SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast.

 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host is Andrew Ferguson.

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]:

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

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TOPICs: Voting Info; the Past/Present/Future of NATO in the age of Trump and Pandemic.

This program was recorded on Thursday evening, APRIL 16. If you call in, you will NOT be able to get on the air, so please do not call the call-in number. We love our callers, but unfortunately live call-in is one of the casualties of COVID-19.

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My guest today is teacher, lecturer and writer Stanley R. Sloan. Stan retired from US government service in 1999, and has been a teacher, lecturer and writer. He has taught in the Winter Term at Middlebury College in Vermont for 16 years. He has lectured at the NATO College in Rome, Italy for three decades. During Stan’s time in government, he served as an intelligence officer in the US Air Force, intelligence analyst at the CIA, as a representative of the intelligence community on a US arms control delegation in Vienna, Austria, and policy analyst and research manager at the Congressional Research Service (which is the main policy analysis agency for the Senate and House.) [Last December, the Trump administration vetoed his participation in a conference on NATO in Copenhagen, Denmark cosponsored by the US Department of States because he had been critical of President Trump and his policies. Danish organizations responded by inviting him to come to Denmark in this past March for a week of lecturing and meetings with Danish media.] I read Stan’s remarks on 12/9/2019. You can hear them here starting at the 15m52s mark. The text is also at the bottom of that post.

Stan Sloan is the author of the award-winning Transatlantic traumas: Has illiberalism brought the West to the brink of collapse? (Manchester University Press MUP, 2018) and Defense of the West:  NATO, the European Union and the Transatlantic Bargain (MUP, 2016).

Stan’s newest book is scheduled for publication in the last quarter of 2020, entitled: Defense of the West: Transatlantic Security from Truman to Trump (MUP, 2020). (Pre-order Link)

Other books by, and information about, Stanley R. Sloan

DISCUSSION:

1. Brief history of NATO and its purpose, up to present.
2. What purpose does NATO serve in peacetime (“peace” being loosely defined over the past 20 years)?
3. What purpose(s) can/should it be serving during the current pandemic?
4. Current problems with the alliance:
   1. What is pre-existing and what is Trump-driven?
5. In your book Transatlantic Traumas”, you discuss the complex development of what you call the Rightwing Populist Parties, or RPP.
   1. Illiberalism in Europe and USA
   2. Is Trump a product or an enabler?
   3. Europeans have little experience with immigration and mass refugees and integrating them.
6. Security factors:
   1. COVID19:
      1. redefinition of security
      2. 2000: feeling of the world having become safer, pre-Putin
         1. “Comprehensive Security”
         2. 2011 changed the definitions of security again
7. Broadening concept of security: health, climate issues, defense spending, Euro-skepticism,
8. US & NATO, post-Trump
   1. 10-20 years: Bi-polar US/China. Russia declining power from an economic base.
9. External defense of Europe:
   1. NATO & Cybersecurity
   2. EU not becoming a strategic pole for the future because of individual nationalism
   3. Is socialism, or some political movement further left, a solution in socio-political peace?

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1. Next Harris County election is a runoff, originally scheduled for May, and is now scheduled for July 14, 2020 – Primary Runoff Elections (at HarrisVotes.com)
2. PRESS RELEASE (In Part): “(Houston, Texas) – The Harris County Clerk will close its main office and annexes to the public on the advice of county leadership as a measure to help contain and mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) … and continue until further notice…. Employees will continue serving the public by email and phone, but residents are reminded that they can access most services online. Among these, electronic filing in real property, electronic filing in the courts (county, civil and probate) and personal records. Electronic filing for campaign and personal finance is also available online. … The Harris County Clerk’s Office is currently working on a plan to continue to make voting accessible for the upcoming elections.”
   1. General business for county Clerk: https://www.cclerk.hctx.net/
   2. The city of Friendswood Updated at 12:34 p.m. March 27: At the board of trustees special meeting on March 23, the board voted to postpone the district bond election to November.
      1. https://communityimpact.com/houston/pearland-friendswood/government/2020/03/19/city-of-friendswood-friendswood-isd-elections-postponed/
3. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   1. For a personalized, nonpartisan voter guide visit vote411.org (DO NOT!! go to 411Vote!!
   2. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   3. HarrisVotes.com  (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965) Dr. Diane Trautman, Harris County Clerk
   4. VoteTexas.gov
   5. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers
      1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      2. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      3. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      4. Current utility bill
      5. Bank statement
      6. Government check
      7. Paycheck
      8. (a) A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
   6. You may vote early by-mail if
      1. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      3. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
   7. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
      1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
      2. POLL LOCATIONS & BALLOTS: Find your ballots with simple information entries
   8. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.

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