In the first half, activist, webmaster, and talk show host Michael Rivero joined John B. Wells for a conversation about how the U.S. government manipulates information to generate support for military conflicts and the financial factors fueling these wars. "We're fed this constant diet, by government and corporate media, basically telling us what will get us to do what they want us to do," he observed. However, Rivero pointed to the barrage of media reports concerning WMDs in Iraq, which convinced many Americans to support the war, as a potential watershed moment, since it exposed this manipulation on a grand scale.
The driving force behind these "military adventures," Rivero said, is a desperate attempt by the banking cartel to maintain the dollar as the world's reserve currency. To that end, he noted that both Iraq and Libya tried to stop using the dollar which led to the subsequent US invasions of those countries. Chillingly, Rivero warned that China and Russia are "digging their heels in" and seem poised to introduce their own international currencies which would challenge the dollar. As a result, he lamented, "we face the real risk of a nuclear war to prop up this paper dollar." Even if such a conflict can be avoided, Rivero suggested that, ultimately, the US government could "collapse from within" under the weight of financial mismanagement much like the Soviet Union.
------------------------------------
In the second half, former Wahabbi Muslim, Al Fadi, discussed the Qur'an, and his efforts to educate Westerners about its teachings. He explained the messages in the Qur'an can be broken down into four basic groups: "generic warnings" that one must follow Allah, religious laws, an emphasis on the "oneness of God" which served as an attack on the Christian trinity, and calls for violence against those who do not practice Islam. According to Fadi, the "number one misconception" surrounding Islam is that it is a religion of peace. He placed the blame for this misunderstanding on moderate Muslims who highlight peaceful verses of the Qur'an and downplay, or outright ignore, the extreme aspects of the text.
Although the Qur'an calls for violence against non-Muslims, Fadi stressed that only 15% of the Islamic population is "terrorist or radical or fundamentalist" and adheres to these principles. However, he dismissed the moderate Muslims' claims that the religion has been hijacked by these radicals because the peaceful practitioners remain unwilling to stand up against the small cadre of their violent brethren. Similarly, Fadi cautioned that the US policy of 'political correctness' in the form of support of Israel, tolerance of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the lack of military response to the Beghazi attacks, is seen as signs of weakness to Islamic radicals. "Therefore," he declared, "it empowers them to become even louder with us and go even further in their demands and their agenda."