The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

Matt and Van chop it up about the Veep debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance; how Ta-Nehisi Coates has taken up the mantel of James Baldwin; the Biden administration's expanding role in Middle East war; and the fanaticism of about China that is dividing America, predictably.

Subscribe to the Bang-Bang Podcast: https://www.bangbangpod.com

Crossover episode! In addition to Un-Diplomatic, Van is now co-hosting Bang-Bang--a new show about war movies, with an anti-imperialist twist. Van and his co-host, Lyle Jeremy Rubin, are military veterans, war critics, and film junkies. Enjoy this free cross-over episode where Van and Lyle discuss Combat Obscura, a 2018 documentary from Miles Lagoze about Marines in Afghanistan (and Lyle’s experience as a Marine in Afghanistan at the same time this was filmed). 

Subscribe to the Bang-Bang Podcast: https://www.bangbangpod.com/

Van spoke at the New Zealand Fabian Society about how the Democratic and Republican Party’s views on foreign policy are changing, and what those changes (and continuities) mean in the context of the US presidential election.

Written remarks: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/live-world-war-iii-and-the-presidential

Matt reports out on his recent trip to China. Israel's terrorism in Lebanon and the horizontal escalation happening before our eyes. And Pakistan as a case study of why geopolitics, climate adaptation, and the sovereign debt crisis must be addressed together or not at all. 

Matt's remarks from the Xiangshan Forum: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-right-way-for-china-and-the-us-to-get-along/ 

Van's remarks at the NZ Fabian Society: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/live-world-war-iii-and-the-presidential

The MAGA foreign-policy braintrust in Trump world is militarism all the way down. The unpopularity of the Democratic Party's popular front. The problem with threat inflation about disinformation. A defense budget out of control. And why Washington's manufacturing fetish is key to a convergence of jingoism, patriarchy, and oligarchy.

Further Reading:

Ken Klippenstein, “Russian Influence Operations Are A Joke"

Van Jackson, “Why the Working Class Strategizes Against Genocide”

Christian Lorenzten, “Not a Tough Crowd"

Thomas Brodey, “Disinformation Dilemma: US Hands Are Way Dirty, Too"

Gisela Cernadas and John Bellamy Foster, "Actual U.S. Military Spending Reached $1.537 Trillion in 2022—More than Twice Acknowledged Level: New Estimates Based on U.S. National Accounts"

Black Alliance for Peace, "Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Federal Indictments of Uhuru 3 and Denial of their Fundamental Human Rights to Speech, Association, Information and Political Dissent"

Further Listening:
Dead Prez, “Police State"

The election is nearing, and students are going back to school. What does this mean for student organizers demanding a ceasefire in Gaza? For the uncommitted movement? In this episode, Julia facilitates an intergenerational conversation about anti-war organizing. Guests Phyllis Bennis and Roua Daas reflect on campus demonstrations in the spring and share their thoughts on what lies ahead for the ceasefire now movement.

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Fellow Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS, focusing on the Middle East, U.S. militarism, and UN issues. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 2002, she co-founded United for Peace and Justice, a coalition against the Iraq war. In 2001, she helped found the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and more recently spent six years on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, where she now serves as its International Adviser. She works with many anti-war and Palestinian rights organizations, writing and speaking widely across the U.S. and around the world. She has served as an informal adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East issues and was twice short-listed to become the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Phyllis has written and edited 11 books. Among her latest is the 7th updated edition of her popular Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, published in 2018. She is also the author of Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terror and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy U.S. Power.

Roua Daas is a Palestinian organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine. She attended Butler University for undergrad, where she co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and led several campaigns, including a successful defeat of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which falsely conflates anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and a campaign against an authoritarian university administration decision to cancel a student-led event featuring abolitionist, scholar, and activist Angela Davis. Currently, she is a graduate student in Pennsylvania State University’s Clinical Psychology and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, where she organizes with Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine.

Their recent work:

How we passed a cease-fire resolution in our town, Roua Daas, American Friends Services Committee

Uncommitted voters sending a clear message to Biden about slaughter in Gaza, Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

What are the differences between nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition? How do disarmers and abolitionists balance the need for policy change with the need for sustainable, intersectional organizing? In this episode, Jasmine Owens discusses how Black and Indigenous thinkers inform her vision for the future of the nuclear abolition movement. She reminds us that “small is all” when it comes to organizing, and that community is everything.

Transformative justice is integral to community building. Indigenous folks are on the frontlines of radiation exposure from nuclear tests, uranium mining, and the dumping of nuclear waste. In 1990, the U.S. government created the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to aid some of those harmed, but the program has expired. This September, members of several Indigenous communities and allies are traveling from New Mexico to D.C. with a simple message: Pass RECA before we die. 

Please consider donating to help bring Indigenous radiation survivors to D.C.: https://chuffed.org/project/pass-reca

And read Jasmine’s recent work, here:

The false equivalency of nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Understanding the Gap Between Vision and Practice: Understanding Emergent Strategies for Authentic Intersectional Organizing in the Nuclear Abolition Movement, Win Without War

Building The World Anew: The Case for Radically Redefining the Nuclear Abolition Movement, Win Without War

Cross-promotion! Van Jackson joined the Hegemonicon podcast and is sharing the experience here with Un-Diplomatic listeners. Van and show host William Lawrence discuss the dangerous strategy of global primacy that drives US foreign policy from many angles. What are the contradictions in US industrial policy? How does primacy relate to China and great-power competition? What kind of international order is emerging? What is the political coalition that can keep us out of catastrophe?

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The Hegemonicon Podcast

Convergence Magazine

"This is what courage looks like." Today Matt talks to three people -- two Biden appointees and one career military -- who made the courageous choice to resign in protest over US support for the Gaza war. We hear from each of them how they came to work in the administration, how they made the decision to leave it, and how that choice has impacted them. 

Tariq Habash most recently served as a political appointee and policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. Tariq worked to overhaul the broken student loan system, provide relief to millions of borrowers, and address inequities across American higher education. He was the second government official, and the first political appointee to publicly resign from the Biden Administration due to its policy on Gaza and unrestricted support for Israel’s aggression against Palestinians. Prior to joining the government, Tariq was a cofounder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a national research and advocacy nonprofit where he led the organization’s investigative work on student loan and consumer finance policies. He also spent years working at The Century Foundation, specializing in higher education affordability, accountability, and consumer protection issues. Tariq holds degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the University of Miami. 

Harrison Mann is a former U.S. Army major and executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Middle East/Africa Regional Center who resigned in protest of his office’s support for Israel during its Gaza campaign. He previously served as a Middle East all-source intelligence analyst and led a crisis cell coordinating intelligence support for Ukraine. Prior to DIA, he worked at the U.S. Embassy Tunis Office of Security Cooperation and led Army Civil Affairs teams combatting regional smuggling under U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) in Bahrain. Harrison began his Army career as an infantry officer. He received a B.A. from the College of William & Mary and a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. 

Lily Greenberg Call is a former Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at the Department of Interior. She has nearly a decade of experience in politics, movement organizing, and domestic and international human rights work. She worked on President Biden's 2020 campaign and served in the administration until May 15, 2024, when she became the first Jewish political appointee to resign in protest of US policy in Gaza. Lily grew up doing pro-Israel advocacy with AIPAC and other organizations throughout high school and college, and later became invested in Palestinian rights and Jewish anti-occupation movements. She has appeared as a guest on MSNBC, CNN, NBC, and given commentary for the Washington Post, Politico, and the Associated Press. Lily holds a B.A. in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Further Reading: 

The Moral Limits of Public Service

State Department Official Resigns

Biden Staffers Mobilising Non-Violent Resistance Against the US Government

What just happened in Venezuela? Matt Duss is joined by two great Latin America experts to talk about Maduro's very shady re-election, and how the US should respond. 

Paarlberg's piece: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/venezuelas-people-not-government-deserve-solidarity/

Michael Paarlberg is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His research focuses on Latin America, migration and security issues. He previously worked for the Service Employees International Union and was a journalist with the Guardian, and was a Latin America adviser for the Bernie 2020 campaign. 

María José Espinosa is the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas (CEDA) and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with CIP. Her work focuses on shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean on issues such as U.S.-Cuba relations, regional migration cooperation, climate, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, and protections for refugees and migrants.