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

Börsen blev nervös efter förra veckans svaga NFP-siffra som kom in rejält under estimat och faktiskt kvalar in som den tredje sämsta missen någonsin. Men vad är narrativet? Bad News is Good News? Mycket möjligt att marknaden nu börjar tro att FED:s tapering skjuts på framtiden, men oavsett är det ju inte enorma stödköp som skapar långsiktigt aktieägarvärde, även om det skapar brus på kort sikt. Dessutom ett trevligt nyhetssvep.

Delikat lyssning på dig,
Nicklas

Episod 215 - Svag NFP-siffra gjorde marknaden nervös

Historian Suzanne Schneider on her book "The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism" from Verso Books.

https://www.versobooks.com/authors/2565-suzanne-schneider

Neoliberal jihad / Suzanne Schneider

We discuss the clown shortage in Northern Ireland, Trump's musical taste, and the discourse around Andreas Malm's recent book How To Blow Up a Pipeline.

DSA GLOBAL JUST RECOVERY SIGN UP
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHAtiIeCBmPoOQsI8mG_3ZA13tfkquzYVhKoBwpGpdFZn5Bw/viewform

FULL EPISODE AT
patreon.com/poddamnamerica

(preview) Clown Quadrant

Chuck Collins on the IPS report "Silver spoon oligarchs: How America’s 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality."

https://ips-dc.org/report-americas-wealth-dynasties-2021/

On dynastic wealth in America / Chuck Collins

(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

We go on yet another forced march, this time we learn the rules of the game from "The Dictator's Handbook," by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

#142 - The Dictator's Handbook

On today's In the News roundtable, Brian Becker, Esther Iverem, Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek discuss how the three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery have been convicted of murder in a major victory for the struggle against racism, but at the same time the Rittenhouse verdict reveals a grave danger. They also discuss the emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID due to global vaccine apartheid, efforts to rig the U.S. electoral map, the historic victory of the left in the Honduran presidential election, and more.

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.

Two Verdicts: Racist Violence & American Capitalism

Max Liboiron on their article "Decolonizing geoscience requires more than equity and inclusion" for Nature Geoscience.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00861-7

On science and colonialism / Max Liboiron

On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss how Joe Manchin took his war on workers to new lows over the weekend as he announced on Fox News that he was pulling out of negotiations with the White House over the “Build Back Better” social programs. But these negotiations have long been a farce. From the beginning, Biden pursued a ridiculous strategy, praising Manchin in public instead of building pressure and offering concession after concession. Now the situation has reached an impasse that only mass struggle can break.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. 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.

Manchin is the Symptom, Capitalism is the Disease

Jim Jatras returns to discuss how things are changing at an accelerating pace and his expectation that there will be an event or series of events of world historic proportions further on up the road. The Great Reset is something elites have been wanting to do for decades (e.g. turn the majority of the world into serfs). He doesn't see the dam breaking anytime soon (e.g. protests are irrelevant) as governments continue escalating their draconian policies. He doesn't see any political solution because, even if Republicans win, they'll just carry water for their real constituents, the corporations. We discuss civil war, Rainbow Fascism, crowd psychology, and the move from soft to hard totalitarianism. He touches on NATO-Russia tensions, how Moscow's ultimatum sounds like a pretext for war and how D.C. pushing Ukraine to act would lead to a definitive break in Russian relations with the West, leaving the EU under American control. We ponder whether we could be living through what John the Revelator on Patmos once wrote about. He's worried the American republic may in fact go gentle into the woke quiet night.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:
SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/geopolitics
PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics
Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Show Notes
It’s Later than You Think (TEXT) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/09/no_author/its-later-than-you-think
It's Later Than You Think (VIDEO) https://youtu.be/QkJX2ffZaI0

Website
Twitter https://twitter.com/JimJatras

About Jim Jatras
Jim Jatras is a Washington, DC-based attorney, political analyst, and media & government affairs specialist. He formerly served as a senior foreign policy adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, and before that served as a diplomat in Mexico, the Office of Soviet Union affairs, and the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

*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)

Neoliberal jihad / Suzanne Schneider

This Is Hell!

Related tracks