Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, a little bit of a change of pace. Mike IX Williams of the pioneering NOLA metal and sludge metal band Eyehategod (also: Corrections House and Arson Anthem) joins us for a chat about music, growing up punk, poetry, transgressive art, race relations, Black Lives Matter, empathy, his industrial-styled band Corrections House, live sets vs. studio recordings, the influence of bands like Black Flag and Swans on his music, Christian protests against Eyehategod, Charles Bukowski, and much, much more! Check out Eyehategod's new album A History of Nomadic Behavior!

On this edition of Parallax Views, the long-time, sometimes controversial, and always fascinating geopolitical commentator Pepe Escobar joins Parallax Views to discuss some of the events the lead up to his the current decade we face, which he calls "The Raging Twenties". Although this conversation was initially intended to cover Pepe's new book Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism, Pepe and I ultimately went in a different direction. Our conversation became less focused on the details of the book and more an overview of the events, geopolitically, that lead to our current moment where tensions are rising between the U.S. and it allies against China, Russia, and Iran. As Pepe put it in the course of our conversation, our conversation serves as a preamble to many of the topics discussed in his new book (which is basically Pepe's coverage of the year 2020 from the death of General Soleimani to the COVID-19 pandemic). Among the many topics we discuss: - The Russia/Ukraine situation - The Nordstream II pipeline, Germany, and Russia, - The Iraq War and neoconservatives - Pepe's interest in the ideas of Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze; Deleuze's concept of the rhizome - Zbigniew Brzezinski and The Grand Chessboard of Geopolitics - The Quad, India and Modi - Euranianism, Putin, and China - COVID-19, Giorgio Agamben, and the surveillance society - The decline of the American Empire; Pax Americana and the Mongolian Empire - Why Pepe references and uses imagery from David Lynch's Twin Peaks in his work - The Belt and Road Initiative; the New Silk Road - The multipolar world and what it means; the failures of the War on Terror; the corrosion of the Empire

On this edition of Parallax Views, what is happening in Russia? Who is Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny? What are the protests in Russia against Putin about? Should discussion of the protests be centered on Navalny or do these protests transcend even him? Joining us to explore these questions are Ilya Mateev and Ilya Budtraitskis, who penned the February 2021 article "Putin's Majorty" for the New Left Review. Mateev and Budraitskis joins us directly from Russia to offer a perspective outisde of the one's found in both the American mainstream press and the American Left. Mateev and Budtraitskis discuss state repression in Russia, skepticism of Navalny and his neoliberal programs, the Russian Left critique of Putin, the two major opposing views amongst the Russian Left of the protests, the role of youths in the protests, Vladimir Putin and Capitalism, street politics in Russia, inequality and elite privilege in Russia, the role of the internet in political engagement and exploration of ideology in Russia, the Kremlin, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Amazon has come under scrutiny lately for its working conditions and also due to effort of Amazon workers to unionize in Bessemer, Alabama where 1 in 4 residents live in poverty. Jacobin staff writer Alex Press is a journalist who has been on the labor movement beat for some time, and joins us on this edition of the program to discuss her reporting on struggles between Amazon and its workers. Among the topics we cover in this conversation: - How Alex became involved in covering the labor movement as her beat - Amazon worker Jennifer Bates testimony about Amazon warehouse working conditions given at the Senate Budget Committee presided by Bernie Sanders - The grotesque story of Amazon workers having to urinate in bottles and Amazon PR's denialist response to it - Misconceptions and stereotypes about union organizing; the stereotypes of unions as being all about Jimmy Hoffa characters or something out of the popular TV show The Sopranos; black union organizing - Sara Nelson, the Flight Attentdant labor leader whom Alex recently interviewed - The vote for a workers union at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama - 

On this edition of Parallax Views, historian Dr. Richard Drake of the University of Montana returns to the program to discuss the new 2nd edition of his book The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy. In this conversation we discuss the terrorism, from both the radical left and the radical right, that rocked Italy in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in what has become known as the Years of Lead. Among the topics of discussion are the hyper-fascist Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola, the Red Brigades, the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the deeper reasons for the Years of Lead, what the relevance of the Italian Years of Lead may be to Americans in light of the January 6th Capitol riots, the questions arising about murky subjects like Operation Gladio and Licio Gelli's P2 Masonic lodge, the failures of the Italian government in dealing with terrorism during the Years of Lead, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, returning guest Brian McGlinchey, formerly of 28Pages.Org, joins us to discuss his new project Stark Realities on Substack. We begin by delving into Brian's initial work shedding light on the formerly classified 28 pages of Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 that related to Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials, and 9/11. From there we dive into why Brian McGlinchey started Substack and his problems with the new algorithmic regime of Silicon Valley and it's effect on independent journalism. Then we discuss his recent piece on the brutal consequences of sanction policies, especially as they pertain to Iran.

On this edition of Parallax Views, fake news and the rise of conspiracy theories like QAnon have become political hot-takes since the 2016 election of President Donald Trump and events like the January 6th, 2021 "Stop the Steal" riots on Capitol Hill. But disinformation and conspiracy theories that stretch far beyond the limits of credulity didn't begin in the 21st century. Case in point with the strange case of UFO hobbyist Paul Bennewitz. and what has become know to UFO enthusiasts as "The Bennewitz Affair". It's a story that doesn't necessarily point towards beings from another world, but rather the mix of deliberate disinformation on one hand and flat-out kookery on the other hand that may play a role in phenomena of Pizzagate and QAnon. Adam Gorightly, author Saucers, Spooks, and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius, and David Perkins, who wrote the forward to said book, join us on this edition of the program join us to unravel how disinformation campaign involving a special agent of United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and others participated in a disinformation campaign against Bennewitz after the enthusiastic UFO hobbyist began attracting unwanted attention to Kirtland Air Force Base. The saga of Paul Bennewitz, as you'll learn in this conversation, ended in tragedy. More precisely, Bennewitz was driven off a psychological cliff into madness that culminated in instiutionalization. But the story doesn't end there. As it turns out the fanciful stories fed to Bennewitz about malevolent extraterrestrial, government deals with an alien presence and it's cover-up, an underground base at Dulce, New Mexico, and more formed the foundation of modern UFO mythology, from cattle mutilations to Area 51, in its most conspiratorially-minded form (which, incidentally, often overlap a great deal with far-right wing "Patriot" and militia movements). Regardless of whether one believes in UFOs or not, what makes the Bennewitz Affair and the late 20th UFO Conspiracy subculture potentially interesting today is what it may be able to tell us about disinformation and the current crop of conspiracy theories like QAnon in the 21st century. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views!

On this edition of Parallax Views, Kairin Van Sweeden, a member of the Scottish National Party, joins us to discuss the Scottish Independence Movement and the arguments for it. Scottish elections will take place on May 1, 2021. What will it mean if more members of the SNP are elected? Find out on this edition of Parallax Views. In the course of our conversation we'll also be discussing the relationship between Scotland and England, the power of Westminster, neoliberalism, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Brexit, the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and her declaration that "There Is No Society, Only Individuals", what Scottish Independence would mean for infrastructure development and use of its resources, Irish re-unification, support for Scottish independence by demographic, and much, much more!

On this edition of Parallax Views, U.S.-Iran relations have been fraught with tensions over the course of many years. he JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), or Iran nuclear deal, initiated during the Obama, however, seemed to mark a turning point towards potentially better diplomatic relations between the two countries. That all changed when Donald J. Trump took the White House in 2016 and effectively withdrew the U.S. from the deal. With the transition to a new administration with President Joe Biden many who supported the JPCOA had high hopes for the U.S. reentering the deal and U.S.-Iran relations improving. These hopes were buttressed by the fact that Biden, when he was on the campaign trail, was very critical of Donald Trump's handling of U.S.-Iran relations. However, those hopes have been diminishing in the time since Biden has transitioned from Candidate to Commander-in-Chief and continued some of the Trump era "maximum pressure" policies on Iran. Joining us to discuss U.S-Iran relations and the potential for a more diplomatic approach to them is Dr. Assal Rad of the National Iranian American Council. Dr. Rad recently co-authored, alongside Negar Mortazavi, a piece for Foreign Policy entitled "President Biden Must Follow the Advice of Candidate Biden on Iran". In addition to discussing some of the point made in said article, Dr. Rad offers an overview of U.S.-Iran relations in the 20th and 21st century including the Iran hostage crisis, the U.S.-backed coup of Iran's democratically elected President Mossadegh in 1953, U.S.-Iran relations during the Bush-era War on Terror, the Obama years and the JCPOA, and much, much more. We also discuss the nature of diplomacy, why it is important to apply pressure to U.S. elected officials on the matter of fostering more diplomatic relations with Iran, the effect of U.S. sanctions on Iran, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's recent praise of Biden's approach to Iran so far, the potential of war, and much, much more in this wide-ranging conversation.

On this edition of Parallax Views,  recently the influential neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan penned an op-ed entitled "A Superpower, Like It Or Not: Why America Must Accept Their Global Role" for the Council on Foreign Relation's Foreign Affairs publication. In it Kagan not only expresses his view that the U.S. must continue it's interventions and wars abroad, but also large portions of the American populace not accepting their country's "Global Role". Robbie Martin of Media Roots Radio, whose documentary A Very Heavy Agenda dealt in large part with Kagan and the neoconservative agenda, joins us to critique Kagan's latest op-ed.