The Brief

Watch Now on Youtube

Watch Now on Youtube

Watch on Youtube Now

Follow us on all platforms @DiscernThisPod!

Zaha Hassan and Jim Clancy Discuss the ICJ, Genocide, and the American voices asking whether a once indispensable nation is being dragged where it never wanted to go.

Former U.S. Ambassador Charles Freeman questions the true intentions of Israel's renewed bombing of Gaza.

Jim Clancy in conversation with James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute.

Every second breath we take comes from oceanic phytoplankton which use sunlight to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. They also form the base of the food chain because all other organisms depend on the organic matter produced by these phytoplankton. Discern this explores what happens when populations of this microorganism get out of balance and how they impact the climate and ecosystems around the world.

Discern This takes a look at the progressive movement in the United States with a focus on the Poor People’s Campaign founded by Reverend William Barber. This modern analogue to the social movement founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, echoes its predecessor’s conviction that society needs to confront the interlocking and mutually reinforcing injustices of poverty, racism, militarism, and adds climate change to the list. Author and progressive activist Phyllis Bennis explains how the PPC functions as fusion movement with interconnected objectives. Using clips from some of Reverend Barber’s powerful and emotive speeches, Discern This discusses the intellectual underpinnings and practical goals of the Poor People’s Campaign. Phyllis Bennis, who is a research partner to the campaign, gives context to the speeches and lays out Reverend Barber’s view of military spending and intersectionality. In her conversation with host Lonzo Cook, she emphasizes the importance of mobilization to achieve progressive goals.

The conversation explores progressive landscape beyond the Poor People’s Campaign, with Lonzo Cook asking Phyllis if the American left has been undermined by its fissiparous tendency to split into narrow interest groups. In the final section, Phyllis Bennis details her engagement with local media outlets across the country and how that meshes with her focus on affecting change in local politics.

Phyllis Bennis is an author and progressive activist. She is the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC.

The United States is an imperial power, driven by predatory capitalism with a foreign and security policy aimed at supporting the maintenance of an American Empire. So runs the controversial thesis of Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. He asserts that the long running wars which the US has fought in the wake of September 11,2001 have been waged for the deep state and the maintenance and extension of Empire. In his view, US support for Ukraine is motivated by a desire to maintain US hegemony over Europe.

In an extended conversation with Discern This host Lonzo Cook, Colonel Wilkerson shares his independent view of US defense spending, a view at variance with establishment orthodoxy one might expect from a former senior military and government official. He charges that defense contractors have been massive beneficiaries of America’s post 911 foreign and security policy and lambasts the inefficiencies of prominent military procurement programs like the F-35 fighter. In an echo of President Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex, Colonel Wilkerson explains how defense spending is not as productive as investments in health, education or business and laments the bloated defense budget as “a drain on the body of America”.

Drawing on his experience at the highest levels of the Army and State Department, Colonel Wilkerson points out that the militarization of US foreign policy dulls the knife of diplomacy and chides the poor quality of senior US diplomats. And in a warning that all Empires run their course, he warns that US adventurism abroad could lead to an expanding global coalition of opponents to the US.