Scheer Intelligence

American historian, writer, professor and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz uses her studies on indigenous peoples’ history and her work with Palestinian diplomats and the United Nations to show how historic “settler colonialism” like in the United States relates to Gaza today. Dunbar-Ortiz makes the case, on this Thanksgiving edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, that inherent in that settler colonialism are the various definitions of genocide.

Amidst the carnage and political debacle surrounding Gaza and Israel, it can be easy to discuss the conflict with a macro view, where families, hospital workers, UN workers and journalists become statistics and political perspectives dominate. On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer talks to the author of what Scheer claims are “arguably the two most important books that deal with the humanity of the Palestinian people.”

After Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

Historian Juan Cole minces no words in offering a grave and sobering account of the conflict in Palestine and Israel on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In a comprehensive reflection of the history and current day situation in the Middle East, Cole uses his expertise as one of the leading historians of the region to paint a picture of the war. He asserts that in all definitions of the words, Israel is actively committing war crimes, like the United States in Iraq, a genocide and ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating the Palestinian presence from their homeland.

“There's no room for complexity in the American media when it comes to Israel and Palestine,” said Robin Andersen, the award-winning author and professor emerita of communication and media studies at Fordham University, to host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In the almost three weeks since the October 7th attacks in Israel, the coverage around the war in the Middle East is as alert as ever, except only for one side, Andersen and Scheer discuss. The real and fabricated stories of Israeli devastation plastered mainstream outlets during the onset of the war, but since then, the bombing campaign on Gaza has yet to receive equal attention.

Palestinian American journalist Mnar Adley makes the case for one democratic nation with each Palestinian and Israeli having the equal right to vote on their governance on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.

The topic of feeding those in need doesn’t sound like it should be controversial but the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the United States is bizarrely under attack by Republicans in the current Congress. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Christopher Bosso to discuss his newest book, “Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program.”

Labor has once again emerged as a hot button issue in the United States, so much so that even the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been spotted lurking around picket lines and union events popping up across the country. To talk about the rise in the American labor movement, Harold Meyerson, editor at large for The American Prospect, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. Meyerson has a distinguished career reporting on labor issues for multiple publications, among them the L.A. Times and Washington Post. Meyerson says public support for unions is almost at an all time high and the proof is in the pudding when looking at the various industries organizing in real time across America. From the writer’s strike in Hollywood to the autoworkers in the Midwest to the assistant professors on numerous campuses, people are standing up for their rights as workers and recognizing their strength in numbers. “Gallup and Pew poll on [unions] every year and in the last few years, it's been about 70% approval rating, which is, so far, in excess of the approval rating of virtually any other American institution,” Meyerson said. Scheer makes sure to remind people of the successes of the labor movement in the past, most notably in one of America’s greatest exports, the entertainment industry, where even Ronald Reagan championed organizing. Along with the autoworkers, Scheer argues the two groups represented the models for unionization and the reason why America had a middle class. The continued recognition of exploitation, greed and misrepresentation at the hands of past administrations, along with corporations reaping the benefits, has culminated in lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis and previous organizing movements like Occupy. This has resulted in “a greater awareness of the economic inequality between major investors and CEOs on the one hand and regular people on the other hand,” as Meyerson put it. In the case of teaching and research assistants on campus, Meyerson has seen an especially huge increase in their enthusiasm for organizing. Mentioning his access to voting data from the National Labor Relations Board, amongst unionized graduate students Meyerson has noted “it was at 89% Yes. That is a statement of generational approval of unions. These are all young people and the polls show that more than 80% of young people are pro-union. And these are workers who can't be fired.”

The Wild West days of the Internet are over, conclude Scheer Intelligence host Robert Scheer and his guest, The Grayzone founder and editor Max Blumenthal. They recall a time when one could find scorching exposés of anti-establishment news on sites like Salon, with the potential to reach millions of readers, that has evolved into a tightly controlled and intensely surveilled space dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley monopolies. Inconvenient information doesn’t stand a chance and will more often than not be algorithmically butchered into oblivion.

Torture. It stands as one of the pillars of American exceptionalism. While it was a major part of the war on terror—one worth hundreds of millions of dollars—a selective amnesia allows it to slip through the pages of history. John Kiriakou suffered for attempting to solidify the record on a torture program that the U.S. has excused itself from countless times through Hollywood propaganda, innumerable redactions to official documents and silencing of dissidents.Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to run back his story as the whistleblower who made one of the most insidious chapters of modern American history widely known. Scheer mentions how the First and Fourth Amendments are treated as indulgences and allowed only if you say the right things in such a setting as the war on terror. If you don’t and “you oppose the torture program, you end up in prison like John Kiriakou. You lose everything, you lose your pension and what have you.”Kiriakou explains that regardless of what treatment was forthcoming, he felt a necessity to expose the horrific crimes his country was committing. He details how a psychologist once explained to him how whistleblowers have a highly defined sense of what is right and wrong and this sense urges them to act. “That's how I felt. I couldn't stop myself. I couldn't sleep at night knowing that this was happening in our name. That the government was carrying out these crimes in our name. So I had to say something,” Kiriakou said.The crimes in question Kiriakou also details: “They threatened to use pages of the Koran as toilet paper. The prisoners, of course, were all Muslim. They made them stand naked in front of female soldiers. Anything they could think of to insult them and to belittle them; they trimmed their beards...”