The Gary Null Show – 12.16.16

Interview 1: News maker on Syria and Aleppo

Dr. Gareth Porter is an award-winning historian, an independent investigative journalist and policy analyst who specializes in US geopolitics and national security issues.  During the Vietnam war, he was Dispatch News Services Bureau Chief in Saigon and later a co-director for the Indochina Resource Center.  In addition to being a specialist in Vietnamese and Cambodian affairs, he has been reporting on the Middle East, including the chemical gas attacks reported in Syria, for the past decade. His numerous articles can found in Foreign Affairs, Al-Jazeera, Huffington, Counterpunch, Truthout, Consortium News and others. For the past 9 years he has been investigating US and Israeli tensions with Iran and US intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gareth has an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University.  He has published five major books dealing with Vietnam and Cambodia. His most recent is “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare” published last year, which debunks the myths regarding Iran as a nuclear threat.

Interview 2:The future challenges to our educational system under a Trump presidency

Prof Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor and historian of education in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at New York University.  Her research has largely focused upon the politics and federal policies of education. From 1991 to 1993, she was the Assistant Secretary of Education and has since held board positions on a variety of national educational organizations, universities and think tanks.  Diane has been outspoken critic of national testing regimes, privatization and for-profit charter schools, and the directions being taken in educational reform. Diane has received numerous awards and honorary degrees holds a degree from Wellesley College and received her doctorate at Columbia University. She has written about a dozen books, her most recent “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.”  Her website is DianeRavitch.com