Citations Needed

When Americans read about the Korean "conflict" in the Western press, the articles are populated almost entirely with Serious Western Talking Heads, weapons contractor-funded think tank "fellows," and former and current U.S. military brass. Who's never consulted, much less heeded, are peace and left activists from the Korean peninsula.  The notion that perma-hostility from the U.S. and arming the South to the teeth is in Korea's best interest -- and is assumed to be popular -- is simply taken for granted by U.S. media. But is this a reflection of the sentiments of most Koreans? What are the forces that oppose nonstop U.S. military occupation and endless war? How come we rarely, if ever, hear from them? And who does this wide spread erasure benefit?  Our guest today is Christine Ahn of Women Cross DMZ.

MSNBC is by far the most influential mainstream media outlet on the American Left. It sets the tone and defines the boundary for what is acceptable discourse among American liberals. But major issues the Left is generally thought to care about - imperial war, worker strikes, Palestine, climate change - are almost entirely absent from coverage, as the network increasingly looks like a 24-hour Trump-Russia infomercial.   What is the point of having a liberal cable news network when it ignores so many major issues on the Left and pushes a narrative that, in the aggregate, does little beyond selling more weapons systems and inflaming US-Russia proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine? How did MSNBC get this way? What are the corporate forces making it so terrible, and is there hope for a more thoughtful, politically relevant network?    We are joined, anonymously, by a former MSNBC employee.   Transcript:  https://medium.com/@CitationsPodcst/episode-34-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-msnbc-5a4538f32ef

The unlikely rise of Trump in the past three years has created a chasm in the Republican party: those who embrace the President’s wild, unorthodox, nativist style and those who––with much posturing and self congratulation––reject his brand of conservatism. The latter group, generally called “NeverTrump” Republicans, occupies a special, protected status in Serious Centrist media––despite representing only 5% of the population. Major outlets like The Washington Post, The Atlantic and the New York Times employ roughly 20 #NeverTrump conservatives between them; there is no greater affirmative action policy in U.S. media than for anti-Trump conservatives. So long as they reject Trump, #NeverTrump pundits can get away with the most odious points of view – anti-Arab racism, climate change denial, literally suggesting women be hanged en masse for having abortions. What accounts for this? Where does the institutional obsession with finding a Reasonable Republican come from and why is there such a widespread denial that Donald Trump does, in fact, actually and accurately represent the GOP as it exists today? We are joined by Slate's Osita Nwanevu.

We’ve heard this scare story a million times: A theater group at Wesleyan won’t perform The Vagina Monologues because it’s offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authorsI Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces! But how much merit is there to the popular trope that college kids are hypersensitive and coddled? Is there really a free speech crisis America’s campuses? What are the origins of this evergreen complaint? Who does the constant harping on the threat of “political correctness” and anti-free speech undergrads actually hurt? And more importantly, whom does it benefit? Today's guest is David Palumbo-Liu, professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.

We’ve seen the headlines hundreds of times: “ISIS plot foiled”, “ISIS in Brooklyn", “Woman Stopped At Airport on way to join ISIS”. These stories strike fear into the hearts of Americans everywhere, especially in the build up to the war effort against ISIS in Summer 2014.   The terror group was everywhere, recruiting our teenagers and attempting to strike in every major city––seemingly all at once. But what do these headlines mean exact? What is an “ISIS plot”? What is the gap between the image the media provides versus the reality of what’s occurring?   On this week’s episode we dive into the 17 year-long phenomenon of the US media assisting the government’s war on terror by parroting dubious claims of al Qaeda and ISIS plots when the vast majority of the time––no al Qaeda or ISIS are involved.   With guest Pardiss Kebriaei, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Fighting against the far right forces of the Republican Party and their auxiliary white supremacist media makes attempts to appropriate notions of nationalism into a liberal mold a compelling short cut for Democrats looking for easy clapbacks and viral RT’s. The temptation to promote a kinder, gentler, "woke" patriotism is understandable.   But what is the collateral damage of this approach? From the justifiably horrified response to mass shootings to the jingoistic worship of all things military, what is the long-term downside of lifting up #VetsForGunControl and retired military brass as a counter to the vulgarity of Trumpism? Can the Left – including liberals – embrace a more holistic and anti-imperialist moral grammar that avoids short cuts and rejects the idea of nationalism altogether?     We are joined by Maggie Martin, co-director of About Face.

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two-state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it. But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza? In Part II of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace.

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two-state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it.  But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza?  In Part I of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Professor Noura Erakat.

Citations Needed is off this week, but we do have a fascinating interview with Hoda Katebi on her now-infamous WGN television segment. In this News Brief, we explore what it means to "sound American," the politics of women's clothing, and why everyone with even a single drop of Iranian blood is expected to be an expert on nuclear energy and international affairs. 

If one were to approach New York Times-reading liberals circa 1990 and tell them about a crime-fighting policy that arbitrarily harassed black and Latino youths who had committed no crime and threw the book at low-level nonviolent offenses, they would be rightfully outraged at the idea. But, if one were to couch this exact policy in pseudoscience promoted by mercenary sociologists and glowingly written up in The Atlantic, these same liberals would not only accept it, they'd be its primary advocates.    This is that story. This is the story of how the racist pseudoscience of Broken Windows and Stop-and-Frisk that started on the rightwing fringes  slowly seeped into the centrist and liberal media and how two new racist pseudosciences, predictive policing and high profile "gang raids", are – again, with the help of liberals - taking their place.    We are joined this week by Josmar Trujillo.