Scheer Intelligence

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.