Scheer Intelligence

Reporting on the election often involves being glued to computer screens dictating the polling numbers around the country and using statistics revolving around race and gender to make assumptions about how the country is politically swaying. Journalist and online host Michael Tracey actually went out to many prominent swing states throughout the election and spoke to various swaths of voters, engaging in what their vote really means and how ordinary Americans view newly appointed Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Tracey joins Scheer Intelligence host Robert Scheer to discuss the election, why Trump won and what his second term holds for the future of the country and the globe. On the side of foreign policy, Tracey says people ought to be wary of Trump’s peace rhetoric and look at his record as president. “Although Trump was seen as in conflict with the so-called neocons in 2016, he then undertook a foreign policy in which he escalated virtually every conflict that he inherited,” Tracey tells Scheer.

Tracey cites regime change in Venezuela, trouble with Iran and bolstering NATO. When it comes to domestic issues and why the US went for Trump in such a grand way, Tracey points to the failures of the Democrats to appeal to common voters, pay attention to the issues they truly care about and allowed them to succumb to Trump’s everyman rhetoric, despite what he might actually do once in office.

“What is deficient about [the Democrats’] own messaging, it has alienated such wide swaths of people who, in earlier eras, would have been considered squarely within their coalition,” Tracey asserts. 

In the end, the Democrats parading around people like Liz Cheney and ignoring crucial issues like the genocide in Palestine hurt them, as was proven through the popular vote. Tracey indicts their strategy: “Liberalism is so oriented itself around the personage of Trump that it's kind of been given a free pass from defining itself on its own terms.”

Amidst the hype, excitement and nervousness of the election, the bigger picture of what the United States is and how it operates often gets lost on people. Many think that choosing one or another candidate will significantly alter their future to better represent their values, but in reality there is only one group of people that matter the most: those who Dr. Peter Phillips, professor emeritus at Sonoma State University, calls the “titans of capital.”

In his new book by the same name, Phillips studies the economic trends following the COVID-19 pandemic and how the wealth concentration in the world took a dramatic turn towards the already ultra-wealthy. He joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to further analyze these trends and how dire inequality is becoming.

The main problem is simple to understand: the ultra-wealthy “doubled their wealth concentration.” That means, according to Phillips, that “the upper one half of 1% of the people got richer and basically, the rest of the world got poorer.”

Phillips names the top 10 capital investment companies, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Morgan Stanley and others as the main culprits. Over $50 trillion are controlled by 117 people across these 10 companies, according to Phillips.

This immense concentration of wealth inevitably renders any semblance of democracy almost useless, as the main decision makers are those who hold the biggest bag. “Whoever we elect as President is not going to make any difference because they're managed by capital,” Phillips tells Scheer. 

“They're there to protect global capital. That's what the American political system is about. That's what the political systems in the West are about. They see capital as a vital interest of the West, and that's why we have military bases all over the world to protect capital and to ensure that debts get repaid and that this capital continues to grow and expand.”

Fewer people in the world had access to the personal moments experienced by Steve Wasserman, Heyday Books publisher, former LA Times Book Review editor and former editor at several of the nation’s most prominent book publishing houses. In his latest book, “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie,” he details his close encounters with a handful of some of the most significant people in the 20th century, including Jackie Kennedy, Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, Barbra Streisand, Huey Newton and others.

Wasserman describes these accounts, or portraits, as focusing on people who “inspired me to do what I could, however modestly, to live a life of passionate engagement.”

From the intimate details of a lunch with Jackie O to a deathbed conversation with writer and journalist Hitchens, Wasserman features a multitude of essays that cover a range of issues from politics to literature to culture and life. One memory of Wasserman included how he “never experienced Susan Sontag as a hostage to nostalgia.” Wasserman found inspiration in that and thought “it was a great, great lesson not to become pickled in your own prejudices such that you couldn't be open to the world.”

Scheer attests that these portraits are brilliant, especially when dealing with controversial figures. He tells Wasserman, “These are famous intellectuals, but you humanize them, and you involve your own criticism.”

Any urban street in America is guaranteed to be lined with popular fast food chains, the readily available nature of their products being the main attraction, with people barely giving a thought to the process behind getting the food from the farm to the table — or more likely, the take-out box. 

Joining host Robert Scheer on this week’s Scheer Intelligence are two people who dedicated their recent film, “Food and Country,” to understanding this process behind food in the United States and how big business, as usual, has almost complete control of the system. Renowned former food critic for the La Times and New York Times, former editor of Gourmet magazine, author of cookbooks and memoirs and PBS food guru, Ruth Reichl and film director Laura Gabbert discuss some of the key takeaways from the film.

Gabbert asserts that big agriculture’s firm grasp on the industry is where the problems begin. Its lobby is amongst the biggest and Gabbert explains that there is no incentive to try and remedy the problems that come from this monopolization of an industry so essential to human survival. “I think that is really the crux of the whole problem, is money in politics,” Gabbert says.

Reichl takes it back to what happened after World War II and how the U.S. government made an attempt to fight communism by cheapening the food making process, which turned farms into factories. “Almost everything that's wrong with America comes from that policy. We've destroyed our health, our environment, our communities,” Reichl tells Scheer.

The heart of their story lies with the farmers themselves, and how, despite being in charge of the most important aspect of human survival, they still tend to struggle the most in society. Reichl explains their significance in the film, stating, “I just wanted for us to be able to listen to their stories that they tell themselves about what has happened to them and what the American system has done to them.”

Check out the film’s website here for screening information.

In the 365 days following the events of Oct. 7, the situation in the Middle East is as complicated as ever. Israel’s genocide in Gaza agonizingly continues, and its invasion of Lebanon and subsequent retaliation at the hands of Hezbollah and Iran has added more fuel to the fire. Tensions are escalating and Middle East expert and writer Juan Cole joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to explain its precedent and what the future may hold.

The extremism of the Netanyahu cabinet in Israel, Cole explains, is the basis for the sharp increase in violence and tension in the region. While the Israeli government justifies their actions as necessary for the protection of Jews in the region, Cole argues their actions do the opposite. “The extreme goals of Netanyahu to completely control the lives of people in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon are endangering the lives of ordinary Jews. They're not making them safer,” he says.

The attempted expansion into Lebanon, which has brought global attention to the country, is something seen before in the recent history of Israel, Cole says. “It's 1982 all over again. 1982 was an enormous failure, and it produced more radicalization and more headaches in the long term for Israel,” he tells Scheer.

Despite their claims of self-defense against “terrorist” organizations like Hezbollah, Cole explains that much like Hamas, Hezbollah’s rise was a direct consequence of Israeli policies. “The Israelis occupied 10% of Lebanese soil, southern Lebanon, for 18 years. And the Lebanese wanted them right back out of their country,” he explains.

“The Shiites of southern Lebanon, who nobody ever heard of… before Israel occupied that area, threw up these resistance movements like Hezbollah. It was Israel that radicalized the Shiites of southern Lebanon,” Cole states.

In the midst of election season, conversations revolving around the levers of power become more frequent, and in the case of a U.S. presidential election, that often includes debates around the so-called “deep state”. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence, Professors Charles Derber and Yale Magrass discuss their new book, “Who Owns Democracy?: The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America.”

There are many interpretations of what the 'deep state' actually represents in government, but Magrass offers a clear definition, breaking it down into two parts: the official state and the deep state. The official state, according to Magrass, consists of the elected officials people know very well, who are always in the media spotlight and soak in the blame for the issues that arise from their perceived rule. Meanwhile, the deep state operates largely unnoticed, with the official state serving as cover.  “It gives free reign to corporations, free reign to the very rich, and they can more or less do whatever they want, with the official state carrying almost all the blame for what happens,” Magrass says.

The two professors dive into the history of the deep state concept, as Derber describes, “when you look carefully at American history, you see a whole evolution of American fascism, which came at the very beginning of the country and went through evolutionary stages.”

Derber and Magrass argue that the deep state has always been embedded in the power dynamics of the U.S., tracing its roots from the Magna Carta—which they contend was designed to expand the freedoms of the English noble elites. They also invoke the Civil War, which they see as a divorce between “northern capitalism, the capitalist Deep State and the southern proto-fascist deep state.” Today, each of the U.S. political parties represent a further expansion of this subversive ruling elite and Derber and Magrass argue that only an expanded public awareness of this hidden power structure will bring accountability to those who operate behind the scenes.

Scheer summarizes the importance of understanding how real power works in the U.S.: “There's a reason why we don't talk about class and caste in America, because the illusion of this egalitarian society is the main cover up of how the system works.”

The genocide in Gaza has brought the issue of Israel — and what it represents for Jewish people — into the forefront of Jewish communities worldwide. The powerful influence of the Israel lobby on Israel’s image in the United States makes this issue highly contentious and deeply complex.

In this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer and Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), a nonprofit dedicated to fostering peace between Israel and Palestine, explain — as two Jewish individuals — how they navigate these complex issues, both in their professional work and personal lives.

Drawing on her experience working with the U.S. Foreign Service in Jerusalem around the time of the Oslo Accords, Friedman offers a complex view of the politics of the situation. Friedman discusses not only the evolving Jewish relationship to Israel but also the plight of the Palestinians who are often subjected to displacement, violence and death.

Friedman highlights a critical distinction when discussing the Oslo Accords: unlike most treaties, which are based on a balance of interests, the Israel-Palestine agreement is rooted in a balance of power. This dynamic, which heavily favors Israel, was recognized by Friedman: “I think that became very clear as the underlying dynamic of Oslo very, very quickly.”

When it comes to interpreting Israel, Friedman points out the difficulty in engaging with its defenders. “The entirety of Israel's existence has been grounded in a series of narratives, and it's almost a pick a long menu for which narrative best suits you at what moment,” she tells Scheer.

The narrative turning Hamas’ recent attack on Israel into a justification of the genocidal attack on Gaza has made it very difficult for anti-Zionist or non-Zionist Jews to express themselves. Friedman conveys her frustration:

“I'm now living in a world where it doesn't matter what your level of faith is, it doesn't matter what your genealogy is, it doesn't matter your self identification. If you're not deeply Zionist in your political outlook, then you're not really a Jew.”

Israel and its lobby today try to conflate the state with Jews around the world, that it speaks for Jews and encompasses the entire diaspora. Richard Silverstein, author and journalist of the Tikun Olam blog, says that this couldn’t be further from the truth. As the genocide in Gaza rages on, along with the killing of Israeli citizens and the mass torture of Palestinians, the support for Israel among Jews, particularly the younger generation, will continue to falter as the state itself plunges deeper into despair.

Silverstein speaks to host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to detail his relationship with Israel and Zionism and how his views have evolved over time, ultimately leading to a complete disconnection from the state, especially in light of the ongoing genocide, and now calling himself an anti-Zionist.

Being raised Jewish and earning degrees from Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, as well as studying Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Israel, Silverstein makes clear: “[F]or you and for me and for most American Jews, Judaism is not genocide in Gaza, is not $20 billion or $80 billion in arms being sent by the US to Israel to kill Palestinians. That's not the kind of Judaism that I represent.”

Not only is the genocide a driving force behind the alienation of the Israel state but also the way it treats its own citizens, looking at them as expendable in its objective to kill Hamas operators. Silverstein refers to the Hannibal Directive, a procedure used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to prevent the capture of soldiers by killing them and their captors. “[Y]ou now have a code that is expanded to also killing your own civilians. And that's, I think, what is even more profoundly upsetting, disturbing about the way in which Hannibal is being used right now,” Silverstein tells Scheer.

Torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners is also something that has emerged from Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and the West Bank, according to Silverstein. “We have Palestinians in Gaza who were swept up in detention raids and brought to concentration camps, really, in Israel, and there they're tortured,” he states.

Silverstein insists that what is happening in Gaza does not represent Judaism worldwide like Israel claims, and that “American Judaism needs to stand on its own.” American Jews, Silverstein says, “really have to separate [themselves] from the hostility, the anger, the violence that Israel represents.”

The CIA’s destructive role in world politics since the end of World War II as a secret rogue spy agency controlled by unelected intelligence officers has become so ubiquitous that it can be joked about. But behind the jokes lies a far darker reality: the agency's imperial ambitions have fueled a legacy of death and destruction in the name of expanding American power. Hugh Wilford, author and professor of history at California State University Long Beach, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to delve into the specifics of CIA operations and their impact on geopolitics from its inception to the present day.

Wilford’s book, “The CIA: An Imperial History,” emphasizes how the CIA is an unprecedented force in the world, advancing the goals of a global empire with a facade of spreading democracy. Although it makes for good Hollywood stories, the subversiveness of the agency alongside its brutal methods made it such an effective power that Scheer describes as capable of “destroying the right of people to make their own history.” The two mention the coup in Iran in 1953, choreographed by the CIA, and operations in Vietnam in the ‘60s and most odious examples.

The CIA’s bloody worldwide campaigns would leave populations dazed and confused, all under the pretense of acting in their best interest, while the rest of the world remained similarly in the dark. Wilford explains, “It's not just that America is trying to hide its imperial role from world audiences, from people in the post-colonial world in the Global South, it's also somewhat trying to hide what it's doing from U.S. citizens.”

These imperial ambitions, Wilford warns, inevitably have a way of backfiring, and the CIA’s history is proof of that. The CIA’s consistent meddling in the Middle East in the 20th century resulted, for instance, in the occupation of the Palestinian people, which has translated to the genocide today. “The growth of this massive secret state to carry out this globalist foreign policy has had baleful consequences, disastrous consequences, not just for people living overseas, but for people within the United States as well,” Wilford explains.

The CIA’s destructive role in world politics since the end of World War II as a secret rogue spy agency controlled by unelected intelligence officers has become so ubiquitous that it can be joked about. But behind the jokes lies a far darker reality: the agency's imperial ambitions have fueled a legacy of death and destruction in the name of expanding American power. Hugh Wilford, author and professor of history at California State University Long Beach, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to delve into the specifics of CIA operations and their impact on geopolitics from its inception to the present day.

Wilford’s book, “The CIA: An Imperial History,” emphasizes how the CIA is an unprecedented force in the world, advancing the goals of a global empire with a facade of spreading democracy. Although it makes for good Hollywood stories, the subversiveness of the agency alongside its brutal methods made it such an effective power that Scheer describes as capable of “destroying the right of people to make their own history.” The two mention the coup in Iran in 1953, choreographed by the CIA, and operations in Vietnam in the ‘60s and most odious examples.

The CIA’s bloody worldwide campaigns would leave populations dazed and confused, all under the pretense of acting in their best interest, while the rest of the world remained similarly in the dark. Wilford explains, “It's not just that America is trying to hide its imperial role from world audiences, from people in the post-colonial world in the Global South, it's also somewhat trying to hide what it's doing from U.S. citizens.”

These imperial ambitions, Wilford warns, inevitably have a way of backfiring, and the CIA’s history is proof of that. The CIA’s consistent meddling in the Middle East in the 20th century resulted, for instance, in the occupation of the Palestinian people, which has translated to the genocide today. “The growth of this massive secret state to carry out this globalist foreign policy has had baleful consequences, disastrous consequences, not just for people living overseas, but for people within the United States as well,” Wilford explains.

The “big club” that “you ain’t in,” as George Carlin famously put it, is increasingly visible as the presidential election rolls on toward November. Politicians and the donor class that controls them have made it known to the public that they are not representatives of the majority but rather the small elite minority. Nomi Prins, financial historian, author and former Goldman Sachs managing director, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to describe exactly how this process works as well as touch on the evolution of the world economy away from the U.S.

As a result of U.S. mishaps in 2008 with the financial crisis as well as the current geopolitical involvements in Ukraine and growing disruptions between the U.S. and China, Prins explains how the world is recognizing the ability to move past the U.S. as well as the dollar: “What's happened is the alliance of nations that needed the U.S. and needed the dollar to trade don't need it anymore.” China’s rise with the BRICS nations alongside has encouraged this, and the U.S.’s policies of supporting the financial system and allowing the banks to run things has led to the rest of the world to say, “We will compete, we'll do exactly what you're doing, but we're going to do it on our own terms.”

Back at home, when it comes to economic justice, the two party system, in short, is a farce, and the difference between how the internal system of each party works is hardly noticeable. “Everything kind of moves upward and gets smaller as it moves upward in terms of who has the power and who wants to retain the power,” Prins tells Scheer. That’s why, she asserts, “even if things get questioned on the surface, the idea of changing them doesn't really get pushed throughout party policy.”

As much as people try to push for or enact change, the questions fall on deaf ears, Prins says. People “can blame the other party, they can blame each other, but they don't get to blame the system, because they don't feel that there's any real connection or control that they could have over the system.”

It is around that time in an election year where the typical platitudes and ultimatums exclaiming it is “do or die,” “now or never” are being thrown around. The overarching narrative from the past two elections remains the same: the Democrats are not great: they bolster the military industrial complex, make empty promises to working people and maintain sometimes identical policies to their right wing counterparts on issues like immigration … but we must choose them or face the wrath of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

In this spirited debate on the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer spars with Jeff Cohen—author, co-founder of RootsAction.org, founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and retired journalism professor at Ithaca College. The two butt heads around the issue of lesser evilism, questioning whether this year will bring actual change from the Democrats in their support for Israel’s suppression of the Palestineans alongside a range of other pressing issues.

Cohen stresses that while the Biden administration’s actions involving Gaza, Ukraine and its saber-rattling of China and Russia are “inexcusable,” a Trump reelection will prove to be worse on all fronts. “Trump's second term will be very, very different than the first. He had no plan, it was chaotic. They [now] have a plan,” Cohen tells Scheer. “They're going to implement ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ which threatens the whole planet. And trust me, they have a plan to suppress progressive dissent.”

Scheer fires back, arguing that this is the exact same argument that has been heard not only in recent elections but for most of his long life. “What we do is we center most of our political discussion, knowledge in this country around the character of the president and these periodic elections: who are the virtuous, who are the evil?” Scheer retorts. “Whereas, in fact, we face very profound, systemic problems that the election tends to obscure.”

Seventy-nine years ago, the Truman administration dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 100,000 innocent civilians. Host Robert Scheer calls these horrific incidents among the major instances of terror ever committed in human history.

Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft joins Scheer Intelligence to discuss the history and legacy of nuclear weapons in relation to the military industrial complex, as a $2 trillion effort from the Pentagon to build “a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines” takes place.

The central question underlying the conversation is asked by Scheer; “How could they, in good conscience, be talking about modernizing the devil's weapon?”

Hartung claims that the Pentagon and arms manufacturers are doing so under the guise of deterrence, but also because of false stories of controllable nuclear war and even the “evil” consideration that it may be necessary to use nuclear weapons on certain populations.

“I think some of the folks promoting this stuff would like to believe that they're not putting the future of humanity at risk. So they kind of tell themselves these stories, which they then tell to the public and hope they can persuade them.”

In the past, the horror of nuclear war was widely acknowledged to some extent by the public and the political class alike, as even Reagan said a nuclear war could never be won and should never be fought. Hartung claims that the belief that nuclear war could be winnable was previously “pushed off the agenda,” but it “seems to be back.”

Despite movies like Oppenheimer, which to some extent injected the issue of nuclear war into public discussion, citizens and the media remain largely uninterested and unaware of the dangers of nuclear war, especially with regard to the war in Ukraine.

This is reflected in the opinions of the American political class. Hartung points out that “if you go to Washington, there's this sort of atmosphere that, if you're for reducing these things, you know, you're the one who's unrealistic. The logic is flipped on its head ...”

Any threat to the status quo within the American empire has led to the censorship, jailing and escape of the dissidents brave enough to stand against it. One may think of Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia or Julian Assange’s refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as recent examples. However, the history of dissidents fleeing American persecution runs deep. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss his new book, “Flights: Radicals on the Run,” is author and journalist Joel Whitney.

The book exemplifies this missing history of dissent in America through accounts of people such as Angela Davis, Paul Robeson, Graham Greene and Malcolm X. Also included are the accounts of Lorraine Hansberry and her mentor, W.E.B. Du Bois. Whitney refers to De Bois’ time starting an anti-nuclear peace movement and subsequently being persecuted by the U.S. government. “[Du Bois’] reputation took severe damage, so when Hansberry knew him, he could barely afford to buy groceries,” Whitney told Scheer.

“Flights” examines the stories of historic struggle of progressive thinkers and political activists who faced the onslaught of Cold War propaganda and McCarthyism, becoming refugees as a result of their political work. The book chronicles a counter-narrative of American history, where the bravest and most outspoken figures criticizing the system are crushed by it and their lives ruined.

The book title, according to Whitney, refers to “flights that are political persecution in some form or another. In a way, you could think of it as 50 or 60 years of counter revolution, massive amounts of funding to chase people … across borders, out of print and, in some cases, unfortunately, into an early grave.”

In the case of people like Graham Greene and his famous novel, “The Quiet American,” the blacklisting of himself and others for their exposure of American activities during the Vietnam War led to Americans “hav[ing] to wait about a decade or a little bit more to actually understand what carnage, what incredible, cynical violence the anti-communist Americans are overseeing in Vietnam as they're taking it over from the French.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress proved to be a testimony of the U.S. government and its politicians’ stance on the genocide in Gaza. With standing ovations, smiling handshakes and overall warm welcome by a large number of Washington politicos, the strength of Israel’s influence in the U.S. is clear. Richard Silverstein, author and journalist of the Tikun Olam blog, which covers the Israeli national security state, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to dive into Israeli history, its evolution and how its current stage fails to represent Judaism to the world.

For Silverstein, Netanyahu’s speech was nothing new as it was filled with the same ideas and tropes about the barbaric Arab and Muslim world against the civilized, Western, Judeo-Christian world. Silverstein said these thoughts, “exemplify a certain attitude and approach that has existed for decades in Israel.”

The current zeitgeist that exists in Israel today, whether it be through its government or settler population, does not represent any recognizable form of Judaism, Silverstein said. “This is why I've become an anti-Zionist, because I don't want to be associated with an Israel that sees its religion as destroying the Palestinian existence in Israel; that kind of Judaism is horrific.”

Silverstein noted, “Israel betrayed the values I had as a liberal Zionist … and I think the genocide in Gaza has really sealed then put the nail in the coffin of Zionism.”

Although Julian Assange is free and home in his native Australia, his story and decade-long suffering at the hands of the U.S. government must never be forgotten for the sake of the survival of the First Amendment. In this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer is joined by Kevin Gosztola, who runs The Dissenter newsletter and has been reporting on the Assange case and whistleblowers in the U.S. for more than a decade. Together, they underscore the significance of the Assange case and delve into the details explored in Gosztola's recent book, "Guilty of Journalism."

Gosztola makes clear one of the main points of the whole ordeal, which is the inconsistency in the U.S.’s interpretation of its own laws. “The First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in conflict in this country. You can't reconcile the two, at least the way that the Justice Department wants to use the Espionage Act against people who aren't even just U.S. citizens. They're trying to apply U.S. law to international journalists,” Gosztola told Scheer.

The U.S. response to the internet age and the powerful journalistic revelations of Assange and WikiLeaks was to criminalize such actions, sending a clear message: anyone attempting to blow the whistle or expose the U.S. government's crimes would face severe punishment, including the use of the Espionage Act, which could imprison someone for life.

“Unlike Daniel Ellsberg, [Chelsea] Manning didn't have to sit there at a Xerox machine making copies. [She] just sent the copies of the documents to WikiLeaks, and then WikiLeaks had all these files that they could share with the world,” Gosztola said.

Despite the online journalism revolution, many in the media space still remained quiet throughout the  Assange debacle both because of their ties to government officials and their lack of professional rigor. Gosztola posed several questions to them:

“Where were you? Why weren't you doing the investigations to uncover these details? Why did this WikiLeaks organization come along and reveal these details about Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the nature of US foreign policy? Why do you accept that all of this information that was classified should be classified?”

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow cities to ban people from sleeping outdoors presents a major shift in the perception of poverty and homelessness in the U.S. and what the Eighth Amendment represents. Clare Pastore, a law professor at the University of Southern California, joins her faculty colleague Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to break down what the decision means and expand on her article published in The Conversation.

Pastore explains that the legal precedent reversed by the conservative majority was that “it's cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to criminalize sleeping outdoors for people who have no other option.” Now, Pastore tells Scheer, cities are not barred from enforcing this kind of criminalization.

“These are not laws to protect people. Homeless people are at greater danger than they are a danger to others. These are laws trying to get people to just move out of the jurisdiction and go somewhere else,” Pastore said.

Scheer argues that the problem has been around long before the recent SCOTUS decision and the elephant in the room for states like California, which Scheer points out is the fifth largest economy in the world, do not use their vast resources to address the problem but rather put the blame on decisions like this and continue their politics that ignore the central issue.

Pastore agrees, telling Scheer, “My biggest fear, in terms of a generation of people who are growing up thinking this is normal, is that this idea that this is intractable, is taking hold and it's not right.”

The greed in the U.S., where housing is regarded as a private good, strains the ability to attack the roots of the issue. “We have very few controls on how much [housing] can cost and we have very few incentives to make it cost less and we just don't put those kinds of legal mechanisms in place to preserve and create more affordable housing,” Pastore said.

Everyday the Washington Post’s “democracy dies in darkness” grows evermore ironic and detached from the reality of what the publication—and legacy media as a whole—has become. In the latest clash between independent and mainstream press, one of the country’s largest remaining newspapers accused—and then retracted—a claim that The Grayzone had received payments from the Iranian media. 

The last time the United States saw large scale student anti-war protests was in response to the Vietnam War in 1968 and today against the genocide in Gaza. The last time the United States saw automatic draft registration was also during the Vietnam War era and today. Long serving Congressman Dennis Kucinich joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to break down what the new automatic draft registration provision, which was passed by the House and now under consideration by the Senate, really means for the future of America. 

Paralysis from the chest down as a result of serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War may sound like devastation beyond reconciliation, but for Ron Kovic, it became a transformative and politically enlightening experience. The two-tour veteran amplified his activism a few years after being discharged from the army with honest and insightful writing about what serving in this war was truly like. His best-selling memoir, “Born on the Fourth of July,” was published in 1976 and later was made into a film adaptation directed by Oliver Stone. 

He continued his activism, most notably with his second book, “Hurricane Street,” following his nationwide organization of the American Veteran Movement, which fought for improved conditions in VA hospitals. Akashic Books recently published Kovic’s third book in his autobiographical trilogy— “A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy.”

Being a 140-pound 19 year old, who had not yet had to shave is a daunting time to enter an American prison with a life sentence, especially when the system has no interest in rehabilitating you or helping you reintegrate into society. The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned.

Dorsey Nunn, a formerly incarcerated individual, co-director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) and co-founder of All of Us or None (AOUON), a grassroots movement of formerly incarcerated people working to secure their civil and human rights, explains to host Robert Scheer how his prison experience is rare but demonstrates that it is possible to make it out of San Quentin’s cells a changed person, with the hope of helping others.

In this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer is joined by author Natalie Foster, president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project, a network dedicated to advancing a guaranteed income in America and reining in the unprecedented concentration of corporate power.

Jordan Elgrably reminds people of the crucial stories behind those being bombarded daily in Gaza.

The solution to Trump's exploitable border crisis is to end the US trafficking of guns for drugs that turns productive Mexicans into desperate refugees. 

The recent missile exchanges between Iran and Israel stirred fears of World War III, and while the action has cooled down, the uncertain path still looms with tension. Esteemed author and Middle East scholar Trita Parsi joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss what these attacks could mean going forward.

Ray McGovern, the 27-year CIA veteran who counseled seven presidents, joins host Robert Scheer in a "Theatre of the Absurd" reenactment of McGovern's historic role. Scheer plays a stern and uncompromising president receiving an uncomfortable briefing from McGovern on the most pressing issues of the day, from Ukraine to Israel to China.

On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer welcomes Maxwell L. Stearns, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, to discuss his book, “Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.”

In light of recent developments in the Julian Assange extradition case, former CIA officer John Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, to delve deeper into the contradictions within the United States government and intelligence agencies regarding the disclosure of classified information and the veil of secrecy they maintain.

In this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer and The Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal contextualize the events of Oct. 7 and afterward in relation to the history of Israel and Palestine. 

On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, David Greene, the Civil Liberties Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins host Robert Scheer to discuss the new bill that would ban the massively popular online social media platform, TikTok, in the U.S. In their conversation, they point out the hypocrisy of singling out one Chinese company for mass data collection, when there’s no evidence that TikTok collects data in any different way, or for any other purpose, than other social media companies. 

Author Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America.

On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and Les Leopold discuss Leopold’s new book, “Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It” that describes how both political parties created the economic suffering that Trump feeds on. The critical question the book asks is: Did the nightmare of the world economy have to go this way? Or is it really a failure of capitalism? Or is it a failure of people manipulating capitalism? 

On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, Heyday Books publisher and former LA Times book editor Steve Wasserman and host Robert Scheer commit themselves to this conversation as Jews who have experienced these questions firsthand through their families in addition to having explored and reported on this topic throughout their careers.

Juan Cole, a renowned history professor at the University of Michigan and expert on the Middle East and South Asia, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to tackle inconvenient truths ignored by the media in the history of Israel and Palestine. This includes the conflation that criticizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is somehow a form of Holocaust denial.

Journalist and filmmaker David Lindorff explores the story of Ted Hall, who, at the age of 18 years old, leaked the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in an attempt to secure a balance in the world’s most dangerous arms race.

His book, “Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World,” makes the case that due to the courageous work of Hall and fellow Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs, the idea of mutually assured destruction was born and the U.S. lost its monopoly on the deadliest weapon ever made.

One of the biggest stories of the twentieth century, big enough to displace Watergate from the front pages of newspapers nationwide, takes the form of a novel in an attempt to use fiction as a vehicle to expose the truth of this media spectacle. Journalist and author Roger D. Rapoport joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss the case of Patty Hearst and how Rapoport's new book, “Searching for Patty Hearst,” ventures into fiction in order to reveal the true story of how Patty Hearst wasn’t a victim in the end but was made a revolutionary.

Israel’s current war on Gaza and the Palestinians draws pessimism and hopelessness, reminding two veterans of its origin in another such war in the region in 1967, The Six Day War, which resulted In Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence  to dissect the relationship Israel has maintained and exploited ever since that imperial conquest with support of the United States, and how the future of American foreign policy appears to once again be led not by informed individuals but rather by selfish and dangerous impulses.

The 1960s represented a pivotal time in American history, one that embodied vast change and influence in shaping what the country has become. From the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War to the moon landing, society was in a period of steadfast innovation, self reflection and self determination. The specter of death, however, could not escape the memory of the time, including the deaths of the millions of civilians and soldiers in Southeast Asia and the thousands of victims of racial violence. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy delivered a resounding blow to the trajectory of these movements and ultimately, the direction of the United States.

Apart from the death, destruction and suffering bestowed upon the Palestinian people in Gaza by the hands of the Israeli government, an ideological battle is taking place around the world, especially in the United States, where Jewish people face discrimination, prejudice and attacks on their identity by the hands of other Jews.

The revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs.

Norman Lear, who died this week at the age of 101, visited the KCRW studio in Santa Monica, CA six years ago to sit down and talk with host Robert Scheer in this two-part interview about Lear’s life through his autobiography, “Even This I Get to Experience.” Scheer said of the book:

This week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence welcomes someone with extraordinary courage and experience not only in Palestine but the Middle East as a whole. Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Kuwait-born, Canada-based Palestinian doctor, who also serves as the medical director at Gila, a global humanitarian healthcare organization, provides an indispensable account of what he knows is Palestine.

American historian, writer, professor and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz uses her studies on indigenous peoples’ history and her work with Palestinian diplomats and the United Nations to show how historic “settler colonialism” like in the United States relates to Gaza today. Dunbar-Ortiz makes the case, on this Thanksgiving edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, that inherent in that settler colonialism are the various definitions of genocide.

Amidst the carnage and political debacle surrounding Gaza and Israel, it can be easy to discuss the conflict with a macro view, where families, hospital workers, UN workers and journalists become statistics and political perspectives dominate. On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer talks to the author of what Scheer claims are “arguably the two most important books that deal with the humanity of the Palestinian people.”

After Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

Historian Juan Cole minces no words in offering a grave and sobering account of the conflict in Palestine and Israel on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In a comprehensive reflection of the history and current day situation in the Middle East, Cole uses his expertise as one of the leading historians of the region to paint a picture of the war. He asserts that in all definitions of the words, Israel is actively committing war crimes, like the United States in Iraq, a genocide and ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating the Palestinian presence from their homeland.

“There's no room for complexity in the American media when it comes to Israel and Palestine,” said Robin Andersen, the award-winning author and professor emerita of communication and media studies at Fordham University, to host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

In the almost three weeks since the October 7th attacks in Israel, the coverage around the war in the Middle East is as alert as ever, except only for one side, Andersen and Scheer discuss. The real and fabricated stories of Israeli devastation plastered mainstream outlets during the onset of the war, but since then, the bombing campaign on Gaza has yet to receive equal attention.

Palestinian American journalist Mnar Adley makes the case for one democratic nation with each Palestinian and Israeli having the equal right to vote on their governance on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

The topic of feeding those in need doesn’t sound like it should be controversial but the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the United States is bizarrely under attack by Republicans in the current Congress. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Christopher Bosso to discuss his newest book, “Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program.”

Labor has once again emerged as a hot button issue in the United States, so much so that even the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been spotted lurking around picket lines and union events popping up across the country. To talk about the rise in the American labor movement, Harold Meyerson, editor at large for The American Prospect, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. Meyerson has a distinguished career reporting on labor issues for multiple publications, among them the L.A. Times and Washington Post.

Meyerson says public support for unions is almost at an all time high and the proof is in the pudding when looking at the various industries organizing in real time across America. From the writer’s strike in Hollywood to the autoworkers in the Midwest to the assistant professors on numerous campuses, people are standing up for their rights as workers and recognizing their strength in numbers. “Gallup and Pew poll on [unions] every year and in the last few years, it's been about 70% approval rating, which is, so far, in excess of the approval rating of virtually any other American institution,” Meyerson said.

Scheer makes sure to remind people of the successes of the labor movement in the past, most notably in one of America’s greatest exports, the entertainment industry, where even Ronald Reagan championed organizing. Along with the autoworkers, Scheer argues the two groups represented the models for unionization and the reason why America had a middle class.

The continued recognition of exploitation, greed and misrepresentation at the hands of past administrations, along with corporations reaping the benefits, has culminated in lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis and previous organizing movements like Occupy. This has resulted in “a greater awareness of the economic inequality between major investors and CEOs on the one hand and regular people on the other hand,” as Meyerson put it.

In the case of teaching and research assistants on campus, Meyerson has seen an especially huge increase in their enthusiasm for organizing. Mentioning his access to voting data from the National Labor Relations Board, amongst unionized graduate students Meyerson has noted “it was at 89% Yes. That is a statement of generational approval of unions. These are all young people and the polls show that more than 80% of young people are pro-union. And these are workers who can't be fired.”

The Wild West days of the Internet are over, conclude Scheer Intelligence host Robert Scheer and his guest, The Grayzone founder and editor Max Blumenthal. They recall a time when one could find scorching exposés of anti-establishment news on sites like Salon, with the potential to reach millions of readers, that has evolved into a tightly controlled and intensely surveilled space dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley monopolies. Inconvenient information doesn’t stand a chance and will more often than not be algorithmically butchered into oblivion.

Torture. It stands as one of the pillars of American exceptionalism. While it was a major part of the war on terror—one worth hundreds of millions of dollars—a selective amnesia allows it to slip through the pages of history. John Kiriakou suffered for attempting to solidify the record on a torture program that the U.S. has excused itself from countless times through Hollywood propaganda, innumerable redactions to official documents and silencing of dissidents.

Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to run back his story as the whistleblower who made one of the most insidious chapters of modern American history widely known. Scheer mentions how the First and Fourth Amendments are treated as indulgences and allowed only if you say the right things in such a setting as the war on terror. If you don’t and “you oppose the torture program, you end up in prison like John Kiriakou. You lose everything, you lose your pension and what have you.”

Kiriakou explains that regardless of what treatment was forthcoming, he felt a necessity to expose the horrific crimes his country was committing. He details how a psychologist once explained to him how whistleblowers have a highly defined sense of what is right and wrong and this sense urges them to act. “That's how I felt. I couldn't stop myself. I couldn't sleep at night knowing that this was happening in our name. That the government was carrying out these crimes in our name. So I had to say something,” Kiriakou said.

The crimes in question Kiriakou also details: “They threatened to use pages of the Koran as toilet paper. The prisoners, of course, were all Muslim. They made them stand naked in front of female soldiers. Anything they could think of to insult them and to belittle them; they trimmed their beards...”

In Jonathan Taplin’s new book, “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto," the internet innovation expert delves into activities of the gang-of-four powerful oligarchs: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreesen, breaking down their increasing profits and infinite ambitions to control and influence domestic and global affairs while sending our technology innovation in a profit-driven, dystopian direction, corrupting both sides of the political aisle. Host Robert Scheer’s question: “Wait a minute, what else is new” in capitalism?”

The New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

The University of California at Berkeley is widely considered one of the most progressive and historically transformative universities in not only the United States, but the world. This is printed all over pamphlets written for prospective students and talked about endlessly by tour guides giving people the privilege to walk through such a prestigious site. What isn’t discussed, however, is the other side of that history, the one mired by involvement with the military industrial complex, with the conquest of indigenous lands and with the creation of the greatest mass murder weapon of all time.

The perception of certain types of trial evidence as cutting-edge, foolproof, and reminiscent of Hollywood can inadvertently sway juries into assuming the guilt of countless individuals. Techniques such as bite marks, blood splatter analysis, ballistics evidence, and others appear to present irrefutable indications of involvement in criminal activities. However, concealed within this seemingly conclusive cache of evidence lies a substantial amount of what is known as junk science. This is why Chris Fabricant, the director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project, wrote his latest book, “Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System.”

A retired CIA expert on Russia and rare voice of reason coming from the bowels of the American deep state, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on another edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. With world peace, nuclear weapon prudence and film critique on the agenda, McGovern and Scheer delve into a host of relevant issues stemming from the war in Ukraine and the history behind it. From Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” to CNN's strange truthful broadcast on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the old boys from the Bronx prod each other’s encyclopedic minds to try and make sense of the state of the world.

On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer is joined by Professor Julie C. Suk, an eminent expert in constitutional law and a professor of law at Fordham University. Together, they delve into the challenges women face in society, which stem from the Constitutional framework despite the century old passage of the 19th amendment that belatedly granted women the right to vote. 

The world has somehow reached a moment where the use of nuclear weapons has possibly never been closer and the interest in nuclear weapons has possibly never been higher. With the release of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a compelling dialogue emerges concerning the utilization of nuclear weapons, as the biopic delves into the life of the father of the atomic bomb and his profound doubts about the barbaric weapon he unleashed on the world. An even more captivating narrative about dissent amongst the Los Alamos scientists who created the bomb is close to release, and its timing couldn't be more perfect. A Compassionate Spy, directed by two time Academy Award nominated Steve James, delves into the intriguing life of an unconventional hero within the world of nuclear development - a character whose history might be viewed with skepticism, yet is undeniably instrumental in shaping the post Cold War nuclear arms race.

There has been no journalist that has been more effective in penetrating the self-serving secrecy of the NSA and the security state than James Bamford, the Emmy-nominated filmmaker and best-selling author. He joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss his latest book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence. While Bamford has engaged in his share of muckraking on the NSA in his previous works, his new book focuses on an even more pernicious aspect of the intelligence apparatus: their carelessness in allowing foreign governments access to some of our own government’s most treacherous cyberwar creations.

While the government often likes to claim people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are the dangerous actors in revealing the inner workings of the U.S. security state, Bamford’s journalism exposes the irony in shifting the blame. Nefarious surveillance and military equipment has been co-opted by foreign governments by way of the NSA yet not much has been done about it. “[T]here's all this effort to silence whistleblowers when there is no effort to really stop foreign countries from accessing the material that NSA has and then… use it against American citizens,” Bamford said.

Bamford specifically highlights Israel as one of those foreign powers and that might explain the limited mainstream attention given to this latest book. He explores the multi-faceted relationship Israel has to the U.S. with regard to lobbying, Hollywood and espionage. Bamford explained, “Israel has been spying in the United States for a long time and it's been not only not written about, but it hasn't been prosecuted and that's one of the problems.” Names like Arnon Milchan—the Hollywood producer, Israeli spy and Robert De Niro confidant—also came up as an example of someone who has engaged in committing espionage in the U.S. yet has faced no repercussions. Despite his hand in maintaining apartheid in South Africa, being an arms dealer and propagandizing it in the U.S., justice never seems to reach him, Bamford said.

Despite the United States accounting for around 5% of the world’s population, it houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population. This often discussed metric begins to make sense when examining the major cities like Los Angeles, New York and others, where things like poverty and mental illness are often considered “crimes.” Host Robert Scheer digs into this phenomenon in Los Angeles on this week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

“First of all, it has to do with the criminalization of poverty, the criminalization of mental illness. What are we talking about? These are people who are innocent at this moment and they have not had any day in court,” Scheer expressed. Together, Scheer and Camacho discussed the recent small victories in L.A. county, where subhuman conditions set for detainees have gradually improved, including new limits on how long detainees can be held at inmate reception centers and how long they can be chained to chairs and benches. Camacho explained that the fight for the improvement of these conditions has been ongoing with the ACLU for over 50 years.

Before this recent victory, detainees would be subject to environments people often associate with third world countries. “[Detainees] were getting stuck in the [inmate reception center] for days at a time, and those who were the sickest were stuck on the front bench, chained to the front bench for literally 24, 48, 72 [hours]. I talked to somebody who had been on the front bench for 99 hours,” Camacho said.

Camacho also mentioned the efforts to control the levels of overpopulation often experienced at these jails. “Our L.A. County jails are authorized to hold around 12,400 people, but they consistently operate above that level, 14,000, 15,000. Before COVID, it was up to 17,000,” Camacho said. As a resident of Los Angeles, Scheer describes how he sees and knows that most of the time, the people who are getting arrested are part of the thousands of houseless people who line the streets of the city.

The Doomsday Clock continues to tick toward nuclear war, but at its fastest pace ever. Professor Jackson Lears, a former naval officer serving on a U.S cruiser carrying tactical nuclear weapons, considers the current moment more frightening than at any time during the Cold War. Then, there was intense alarm for the fate of the earth and the survival of the human race. Today, rather than diplomacy or negotiation, talk revolves around new weapons shipments, disappointment in Ukraine’s counteroffensive failures, and even drone strikes in Moscow. But far less attention has been paid to the prospect of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S that threatens to end all life on this planet as we know it. That is the alarm sounded by cultural historian and author Jackson Lears who joins host Robert Scheer to discuss Lears’s essay for Harper’s Magazine, “Behind the Veil of Indifference.”

Lears’s piece warns that despite the public indifference, a “winnable nuclear war” has entered the minds of American strategists and politicians once again, undermining years of work towards nuclear disarmament. Lears tells Scheer that it is similar to the attitudes from the Cold War, yet this time, there is an eerie disinterest from the American side about even talking to someone like Vladimir Putin. “[T]his is, in a sense, a return to the worst kind of confrontations of the early 1960s but there's a big difference because even Kennedy and even Reagan, cold warriors that they were, were eager to create common ground ultimately between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And that common ground no longer exists between the U.S. and Russia, and there is no interest in diplomacy at all,” Lears said.

Scheer and Lears also highlight a critical factor in shaping public perception: the Russiagate controversy and the media's role in complying with government demands for secrecy, beginning in the late 1970s, while also promoting narratives that fostered consent for war with Russia. Scheer said, “if you even dare suggest there's some complexity to this issue, or that the other side might have a point of view, or there's something even worth negotiating about, you're now considered unpatriotic.” Lears agreed: “We have former directors of the CIA who have perjured themselves before Congress, now posing as professional wise men and professional truth tellers on MSNBC and CNN.”

Wrapping up the discussion, Lears gives an insight into his latest book, Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street. In it, Lears explores the history behind thinkers in America who honed in on vitalism rather than the restrictive nature of traditional cultures involving religion, science and commercialization.

Understanding foreign policy in Russia is complicated. Over the past weekend, the media said Russia was undergoing a coup and then they weren’t. The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was a brutal military figure, then suddenly a liberator of Putin’s hold on Russia. These entanglements in narratives require an impartial judge, someone who can make sense of it for the way it is. After years of doing this on a daily basis for the president of the United States, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to do just that.

Harvard physician Peter Grinspoon fights back against years of war on youth and communities of color.

In War Made Invisible, journalist Norman Solomon explains that Biden is as guilty as Trump in ushering a potential nuclear holocaust.

Peter Singer knows it is difficult to make a lonely stand against the mega corporate food processing machine. To make meaningful changes to diet, to care more about where food comes from and to consider the vast laundry list of problems that comes with the international food industry requires a great deal of attention to detail and resourcefulness. Singer, through his persuasive and forgiving prose, makes it easier for folks to get in the know about what a trip to the supermarket really entails. Singer joins host Robert Scheer for this week’s Scheer Intelligence episode to talk about the renewed version of his classic book, Animal Liberation Now.

After nearly 50 years since the original publishing of Animal Liberation, Singer finds that there indeed has been change, although not as much as he would have liked. With a fresh perspective on the research regarding food production's impact on climate change, Singer reintroduces his classic with a modern angle. Scheer and Singer revisit the important points that made the book a hit for all these years. For one, despite improvements in regulations in Europe, the U.S. continues to be one of the worst violators of animal welfare. “There's no federal regulation that says you can't keep a chicken in a cage so small that she can't stretch her wings fully or you can't keep a pig in a crate that she can't even turn around in,” Singer says, adding “that's the influence of the lobbyists… the agri-business that is pouring money into Washington lobbyists and preventing any such legislation at the federal level.”

The nightmarish conditions of overcrowded food factories, where 20,000 animals are confined and deprived of natural light, while being force-fed subpar nutrition, depict the current state of affairs. Even if you have no sympathy for the animals, “they're under stress, their immune systems are weakened. It's a perfect recipe for creating new viruses… There will be humans who have to go into the sheds, who will pick up the viruses and spread them back to the community. So there's a serious pandemic risk with factory farming,” Singer adds.

Sympathy for these animals should be the goal, however, as Singer attempts to convey throughout the book. “Animals are other beings who are on this planet. They were not placed on this planet just for our benefit. They are living their own lives. And I don't believe that we—because we have power over them, because of our advanced technology—are justified in giving them miserable lives in order to produce their flesh, milk or eggs more cheaply,” he declares.

Often overlooked, ignored and damned, the cycle that throws people in the prison system and spits them out is a calamitous yet integral part of the American experience. People who find themselves at the short end of the stick—usually poor, uneducated and of a minority race—find themselves worse off, excommunicated from society and filled with more trauma and neglect. Keri Blakinger was not poor, was highly educated and white, yet found herself in the same spot and was treated in the same cold and dehumanized fashion. In prison, as Blakinger points out, “You become a number.”

The Western world, in the midst of being primed for a war with China, often has a limited understanding of who this supposed enemy is. Is it a communist force ready to challenge the U.S.’s capitalist and hegemonic structure? Is it an economic ally providing an indispensable factory floor for our corporate interests? Or is it somehow a combination of both? Joining host Robert Scheer this week on Scheer Intelligence is Suisheng Zhao, professor and director of Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies, who hopes to provide clarity to these ever growing questions.

It is so easy for people to throw trash on the floor, waste food and water and engage in endless consumerism without being truly connected with the Earth around them. Without witnessing a first hand account of the destruction to the natural environment from the persistently damaging habits of society, there is little incentive to change. The scary and all encompassing problems of climate change will devastate the planet indiscriminately regardless, and it is because of this that writer, editor and professor David Gessner decided to embark on a journey that details the need for this understanding amongst the masses.

Over 100 years ago, the United States had corrupt politicians who could actually be prosecuted  for their crimes in gaming the economy.  As mythical as it may seem, the history of a small band of radical and gutsy senators who were willing to put it all on the line for justice can serve as inspiration for those who have only ever seen their political representatives bought and paid for. In Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal, author, producer and Emmy winner Nathan Masters explores the remarkable time in American history.

It has been almost two years since the distressing scenes of packed airports, people chasing after departing U.S. aircraft and the Taliban emerging on top were witnessed with the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. Amidst the commotion and confusion, what was certain was the fear within one type of Afghan citizen, the interpreters of the American military. Without them, U.S. forces would have been an army of the deaf, engaging in pivotal and deadly operations in a country thousands of miles away.

Alan MacLeod’s reporting on the influx of former government employees at TikTok, Meta, Twitter and other social media companies helps define the scope of the U.S. censorship regime.

A thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering.

The story of a U.S. backed coup destabilizing a country for the benefit of Western capitalist interests is one so often repeated that each instance is a sort of classic novel in the dystopian series from the 20th century on. The tale of the Iranian coup in 1953 is indeed a classic, as it was the first of its kind. With its share of infamous characters—mainly the CIA and British MI6—as well as its lasting impact on the region, its citizenry and the world, the coup in ‘53 proved to be a monumental shift in world politics, one of great promise and prosperity for the West by means of exploitation and rapacity. For its victims, decades of occupation, terror and confusion flooded countries and created the hegemonic world we live in today.

Writer Dionne Ford dives deep into her ancestry and confronts the complexities of being a Black woman in America with the blood of both the enslaved and the enslaver.

The Federal Reserve is not working for the people but for wealthy individuals and corporations that can afford to have a say in the rules.

A major shift in global relations has recently transpired. To some in America, it may look like the second coming of the Evil Empire. To much of the rest of the world, it’s a welcome chance for a renewed multipolar order, where the sovereign desires of nations are respected and new collaborations can be established. The deal brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brought together by China, to restore diplomatic relations, is a clear example of that. The 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War is bringing even more attention to the faltering era of U.S. global hegemony and bullying. To add to that, America’s thirst for war with China spells out its acknowledgement of its waning dominance in the world. The last two decades in the Middle East serve as the quintessential case study of U.S. foreign policy and how it served the interests of America’s biggest corporations and stakeholders.

University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, a leading Middle East expert, joins host Robert Scheer this week on Scheer Intelligence to discuss the diminishing role of the U.S. in the world, the way its wars in the Middle East led to this point, and how China is emerging as a frontrunner in the new multipolar world. “The United States is not the only game in town anymore, and that's not been the case since the end of World War II, when the U.S. was 50% of the world economy. It's just becoming smaller, it has a smaller proportion of world wealth and power,” Cole said.

Despite the U.S.’s best efforts to thwart prosperity in Iran, countries like China have been circumventing their dollar dominance and now sit in the driver’s seat. “Most countries have been strong-armed by the United States—South Korea, Japan and the European countries—not to buy Iranian petroleum. China has defied the U.S. in this regard and can do so because it has a big, complex economy,” Cole said.

Renowned sports journalist Dave Zirin talks about his latest documentary, which explores the unjust, unfair and deeply racist history of the NFL coupled with its commitment to nationalism, militarism and corporatism.

The use of the century old Espionage Act in the Julian Assange case continues to set the chilling precedent of a bleak future in American journalism, a precedent that endangers even those outside US borders.

After a year of war and carnage in Ukraine, the fighting continues, and there are no signs of it slowing down. In fact, military budgets have increased, the weapons shipments have multiplied and the number of countries involved has reached world war levels. In a time of conflicting narratives, misinformation and rampant propaganda, history proves to be one of the few sources of wisdom left to predict and caution what the future holds.

Violent drug cartels often dominate headlines about Mexico but the Ayotzinapa case reveals a more sinister involvement from the US side of the border.

Cop City Atlanta is a privately funded, local community surveillance campus that has already taken the life of one protestor as a harbinger of the police state on the horizon.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William J. Astore who served in the nuclear missile command fears the end of human life through nuclear war is more likely than in the Cold War era. 

Numbers and facts only tell half the story of some of the world’s most horrendous circumstances.

The FBI, CIA, NSA and other agencies have historically exploited their power but their limits appear boundless in the modern age.

Israel’s sharp turn to the extreme right has startled American Jews.

Physician and anthropology scholar Dr. Warren Hern delves into some of the most upsetting aspects of human behavior as a fatal threat to all life on earth in the near future.

The Rev. Madison Shockley discusses the historical, political and controversial misconceptions of the Christmas story.

Larry Gross, author of the LGBTQ civil rights treatise, “Up From Invisibility,” honors the achievement of the new same-sex marriage law with only feint appreciation for the president who signed the bill.

Dr. Gabor Maté’s new book strips back the realities of the neoliberal system that has been plaguing the health of US and the world citizens.

How Democrats, their pro-war Republican cohorts and the media canceled the U.S. Senate campaign of ex Marine and US foreign policy official Matthew Hoh.

Esteemed physician Dr. Stephen Bezruchka explains why spending the most in the midst of inequality and flawed politics produces an unhealthy prognosis.

Historian Joel Beinin uses his personal experiences to paint a picture of Israel, past and present, as a country and an idea.

In this week's Scheer Intelligence interview, as in his New York Times bestselling book, ​“Solito: A Memoir,” ​celebrated poet ​Javier Zamora​ ​cuts through the nasty dehumanization about undocumented immigrants with the focused memory of his perilous journey as a child refugee attempting to join his family under the most vulnerable of circumstances. With their lives overturned by the U.S.-sponsored war in El Salvador, Zamora's parents had found refuge in California, but it took eight years and the risky efforts of a paid smuggler to open the possibility for their child to join them.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry discusses with host Robert Scheer the internet control issues raised by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and what may lie ahead for it and other social media giants.

For 16 years the former Democrat congressman from Cleveland advocated for peaceful alternatives to the madness of war, but now members of his party in Congress are permitted only the voice of the warmonger.

Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins exposes the role of the Federal Reserve and other western central banks in creating a world economy for the superrich while enabling the impoverishment of much of the world’s population

Indigenous Los Angeles psychology graduate student Eduardo Carreon analyzes the mindset of disgraced former LA City Council leader, a Latina whose racist bile scorned Black and gay colleagues and others, including indigenous members of her own Latinx community.

35-year teaching veteran Jim Mamer explores the uncomfortable areas of history most schools fail to teach and what it means about the state of the world today.

Author Zachary Karabell pleads that despite the militaristic noise, China and the U.S. share an economic dependency that would rupture the domestic economy of both nations if severed.

The U.S. withdrew its troops and with them all humanitarian aid while freezing Afghanistan’s foreign reserves, leading to mass deprivation for Afghanistan’s innocent civilian population.

On this week’s Scheer Intelligence, Boyah Farah, a young refugee from Somalia’s hellish civil war describes his family’s narrow escape from death and their arrival in the placid suburbs of Boston. But life was more a nightmare than the dream he had imagined.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation, remembers the Russian leader—whom she called a friend—as a committed pro-peace thinker, on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

CODEPINK founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans are rare voices of conscience confronting the bipartisan warmongers. 

Climate scientist Alan Robock, one of the authors of a groundbreaking Nature Food paper on the little-discussed impacts of nuclear war, talks to Robert Scheer about his work. 

Columbia Law School professor Kathryn Judge talks to Robert Scheer about the exploitation of monster behemoth retail companies revealed in her new book “Direct.”

Joel Whitney, the author of “Finks,” joins Robert Scheer to discuss a little-told episode in the socialist actor and singer’s life and why it’s seemingly been erased from our collective memory.

The comedian and host of two popular progressive podcasts offers her take on why the American left keeps getting things wrong.

Former Mideast CIA operative John Kiriakou discusses his recent trip covering Biden in Saudi Arabia and what he’s learned about America’s “special relationship” with the country. 

Michelle Wilde Anderson speaks to Robert Scheer about how four working class towns struggling with poverty and broke governments still managed to progress. 

At a time when the war that could end civilization escalates, peace activist Ron Kovic marks his July 4 birthday sounding the alarm about the true costs of war, a sentiment shared by his girlfriend of 16 years, TerriAnn Ferren.

The authors of “Let’s Agree to Disagree” offer a guide to fostering critical thinking and dialogue in a society that seems to have forgotten how to engage in either.

The author of “Because Our Fathers Lied” lays bare agonizing truths about America his father helped to shape. 

The former presidential candidate speaks to “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer about the shreds of democracy left in America. 

A veteran foreign correspondent returns from three decades covering the rise of the East to grapple with an America that is more dangerously parochial than ever.

A new book documents the extent to which American prosperity is founded on immigration—and raises questions about how we treat immigrants today.

Critics of the West’s role in the Ukraine war, such as CIA veterans Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, are being ostracized from the American media landscape. 

Veteran award-winning journalists Patrick Cockburn and Robert Scheer, who met in  Moscow in 1987 when Mikhail Gorbachev optimistically promised peace, now fear a descent into nuclear war hell. 

Lifelong journalist Joe Lauria joins Robert Scheer to discuss how companies like PayPal, YouTube and Facebook are quashing non-stream reporting and opinions on Ukraine. 

Jorja Leap joins Robert Scheer to discuss the plight of women who have been incarcerated and their struggles to reenter society. 

Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg argues the Russian president may not be deploying his nukes but is using them effectively as a threat. 

When it came to the Ukraine conflict, Professor Michael J. Brenner did what he’s done his whole life: question American foreign policy. This time the backlash was vitriolic. 

Economic expert Ellen Brown talks to Robert Scheer about the financial revolution Vladimir Putin has started and what the global economic future could look like as a result.

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou comments on the legal case of five Guantanamo Bay torture victims and what its outcome could say about the US. 

For decades after the Cold War ended, the threat of nuclear war seemed to fade into the global background. Climate change took center stage as the existential crisis of our time, and it seemed for a few brief years that treaties and diplomacy, however flawed, had led nuclear powers to set aside the possibility of using nuclear weapons again. (To date, it is only the U.S. that has detonated nuclear weapons—both in Japan—and it continues to be the country with the largest nuclear arsenal by far.)

Mary Childs, the co-host of NPR’s “Planet Money,” joins Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, “The Bond King.” 

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine wages on, and Ukrainian civilians die daily, the fog of war has seemingly been clouding more nuanced analysis in the United States, argues “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer. To get more perspective on the historical context of the current conflict, Scheer invites former CIA analyst Ray McGovern to discuss the role the U.S. and NATO have played in Ukraine. McGovern has long been an outspoken critic of what he’s coined as the American Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) for leading the world ever closer to a nuclear war.

Greg Sarris, Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, explores the urgent need for an American future rooted in indigenous knowledge. 

Journalist Matthew Cole joins Robert Scheer to discuss his hard-hitting book, “Code Over Country,” about SEAL Team 6, the most celebrated unit in the Navy SEALs elite special forces unit.

Leading privacy lawyer Neil Richards joins Robert Scheer to discuss his new book “Why Privacy Matters” and whether we can still claw back some control over our personal data.

Oliver Stone, creator of the Showtime documentary series “The Putin Diaries,” speaks to Robert Scheer about the escalating crisis in Ukraine. 

Middle East expert Juan Cole talks about lesser known peaceful Muslim movements and how the U.S. maligns a Muslims at home and abroad. 

The late human rights lawyer took on some of the most important cases of our time, including defending Guantanamo Bay detainees and representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

Peter Richardson joins Robert Scheer to discuss his latest book, “Savage Journey,” on the legendary Gonzo journalist.

On this week’s “Scheer Intelligence,” Wasserman joins host Robert Scheer to talk about the larger-than-life writer they both greatly admired, but also the flesh-and-bones woman they both knew personally: Joan Didion.

During another pandemic holiday season when everyone could use a little faith, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist talks to Robert Scheer about putting Christ back into Christmas. 

Joseph Carson has spent most of his career as a federal employee challenging everything from the country’s nuclear weapons program to its whistleblower adjudication infrastructure. 

The Mexican-American author opens the wounds his father inflicted in a eulogistic debut that is as much about the U.S.-Mexico border as it is about healing.  

The Native American activist’s attorney Kevin Sharp tells Robert Scheer why Peltier’s imprisonment is one of the worst miscarriages of justice this country has ever seen. 

Tony Platt’s recently re-released book, “Grave Matters” digs into the Golden State’s dark history of not only massacring Indigenous Peoples, but later desecrating their graves and excavating their remains without their descendants' consent. 

Aaron Maté joins Robert Scheer to discuss the damning new Justice Department evidence that the Hillary Clinton campaign conspired to finance and promote the totally fraudulent “Steele dossier.”

Torture victim Majid Khan’s lawyer J. Wells Dixon joins Robert Scheer to discuss his client’s shocking testimony about the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation tactics.”

John Kiriakou joins Robert Scheer to discuss the plight of the whistleblower, sentenced to 45 months in prison for revealing how often drone strikes kill civilians. 

Chris Hedges on his 10 years as a teacher and pupil creating theater in the U.S. prison plantation system.

Documentary filmmaker Judith Ehrlich joins Robert Scheer on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss “The Boys Who Said No,” a documentary about the Vietnam War draft resisters. 

Joseph Weisberg, a former CIA officer and the creator of the TV show “The Americans,” joins Robert Scheer to examine common misconceptions about the Cold War. 

Andrew Cockburn brilliantly documents the motivations behind the U.S. military’s war lust in his new book, “Spoils of War.” 

In this week’s installment of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer hears from Kiriakou the inside story of how the the program started as part of a cynical power struggle between the CIA and FBI, why torture does not save lives or secure better intelligence, and how, while the program was started under Republican President George W. Bush, it was a top appointee of President Obama, himself a key architect of the torture program, who chose to prosecute him five years after his interviews with ABC which should have made him a national hero instead of a disgraced felon. 

In this week's Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer discusses the paradoxical past, present and future of China's "socialist market" economic model with Nathan Gardels, author of "It Is No Longer Glorious to Get Rich in China," published this week by Noema, a magazine of the Berggruen Institute. 

Peter Edelman examines how Americans are still tormented by the specter of President Bill Clinton’s worst domestic policy failure.

Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, a professor of religious studies, examines how Christian rhetoric is used to justify endless wars and the “moral injury” they inflict.

Activist Achal Prabhala speaks to Robert Scheer about the wealthy countries’ reluctance to end global vaccine apartheid.

Marion Nestle’s book “Unsavory Truths” contains shocking revelations about how the science that influences what we eat is corrupted by corporate interests.

John and Gabriel Shipton talk to Robert Scheer about the WikiLeaks founder’s grueling struggle to be freed from a London prison as the Biden administration demands his extradition.

In a new book, journalist Larissa Zimberoff examines how companies have changed the way we eat in the name of climate change without always considering their products’ health impacts.

The second American Revolution: A work in progress

Ximena Vengoechea wants to teach us how to listen again with her new book “Listen Like You Mean It,” but is that even possible in a capitalist world?

The former Congress member talks to Robert Scheer about his life and the dramatic events surrounding his political rise, as told in his new book “The Division of Light and Power.”

Sherry Buchanan, author of “On the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” discusses what she learned about the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese women who survived its frontlines. 

John Kiriakou, a CIA torture whistleblower, offers expert insight into Israel’s most recent attacks on the Palestinian territories on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence”

Maj. Danny Sjursen weighs in on U.S. intelligence agencies’ recent admission that a report that the Taliban had been paid by Russia to kill Americans is most likely false. 

Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges joins Robert Scheer to discuss the WikiLeaks founder’s plight as he languishes in a British prison. 

Journalist and anti-war activist David Harris speaks to Robert Scheer about his resistence to America’s genocide in Vietnam and his education in federal prison. 

As the jury was deliberating its verdict in George Floyd’s murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, BLM co-founder Melina Abdullah spoke with Robert Scheer about the movement’s enormous impact and the work that remains.  

Jonathan Taplin joins Robert Scheer to discuss his new memoir about the time he spent among rock-and-roll royalty like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin. 

Writer-director Oliver Hermanus discusses his new film and the complex history of his native South Africa on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

Maj. Danny Sjursen, ret. discusses Biden’s stalling on Trump’s commitment to end the US-Afghanistan war.

Political cartoonist Mr. Fish joins Robert Scheer to talk about the death of his art form and his most recent book, “Nobody Left.” 

The consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate, refuses to mince words about Democrats and their corporate bedfellows in a new interview with Robert Scheer.

Larry Gross, who grew up in Israel shortly after it was founded, talks about the racism he witnessed in the young nation long before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

Investigative journalist Amelia Pang joins Robert Scheer to discuss the story of a Chinese prisoner at the heart of her gripping new book, “Made in China.” 

In a special Scheer Intelligence from a March 2019 conversation,  Robert Scheer talks with his lifelong friend and legendary poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who passed recently in San Francisco at the age of 101. The two discuss a host of topics, including the importance of not selling out and the founding of San Francisco’s landmark City Lights bookshop, where Scheer worked as a young man. 

Middle East scholar Juan Cole joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Films like “Palmer,” released on Apple+ in late January, are redefining how global audiences understand gender constructs in previously unthinkable ways. 

Joel Whitney joins Robert Scheer to talk about the lives of poets George and Mary Oppen, two admirable Americans persecuted for their leftist ideals.  

Director Sam Pollard did a deep dive into the FBI’s surveillance of MLK under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover in his documentary “MLK / FBI,” released by IFC Films earlier this month. Listen to the full conversation between Pollard and Scheer as they discuss the implications of that question, as well as address the highly controversial summaries of the FBI’s MLK surveillance tapes discovered by King’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, David J. Garrow in 2019. 

In the second part of the “Scheer Intelligence” interview with Jonathan Alter, the author of “His Very Best” examines the former president’s mixed foreign policy record.

Raised in privilege amidst the barbarism of segregation, the oft-maligned president eventually embraced the New South liberalism that just swept his native Georgia’s election.

Clay Tweel’s HBO Max documentary on the New Age “cult of cults” that claimed dozens of lives raises powerful questions about the checkered histories of various religions. 

Matt Tyrnauer, director of the devastating Showtime documentary blockbuster “The Reagans,” reveals how Donald Trump was the logical heir to the Reagan Revolution beginning with his plagiarism of the Gipper’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and ending with the abysmal failure to confront a medical pandemic.

Historian Jon Wiener, who wrote “Conspiracy in the Streets” on the subject of the Netflix film, sets the record straight on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

In the second part of a two-part interview, Thomas Frank explores how anti-populism made liberals comfortable with plutocracy. 

Robert Scheer sits down with professor and author Benjamin Madley to talk about a little known part of California's history.

Thomas Frank examines the history of American populism, and how it was distorted by Democrats and co-opted by Republicans. 

Dennis Kucinich, former Ohio congressman and mayor of Cleveland, weighs in on what the Democratic Party keeps getting wrong.

Publicly-funded media models make a lot of Americans nervous, but Victor Pickard argues it may be the only way to repair our tattered democracy.

Political anthropologist David Vine argues that the most visible evidence of the country’s global empire are the thousands of military installations it has around the world. 

Attorney Ronald Goldfarb offers a scathing indictment of American law and lawyers in his new book, The Price of Justice. 

The epic battle by Steve Donziger to get Chevron to pay a $9.5 billion judgment he won in 2011 for its “mass industrial poisoning” of Indigenous Amazonian tribes in Ecuador has left him under house arrest for 13 months, disbarred, with a lien on his home, frozen bank  accounts, $32 million in legal fees and no way to make a living.  The judgment has not yet been paid.

James Steyer is taking on Mark Zuckerberg and other tech barons and he wants to empower the rest of us to do the same.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, a lifelong progressive, talks about his new book and what he found lacking in the Democratic Socialist’s presidential campaign. 

The movements of the sixties, which are captured in detail in Mike Davis and Jon Wiener’s new book Set the Night on Fire, are seen as wildly successful. Is it possible Black Lives Matter will be even more significant?

Journalist David Dayen examines how the greatest danger to our American society doesn’t come from the White House, but from a few obscenely powerful corporations. 

“The Great Influenza” author John Barry gave us a warning 16 years ago that is extremely relevant to today’s Covid-19 pandemic: It is always fatal to allow politics to trump science. 

Communications scholar Mark Lloyd explains how the USPS, which is enshrined in the Constitution, became a political battleground. 

A new book by Barbara Freese explores eight stories about the unfettered corporate greed that has corrupted modern society and led to an astounding loss of life. 

Journalist JoAnn Wypijewski’s latest book, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority and the Mess of Life” issues a blistering challenge to “scandal media,” which she dismisses as a distorted Cliff Notes version of reality.

In his new book, Theodore Hamm examines the New York figures and policies that inspired Sanders to become a champion of working class Americans.

In “Rigged,” historian David Shimer documents both countries attempts to manipulate democracies abroad — and comes to some questionable conclusions

Oliver Stone and Maj. Danny Sjursen frame their nation’s past and present in the context of the imperialist U.S. wars that stole their youth. 

The former L.A. Times cartoonist thought he was protected by freedom of the press until his own newspaper came after him for a blog post about LAPD abuses.

Throughout the uprisings inspired by the killings of Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray and so many other Black victims, white leaders refused to learn from Black Lives Matter, a group inspired by the police killing of Trayvon Martin, 17, in 2012 and catalyzed by the killing of Michael Brown.

In conversation with Robert Scheer, Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen examine their roles in our nation's bloody trajectory since the Vietnam War.

Bernie Sanders may never make it to the White House, but, just when we need them most, socialists like “Bigger than Bernie” co-author Meagan Day have picked up his torch. 

As BLM protests sweep the globe, the movement’s co-founder Melina Abdullah talks about its roots and her hopes for the coming years.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn examines the disastrous inevitability of America’s failures in the Middle East as the region continues to reel from decades of U.S.-sponsored turmoil. 

Political comedian Lee Camp wants to dismantle systems of oppression with a molotov cocktail filled with facts and some good old fashioned laughter. 

In a new book, journalist Vincent Bevins traces the Cold War massacres in Asia and Latin America that still define global political dynamics today. 

The series “Decoding Covid-19” offers a hopeful account of the international cooperation that has stemmed from the unprecedented crisis. 

Banking expert Nomi Prins explains why Congress’ stimulus bill has been a boon for Wall Street and not the small businesses that need it most. 

Dr. Margaret Flowers predicts how the coronavirus pandemic will impact the ongoing struggle for universal health care in the U.S.

Economist Ellen Brown sheds light on the intricacies of an economic system that is being unmasked by the government’s pandemic response.  

States all over the world are ramping up surveillance, as people seemingly willingly give up whatever civil liberties they have left in the name of safety.

As we all battle the deadly pandemic, Asian Americans like Hollywood producer Janet Yang are also facing an onslaught of racism.

In a special edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” host Robert Scheer becomes the guest as filmmaker Stephen French asks for the journalist’s take on the unprecedented crisis.  

The U.S. response to the international criminal court’s decision to permit an investigation into the Afghanistan War highlights the profound danger America poses to the world. 

A combat veteran reflects on the moral impact America’s longest war has had on its own people.

The class war that gave rise to Sanders’ campaign is the fault of a long line of corporate Democrats like Joe Biden, and voters know it.

The lifelong activist often adopted radical positions on a number of issues, including war and the environment, a new book reveals.  

Intelligence expert William Binney discusses the revelation that a widely used encryption service has been in CIA hands for decades.

It’s not just Sanders that the Democratic establishment is frightened of, it’s the powerful working class movement he’s helped build. 

As tensions between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party continue to rise, the former Congress member offers an insider’s take on the party. 

A new PBS documentary provides insight into a prison initiative that is fighting recidivism with an unlikely tool.

In the second part of an engrossing interview, the renowned thinker explains his criticisms of Israel and his take on U.S. electoral politics.  

In the first installment of a remarkable two-part interview, the two left-wing public intellectuals meet for the first time to discuss world politics.

When it comes to the U.S. housing crisis, the blame from the wholesale swindling of the American people lies on all ends of the political spectrum.

Several nations have played a role in the WikiLeaks publisher’s demise as corporate media stands idly by. 

A new film about the CIA torture report brings to life the brutal reality of the crimes the agency committed post-9/11.

Although the extent of our lawless detention program in Guantanamo Bay is something many Americans know little about, it affects us all.

Experts worldwide are trying to tackle climate change with radical proposals, but one thinker is advocating for a more moderate approach.

An in-depth look at a debate between James Baldwin and Buckley reveals ever-relevant truths about racism in modern America. 

A gripping documentary documents the surprising role drug cartels and illegal traffickers are playing in the looming extinction of a rare whale.

Two of the most urgent crises facing Americans---mental health and homelessness---are inextricably linked. The failure to see this has only made things worse. 

A bone-chilling documentary about Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor, reveals the all-American evil that brought us modern-day politics.

“Midnight Traveler” tells the harrowing story of Afghani director Hassan Fazili and his family’s displacement as filmed on their cell phones.

In a world in which global opinion reigns, public diplomacy rooted in nationalism and propaganda will not save us from pressing crises. 

The two international giants are linked in inextricable ways, and yet Americans’ understanding of China consistently lacks nuance. 

People like Becky Dennison are working to address to one of America’s most urgent crises with a straightforward approach. 

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Katharine Gun, the subject of the film “Official Secrets,” nearly changed the course of history with one corageous decision.

A documentary about a black woman’s reunion with relatives who have been passing as white gets to the heart of one of the nation’s founding wounds.

The mysterious arrest of a Swedish data privacy activist with links to the WikiLeaks founder raises important questions about government surveillance.

Where would America be without the muckraking journalists and the publications that champion their work?

Author and University of Michigan professor Alexandra Minna Stern traces the origins of America's burgeoning white nationalist movement.

In a groundbreaking series, Shoshana Walter reveals the work camps operating all over the country under the guise of rehab centers.

Filmmakers Abby Martin and Mike Prysner discuss the war crimes being committed in Gaza and how a resolution could be reached in the Middle East. 

A new investigative report uncovers rampant exploitation of caregivers at residential care homes across the nation, many of them poor immigrants who work for a pittance around the clock with no days off, often sleeping on floors, couches, or in garages while the care home owners get rich, breaking several labor laws.

A United Nations expert finds the WikiLeaks founder has been subjected to psychological torture, and media around the globe played a part.

One of the wealthiest and most liberal states in America has created a humanitarian emergency that only those who caused it can truly fix. 

Languages along with the world views they contain are dying out at an alarming rate. Sadly, this is by no means an accident, argues Lena Herzog.

Journalist Will Evans exposed Tesla’s flagrant labor violations, but all the company’s founder did was shrug him off and cry "fake news."

A deep-seated denial of the racist, colonial roots of gun rights in the U.S. underlies the left’s flawed approach to domestic arms control.

In a brutally honest exit interview, recently retired U.S. Army Maj. Danny Sjursen opens up about his 18 years as a witness to the carnage of America’s forever wars.

Susie Linfield traces the history behind what she views as a leftist abandonment of Zionism by Jewish intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Hannah Arendt.

Hollywood's triumph in the global culture wars is a serious cause for concern at a time in which conglomerates and uniformity reign, argues French scholar Violaine Roussel.

In a bold statement, a leading dean of journalism argues that in abandoning Julian Assange, the mainstream media have abandoned the First Amendment.

Bill McKibben, the “world’s best green journalist” says it may be too late to save the planet, but that doesn’t seem to keep tech barons and the rest of the uber-rich up at night.

Billionaire Nicolas Berggruen’s plan to revamp democracy and put capital in the hands of the people has one glaring blindspot.

The U.S. government’s attack on the WikiLeaks founder covers up a menacing assault on the First Amendment, argues journalist Bruce Shapiro.

The great majority of Israel’s problems would be solved if the nation were able to establish lasting peace with its neighbors, says journalist and filmmaker Mariam Shahin.

After finding herself abandoned by society after leaving prison, Susan Burton became the aid she and so many others in her position needed.

The victory against “the white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative capitalists” will be won in our courtrooms, our streets and our classrooms through vigorous, relentless resistance, according to Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah.

Mass incarceration, one of our greatest shames, was established by Republicans and Democrats who demonized large parts of American society.

Nazi Germany’s crimes and the U.S. War on Terror may not be so different in the eyes of international law.

When it comes to matters of race, the entertainment industry fails its increasingly diverse audience, time and again.

Two Russia experts discuss how the Washington establishment's virulent anti-Kremlin sentiment affects domestic and foreign policy as well as media narratives.

Los Angeles Times reporter Patt Morrison and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer point out a surprising fact about journalism through the ages.

Tosh Berman, the son of the artist Wallace Berman, describes his childhood surrounded by the revolutionary artists of the Beat movement.

The story of Tom Catena, a doctor who risks his life daily to proffer medical care in an African war zone, is as remarkable as it is inspiring.

In conversation with Robert Scheer, Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen examine their roles in our nation's bloody trajectory since the Vietnam War.

Life, replete with its ups and downs, goes on in U.S. and Mexican border communities despite the political calamity unfolding around them.  

Was it conspiracy or idiocy that led to the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to detect and prevent the 2001 terror attacks?

University of Michigan professor and author Juan Cole explores our biggest misconceptions about the world's second-largest religion.

Writer Chris McGreal and host Robert Scheer zero in on the book American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts in this week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence. McGreal, the book’s author and a correspondent for The Guardian and other news sources, discuss how the opioid addiction crisis is largely an American epidemic. 

Here’s a pop quiz: How long has corporate corruption existed? Answer: As long as corporations as we know them have been in business. Thanks to journalist David Montero’s meticulously sourced survey, Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network, the consumer public now has access to a wealth of details about the astonishingly shady antics in which multinationals have been engaging since the retro-imperialist heyday of the British East India Company.

And this malignant strain of corporatism is only getting worse. As Robert Scheer remarks to Montero in this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” it amounts to nothing short of a “virulent, corrosive, murderous arrangement that has only accelerated in recent years.” Some potential reasons why this global scourge hasn’t been more aggressively treated include: willful ignorance; greed; the widely supported myth that the phenomenon is ‘just’ about white-collar crime; a false sense that corporate malfeasance ranges outside of various states’ jurisdictions; and powerful companies engaging in a race to the bottom because, well, everyone else is doing it.

But Montero is ready to serve notice to a host of Fortune 500 companies helpfully name-checked throughout the episode that at least two hard-nosed investigators are onto them. Not only has the extent of the damage done been vastly underestimated and underreported, but so long as it grows in the dark, it’s able to feed into the worst kinds of crises around the world. After taking in Montero’s argument, Scheer sums up the stakes powerfully as he remarks that “white-collar crimes are human rights crimes.”

The odds were stacked against the two authors of “The Kremlinologist: Llewellyn E. Thompson, America’s Man in Cold War Moscow” when it came to treating their subject with anything resembling journalistic precision or objectivity. That’s primarily because they resembled their subject a little too closely -- in addition to being the book’s co-writers, Jenny and Sherry Thompson are also Llewellyn Thompson’s daughters.

This is part two of a two-part interview. To listen to part one, click here.

In part one of a two-part interview, 33-year death row inmate Kevin Cooper—also an artist of exhibited works and a published author—describes his fight to prove his innocence of a heinous murder and asks why Gov. Brown refuses testing that could prove his innocence, identify the real killer and prove he was framed.

"Noncompliant" author Carmen Segarra sounds off on Goldman Sachs, deregulation and the dangerous ways our culture rewards bad behavior.

Digital DNA co-author Jonathan Aronson on the "hollowing out" of American workers and the elected officials that claim to represent them.

Dianna Cohen of the Plastics Pollution Coalition reveals how our dependence on the material threatens the health of future generations.

FAIR co-founder Jeff Cohen dissects the midterm elections, the failures of the mainstream media and the future of the Democratic Party.

Filmmaker Alexandria Bombach discusses her new documentary, "On Her Shoulders," and the challenges of telling Nadia Murad survivor's story and the Yazidi people.

Comedian Lee Camp explores the legacy of Lenny Bruce, big tech's capacity to strangle independent media and the freedom of working for a network like RT America.

Lyle Jeremy Rubin, a five-year marine veteran of the war in Afghanistan, member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, and PhD candidate in history has developed considerable authority and wisdom to speak on US foreign policy, truth about war veterans, and the role liberal and progressive media celebrities play as “cheerleaders” of the “forever war” the United States seems unwilling to end.  Rubin and Scheer talk about the relationship of war-fighting, patriotism and the American people. About Americans’ Rubin says, “I think the veteran as this kind of patriotic object really speaks to a much deeper insecurity on the part of the populous, not just about American foreign policy, but about the state of America in general as a kind of decadent empire that's somewhat aimless and self-destructive. That's at least where I would begin the conversation.”

Has the CIA taken over local policing? Activist Jamie Garcia discusses how technologies launched by the CIA, NSA and the Pentagon to spy on terrorists are radically altering crime-fighting  in Los Angeles and local communities in a “predictive policing” program that ends up targeting black and brown communities.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and a 25-year veteran of congressional trade battles, discusses NAFTA 2.0, the Trump Administration’s newly negotiated trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States that, improbable as it may seem, could actually give Mexican workers a living wage and end corporate control of trade courts.

Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, discusses his latest book, How Fascism Works, the Politics of Us and Them, and why the United States is especially vulnerable to certain elemental features of fascist policies. Our history with actual fake news, patriotism, racism, and the lack of a true liberal democracy has led us to the rise of Trump, Stanley asserts.

California’s only elected public defender Jeff Adachi, of the City and County of San Francisco, discusses why he opposes California’s new bail reform bill, his views on  preventive detention, immigration, and how the Japanese internment camps led him to a career as a public defender.

Film veteran Susan Lacy discusses her latest documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts. Lacy stresses that celebrated actress and political activist Fonda has been shaped by four “acts —the four men in her life—her father and actor Henry Fonda, and husbands, film director Roger Vadim, political activist Tom Hayden and media mogul Ted Turner. The last act is Fonda’s alone, on her lifelong journey to personal liberation.

Author Anand Giridharadas discusses the distorted libertarian ideology that they use to subvert the American experiment in democracy. They have done so by denying the legitimacy of government intervention into the economy on the side of fairness and justice, including decent working conditions, fair wages, regulation of the economy, and the right to form unions to represent them and fight for their interests. 

Helen Sklar, immigration attorney for more than 33 years, discusses the basis of the immigration family separation under Trump and how former President Clinton laid the groundwork for this.

Alissa Quart discusses her latest book, Squeezed, on living in a middle-class that is being crumpled by meritocracy and converted into what Quart terms the “Precariat,” which Scheer describes as “people who think they’re in the middle class, and they have the education, very often they find themselves living paycheck to paycheck.”

Jacob Snow discusses Amazon’s Rekognition program, which is being promoted for use at the state and federal level to use facial recognition to fight crime. 

Journalist and filmmaker Zeiad Abbas, a Palestinian refugee, describes living conditions of Palestinians under the state of Israel, which he calls “ethnic cleansing,” and discusses a toxic water crisis in Gaza and more.

Hollywood historian, film critic and writer Carrie Rickey discusses the lack of women behind the cameras in Hollywood; it wasn’t always so.

A deep look at how the accumulation of money has become the greatest goal, even at the peril of the self.

Nick Goldberg, the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, discusses print journalism, its financing, and the challenges it faces.

The Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist assesses his career reporting on some of most significant stories of the past 50 years.

The sports journalist discusses his new book on the conflicted progress of black athletes.

The documentary director and Montana journalist discuss their film about how so-called dark money entered politics in the big sky state.

The former Wall Street banker turned journalist and author returns to Scheer Intelligence to critique the actions of international central banks.

The Loyola Law professor discusses her new book about the history and evolution of the right of publicity.

The documentary filmmaker and a former prisoner discuss the film about a group therapy program in one of the most infamous prisons in the United States.