Kalmen Barkin is back for an update on Israeli politics. In the last two weeks, Knesset opposition leader Yair Lapid got the opportunity to form a coalition government, and possibly oust Prime Minister Netanyahu for the first time since 2009. But just afterward, as Barkin explains, violence erupted at the al-Aqsa mosque, in response to Palestinian protests about settlements in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. These events have thrown Israeli politics into turmoil, and it's not at all clear what...

Eric Brakey, former state senator from Maine and current spokesman for Young Americans for Liberty, talks about the efforts to get Defend the Guard bills into state legislatures. The Defend the Guard movement is an attempt to force congress to uphold its role in declaring war by making sure states retain control of their own national guard troops until an official declaration of war, as the constitution outlines. Of course, congress hasn't declared a war since World War II, and is unlikely to...

Scott talks to Gareth Porter about the national political scene in Iran, where, in large part thanks to U.S. intervention, the population is increasingly aligning behind the most conservative forces, and moving away from President Rouhani. Iranians, Porter says, have very little trust that America will negotiate in good faith, and there is now less support than ever for the JCPOA, which the Biden administration is supposedly trying to renegotiate. Discussed on the show: "Leak Exposes Fissures...

Daniel Larison talks Israel-Palestine. He takes on the common straw man argument that Israel "has a right to defend itself" from the belligerence of its neighbors. In the abstract, of course, every sovereign nation should have the right to self-defense; the problem is that this argument doesn't take any of the history of the conflict into account. The Hamas rocket attacks, Larison explains, have been a response to raids on the al-Aqsa Mosque, which were themselves a reaction to Palestinian...

Hassan El-Tayyab discusses the state of the war in Yemen. The Biden administration famously announced in February that it would be ending support for Saudi "offensive operations" in Yemen, including targeting assistance and maintenance on their military equipment. In the last few days, however, the U.S. military has clarified the position: it will, in fact, still be supporting the Saudi air force in its bombing operations, seemingly the most important part of Biden's supposed decision to stop...

Mike Swanson gives his take on what's in store for the U.S. economy as the covid restrictions begin to lift. Although the early economic recovery isn't looking as rosy as some predicted, many businesses do seem to be getting back to normal as the pandemic subsides. What's much more worrisome, says Swanson, is the sheer amount of money that the government has created over the last year. With trillions of new dollars injected into the economy, it's impossible that we won't see some kind of...

Scott talks to Max Blumenthal about the true state of affairs between Israel and Palestine, which you won't hear about in most mainstream media sources. Although the situation is often depicted as two neighboring states engaged in a religious conflict, the truth is that the Palestinians are second-class citizens in what has become a de facto single apartheid state. The widely-publicized rocket attacks are the actions of an oppressed minority fighting back in the only way they can. Any violence...

Scott interviews Ben Freeman about his research into the Saudi lobby's activity in American politics. Freeman explains that while it's illegal for foreign governments to donate directly to politicians in this country, it's easy to get around these restrictions by hiring firms in the U.S. to make contributions and to lobby on behalf of governments like Saudi Arabia. Freeman has found hundreds of such filings per year, totaling tens of millions of dollars in contributions. He reminds us that all...

Jim Bovard discusses the way the American surveillance state has slowly dismantled the fourth amendment, especially thanks to the FISA courts and the way they've enabled legal loopholes for spying on nearly any American citizen. Bovard cites interventions by the NSA and FBI as major factors in Trump's failure to win re-election in November, and says similar activity has most likely compromised dozens of high-profile politicians in the past. All Americans should be able to agree that the...

Scott interviews Alan Macleod about all the ways the mainstream media distorts the Israel-Palestine narrative to make it seem like both sides share some of the blame for an unfortunate situation that isn't really anyone's fault. What's never explained is the fact that the supposed Palestinian territories are at this point little more than heavily-occupied refugee camps, and that attacks from the Palestinians are the predictable result of decades of Israeli aggression. Still, Scott and Macleod...

Ramzy Baroud discusses the deliberately misleading way that stories about Israel-Palestine are presented in western media. The story, he says, almost always begins with the fact that Palestinians have launched rockets at Israeli forces, or at least presents the conflict as an even fight between two neighbors, in which Israel, of course, has the right to defend its own borders. What's never explained is the fact that the supposed Palestinian territories are at this point little more than...