Scheer Intelligence

Welcome to another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where insights come alive through the voices of our guests. I'm your host, Robert Scheer, and today we have the privilege of speaking with the insightful Vijay Prashad, a prolific author and the Director of the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research. With an impressive body of work that includes over 40 books, Prashad has established himself as a leading voice on global affairs.In our conversation, we explore the complexities of international relations, particularly focusing on the rising influence of China, the dynamics of capitalism, and the implications of a multipolar world on the global economy. We discuss critical issues, from technological advancements to the evolving nature of democracy, and reflect on the historical context that shapes today’s geopolitical landscape.Join us as we unravel the narratives behind global events and seek to understand the balance of power in a world that's rapidly changing. 

Welcome to another episode of Scheer Intelligence! I'm your host, Robert Scheer, and today we’re diving into a critical conversation about the state of media, censorship, and the role of independent journalism in our society. Joining me are two passionate advocates from the organization Project Censored: Shealeigh Voitl and Andy Lee Roth.In this episode, we explore the alarming trends of censorship, particularly in an era where many attribute societal issues to the influence of the internet rather than systemic inequalities or failures within our democratic structures. We'll discuss Project Censored's important work in highlighting underreported stories—stories that often reveal systemic injustices overlooked by corporate media.Shealeigh and Andy share insights from their recent list of the top 25 censored stories, touching on crucial topics such as environmental crises, reproductive rights, and the growing influence of big tech on our information landscape. As we reflect on the historical context of media ce

Welcome to another edition of Scheer Intelligence. I’m your host, Robert Scheer, and today marks a significant new chapter for our program as we transition to Scheerpost, where we’ll continue our mission of exploring vital issues with depth and clarity. After nearly a decade of broadcasting through KCRW, we’re excited to bring you more frequent conversations, allowing us to engage with the news as it unfolds.In this inaugural episode under the Scheerpost banner, I’m joined by the esteemed Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst with over 27 years of experience, who has briefed three U.S. presidents and witnessed history from the inside. Together, we’ll delve into pressing topics, including the current geopolitical landscape shaped by figures like Trump and Netanyahu, and the ongoing crises in places like Gaza.As we navigate this complex terrain, we’ll reflect on the challenges posed by the current administration’s foreign policy and the implications for international relations, particularly with Russia and China.

Tariffs, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric cars: there is much to be said about the evolving relationship between China and the United States. While Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on the country are just the latest story, it is only a fraction of the news coming out of China that directly affects the U.S. and the future prospect for business and the government. Joining host Robert Scheer from China on this episode of Scheer Intelligence is Geopolitical Economic Report editor-in-chief and journalist Ben Norton. 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, s

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

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 per

*This episode originally aired on December 21, 2018.This is part two of a two-part interview. To listen to part one, click here.In part two of this two-part interview, Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper, once coming within four hours of execution, details how he copes with the daily torment of impending death as his legal team fights to prove his innocence with new exonerating evidence Gov. Jerry Brown has refused to allow to be examined. For the past 33 Christmas holidays, Kevin Cooper has inhabited an 11-by-4 ½-foot cell in California's San Quentin State Prison, the last eight waiting for Brown to grant him a new hearing and advanced DNA testing that would support what federal Appellate Judge William C. Fletcher has said: “Kevin Cooper is on Death Row because the San Bernardino sheriff’s department framed him.” Cooper, at the top of the list to be killed when

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. Companie

The assassination of Brian Thompson, the former CEO of UnitedHealthcare insurance company, has prompted a national reckoning of how corporate entities commit crimes on a daily basis and are not only not punished but rewarded for their profit-making prowess. Many point to Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin, as an example of vigilante justice, murdering someone who is responsible for the deaths of thousands who are denied medical care. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence is Anthony Grasso, professor of political science at Rutgers University and author of the new book, “Dual Justice: America’s Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime.” The book, published a day before the assassination, dives into how the justice system is really set up in two separate ways which Grasso describes as “poor people, people of color, we want to crack down on them.” But as Donald Trump puts it, when he doesn’t pay his taxes, he’s not a criminal, he&

Though one can debate the reasons, statistics and precedent of nuclear war, what is often left out of the conversation is the reality of it: destruction of the world as a whole. In her new immersive art experience titled, “Any War, Any Enemy,” immersive artist Lena Herzog throws this reality literally right in the faces of viewers. The film can uniquely be experienced via virtual reality as well as a traditional screen and it plainly shows what nuclear war looks like. Herzog begins the film with a quote stating nuclear war is not war. She tells host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence that she begins with this because “the word ‘war’ is disorienting, because in war, you can have a battle, you can lose a battle, you can win a war. You cannot win a nuclear exchange. It's omnicide. It's not war.” Part of a trilogy which tries to invoke art in a novel form, the film follows "Last Whispers," another piece of immersive art that focuses on the destruction of langu

Gaza today symbolizes nothing but death, destruction and oppression. Israel’s genocide and scorched earth bombing campaign has not only wiped out its people but the rich history that stretches back thousands of years. Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor and renowned Middle East historian, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to clearly lay out the history behind Gaza through his newest book, “Gaza Yet Stands.” Gaza, Cole says, was a cosmopolitan place, a place people went through for travel, trade and its rich civilization. “If you were in Beirut and you wanted to go to Cairo by land, you would go through Gaza. It was a crossroads,” Cole tells Scheer. A unique, multinational city with diverse religious significance, Gaza used to represent something grand in the heart of the Middle East. Today, after it was stolen by Israel and Western colonialism, even the history is in jeopardy.  “The Palestinians were 1.3 million

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 Sche

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,”

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 an

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

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

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, w

At a time of book bans and the withholding of critically important struggles in our history, our education system has increasingly failed to provide our young with the tools to become engaged citizens in our much celebrated experiment in democracy. This miseducation of the young has been vastly accelerated by the shocking erosion of civic education in the standardized testing that separates winners and losers in the ranking of our meritocracy. This reality has been made painfully obvious to Lindsey Cormack, a parent of two young children and a professor of political science at the prestigious Stevens Institute of Technology, teaching a generation of young engineering students in the diminished art of civics education. Sadly, Cormack tells host Robert Scheer that many of her students don’t understand the basics of our government: “They think they're going to do this big adult thing, participate in democracy, but then they're crestfallen and they're a little heartbroken because someone didn't ex

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 corporatio