Podcast

Scheer Intelligence: Governor Orders Independent Investigation Into Kevin Cooper Case

May 29, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! California, Death Row, Podcast, Prisoner rights

Three hours and 42 minutes. That’s how close Kevin Cooper came in 2004 to being murdered by the state, strapped down to a gurney, and poisoned via lethal injection. He had been placed in what he calls a “death chamber waiting room” and stripped of all his clothes before he was granted a stay of execution. Five years later, in an unprecedented dissent, five federal judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion that began: “The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.” A rash of evidence would appear to substantiate their claim. In the opinion, Judge William A. Fletcher details multiple Brady disclosures—key information that had been ignored or actively suppressed that would compromise the case against Cooper.

Scheer Intelligence: CIA Mideast Expert’s View Of The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

May 21, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! CIA, Israel, Palestine, Podcast, Wars and Militarism

John Kiriakou’s story as an Arabic-speaking former CIA agent and CIA torture whistleblower has taken a number of turns throughout his life, including a prison sentence that sent a wrecking ball through his career and personal life. During his time with the intelligence agency, however, he spent significant periods of time in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the Middle East on a quest to round up Al-Qaeda militants during the “War on Terror.” Kiriakou’s experience gives him a unique insight into the current crisis in the Palestinian territories and Israel with violence continuing to escalate as Israel fires more than 100 bombs on Gaza. So far the most recent attacks on Gaza have killed at least 230 people, including more than 100 women and children, while in Israel, 12 people, including two children, have been killed.

Scheer Intelligence: The Ruling Class’ Revenge Against Julian Assange

May 8, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Joe Biden, Julian Assange, Podcast, Press Freedom

The mistreatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over the past decade has been defined as “psychological torture” by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. Yet, there is still no real end in sight to Assange’s promethean plight. Several months after a British judge blocked his extradition to the U.S.–citing that conditions in America’s inhumane prison system would be detrimental to his health–the WikiLeaks founder continues to be held in a maximum security prison in the U.K. The U.S. government, first under Donald Trump’s rule and now under Joe Biden’s, is appealing the extradition ruling. With a new decision in the case is due to be announced any day now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and ScheerPost columnist Chris Hedges joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what Hedges has called Assange’s “martyrdom.”

Scheer Intelligence: ‘When We Fight, We Win’

April 23, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Black Lives Matter (BLM), George Floyd, Legal System, Podcast, Police violence

As the world awaited the fate of Derek Chauvin–the Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of killing George Floyd–Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah joined Robert Scheer on “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what he calls the most successful social justice movement the country has perhaps ever seen. In the timely episode, Abdullah, a lifelong activist and California State University, Los Angeles professor, traces the roots of the BLM movement back to 2013 and notes that Floyd’s killing was the moment the “world was cracked wide open” for everyone to see the deep-seated systemic racism at the core of every American institution. She adds, however, that regardless of a guilty verdict there is still a lot of work to be done in order to truly achieve racial justice.

Scheer Intelligence: Capitalism Killed The Rock-and-Roll Star

April 16, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Capitalism, Music industry, Performing Arts, Podcast

Jonathan Taplin may not be a household name, but he has been behind the scenes of some of the most influential moments in 20th century American music. As the description of Taplin’s latest book notes, the University of Southern California professor emeritus has made waves in every one of the past several decades: “he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium.” Taplin joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss his fascinating career as well as his friendships and encounters with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Martin Scorsese, Eric Clapton, and many others, all of which is captured in his new memoir, “The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock-and-Roll Life.”

Scheer Intelligence: “Moffie” Links White Supremacy And Homophobia As Macho Perversions

April 9, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Homophobia, Masculinity, Podcast, White Supremacy

“Moffie,” a new South African movie billed as an apartheid-era “queer war film,” tells the story of the closeted 16-year-old Nicholas (Kai Luke Brummer) and his conscription into South Africa’s military service to fight a war against communist Angola in the 1980s. The film, in movie theaters and On Demand platforms, is based on André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel “Moffie”–a homophobic slur. It explores with great nuance the complex realities of apartheid-era South Africa and the dangerous ideologies pervasive in its solely white male armed forces. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” writer-director Oliver Hermanus talks to host Robert Scheer about the many threads his film captures as it takes us back to a time and place in which racism and homophobia were both extremely deadly.

Jared Ball: Black Liberation And Socialism With Frank Chapman

April 5, 2021 Jared Ball, I Mix What I Like. Resistance Report Black Liberation, Podcast, Socialism

Frank Chapman is a community organizer, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and a member of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. He is also a published writer, with articles on Truthout and Freedomways. In 2019, Frank published his first book, a memoir entitled The Damned Don't Cry: Pages from the Life of a Black Prisoner and Organizer.

Scheer Intelligence: What Is It About The Democrats’ Love Of War?

April 3, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Afghanistan War, Democrats, Podcast, Wars and Militarism

Nearly two full decades into the Afghanistan War, with just a month left before the United States under President Trump had agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan at long last, it seems Joe Biden is going to backtrack on his predecessor’s promise. At his first press conference as U.S. president, Biden stated, “It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” citing “tactical” and safety concerns regarding the 2,500 soldiers left on the ground in Afghanistan. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and veteran of America’s two longest wars, joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what he thinks about Biden’s possible delay and what this will mean to Afghanistan’s people and the American soldiers in the region.

Scheer Intelligence: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

February 26, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Activist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Podcast

Ninety-seven-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti was one of the founders of the paperback bookstore City Lights in San Francisco, as well as publisher and champion of beat poets and writers including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. In their conversation, Ferlinghetti tells Robert Scheer how his experience as a naval officer in Japan during World War II made him an “instant pacifist.” Ferlinghetti discusses many in the Beat movement’s surprising sympathy for Fidel Castro and Cuba in spite of their socially progressive views. Despite his lifetime of work with the Beats, Ferlinghetti never considered himself one.

Is Hollywood Finally Breaking Free Of Toxic Gender Stereotypes?

February 12, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Film, Gender, Masculinity, Podcast

“Palmer,” a new film starring Justin Timberlake and directed by filmmaker and actor Fisher Stevens, challenges harmful ideas about masculinity and serves as an example of how far Hollywood and much of the U.S. has come towards creating spaces for gender nonconformity. The movie, released globally by the streaming service Apple+ on January 29, is set in small town America and centers on the story of a child, played by Ryder Allen, who defies ideas about what boys should and should not look and act like. The film ultimately becomes about the child’s unlikely kinship with Palmer (Timberlake), who is struggling to rejoin his community after a prison sentence, and how society views those who are...

Scheer Intelligence: The Egregious Price America Exacts For Integrity

February 5, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! FBI, Left Politics, Oppens, Podcast, State Violence

“George and Mary Oppen were branded enemies of the state,” writes Joel Whitney in a recent essay for The Poetry Foundation titled “The Violent Years.” “Their FBI files document just how deep their activism went, and the price they paid for it.” The author of “Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers” has long been interested in the links between the world of literature and the U.S. surveillance apparatus that grows more unwieldy by the day. As he finished his most recent book tour for “Finks” just as Donald Trump and neo-fascism were on the rise, he tells Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Whitney kept hearing a few lyrical lines ringing through his mind.

Scheer Intelligence: What They Got Wrong In ‘The Trial Of The Chicago 7’

December 11, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Chicago 7, Documentary, Podcast, Wars and Militarism

“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” an Aaron Sorkin film that recently aired on Netflix, brought an important chapter in the history of American activism to screens around the globe. Based on real events, the film dramatizes the 1969 trial of eight activists who were arrested during the Vietnam War protests that took place in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale were all charged with attempted incitement of a riot after the Chicago Police Department, under orders from then Mayor Richard Daley, brutally repressed the summer demonstrations.

Scheer Intelligence: Don’t Believe Anything You Were Told About Populism

November 20, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Democratic Party, Podcast, Populism, Republican Party, Trumpism

The word “populism” gets a bad rap these days as corporate media warns of its alleged dangers and President Barack Obama goes so far as to blame Sarah Palin for its recent rise. But, according to Thomas Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and author of What’s the Matter with Kansas and his new book, The People, No, a detailed account about the history of populism in the United States, true populism is a force for good, not evil. On this week’s installment of Scheer Intelligence, the journalist and historian joins Robert Scheer to discuss in-depth how the Democratic Party chose to quash populism, while the Republican Party decided to use its stripped-down ideals for its own nefarious means.

Fortress On A Hill: ‘I Ain’t Marching Anymore’

November 6, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Fortress On A Hill. Resist! GI Resistance, Podcast, US military, Wars and Militarism

Chris Lombardi, editor at Democratic Left Online, stops by the podcast to discuss her new book “I Ain’t Marching Anymore: Dissenters, Deserters, and Objectors to America’s Wars”. It’s an amazing history of military dissenters, conscientious objectors, and their hard, but determined path of dissent. She will be hosting a live stream on Nov 10, 2020, at 4pm PST. Click here to register for the event! Journalist Chris Lombardi has been writing about war and peace for more than twenty years. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, the Philadelphia Inquirer, ABA Journal...

Scheer Intelligence: Tracing America’s Brutal Imperialist History

October 30, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Intelligence. Educate! Podcast, US Foreign Bases, Wars and Militarism, White Supremacy

The United States has the largest number of military installations in the world, with about 5,000 bases in total and at least 600 overseas, according to the Pentagon. Although the Department of Defense is not forthcoming with the exact numbers, even these estimates reveal a truth about the country’s standing in the world that many Americans often fail to recognize: the U.S. has built one of the most extensive empires in modern history. On this week’s installment of Scheer Intelligence, David Vine, the author of the books Base Nation and The United States of War, talks to host Robert Scheer about...

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