Illegal trade in wildlife is booming and no one knows that better than Jorge Picon. For 30 years, Picon has tracked animal traders from the beaches of the Caribbean to the port of Miami. As a veteran undercover agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he’s been called a high stakes pet detective. And he’s seen and done just about everything. Working undercover, Picon has posed as a restaurateur, a drug lord, and a gorilla, all in the dangerous hunt to find and stop traffickers. But he says smuggling is only growing more lucrative and easier by the day.

Guests:

Jorge Picon, 30-year veteran with the US Fish and Wildlife Service working as an undercover Law Enforcement agent in Miami, FL.

Peace-making is one of the most complex and dangerous missions in world affairs. And while that won’t come as news to anyone who has followed events in Bosnia or the Sudan, it helps explain why the rigid orders of U.N. peacekeeping forces so often seem to be leave them adrift in these conflicts.

The United Nations is considering rewriting its rulebook, trying to focus its muddled mission with a major overhaul of the organization. While it comes at a time of deep divisions among member states and accusations of corruption, there is a basic agreement that those who wear the blue helmets either need new marching orders or need to be taken off the field of battle.

Guests:

Nick Birnback, External Relations Media Affairs Officer for the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Anthony Arend, Professor and Director of the Institute for Law & Politics at Georgetown University.

Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and author of “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.”

Emeline Michel grew up in the Haitian countryside on the banks of a river. There was no electricity, but there were long afternoons with her father under the shady trees of home. She grew up singing, studied jazz in the U.S., moved to Paris, recorded in Montreal, but Emeline’s music is the sound of longing for home.

Singing in “Kreyol,” she celebrates the street life of the city and the sweetness of life in a remembered country. Two hundred years after gaining its independence, the shade trees are gone, and Haiti is a shattered nation. But Emeline Michel is not giving up on hope for Haiti.

Guests:

Emeline Michel, singer, musician and bandleader.

Makarios Cesaire, guitarist.

It is almost a routine practice today, for any company with money to spend. The first stop is city hall, with a promise of jobs and spin-off businesses and hand-out out for tax breaks.

But now a court in Ohio has decided that such incentive packages are illegal; that they mess with Congress’s right to regulate interstate trade. You can imagine that companies and local politicians are in a lather over the decision. What about you? It’s your money. Do you see this as corporate welfare or your best shot at a new job?

Guests:

Greg LeRoy, Executive Director of Good Jobs First.

Dan Navin, Managing Director of Legislative Affairs, Ohio Chamber of Commerce. ;
Herman Blankenship, Kim’s Auto and Truck Service.