Week in Review Discussion on Loud & Clear (12/13/2019)

Labour Suffers Catastrophic Defeat in UK Election

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Neil Clark, a journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Week, and Morning Star.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won British elections yesterday in the biggest landslide since 1987, guaranteeing that Brexit takes place on his terms next month. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that he would not head the party in the next elections, but he has not yet set a resignation date. Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party won broadly, perhaps enough to push another referendum on Scottish independence.

The House Judiciary Committee this morning voted 23-17 in a party-line vote to impeach President Trump. The two articles of impeachment now go to the floor of the House, and the entire body will vote on impeachment on Wednesday. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist whose work is at www.rall.com, joins the show.


Earlier this week we told you about secret Pentagon documents uncovered by the Washington Post that show that the Defense Department, the CIA, and other federal agencies have lied consistently over the past 18 years about US military progress in Afghanistan. While the government was telling the American people that we were winning the war in Afghanistan, the truth was that we were losing, and in fact, we weren’t even sure who the enemy was. Brian and John speak with Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and the co-author with Oliver Stone of the book and hit Showtime television series “The Untold History of the United States.”

Israel appears headed toward a record third election in the past year after neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his chief challenger, Benny Ganz, were able to form governments. The new election has been set for March 2. But this time, Netanyahu will have to campaign as a defendant in three criminal cases related to abuse of power and bribery. Miko Peled, the author of “The General’s Son - A Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and of "Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five,” joins the show.

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.

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 impeachment hearings,US-China tensions and the UK election. Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell join the show.
(This is my, segment starts at 57:55)

Listen to "Labour Suffers Catastrophic Defeat in UK Election" 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.)