GUESTS
Leo Flores - Political Analyst and Latin America Campaign Coordinator at Code Pink | Good Neighbors or the Monroe Doctrine
Daniel Lazare - Journalist, author of several books about the US Constitution and American urban policy | Sanctions Against Iran
Mark Frost - Economist, professor, consultant, drummer, Eagle Scout, Marine, capitalist, Schumpeterian, recovering libertarian | Politics and Algorithms
In the first hour, Shane and Garland discussed the economic consequences of the COVID-19 response and whether or not Trump is to blame. Then the hosts were joined by Leo Flores, who spoke about a letter he co-wrote to Medea Benjamin urging the Biden and Trump campaigns to adopt a good neighbor policy with Latin America. He talked about the history of ‘gunboat” diplomacy by the United States in the Caribbean and Latin America and said that he and Medea wanted to lay out a positive vision for what US policy could look like. He cited the writings of figures like anti-war General Smedley Butler and said it’s a shame that politics have come down to a pure power grab for the region and that voters in Florida have too much interest. He also discussed the problems with US militarizing the police in Latin America to fight drugs, and used recent rioting in Columbia as an example and said the drug war has been a disaster for the region.
In the second hour, Garland and Shane talked to Daniel Lazare, and they discussed the dysfunction in American politics and sanctions against Iran. Lazare used the blaming Iran for the 9/11 terror attack as an example and pointed out how both Democrats and Republicans do it. He discussed the formalistic and stylized disclosure in Congressional debates and how Americans eschew debate and don’t often consider the information outside of very narrow confines. Daniel discussed how the United States policy of imposing sanctions has backfired and how the U.S. sanctions were repudiated by the United Nations. Daniel said that the United States policy is actually making the Iranian regime look good and said that the anti-Shah movement resulted in the religious coup in the 1970s.
In the third hour, Shane and Garland were joined by Mark Frost, and they discussed the role of outlying information in algorithms and how that relates to US politics, particularly to the Black Lives Matter protests, which he said have been taken over by white thugs. He named several possible causes of the riots: Donald Trump, Ted Wheeler, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the educational system, and things George Bush did. Then he talked about how he was skeptical of the Iraq invasion when it happened because he had been studying these types of algorithms. They also discussed distribution of land, property rights, and government-imposed shutdowns.
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