Episodes

Despite being (mis)characterized by the IMF as a free-market "success story," South Korea's development model involved state planning and import controls for decades prior to the 1997 East Asia debt crisis. Economist Martin Hart-Landsberg, Professor Emeritus at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, explains how capitalist globalization materialized and morphed in East Asia, often to the detriment of its worker population. With Trump's inauguration nearing, Hart-Landsberg sheds light on why contem...

Trump’s interest in Greenland is closely tied to his plan to build a nationwide anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, which he calls the "American Iron Dome." It could trigger a nuclear war.

In part two, political economist Dr. Devaka Gunawardena outlines the political dynasties in Sri Lanka that governed the country until the National People Power’s (NPP) recent electoral victory. Gunawardena discusses how NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has garnered widespread support across different ethnic and class lines despite being a political outsider.

In November 2024, Anura Kumara Dissanayake's National People's Power (NPP) coalition won a two-thirds majority in Sri Lanka's general elections, marking a historic win for the Sri Lankan left. NPP's victory came at a time of prolonged economic crisis exacerbated by the crushing terms of Sri Lanka's IMF agreement. Political economist Dr. Devaka Gunawardena traces the factors leading to Sri Lanka's economic woes and how international sovereign bonds (ISBs) held by private equity firms such as Blac...

Steven Donziger, an American environmental and human rights lawyer, won a landmark case against Chevron, requiring it to pay 9.5 billion USD in damages to indigenous communities in Ecuador for destroying and polluting their land. In retaliation, Chevron launched a suit against Donziger, accusing him of fabricating evidence in the case. In an unprecedented move, a U.S. judge appointed a corporate prosecutor, paid for by Chevron itself, to litigate a case against Donziger after the U.S. Justice De...

How did a Cold War nuclear planner become one of its biggest critics? Paul Jay traces Daniel Ellsberg's journey from nuclear war planner to discovering the lies behind the "missile gap" with the Soviets. Jay exposes how defense industry executives and government officials manufactured the Cold War to keep military spending flowing after World War II. While the Soviet Union posed an ideological challenge, its military threat was deliberately exaggerated. The real goal? Using massive defense spend...

In part two, Petra Molnar, anthropologist and human rights lawyer, speaks about the dangers of high-risk AI systems and state efforts to sabotage its regulation, as seen in the recent watering down of the European Union’s AI Act. Molnar explains how Israeli and U.S. surveillance tech firms market their drone technology and other AI products as “solutions” to state “problems.” The lucrative border and surveillance tech sector has grown exponentially as a result of governments deploying these tech...

In part two, historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov discusses the U.S.' gross rejection of numerous human rights organizations’ reports substantiating Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, as well as France’s comical rebuttal of the ICC arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Bartov contends that the West’s dangerous sabotage of international legal norms flies in the face of the very post-WWII edifice of international conventi...

According to recent Lebanese Health Ministry figures, Israel has killed a total of 4,047 people in Lebanon since October 2023, with 3,402 people killed in the past few months alone. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared Israel’s invasion of Lebanon a political victory for his coalition of right-wing fanatics. Omer Bartov, Israeli American genocide scholar and historian, characterizes Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon as a political exercise in saber-rattling for Bibi’s domestic aud...

Jim Thomas portrays the 2024 Global Biodiversity Convention as a struggle between the interests of the world’s biggest profit makers and the interests of people struggling to safeguard their planet, their food and their economies. Blandishing promises of technofixes and a meager fund, the profiteers got their way. Produced by GPEnewsdocs.

In part two, Triestino Mariniello, Legal Representative of Gaza Victims at the International Criminal Court, discusses U.S. hypocrisy in accepting the ICC's jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin but not for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Mariniello discusses how international legal instruments, such as the ICJ rulings on the risk of Israel committing genocide in Gaza, have been effective when not subject to ...

Following the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor's release of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Germany, France, and the U.S. falsely characterized the warrants as inapplicable. International lawyer Triestino Mariniello, who represents Gaza Victims at the ICC, explains the legal obligation of state parties to the Rome Statute to enforce these arrest warrants. Mariniello exposes the U.S.' false statements around the ICC's s...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's promise to deport millions of people draws attention to longstanding practices of tracking and intercepting migrants using artificial intelligence and high-risk surveillance technologies. Petra Molnar, human rights lawyer and anthropologist, underscores how border surveillance tech firms drive and profit from the U.S., Canada, and the European Union's criminal migration policy agenda. Yet the application of these insidious technologies, largely developed by Is...

In part two, journalist Jonathan M. Katz discusses the financial elite and fascist sympathizers who were conspiring to undo FDR’s economic reforms in what is known as the foiled Business Plot of 1933. Retired U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler, who outed the coup plotters in Special House committee hearings in 1934, subsequently published War is a Racket, a pamphlet critiquing the monied interests behind America’s imperial war machine. Katz describes Butler’s transformation from “racketeer for c...

U.S. interventions at the turn of the 20th century were numerous and widespread, including bloody operations in Cuba against the Spanish and then against the Cubans themselves, in northern China against the Boxer Rebellion, and most notably, the Balangiga massacre on the island of Samar in the Philippines. General Smedley Butler, a decorated U.S. marine, was stationed on all these fronts and was subsequently involved in invasions of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Haiti in 1915. Jonathan M. Katz, author ...

This interview was originally published on June 3, 2011. Lawrence Wilkerson, Collin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, reflects on his life journey from “cold warrior” to harsh critic of US foreign policy.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Paul Jay analyze Trump's 2024 victory, attributing Harris's failure in part to a campaign that avoided progressive policies that would lower the cost of living - to please billionaire donors. Wilkerson warns of a climate catastrophe and a draconian Trump administration that leads to the collapse of American society. Jay argues Harris's defeat creates an opening for a broad democratic, independent movement that takes control of the Democratic Party at state and local l...

In part 2, Bob Pollin, economist and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), lays out policies to increase workers’ wages and bargaining power and bring down the price of food items such as eggs. He tackles the issue of U.S. government debt, as well as fiscal conservative and MAGA Republican claims that China owns most of this debt. These falsehoods deflect from Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and his high military expenditure, which ran up U.S. debt far more than u...

Following the inflationary period of the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation is largely down and currently at 2.1% in the U.S. Bob Pollin, economist, and Co-Director at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), explains the causes of inflation, including demand-side and supply-side factors. He illustrates how the economic models used to tackle inflation are essentially tools to chip away at workers' bargaining power. Pollin recounts the history of policies of inflation control, tracing their dev...

Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, says if he lived in a swing state, he would vote for Harris, in spite of having no sympathy for the leadership of the Democratic Party. He analyzes how America's social fabric is unraveling and how this explains Trump's mass appeal. He warns that rebellion within the military remains possible, discusses the role of Christian nationalism in the armed forces, and examines how economic inequality has destabilized American society.

Donald Trump called himself a “self-funder” in 2016 in an effort to show Americans he could not be bought off like the rest of Washington. Eight years later, Trump has yet to pledge even a dime of his own money to his campaign, instead relying heavily on the big-money donors he said could never influence him as president.

In part 2, Member of Israeli Knesset Dr. Ofer Cassif discusses the regional class interests that actively oppose Palestinian statehood and equality for Israelis and Palestinians. He describes the U.S.-backed bilateral Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE, and Israel and Bahrain, as agreements to further entrench class inequalities and capitalist military-industrial interests in the Middle East and foreclose the possibility of Palestinian self-determination.

This episode of Oats for Breakfast Podcast interviews journalist and filmmaker Paul Jay. Paul discusses why a second Trump term would be significantly more dangerous than previous Republican presidencies, including Trump’s first term in office. He also talks about what it might take, over the long term, to beat back the advances that the far-right has been making in the U.S. and Canada.

The Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which the United States was a signatory to but abandoned under former President Trump, is unlikely to be revived. Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and journalist with extensive experience reporting from Iran, underscores Iran's desperate need for sanctions relief. She argues that the JCPOA is an outdated framework, given President Biden's refusal to sign an executive order to bring the U.S. back into the deal, and that current twisted Am...