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"Now we think not only us are going to have to review our sense of comfort. I am not very comfortable." says Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers union. Gerard himself was once a union representative at a facility that mined and refined uranium, and he represents many workers in such dangerous conditions across the country today. The USW has long been part of the Blue-Green Alliance, creating a labor-environmentalist coalition, but stopped short of calling for an end to nuclear power--but will that change after Japan? Leo joins Laura via Skype to discuss the crisis in Japan, the situation of the workers there, and why this crisis is linked to workers' protests around the US. Republicans have NPR and PBS in their sights once again, and once again progressives and media reformers have to fight for every penny that public media gets. Just how many pennies is that, though? Sally Kohn of Movement Vision puts that funding in perspective in this video. "You see this coming together of networks of educated people—I call them the graduates with no future—with the urban poor, with sometimes organized labor. This mixture is there everywhere the protests have been," says Paul Mason, Economics editor of BBC Newsnight and author of Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. Mason notes that from student protests in London to workers in Wisconsin, revolution in Tunisia to uprising in Libya, many of the same characteristics are visible. Paul joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the global protest movement, the role of social media, what different areas have in common, and much more. You can see Paul and Laura along with Cornel West and Barbara Ehrenreich in New York on Friday night at the opening plenary of the Left Forum--more information here! Finally, the US Government paid $2.3 million to have CIA contractor Raymond Davis freed in Pakistan. But what are other lives worth--or other jobs? Distributed by Tubemogul.

"NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan in every quantifiable way," says Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, recently returned from a reporting trip to that country. And what's more, he notes, what's clear from the WikiLeaks cables is that the coalition governments are not as deluded as they would like their people to be about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.Rick joins us in studio to discuss the realities he saw on the ground in Afghanistan, the death of special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, and more.Rick Rowley is just one of the unembedded, independent reporters trying to bring the real story from Afghanistan to the American people. Our friends at Brave New Films also have teams of independent media makers in that country, and this segment takes us inside their dangerous work."In truth, we face the sobering reality that capitalism’s latest crisis — complete with bank failures, corporate bailouts, rising unemployment, and declining wages — has aided the right, not the left. How can we explain the capacity of the right to benefit from and redirect the bitterness and discontent that derives from capitalism’s own failures?" Peter Bratsis wrote a provocative piece for The Indypendent about the Tea Party movement and the crisis on the left--and he joins Laura in studio to discuss it. Are we missing passion and emotional appeals in our quest to be rational?Finally, there's a new blockbuster out just in time for the holidays: Harry Potter and the Bailed-Out Banks. Laura has a synopsis.

Was it Obama that caused Democrats' major midterm losses? Racism? The economy? Why was the Democratic base demoralized--failure to take on Wall Street or immigration reform? And which constituencies did come out to vote? These are all questions worth answering the morning after the Republicans take back the House with little more than inchoate rage and promises of "smaller government." Kai Wright and Steve Cobble were both with us for our special live coverage with Free Speech TV, Democracy Now! and more, and they join us in studio for some morning-after analysis--and a warning for 2012: Obama better keep his eyes on his left flank as well.

We've had a lot of talk this week about the Left: where is it? Why does the media ignore it? What can we do to rebuild it? And whose fault is any of this? The mainstream media might ignore voices from the Left, but here on GRITtv those are just the voices that matter--and today, for a special feature, we welcome two you may have heard of: Tariq Ali and Alexander Cockburn. From Tony Blair to Tea Partiers to Thatcherism, Iraq to Pakistan, banks and bankers and campaign donations to the time Obama might have had to make significant change, Tariq and Alexander dissect the conventional wisdom of today on just about every political issue, domestic and global.