Wider View provides perspectives on the news outside the narrow confines of the mainstream media. It is available to radio stations through the Pacifica Network. If you have questions or comments on the show, email me at widerviewradio@gmail.com
This week I'm exploring the efforts of the elites to control us through control of the media narrative. We explore the role of social media and government efforts to put tight controls on what we can read and write on the internet.
This is a very timely episode discussing the posture of the US vis-a-vis Iran and the effects of this week's bombing in Syria and the sanctions regime being continued by Biden.
My guest this week is Assal Rad. Dr. Rad is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Iranian-American Council. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her writing can be seen in Newsweek, Independent, the National Interest, and Responsible Statecraft, and she has appeared as a commentator on the BBC, Al Jazeera, BBC Persian, and NPR.
This episode details the sources I use for news and opinion outside the narrow confines of the mainstream media.
Web Sites mentioned on this broadcast (Please note that I do not endorse everything posted on any of these web sites. I do think they are worth reading because they provide missing alternative perspectives.):
Keaton Weiss lives in Beacon, NY on the Hudson River, and is a published playwright and award-winning filmmaker. I came to know him through his Due Dissidence blog, film club, and podcast. He tweets (much more rationally than our former President) at @DueDissidence and you can support his work on Patreon at https://patreon.com/duedissidence. The Due Dissidence Podcast is available on Google, Apple, Soundcloud, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an almost hour-long conversation I had with Jim Kavanagh on January 24, 2021. We talk about the storming of Congress, populism of the left and right, keeping the pitchforks away, and various other topics.
Jim is a former college professor who publishes left-socialist analysis at ThePolemicist.Net, Counterpunch, and Medium and appears regularly on podcasts including The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, and Political Misfits.
Dr. Rick Staggenborg, President of the Linus Pauling Chapter of Veterans for Peace in Corvallis, Oregon and an activist for public banking talk about the need for Public Banking and how it might work and the current political situation in the US.
In this episode we consider the question "Is the US a failed state?" Looking at the key characteristics of a failed state, are they here in the US today? Is the US a failed state with a huge military and an inflated self-image?
The program contains the song "Failed State" by last week's guest, David Rovics, from his album "Strangers and Friends".
My guest today is David Rovics. David is a songwriter, podcaster, and part of Portland Emergency Eviction Response. We discuss the upcoming tsunami of evictions and the response of landlords, the history of rent strikes, and the struggle to stop evictions including that of the "Red House" in Portland, OR.
You can find out more about David at https://www.davidrovics.com. His podcast “This Week with David Rovics” is archived at https://drovics.podbean.com/ You can find his music on Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube and wherever fine music is available. He even has an app for Android and Apple iOS!
In this episode, I examine identity politics as a strategy for the Left. Is it getting the results we want, or is it a distraction from the work the Left needs to do to gain political power?
I’m very pleased to welcome Patrick Lawrence back to Wider View. Patrick was a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, and is currently a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Patrick's recent essays can be found at https://consortiumnews.com/tag/patrick-lawrence/
Patrick and I have a wide-ranging conversation mostly about US foreign policy and the contrast, or lack thereof, between the outgoing Trump Administration and the incoming Biden presidency.
