Scheer Intelligence features thoughtful and provocative conversations with "American Originals" -- people who, through a lifetime of engagement with political i...
Tariffs, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric cars: there is much to be said about the evolving relationship between China and the United States. While Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on the country are just the latest story, it is only a fraction of the news coming out of China that directly affects the U.S. and the future prospect for business and the government. Joining host Robert Scheer from China on this episode of Scheer Intelligence is Geopolitical Economic Report editor-in-chief and journalist Ben Norton.
The two discuss what the incoming Trump administration represents for U.S.-China relations as well as the state of China from the ground. Norton reports on his experiences living there and the local reaction to the U.S. political scene.
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1:02:25
For once Trump gets it right
This is the political season to be thankful for small favors of optimism, and in this edition of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and guest Joe Lauria, editor of the Consortium News website, are excited to have found a gift of striking significance to what remains of the practice of serious journalism on the internet. It is Donald Trump’s delivery on a promise in his inauguration address that “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all censorship and bring back free speech to America.”
What Trump is referring to is summarized in his executive order, “Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” asserting: “Over the last four years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ `disinformation’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States.”
Despite its presence In the egregious pile of Donald Trumps otherwise deeply frightening Executive Orders assaulting logic and decency, both Scheer and Lauria, who edit internet publications that have been targeted in this manner, argue that this particular executive order is a gem of sharp brilliance that should not be shunned for the
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56:19
Did Mike Davis get it right in making “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn”?
The wildfires in Los Angeles county have brought a multitude of difficult and prevailing questions to the forefront of the region as well as the system of capitalism. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Jacobin Magazine columnist Ben Burgis to discuss writer Mike Davis and how his book, “The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster,” (February 1998) serves as a kind of prognosis for everything going wrong in Los Angeles today.
The two dissect the multitude of issues at play in the wildfire disasters: the conceit of real estate developers testing the limits of nature, the passive and active exploitation of the working class to make and now handle the disaster, the greed of for-profit insurance companies cancelling policies, and the decisions by a major county like Los Angeles in foregoing budgets to handle these inevitable disasters.
Burgis asks, “If the public is just frankly going to be on the hook for it, do we, in fact, need to be building this densely in areas this prone to fire? I think at the very least, that's something that should be a question for public discussion in a way that it's just not.”
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52:33
China is not our enemy
The American saber-rattling against China has been increasing almost as fast as China’s own development in the past few years. China’s economic prosperity and international influence is undeniable yet American politicians continue to treat their rise as a threat to their global hegemony. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence is Megan Russell, a writer, academic and CODEPINK's China is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator.
Scheer is quick to point out the intergenerational dynamic between his own work on China as a fellow in the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s and Russell’s recent experience living in China and studying in Shanghai. Both witnessed and experienced the American perspective of China and how it has continued to undermine it. Scheer and Russell focus on her latest article, which calls out New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for his portrayal of China and how his deficient op-ed mirrors the broader perception of China in the United States. While many may think that China is an authoritarian country with people living under the heel of Xi Jinping, the actual material conditions of its population are often left out.
“Something [people] don't talk about enough, in my opinion, is how China managed to eradicate extreme poverty. And that's not just a minimum income level, it also means access to food, to clothes, healthcare, clean housing, free education. It means infrastructure, means functioning systems,” Russell says.
People also point to working conditions and the outsourcing of American jobs to China as a means of attacking them. To this, Russell explains, “All China has done is use the system in place to develop and try to provide opportunities to its incredibly vast population, while still maintaining its proto-socialist policies. It's us that has exported the production of all our goods to make a few more dollars.”
In the end, the US stands to lose, not only in a trade war, but also in the climate aspect, since China has also made great strides towards combatting the climate crisis. Russell cites their plan of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 and tells Scheer, “China has really undergone this internal green energy revolution, doing far more than any other country to combat climate change.”
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1:12:51
Another Christmas on Death Row
*This episode originally aired on December 21, 2018.This is part two of a two-part interview. To listen to part one, click here.In part two of this two-part interview, Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper, once coming within four hours of execution, details how he copes with the daily torment of impending death as his legal team fights to prove his innocence with new exonerating evidence Gov. Jerry Brown has refused to allow to be examined.
For the past 33 Christmas holidays, Kevin Cooper has inhabited an 11-by-4 ½-foot cell in California's San Quentin State Prison, the last eight waiting for Brown to grant him a new hearing and advanced DNA testing that would support what federal Appellate Judge William C. Fletcher has said: “Kevin Cooper is on Death Row because the San Bernardino sheriff’s department framed him.”
Cooper, at the top of the list to be killed when the state resumes executions, talks to Robert Scheer in the latest installment of "Scheer Intelligence" about the unfairness of the justice system and the difficulty of proving one’s innocence once convicted: “”Whenever you have a judge that comes forward and stands up and says no, this person innocent…this person was framed, we need to take that serious as a society.”
He discusses his ongoing struggle to preserve his basic humanity: "I’ve been blessed, in a sick sense of the word. I’ve been cursed by putting me here, but while I’m in here, I’ve been blessed, because there are a lot of death row inmates who commit suicide every time you turn around. They took a guy past this cage last night on a gurney, ‘cause he was ‘man down’...Don’t know if he lived or died. But they’ve been committing suicide up here, they’ve been killing each other up here. All types of craziness has been going on up in here."
Cooper explains how he has kept hope alive when he could so easily succumb to desperation and despair. He paints, writes and reads voraciously but is most passionate when speaking out against the death penalty: "When you find yourself in a fight that is bigger than you—[capital punishment] affects the lives of many people—and you can do something to help in that fight, you can’t give up...You can’t stop, you can’t quit. You just can’t do it...I did not choose this, to speak out against the death penalty; I didn’t. This [struggle] chose me."
Scheer Intelligence features thoughtful and provocative conversations with "American Originals" -- people who, through a lifetime of engagement with political issues, offer unique and often surprising perspectives on the day's most important issues.
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