Scheer Intelligence

NOV 22, 2024

Juan Cole: The antidote to Israeli propaganda

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, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKZXR6JP?crid=DWAP8N9I3ILM&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qsOHj3TEurbghfm-SVBWVwNdbSwyReWBod3J3GrEqSLGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.sNN2YmuGu19gOzz_5nTGhpklV_YofGSTY2tOuMdN9HA&dib_tag=se&keywords=Juan+cole+gaza&qid=1729912218&sprefix=juan+cole+gaza%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1#customerReviews" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKZXR6JP?crid%3DDWAP8N9I3ILM%26dib%3DeyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qsOHj3TEurbghfm-SVBWVwNdbSwyReWBod3J3GrEqSLGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.sNN2YmuGu19gOzz_5nTGhpklV_YofGSTY2tOuMdN9HA%26dib_tag%3Dse%26keywords%3DJuan%2Bcole%2Bgaza%26qid%3D1729912218%26sprefix%3Djuan%2Bcole%2Bgaza%252Caps%252C123%26sr%3D8-1%23customerReviews&source=gmail&ust=1732307120272000&usg=AOvVaw2tXIBW1-MfcsjZ2cnigR8w">Gaza Yet Stands</a>.” 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, and the British envisaged in the White Paper of 1939 that they'd make a state of Palestine in which the Jews would be a substantial minority,” Cole explains. “It would be a Palestine, just as the British Mandate of Iraq eventuated in the country of Iraq, and the French mandate of Syria eventuated in the country of Syria, there would be a Palestine.” This arrangement, Cole contends, was uncomfortable for all parties involved and made things worse in each affected region. Many of the Jews persecuted in the Holocaust were now destined to repatriate to this foreign land instead of to Poland and Germany, which displaced the Palestinians and welcomed havoc from settlers. In a world emerging from colonial rule following World War II, Cole explains that Israel’s creation was just a reversion back to that model. “That's what Israel is, it's a Western colonial instrument,” Cole says. “What's been done to the Palestinians is considered extremely unfair by almost everybody in the world, outside of Western Europe and the United States.”

62 MIN

NOV 15, 2024

Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion in the age of unreason

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.”

63 MIN

NOV 8, 2024

Michael Tracey: Why working class Americans of all races voted for Trump

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.”

77 MIN

NOV 1, 2024

These 10 Companies Run Our ‘Democracy’

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 <a href="https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4674-titans-of-capital" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4674-titans-of-capital&source=gmail&ust=1730504274318000&usg=AOvVaw1j5O0kHV4ZlfuEpl8u6iVf">new book</a> 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.”

54 MIN

OCT 25, 2024

The enviable life of a true American publisher

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.”

64 MIN

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