Information Talks. Anita Raghavan, NYT. “I met Khan in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in September, five months after she was released from prison and three months after she was transferred from a halfway house to her own home. I wanted to understand how a highly intelligent woman like Khan — she has a degree in engineering, two in physics and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley — wound up committing a crime like this. What sorts of calculations had she made to convince herself that the benefits of cheating outweighed the possible costs? “Khan was wary of me. She felt bruised by the way the media had demonized her. All but one of her friends from her California days had abandoned her. Since moving to Florida, she has channeled her energies into raising her only child, her adopted daughter, Priyanka. “I have no outside-world connections,” she told me. Oddly, she was worried that if she agreed to be interviewed for an article, people might think she was paid for her story. (The New York Times does not pay for interviews.) After vetting the idea with her lawyer and her probation officer, she agreed to sit down and tell me about her life. “I had seen so many unattractive photographs of Khan that I was surprised when a spunky woman with large, lively eyes and carefully blow-dried hair bounded up to me in my hotel lobby. Khan, who is about 5-foot-2 and svelte, was dressed in a loosefitting cotton blouse and skinny jeans and carried a horseshoe-shaped, fuchsia Louis Vuitton bag and an iPad on which she tracks a handful of stocks — Apple, Caterpillar and Cummins. She said she has no money to invest. “I do it for the intellectual curiosity. Otherwise my mind would be mush.”…” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/can-a-stock-trader-turned-convict-start-a-new-life.html

Paul Kennedy in conversation with author and New York Times journalist Scott Shane about his Gelber Prize winning book "Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President, and the Rise of the Drone"

In Part 2 of our wide-ranging conversation with the world-renowned dissident Noam Chomsky, we talk about the conflict in Syria, the rise of ISIS, Saudi Arabia, the political crisis in Brazil, the passing of the pioneering lawyer Michael Ratner, the U.S. relationship with Cuba, Obama's visit to Hiroshima and today's Republican Party. "If we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects," Chomsky says, "but the fact of the matter is that today's Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally."

To watch Part 1 of the interview, click here.

Democracy Now! 2016-05-17 Tuesday

• Headlines for May 17, 2016
• Noam Chomsky on Syria Conflict: Cut Off the Flow of Arms & Stop Bombing to Stem the Atrocities
• Chomsky: Saudi Arabia is the "Center of Radical Islamic Extremism" Now Spreading Among Sunni Muslims
• Noam Chomsky: Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff "Impeached by a Gang of Thieves"
• Chomsky: Today's Republican Party is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History
• Chomsky on Obama's Visit to Hiroshima & Presidential Legacy: "Nothing to Rave About"
• Chomsky on the Late Michael Ratner & How U.S. Thawed Cuba Ties to Avoid Dwindling Regional Influence

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Democracy Now! 2016-05-16 Monday

• Headlines for May 16, 2016
• Noam Chomsky: Climate Change & Nuclear Proliferation Pose the Worst Threat Ever Faced by Humans
• Chomsky on Trump's Climate Denialism: He Wants Us to March Toward the Destruction of the Species
• Chomsky: Hillary Clinton Fears BDS Because It Counters Decades of US Support for Israeli Aggression
• Chomsky on Supporting Sanders & Why He Would Vote for Clinton Against Trump in a Swing State

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There are almost 12 million admissions to local jails each year in the U.S. Activist Nancy Fishman says that most of those jailed are poor people being held for low-level offenses, like traffic violations. Ken Tucker reviews a new album from Car Seat Headrest.

This month, Jewish communities across the country celebrate Passover, a holiday that marks the end of the Israelites’ enslavement by the Egyptians. Only about 2% of the U.S. population is Jewish, but the influence of American Jews far outweighs their relatively small demographic size. In this episode of BackStory, the Guys explore the history of Judaism in America, from George Washington’s famous letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, to efforts to establish a Jewish city of refuge, near Buffalo, New York in the l820’s, and the importance of delis in Jewish American culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a central London street renowned for high-class healthcare sits a property that houses 2,159 companies. Why has this prestigious address been used so many times as a centre for elaborate international fraud?

Professor of Chinese history and philosophy Michael Puett draws from ancient teachings to help us challenge deeply-held assumptions about how to live our lives and follow a path of self-cultivation and engagement with the world. He invites us to re-examine the impact of Western philosophy on our lives and to "unlearn" many ideas that inform modern society.

Speaker(s): Professor Fawaz A Gerges | The Islamic State has stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. What explains the rise of ISIS and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? One of the world's leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions as he provides a unique history of the rise and growth of ISIS. Fawaz A. Gerges (@FawazGerges) is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His many books include The New Middle East, Obama and the Middle East, and The Far Enemy. His latest book is Isis: A History. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. Chris Hughes is Professor of International Relations and Head of the Department of International Relations at LSE. The Department of International Relations (@LSEIRDept) is now in its 88th year making it one of the oldest and largest in the world.

Democracy Now! 2016-05-04 Wednesday

• Headlines for May 04, 2016
• "Slickest Con Man Out of NYC": Donald Trump Set to Be GOP Nominee Despite Links to Organized Crime
• "A Voice from Another Part of New York": Hear Juan González's NY Journalism Hall of Fame Speech
• Revolutionary, Strike Leader & Columnist: Juan González Retires from NY Daily News After 29 Years

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Author (Photo: ‪Hundreds of locals gather around the scene of a massive car bomb attack, on July 1, 2006, in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. A car bomb exploded in the…) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World by Nir Rosen. Booklist “This could not be a more timely (2010) or trenchant examination of the repercussions of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Journalist Rosen has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s, among other publications, and authored In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006). His on-the-ground experience in the Middle East has given him the extensive contact network and deep knowledge—advantages that have evaded many, stymied by the great dangers and logistical nightmares of reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. This work is based on seven years of reporting focused on how U.S. involvement in Iraq set off a continuing chain of unintended consequences, especially the spread of radicalism and violence in the Middle East. Rosen offers a balanced answer to the abiding question of whether our involvement was worth it. Many of his points have been made by others, but Rosen’s accounts of his own reactions to what he’s witnessed and how he tracked down his stories are absolutely spellbinding.” --Connie Fletcher http://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Following-Bloodshed-Americas-Muslim/dp/1568584016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461460060&sr=1-1&keywords=nir+rosen

During an event Tuesday night, Noam Chomsky was asked about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and said he considered him more of a "New Deal Democrat" than a radical extremist, as some have portrayed him. Chomsky said Sanders' positions on taxes and healthcare are supported by a majority of the American public, and have been for a long time. He added that Sanders has "mobilized a large number of young people who are saying, 'Look, we're not going to consent anymore.' If that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term."

Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than half a century. He spoke at the Brooklyn Public Library at an event hosted by Live from the NYPL.

The event also featured Greece's former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. He discusses his role in the country's financial crisis in his new book, "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future."

Varoufakis will be a guest Thursday on Democracy Now!

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh discusses the reporting he did for his new book, The Killing of Osama bin Laden, in Part 2 of an extended interview. Next week marks the fifth anniversary of the assassination of bin Laden.

Watch Part 1, when Hersh argues the official U.S. account of how bin Laden was found and killed was deceptive, and that Pakistan detained bin Laden in 2006 and kept him prisoner with the backing of Saudi Arabia. He suggests that the U.S. and Pakistan then struck a deal: The U.S. would raid bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, but make it look as if Pakistan was unaware.

Democracy Now! 2016-04-25 Monday

• Headlines for April 25, 2016
• "Horrified": Seymour Hersh Reacts to Obama's Plan to Send 250 More U.S. Special Ops Troops to Syria
• Seymour Hersh Weighs In on Sanders vs. Clinton: "Something Amazing Is Happening in This Country"
• Is the Obama Admin Ignoring the Role of Turkey & Saudi Arabia in Syria's 2013 Sarin Gas Attacks?
• Sy Hersh's Book on Bin Laden Killing Rejects U.S. Story, Says Saudis Financed Hiding of Qaeda Leader

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How much does a candidate's stance on free trade affect your support of him or her? https://t.co/YtFzNRCrJa

— KQED Forum (@KQEDForum) April 18, 2016

Behind the News, 4/21/16 - guests: Bruce Dixon, Alfredo Saad Filho - Doug Henwood