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Scheer Intelligence: How Big Oil Weaponized The Judicial System

October 16, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Steve Donziger has dedicated the latter part of his life to fighting oil companies’ greedy destruction of indigenous lands and peoples in the Amazon. After a decades-long legal battle against Chevron, which Chris Hedges details in a recent column for Scheerpost, Donziger was charged with misdemeanor civil contempt for refusing New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s orders to turn over to Chevron his client communications—which would force him to violate attorney-client privilege— his personal electronics, his passport and to cease trying to collect the $9.5 billion from Chevron for his Indigenous clients.

Scheer Intelligence: Wrestling Back Privacy From The Jaws Of Big Tech

October 13, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Over the course of just a few decades, technology has come to play a role in nearly every single aspect of our lives. While there have been undeniable benefits to technological advances, one of the main concerns that has grown alongside its presence in daily life is how tech companies collect, use and profit from our data in ways we’re often unaware of. James Steyer, a professor at Stanford University and the founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, a leading consumer advocacy group that promotes safe media and technology for families, joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss how we can fight back against tech companies’ encroachments on our privacy.

Scheer Intelligence: In A Time Of Mortal Crisis

October 2, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
There’s no denying there’s been a renewed wave of interest in socialism in the United States, thanks in large part to Bernie Sanders. While the Vermont senator gained support across the country for his rallying cry against inequality and for promoting equitable policies like Medicare for All, Rabbi Michael Lerner, a lifelong progressive and author of the new book Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World, believes there was something missing from Sanders’ socialist message.

Fortress On A Hill: Understanding The War Industry

October 1, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Fortress on a Hill. , , ,
Christian Sorenson stops by the podcast to discuss his new book “Understanding the War Industry”, a detailed look at contracting within the U.S. military industrial complex and how its giant war chest gets funneled to an endless list of contractors, without question to its necessity or what could have been purchased in its place. Everyone from libertarians to mainstream liberals to anarchists utters the words “military-industrial complex,” often as a catchall for murky forces that press the U.S. government into war. But what is this complex?

Scheer Intelligence: Justice Ginsburg’s Life And Legacy

September 25, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The documentary filmmakers discuss their film “RBG” on the life and career of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While Justice Ginsburg did not grant access to filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen right away, eventually she allowed them an intimate look at her life and her career-long fight for equal rights. West and Cohen tell host Robert Scheer that Ginsburg has embraced her recent emergence as a pop culture icon because she believes it is an opportunity to reach a younger generation.

Scheer Intelligence: How Today’s Uprisings Compare To The 1960s Rebellions

September 18, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The 1960s live on in U.S. memory as an era of counterculture rebellions and the civil rights movement that changed the course of the nation’s history. The mass uprisings that took place from coast to coast have been immortalized in myriad films and books, but these often focus on well known figures rather than the everyday Black and Chicano youths that fueled the movement. In their new book, Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the 1960s, renowned historians Mike Davis and Jon Wiener set out to capture the complete history of the city’s revolutionary political scene by focusing on the working class Americans who are so often left out of the story.

Scheer Intellience: The 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Was A US Export

September 4, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Don’t say we weren’t warned.  As President Trump’s subversion of science wreaks havoc with American society, the reappearance on bestseller lists of John Barry’s 2004 classic work, “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” is a reminder that presidential irrationality is not unprecedented. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Barry joins host Robert Scheer to compare the two pandemics and the United States’ response to each. Back in 1918, Woodrow Wilson was deprived of the jingoism card played by Trump in labeling the current worldwide scourge “the China virus” because the first wave of massive fatalities was exported from a huge military base in Kansas. 

Scheer Intelligence: The Revolt Of The Black Athlete

August 28, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com and appears regularly on the sports network and NPR. His most recent book “The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism” is about the responsibility often placed upon professional black athletes from Jackie Robinson to LeBron James to be role models for social justice. In their conversation, Bryant tells host Robert Scheer that black athletes often come up against the conflict between their corporate sponsors and their desire for social justice and action.

Scheer Intelligence: Something’s Rotten In The Corporate States Of America

August 21, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Beginning with the slave trade and leading all the way up to the climate crisis, author Barbara Freese’s “Industrial Strength Denial” examines eight of private industries’ most egregious crimes against humanity. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the author and former assistant attorney general of Minnesota joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the host calls “heinous behavior” on the part of the corporations involved in each case, and, most importantly, how the corporatization of the United States has allowed unfettered greed to cause irreversible harm and an astounding loss of life. 

Scheer Intelligence: Questioning Corporate Media’s Thirst For Scandal In The Age Of #MeToo

August 14, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , ,
The Times Literary Supplement in a rave review of JoAnn Wypijewski’s provocative new book states: “It is thrilling and cathartic to watch Wypijewski slice through our culture’s flabbiest orthodoxies.” On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Wypijewski talks to host Robert Scheer about the “haste to castigate” that has led to shoddy reporting of the true meaning of trials she has covered, ranging from the media frenzy trial of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein  to the framing of five teenagers known as the Central Park Five on rape charges, which she offers  as a shocking example of a “scandal media” lynching mob.

Are Russia And US Different When It Comes To Election Meddling?

August 2, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Robert Scheer challenges guest David Shimer on the fundamental conclusions of his new book, “Rigged: America, Russia and 100 Years of Covert Electoral Interference,” regarding the “intentions” for US covert operations versus those of the Soviet Union/Russia. Excerpted and lauded in the New York Times and elsewhere in the mainstream media, “Rigged” outlines covert operations in various countries by both nation-states, including American interference in 1970s Chile and post-World War II Italy, among others, but has been best reviewed for its deep dive into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Obama Administration’s subsequent response and whether, as has been frequently alleged, it was all key to Donald Trump’s shocking upset of Hillary Clinton.

Scheer Intelligence: The Unbearable Violence Of Being American

July 24, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Intelligence. , , ,
America’s military industrial complex and multiple presidential administrations have funnelled several generations of soldiers through unwinnable wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq seemingly without qualms. What has emerged from these tragedies are thousands of traumatized young Americans bringing home wars and leaving behind millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and forced to become refugees. But some of these former soldiers also came home with an urgent new perspective to share with their compatriots.

Scheer Intelligence: The Cartoonist The Cops Didn’t Let Get Away

July 17, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Ted Rall, the Pulitzer Prize finalist, columnist and cartoonist joins Robert Scheer on in this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” to talk about his firing by the Los Angeles Times and and his latest book, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” The host commends the journalist for his “courageous” and “gutsy” reporting on the Afghanistan War and a long, noteworthy career. Yet, it is precisely his candid storytelling through words and visual arts that earned him a place in the Los Angeles Police Department’s crosshairs. The story of Ted Rall’s firing as a cartoonist by Los Angeles Times in 2015 reveals the historically cozy relationship that existed between the media and the police.  Writing a blog for the LA Times, in which he detailed an encounter with an LAPD officer who’d detained and handcuffed him for allegedly jaywalking years earlier, ultimately led to Rall’s very public firing and a legal case that now threatens to bankrupt him.

Scheer Intelligence: The Price Of Ignoring The Ferguson Uprising

July 10, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
August 9 will mark six years since 18-year-old Michael Brown was murdered by policeman Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Miss. Since then, Wilson has walked free and the systemic issues that have plagued this nation throughout its history have gone unaddressed. That changed with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, which so thoroughly shocked Americans and established that the lessons from Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement that rose from it never had been absorbed.  Now, at a moment of heightened awareness about racism, Black Lives Matter leaders and Black activists and artists such as the award-winning filmmaker Mobolaji Olambiwonnu are working to bring the lessons of Ferguson to all Americans. Olambiwonnu, a UCLA alumni and first generation African American, joins host Robert Scheer on this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” to talk about his as-of-yet unreleased film, “Ferguson Rises,” and why he chose to tell the tragic story from a perspective he finds lacking in mass media. 

Scheer Intelligence: For Many Young People, Socialism Is As American As Apple Pie

June 26, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
In the devastating aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many young Americans who felt betrayed by capitalism were introduced to socialism by Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. Meagan Day, a staff writer for the popular left-wing magazine Jacobin and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), serves as an example of how the Vermont senator radicalized a generation with a platform that called for policies like Medicare for All and tuition-free college. Day credits Sanders with her decision to choose socialism when she felt the time came to “pick a side” in American politics and has since been working to understand how the socialist resurgence the Democratic candidate inspired can grow without him in the White House. 
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