Level Talk with John Harrison

This week’s Level Talk looks a global look at East-West tensions, revealing that things perhaps are not quite as bad as they seem. Dr. Tara McCormack, lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Leicester and Mary Dejevsky, a prominent writer, and journalist based in London take part in this program.

The Russian Olympic Committee and their staff are specifically accused of state-sponsored doping. However, there is little evidence to support this claim. What is the real reason?

British scientists have studied interplanetary dust that can travel through space at up to 70km per second. They calculate that if bio-particles high in the atmosphere could be dislodged from the Earth's gravity by incoming space dust, the same process could have happened in reverse.

President Trump threatened to pull out of the TPP during his election, and perhaps to his credit, did exactly that soon after becoming President. Since then, 11 countries mostly in the Pacific Rim have moved on without the US to form another agreement. But does the Asia Pacific region really need another trade agreement?

The World Bank has recently issued a report on the influence of the economic development of India and China on the Russian economy. This is important, because what is happening now in terms of bringing the economies of these countries together has global importance. Let's look at some of the major economic alliances between Russia, China and India.

The large-scale demonstrations which took place in Poland on Polish Independence Day on November 11th have not been given much attention in the international press. We are talking about 60,000 people shouting very strong nationalist, anti-Jewish, anti-migrant slogans in the middle of Eastern Europe.

Former minister Baroness Shriti Vadera, who is now chairwoman of Santander UK, said that "the underlying promise of western capitalist economies - that a rising tide lifts all boats - has been broken". Can capitalism be fixed? If it can't, then what on earth do we do?

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio has become one of the most popular Popes ever, but inside the Catholic Church, many hate him intensely. He drives a Fiat, pays his own hotel bills and controversially washed the feet of Muslim women refugees. He has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that the Church will split.

Observers may not realize the seriousness of events taking place in Poland. Some think the independence of Poland’s judiciary is under attack, the Polish government is becoming ‘populist,’ and Poland’s foreign policies are being leveraged to support certain autocratic policies.

In the midst of many bold statements about fake news, Donald Trump has threatened to shut down NBC and some other American networks. It seems very unlikely that any networks will actually lose their broadcasting licenses, but has freedom of the press in the United States already been seriously compromised?

We are used to describing Kim Jong Un as being psychotic, but are his actions in fact rational if we look at the geopolitical history of the region?

The CIA has applied for authority to conduct drone strikes in Afghanistan. This raises a number of extremely important questions about the politics of drone usage in general.

According to a poll carried out for the Independent newspaper by BMG Research last week, the majority of British people believe that the UK should stay in the UK. If this change in attitude should prevail, is another referendum possible?

We are used to treating houses as not only places to live in, but also as assets to invest into. The motto: ‘As safe as houses’ holds sway over our collective consciousness, and many see property as the easiest way to accumulate capital. Is this good or bad for our economies?

Hollywood has long been respected as a centre of excellence – the world’s premier film making centre. And perhaps quite rightly so. But there is a mostly unknown aspect to Hollywood – the influence of Washington on scripts and production. The two authors of the new book ‘American Security Cinema’ reveal the extent of this involvement.

Early in the morning of November 9, 2016, Hillary Clinton phoned Donald Trump and congratulated him on his win. There were all sorts of scapegoats, the biggest being Russia. Why did Hillary lose, and was it because of the Russians?

For many Europeans, America was our guiding light; we were very much a part of the US vision for the world. Together we established the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and opposed the Soviet Union. Now, many Europeans feel that the United States has become a destabilizing factor. This is a huge shift in public perceptions in the space of one lifetime.

Statues are once again showing their power – they are at the centre of political protests and struggles the world over. What do we do with the hundreds of thousands of statues which represent ideologies and systems which are no longer practiced – leave them as they are, destroy them in cathartic mass rituals, or put them in special sculpture zoos?

Sanctions have become the foreign policy instrument of choice for many countries. But do sanctions actually work? It can be argued that they are in fact counterproductive, and have only made resolution of international tensions more difficult if not impossible without the use of force.

How exactly will the new US sanctions affect EU companies working on Russia-related energy projects? Could this be the straw that finally breaks the back of close US-EU business and political ties?