Erdogan-Putin Meeting; Colombia Peace Agreement at Risk; Infrastructure Bill Fight

Erdogan-Putin meeting points to widening rifts between Turkey and US/NATO. What this means for Russia and Turkey in Syria and Afghanistan.

Mark Sleboda, international affairs and security analyst, joins us to talk about the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, as they discuss improving relations between the two countries as rifts between Turkey, NATO and the US continue to widen. We talk about the role the two countries could play in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, what this could mean for Russia and Turkey in the conflict in Syria.

Angela Arias Zapata, educator, researcher, and PhD candidate in media, culture & communication at New York University, talks to us about the political situation in Colombia, where the now 5-year-old peace agreement between the government and the FARC is in peril after missteps by the government in its implementation, ongoing violence against labor and community leaders, and the chances of opposition parties in the next election.

Dr. Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law and professor of public policy at Cornell University in New York, senior counsel at Westwood Capital, and fellow of The Century Foundation, talks to us about the dueling infrastructure bills in Congress, why the Democrats can’t seem to unify the party to support the more ambitious one, who and what is behind this opposition to increased public spending beyond red and blue lines, and how parties sometimes support policies in order to just secure power without regard to actual policies that may help or harm citizens of the country.

Chris Garaffa, web developer, technologist, and security & privacy consultant, talks to us about Facebook investigation into the “toxic” nature of Instagram on teenagers, Google redesigning its search engine and how this may end up pushing more traffic to Google properties like YouTube, Bill Gates’s claiming naiveté after the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust released a report concluding that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google hold monopoly power, and the YouTube scandal involving RT-Germany that could see the app banned in Russia.

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