This week, Joshua Holland offers a brief rant about one of the more prominent strawmen that's been deployed to downplay the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

Then we're joined by Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, to talk about Mohammad bin Salman, also known as "MBS" -- the brash, young Saudi Crown Prince who consolidated an enormous amount of power in recent weeks by detaining over a dozen of his royal rivals and other senior Saudi officials. Al-Rasheed will help us understand not only what's going on within the kingdom, but also the larger regional context of MBS' dangerous power play.

Finally, we'll speak with Gabriel Zucman, a professor at UC Berkeley and author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, about the so-called "Paradise Papers" -- a treasure trove of leaked documents that reveal the tax avoidance strategies of the upper crust of the elite -- and what they reveal about how tax havens screw the rest of us.

Playlist:
The Shins: "New Slang"
Rostam: "Bike Dream"
Manu Chao: "Bongo Bong"

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