empire woes

:1995-2001:

The HBO documentary THE SWAMP (2020) follows three "maverick" Republican congressmen who seek to fulfil Donald Trump's promise to "drain the swamp," even if that means alienating their party leaders. But what you really need to know about this documentary is that the main one is Matt Gaetz, and he is a huge doofus. PLUS: thoughts on Canada Day, Alex Gibney's Agents of Chaos, and a look back at the media coverage of the War in Iraq.

Michael and Us

#248 - Enemy at the Gaetz

On today's "In the News" roundtable, Brian Becker, Esther Iverem, Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek discuss how the U.S. government and corporate media are hoping for regime change in Cuba, but the Cuban people and government are mobilizing to defend their revolution in spite of the severe hardships caused by the U.S. blockade. They also discuss the political crisis in Haiti and the danger of U.S. intervention, and more. This episode includes a special interview with Cathy Rojas, the socialist candidate for mayor of New York City.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

U.S. Strangles Cuban Economy & Seeks Counter-Revolution

Brian Becker and Prof. Richard Wolff continue a discussion on the Marxist understanding of the housing market, today focusing on the system of rent and the current crisis resulting from soaring rents. Today's episode is also part of a series of discussions about the basics of Marxism — a method for understanding and changing the world used by many of the great revolutionaries of modern history.

Richard Wolff is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books, the latest being “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself”. You can check out his work at rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Soaring Rents Lead to New Housing Crisis

Meloni, Salvini and Italy's future, in and out of the EU
The Duran: Episode 1040

Mittdolcino details:
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Twitter : @mittdolcino
Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2YV9tve-WIeFBQHSD8m8ew
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#Italy #Salvini #Meloni #TheDuran

Meloni, Salvini and Italy's future, in and out of the EU

Today's episode is the sixth in a multi-part series that takes an in-depth look at the history of China's foreign policy. In 1997, China achieves another milestone in its long struggle to unify the country and end foreign domination -- the return of the city of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Meanwhile, China's economic growth accelerates as the country plays a bigger and bigger role in the global economy. In 2001, this culminates with China's entry into the World Trade Organization

Brian is joined by Kenneth Hammond, a Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University and an activist with the organization Pivot to Peace.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

China's Foreign Policy Part 6, 1995-2001: Hong Kong Returns to China and China Joins the WTO

ECFR Director Mark Leonard discusses his new book "Age of Unpeace" and why having an open, globalized, "one-world" of connectivity is actually the source of problems today and how issues that bring us together (e.g. internet, migration, economy, health, climate) are being weaponized and providing new platforms for countries to hurt each other. The three empires of connectivity (U.S., China, EU) will define the new global order which in turn will impact the "fourth world". He examines the U.S.-China relationship and how they are becoming 'mimetic doubles' of each other and converging, with the threat of the West becoming more like Beijing. He gives his thoughts on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and reveals his "nightmare scenario" in the age of unpeace.

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Show Notes
The Afghan tragedy and the age of unpeace https://ecfr.eu/article/the-afghan-tragedy-and-the-age-of-unpeace
The fall of the Afghan government and what it means for Europe https://ecfr.eu/podcasts/episode/the-fall-of-the-afghan-government-and-what-it-means-for-europe

Websites
ECFR https://ecfr.eu/profile/mark_leonard
Twitter https://twitter.com/markhleonard
"Age of Unpeace" Book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/144/1443237/the-age-of-unpeace/9781787634657.html
Mark Leonard's World in 30 Minutes Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-leonards-world-in-30-minutes/id340460705

About Mark Leonard
Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank. His topics of focus include geopolitics and geoeconomics, China, EU politics and institutions.

Leonard hosts the weekly podcast “Mark Leonards’s World in 30 Minutes” and writes a syndicated column on global affairs for Project Syndicate. Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s, Leonard worked for the think tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.

He was Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics until 2016.

Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, and international organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writer and commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China’s internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world. His essays have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, Gazeta Wyborcza, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph, The Economist, Time, and Newsweek.

As well as writing and commenting frequently in the media on global affairs, Leonard is the author of best-selling books. His first book, Why Europe will run the 21st Century, was published in 2005 and translated into 19 languages. Leonard’s second book, What does China think? was published in 2008 and translated into 15 languages. He has published an edited volume on Connectivity Wars and in September 2021, his latest book on this topic “The Age of Unpeace. How Connectivity Causes Conflict” will be released.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Mark Leonard: U.S.-China Convergence as 'Mimetic Doubles' & the Age of Unpeace #221

China is on the move & Biden White House is dazed & confused
The Duran: Episode 1086

Xi-Biden Call Signals US Retreat on Confrontation with China, Taiwan Issue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2oHiIS32A

China is on the move & Biden White House is dazed & confused

UK government continues to flip flop. Health Minister says NO passports, NO lockdowns
The Duran: Episode 1087

UK health minister says govt will NOT introduce shot passports, lockdowns over Christmas unlikely
https://www.rt.com/uk/534633-uk-vaccine-passports-minister/

UK government continues to flip flop. Health Minister says NO passports, NO lockdowns

James Kunstler returns to Geopolitics & Empire for an update on the "long emergency" and how the neo-Jacobin program is faring. He believes we are in the midst of a mass hysteria with the question being how to battle our way out of it. At the bottom of it all is the fact that techno-industrial economies have lost their mojo and are crashing, threatening to push us into a technological surveillance state. The cycle of politicians being able to get away with anything needs to be broken and the latest indictment by John Durham may contain seeds of hope. A very ugly struggle may ensue, which can include military conflict. He believes enough people will resist and put an end to the tyranny, that the techno-dystopia won't succeed because of energy restraints, though we will wake up to a different world which will include the collapse and contraction of cities.

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Show Notes
“What Am I Doing?” He Asks https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/what-am-i-doing-he-asks
Let Us Count the Ways https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/let-us-count-the-ways
The Mark of the Beast https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-mark-of-the-beast
The Answer is the Coming Small-Town Revival https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-answer-is-the-coming-small-town-revival

Websites
James Howard Kunstler https://kunstler.com
Clusterfuck Nation Blog https://kunstler.com/writings/clusterfuck-nation
KunstlerCast Podcast https://kunstler.com/writings/podcast
Books https://kunstler.com/writings/books
Twitter https://www.twitter.com/Jhkunstler

About James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, “Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.”

Home From Nowhere was a continuation of that discussion with an emphasis on the remedies. 

His next book in the series, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, published by Simon & Schuster / Free Press, is a look a wide-ranging look at cities here and abroad, an inquiry into what makes them great (or miserable), and in particular what America is going to do with it’s mutilated cities.

This was followed by The Long Emergency, published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 2005, is about the challenges posed by the coming permanent global oil crisis, climate change, and other “converging catastrophes of the 21st Century.” This was followed in 2012 by Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation which detailed the misplaced expectations that technological rescue remedies would fix the problems detailed in The Long Emergency.

His 2008 novel, World Made By Hand, was a fictional depiction of the post-oil American future. It eventually became a four part series that included The Witch of Hebron, A History of the Future, and (forthcoming in June 2016), The Harrows of Spring.

Mr. Kunstler is also the author of eight other novels including The Halloween Ball, An Embarrassment of Richesand Maggie Darling, a Modern Romance. He has been a regular contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, where he has written on environmental and economic issues.

He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, the University of Virginia and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the AIA , the APA., and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

James Kunstler: There Will Be Revolt Against the Neo-Jacobin Program, We'll See the End of This #230

(Patreon-only Rose McGowan interview here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rose-mcgowan-57953217)
Labor journalists Alex Press (https://twitter.com/alexnpress) & Jonah Furman (https://twitter.com/JonahFurman) discuss the labor movement, strikes, John Deere and what it has to do with Alec Baldwin's deadly shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Alex Press is a writer and editor at Jacobin Magazine, whose latest article is "Halyna Hutchins’s Death on the Set of Rust Was 'Not a Freak Accident'."Jonah Furman is a labor movement organizer and writer for Labor Notes (https://twitter.com/labornotes), the media and organizing project that since 1979 has amplified the voice of workers and labor militants. He is also a frequent contributor to The Intercept.

Alec Baldwin Shooting 'NOT a Freak Accident' With Alex Press & Jonah Furman

The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with prominent international experts on a wide-range of topics.

Past guests have included diplomats, government officials, whistleblowers, soldiers, spies, economists, academics, scientists, wealthy investors, dissidents, journalists, and musicians.

The broadcast seeks to gain insight from guests who come from the left, right, and beyond. It should go without saying that the host does not always agree with beliefs espoused by podcast invitees, but maintains an open mind, and believes it important to respectfully listen to a multitude of voices and let listeners come to their own conclusions.

*Music used in podcast intro is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)