Scheer Intelligence

The two discuss what the incoming Trump administration represents for U.S.-China relations as well as the state of China from the ground. Norton reports on his experiences living there and the local reaction to the U.S. political scene.

This is the political season to be thankful for small favors of optimism, and in this edition of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and guest Joe Lauria, editor of the Consortium News website, are excited to have found a gift of striking significance to what remains of the practice of serious journalism on the internet. It is Donald Trump’s delivery on a promise in his inauguration address that “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

What Trump is referring to is summarized in his executive order, “Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” asserting: “Over the last four years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”

Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ `disinformation’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States.” 

Despite its presence In the egregious pile of Donald Trumps otherwise deeply frightening Executive Orders assaulting logic and decency, both Scheer and Lauria, who edit internet publications that have been targeted in this manner, argue that this particular executive order is a gem of sharp brilliance that should not be shunned for the 

The wildfires in Los Angeles county have brought a multitude of difficult and prevailing questions to the forefront of the region as well as the system of capitalism. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Jacobin Magazine columnist Ben Burgis to discuss writer Mike Davis and how his book, “The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster,” (February 1998) serves as a kind of prognosis for everything going wrong in Los Angeles today.

The two dissect the multitude of issues at play in the wildfire disasters: the conceit of real estate developers testing the limits of nature, the passive and active exploitation of the working class to make and now handle the disaster, the greed of for-profit insurance companies cancelling policies, and the decisions by a major county like Los Angeles in foregoing budgets to handle these inevitable disasters.

Burgis asks, “If the public is just frankly going to be on the hook for it, do we, in fact, need to be building this densely in areas this prone to fire? I think at the very least, that's something that should be a question for public discussion in a way that it's just not.”

The American saber-rattling against China has been increasing almost as fast as China’s own development in the past few years. China’s economic prosperity and international influence is undeniable yet American politicians continue to treat their rise as a threat to their global hegemony. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence is Megan Russell, a writer, academic and CODEPINK's China is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator.

Scheer is quick to point out the intergenerational dynamic between his own work on China as a fellow in the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s and Russell’s recent experience living in China and studying in Shanghai. Both witnessed and experienced the American perspective of China and how it has continued to undermine it. Scheer and Russell focus on her latest article, which calls out New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for his portrayal of China and how his deficient op-ed mirrors the broader perception of China in the United States. While many may think that China is an authoritarian country with people living under the heel of Xi Jinping, the actual material conditions of its population are often left out.

“Something [people] don't talk about enough, in my opinion, is how China managed to eradicate extreme poverty. And that's not just a minimum income level, it also means access to food, to clothes, healthcare, clean housing, free education. It means infrastructure, means functioning systems,” Russell says.

People also point to working conditions and the outsourcing of American jobs to China as a means of attacking them. To this, Russell explains, “All China has done is use the system in place to develop and try to provide opportunities to its incredibly vast population, while still maintaining its proto-socialist policies. It's us that has exported the production of all our goods to make a few more dollars.”

In the end, the US stands to lose, not only in a trade war, but also in the climate aspect, since China has also made great strides towards combatting the climate crisis. Russell cites their plan of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 and tells Scheer, “China has really undergone this internal green energy revolution, doing far more than any other country to combat climate change.”

Much needed attention has been brought upon the for-profit health insurance industry in the wake of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Personal stories about people’s tragic experiences involving not only UnitedHealthcare but many other insurance companies have spelled out a deeper issue that resonates across the American political spectrum.

Sean Morrow, a journalist and writer for More Perfect Union—a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on working class issues—has gained significant attention lately as a result of the shooting. Morrow joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to further elaborate on the issues millions of Americans are facing and why Brian Thompson’s assassination led to such a widespread public reaction.

Morrow dives into some of his reporting, which has dealt with the internal processes behind the health insurance system. Among insurance companies, there is a consolidation process in the form of vertical integration. Companies like UnitedHealthcare can own multiple parts of the healthcare process and thus set up toll booths along each route people can expect to take. “They'll have pharmacy benefit manager companies, they'll have data companies, and then they kind of own this entire system, so that they're always routing you through there,” Morrow says. 

“If you have a health issue, you could theoretically be giving UnitedHealthcare a little bit of money from every step of the process. And they're their own vendors in all of that,” he explains.

“The system's not broken. The system's working as it's intended,” Morrow tells Scheer. The system, Morrow says, is intended “to funnel more and more money to a certain handful of people at the cost of all others.” Despite the legality of this system, the rigging of it against the interests of the working class is what enables their suffering as well as their anger against it.

The election came and went, and despite Democrats’ heavy emphasis on abortion rights, the election of Donald Trump makes it clear that the rights of women across the country are in grave danger. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to spell out this danger and talk about his new book, “Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor's Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade” is “America's Abortion Doctor” Dr. Warren Hern.

Hern possesses vast experience with abortion and abortion rights, from his days at the first private nonprofit abortion clinic in Colorado in 1973 to his having to shield himself behind bulletproof windows today as a response to the violent right-wing anti-abortion protests in America. 

“There's no debate in abortion. It's a civil war. The anti-abortion people have assassinated five of my medical colleagues, including one of my best friends, Dr. George Tiller, and I'm on all the hit lists,” Hern tells Scheer.

Abortion goes beyond politics, Hern argues. He states plainly that politicians have no right to be involved in the decision-making process behind abortions: “This is a medical issue. Politicians should get the hell out of this, and we should have a constitutional right to a safe abortion.”

Hern likens abortion to a medical condition, and women should always have the fundamental right to choose how to treat themselves. “What my point has been since 1970 [is] that the treatment of choice for pregnancy is abortion unless the woman wants to have a baby,” Hern says. “There is no justification for any law or any restriction on access to safe abortion services as part of medical care. Safe abortion is a fundamental and essential component of medical care for women.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 ...”