Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

Adolph Reed, political commentator & activist, discusses voting strategically to defeat Trump, despite criticisms of Dems. Explores complexities of building a working class base for change, challenges faced by left movements in Latin America, and implications of Project 2025 for workers' rights. Reflects on voting choices, financial influences, and urgent need to safeguard democracy.

On this edition of Parallax Views, journalist Albert Lanier, a multi-time guest on the show, just started a Substack called The Final Cut. This new venture from Lanier is a return to his roots. Although he's become known, especially to listeners of this show, for his thoughts on true crime cases and politics, in a previous life he was a film critic/movie reviewer. He even contributed to Ain't It Cool News! And over the years he had an opportunity to meet Hollywood players ranging from Nancy Kwan to Roger Corman. In this conversation, Lanier and I will discuss his work writing about cinema and his experiences going to film festivals. But we'll also discuss his thoughts on the state of the movie industry and the state of film criticism as well. In particular, we will look at the decline of film criticism and what phenomena such as film-focused, anti-woke, culture war Youtube channels have on film criticism as well as the impact of Movie Tok on film criticism and how we understand and appreciate cinema. We'll also discuss the cycles of the film industry, the importance of overseas markets to Hollywood, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, in 2009 a documentary came out entitled Defamation. Directed by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, the film sought to explore the phenomena of antisemitism, the perceptions of what is an isn't antisemitic, the question of whether criticism of Israel is the same as antisemitism (or, in the words of many Israel supporters "The New Antisemitism" that seeks to dress hatred of Jews up in a critique of Israeli and its policies), and related issues. The genesis of Defamation begins with Shamir's previous documentary, the equally controversial Checkpoint. Checkpoint took a "fly on the wall" approach to examining the interactions between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian citizens along the border of the occupied territories. Despite the cinema verite fly on the wall" approach of the film, some felt that it painted a slanted, negative picture of Israel that in turn led to accusations that Shamir was the "Israeli Mel Gibson". Gibson, of course, had at that point been known for having an antisemitic outburst after a DUI arrest and, before that, his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ was heavily criticized as promoting hatred of Jewish people in its depiction of Christ's death. Yoav Shamir, was surprised that anyone would call him the "Israeli Mel Gibson". He also had not experienced antisemitism himself as someone who lives in Israel. So he ventured out to embark on a journey that would take him from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, where race relations between Jewish and Black residents have long been troubled, to Ukraine and even Poland. He met with the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman and was given unprecedented access to the Anti-Defamation League's office where he got a rare inside look of their operations. Additionally he spoke Jewish academic and noted critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein and the international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, who alongside Stephen Walt co-wrote the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. And he went with a group of young Israelis to a state-funded trip to Israel in which teenaged Israelis learn about the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland. What Shamir's documentary shows, however, is up for the viewer to decide. From Shamir's purview, victimhood narratives are holding Israel, and perhaps even the Jewish people more broadly, back. However, his documentary nonetheless paints a poignant picture of all its major players and humanizes all the participants from Abe Foxman to his polar opposite Norman Finkelstein. There's moments of the film that are dramatic, but also uneasy moments of what can only be described as comedy or farce, such as when two young Israelis on the Poland trip mistakenly assume that the Polish men they approached in the street were calling them cuss words (it turns out the men simply did not know the Hebrew language and were trying to explain they didn't understand them). It's hard to describe in both the written word or even a podcast what Defamation documents. As such it is highly recommended that either before or after this podcast you view the whole documentary at Yoav Shamir's Youtube channel. You can also watch Yoav's previous documentary Checkpoint on his Youtube channel as well and that too is recommended. At the end of the conversation, we speak a bit about Yoav's latest documentary The Prophet and the Space Aliens about the Raelian UFO cult and discuss Elon Musk's retweeting of Defamation and get Yoav's thoughts on antisemites that have sought to use the film for their own agenda. We'll also discuss strife in Israel amongst it's inhabitants beyond the Palestinians. In other word: Mizrahi vs. Ashkenazi Israelis, etc. There's a lot of ground covered in this discussion and hopefully it supplements Yoav's documentaries well.

On this edition of Parallax Views, investigative journalist Ken Silverstein returns to the show hot off the major story he broke for The New Republic last week: "Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat | The New Republic". Ken has blown the lid off a secret chat group created by Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private military company Blackwater, that includes a who's who of influential figures of the global right-wing including Congressman Ryan Zinke, Congressman Mark Green, Tucker Carlson, Gen. Michael Flynn, and many others. Silverstein's reporting on this provides an insight into where a number of major figures, including some with intelligence and military connection, stand in 2024 behind-closed-doors on issues ranging including Iran, the Israel-Hamas War/Gaza War, Israel/Palestine, MAGA vs. the Democratic Party, U.S. foreign policy, and much, much more. He's found communications that reveal what friend of the show, American Conservative contributor, and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute Kelley Vlahos describes as a "batshit crazy chat group that includes Erik Prince, Lara Logan, and every rightwing grifter, politician, influencer, ex-military psycho" that want to "nuke, napalm, and 'take out' everyone." There was even discussion in the group of rounding up the American right's domestic enemies for Nuremberg-style tribunals. And, on the U.S. foreign policy front, there were calls for covert assassination of political leaders from countries seen as adversarial to the U.S. There were even inclinations in the chat group towards the idea of using nuclear weapons against Gaza. There's also some opaque discussion of Erik Prince having "the right people in place" to deal with Iran, which many of the members of Off-Leash have hawkish foreign policy views on, and some rather interesting discussion pertaining to the plane crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. Talk of the need for a MAGA "revolution" and fighting against a cabal of Marxists, Islamists, and globalists that many members of the chat view as destroying the U.S. and Western civilization are also prominent in the communications that Silverstein uncovered. We'll discuss all of this and much more in the conversation, but its highly recommended you consult both Ken's original report on this for The New Republic AND his Washington Babylon Substack which will be covering this further going forward. You'll also hear us discuss Donald Trump and domestic repression, Russiagate, the RFK Jr. connection to Off-Leash, Ken's thoughts on President Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump, and much, much more.

Professional poker player turned commentator Yakov Hirsch discusses 'Hasbara Culture', arguing it distorts reality for Palestinians and Jews. Examining the influence of key U.S. commentators like Bari Weiss and Jeffrey Goldberg, the conversation challenges narratives and aims for a nuanced understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Rutgers University's Director of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Sahar Aziz, returns to the program to discuss the recent House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearings on antisemitism and why they resemble something more akin to the McCarthyite witch hunts of the House on American Activities during the Cold War than an honest effort to combat antisemitism. These hearings, she argues, are more about shutting down political criticism of Israel than fighting antisemitism. We'll also delve into some of the key points covered in Sahar's book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom and discuss the Islamophobia-industrial complex that's especially been prevalent in America since 9/11 and the Global War on Terror. Moreover, Prof. Aziz will offer her thoughts on the Anti-Defamation League, which has received harsh criticism in recent years with Jonathan Greenblatt at its head, and its activities against pro-Palestinian and Arab American political activists. Most importantly, however we focus on how the House Commitee on Education and the Workforce investigations into antisemitism, which involves figures like Rep. Elise Stefanik and Rep. Virginia Fox, have attacked the Center for Security, Race, and Right as well as academics like Noura Erakat and Juan Cole. Sahar will address some of the allegations made by the House Commitee against CSRR and delve into how this is connected to broader Republican Party efforts to tamper down academic freedom and discourse (ie: how it connects to GOP attacks on DEI and CRT, right-wing promotion of book-banning, etc.).

On this edition of Parallax Views, Israeli investigative reporter Meron Rappaport joins the show to discuss a MAJOR story he helped break last week with 972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian: Israel's Covert War Against the ICC. According to the bombshell reporting Meron and others have done, Israel has engaged in a nearly long surveillance program against the International Criminal Court. Surveillance was aimed at both current chief prosecutor and his predecessor Fatou Bensouda. Additionally, Palestinian human rights groups like Al-Haq, Addameer, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) were targets of surveillance and there are connections to the controversial and scandal-besieged Israeli private cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group's Pegasus spyware to this story. This story includes allegations of illegal activity, intimidation, and blackmail. Read the story HERE: Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed We'll  discuss a numbe of issues-related to this story including how figures at the highest-levels of Israel's government, specifically Benjamin Netanyahu, figure into the surveillance program as well as the military (ie: IDF) and intelligence services (ie: Shin Bet) tie into it as well. Moreover, we'll look at how Israeli officials were initially enthused about Karim Khan taking over as chief prosecutor at the ICC until "everything changed" with the October 7th Hamas attack and the Gaza War. At the beginning of the conversation Meron will give his thoughts on the state of the Israeli free press in light of the recent attack on Haaretz's Tel Aviv headquarters where the main doors of the HQ's entrance were smashed. In the final portion of the conversation Meron discusses the Land for All movement that he helped cofound which offers a Confederation approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many argue that the Confederation approach amounts to a push for a de facto one-state solution, but figures like Dahlia Scheindlin as well as Meron argue that it is actually a two-state solution for the 21st century that addresses the failures and missteps of the Oslo generation. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views.

On this edition of Parallax Views, longtime California-based progressive activist Mirvette Judeh tells the story of her only political journey and how she and a group of activists scored a victory for the the #CeasefireNow movement that is seeking to make calling for a ceasefire in Gaza a priority in California Democratic Party politics. Mirvette recently penned a piece that appeared in Antiwar.Com entitled "Our Fight To Get the Democratic Party To Call for a Ceasefire in Gaza" in which she chronicles how the fight to get proper recognition of the Palestinian plight in a call for ceasefire resolution. We'll also discuss Mirvette's experiences as a Palestinian, her family's experiences under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, what "Free Palestine" means for her and what she wants for the Palestinian people, her experiences at the UCLA encampment and what she witnessed there, the "Progressives Except for Palestine" problem, antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, the brutal nature of Israel's assault on Gaza and the cultural destruction it has wrought on Palestinian society, the importance of speaking to Palestinian voices, settler violence in the West Bank and pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank, feelings of being portrayed by fellow Democrats who she's worked with over the years when it comes to the past 8 months of Israel's assault on Gaza, why she doesn't refer to what's happening as the "Gaza War", land theft and resource access in Israel/Palestine, Rashida Tlaib and other politicians standing up for Palestinians at this moment, problematic language in the original ceasefire language that Mirvette and other activists fought to change, and much, much more!

On this edition of Parallax Views, are major US officials like National Security Spokesman John Kirby, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and Sen. Ted Cruz throwing US military veterans under the bus in an attempt to excuse Israel's conduct in Gaza? This became a question for some after John Kirby said "We did it to" in Iraq and Afghanistan in response to a question about Israel's conduct in Gaza. In the first segment of the show, The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's Kelley Vlahos returns to the program to discuss her piece in The American Conservative entitled "‘We Did It Too’: The Ugliest Excuse for Israel ". Kelley interviewed military veterans like Ret. Col. Douglas MacGregor and Ret. Lt. Col. Daniel Davis to get an idea of what men who served in the armed forces may be thinking of the statements being made by Kirby, Milley, and others about Israeli military conduct and comparing it to US military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. We'll also discuss the $320 million dollar boondogle that was the Gaza pier project and how that's ended on a rather sour note. In the second segment of the program, James R. Webb, son of Sen. Jim Webb and a former combat veteran in the Iraq War and Marine service infantryman from 2005-2010, returns to offer his own commentary on Kirby's comments, the Gaza war, reports of Israeli soldier's taking lewd pictures of themselves posing with stolen Palestinian Gazan women's underwear, the nature of atrocities and how they happen in warfare, lack of discpline as a driving factor in atrocities, the slogan that "Israel is the most moral military in the world" above and beyond the US military, Benjamin Netanyahu's lack of strategy in the current war, how atrocities and mass civilian casualties can create future security threats/terrorist threats, the IDF, Jim's experiences in Ramadi, a rather funny anecdote about Jim's father's reaction to the Rambo movie sequels, misperceptions about American military veterans, Fallujah and use of excessive force/brutality in war, and much, much more!

Hussein Ibish, Senior Resident Scholar, discusses the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dissecting diplomatic failures, national identities, the Camp David Summit, BDS movement, two-state vs. one-state solution, riparian rights, American Task Force on Palestine, Hamas psychology, and cycles of violence. A comprehensive look at the complex dynamics shaping the conflict.