theAnalysis.news

The Biden administration has been pursuing a reckless policy in the Middle East in which Israel's massacres in Gaza and now in Lebanon are unconditionally supported with deliveries of 2,000 lb bunker-busting bombs and diplomatic cover. Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, discusses Iran's policy of strategic patience in which a response to Israel's extra-judicial killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, as well as a fatal strike on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, possibly came too late according to Iran's hardliners.

Given voters’ concerns over rising food and housing costs, Kamala Harris has pledged to combat price gouging if elected president, though she has yet to clearly lay out the hallmarks of the rest of her economic policy. In part 2, Bob Pollin, economist and advisor to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal on Medicare For All, explains the meaning of price gouging and delves into the causes of inflation during the COVID pandemic.

In part two, American theologian and priest Matthew Fox traces out the links between the fascist wing of the Catholic Church, Opus Dei, American Cardinal Burke, and Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor and former Executive Chairman at Breitbart News. He explains how Cardinal Burke and other neofascists in the Catholic Church opposed the Second Vatican Council, which sought to update the Catholic Church. He then explains how both Co-Chairman of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, who drew up lists of potential conservative judges to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, share a right-wing Catholic ideology.

The issue of banning (or not banning) fracking has been at the forefront of the 2024 presidential debates between former President Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Fracking, a technique that involves horizontal drilling to extract gas and oil from shale rock, risks methane leaks and other environmental hazards. Professor Bob Pollin, economist and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), lays out the elements of a Global Green New Deal to avert climate catastrophe and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Can we frack and still reach this goal?

At first glance, an impressive fresco in San Brizio’s Chapel in the Orvieto Cathedral appears to show Christ addressing a crowd – but after closer inspection, one realizes that the main figure is, in fact, the Antichrist, with a demon speaking into his left ear. Luca Signorelli’s painting, The Preaching and Punishment of the Antichrist, inspired artist Michelangelo and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud to produce some of their greatest works. It also inspired American theologian and priest Matthew Fox to write his new book Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election. In part 1, Fox argues that the archetype applies to the darker sides of MAGA and its Christian-nationalist backers.

The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom and the separation of Church and State, basic tenets of American democracy which conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation is intent on undermining. Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, describes how the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 would upend military protocols to eliminate civilian oversight. He believes a dystopian future in which the rights of racialized and marginalized groups are denied would be in store under a second Trump presidency. 

TranscriptListenDonateSubscribeGuestMusic

Talia BaroncelliHi, I'm Talia Baroncelli, and you're watching theAnalysis.news. I'll shortly be joined by Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We'll be speaking about Project 2025 and the implications it has for the U.S. military.

If you'd like to support the work that we do, you can go to our website, theAnalysis.news, and hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen. Make sure you're on our mailing list; that way, you're always up to date every time a new episode is published. You can like and subscribe to the show on YouTube or on other podcast streaming services such as Apple or Spotify. See you in a bit with Mikey.

Project 2025 is a lengthy policy agenda authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative and Christian nationalist think tank. Investigative outlet ProPublica recently obtained Project 2025 private training videos, which involve several former Trump officials. This corroborates the connection between former President Trump and the Heritage Foundation.

One of the videos features Bethany Kozma, a former Deputy Chief of Staff at USAID during the Trump administration. In this video, she discusses Project 2025's opposition to legislation trying to mitigate the effects of climate change. She reads from page 364 of Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership, which states that "In the name of combating climate change, policies have been used to create an artificial energy scarcity that will require trillions of dollars in new investment, supported with taxpayer subsidies, to address a problem that government and special interests themselves created." They don't perceive climate change or carbon-intensive industries as posing a threat to society or to the environment but as a set of policies meant to create energy scarcity and benefit a certain segment of the elite.

Joining me to discuss these issues is Mikey Weinstein. He is the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the constitutional right of religious freedom for the U.S. Armed Forces. He is also a lawyer and a former Air Force officer and served as White House Legal Counsel to the Reagan Administration. He also served as first general counsel to Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who ran for president twice. He's the author of several books, including Was God on Our Side and No Snowflake in an Avalanche. It's great to have you again, Mikey.

Mikey WeinsteinThanks, Talia. I'm looking forward to it as well.

Talia BaroncelliBefore we get into Project 2025, can you explain to our viewers what you do at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation?

Mikey WeinsteinAbsolutely. We are a weapon, and we've been fighting Christian nationalism and calling it out before anybody else did, that I'm aware of, going back to the early 2000s. Our job is to protect the U.S. Constitutionally mandated wall, separating Church and State in the technologically most lethal organization ever created by humankind, which is the U.S. military: the Marine Corps, Navy, Army, Air Force, and Space Force.We have clients in all 18 national security agencies. Some are well-known, like the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, etc. We have clients in the U.S. Coast Guard, which is not the DOD; that's the Department of Homeland Security, and even the U.S. Maritime Service,

Throughout his recent presidential campaigns, former President Trump has garnered widespread conservative Evangelical support and the endorsement of powerful televangelists such as Paula White-Cain. André Gagné, Professor of Theology at Concordia University, explains the New Apostolic Reformation and its ties to the Neo-Charismatic Pentecostal movement, which constitutes the largest growing sector of Christianity both globally and within the United States. In the U.S., Neo-Charismatic Christianity has been largely hijacked by New Apostolic Reformation firebrand Trump supporters who push a radical conservative agenda.

John Bellamy Foster points to "Beyond Leviathan" by István Mészáros for insights into the ancient origins of the state and nature of its evolution over thousands of years, the necessity to move beyond the state, and how to meet that challenge. Produced by GPEnewsdocs.

In this essay, Paul Jay unravels the alliance of tech billionaires and religious zealots behind the Trump/Vance campaign and their plans to build an American “Iron Dome,” a new ABM system that threatens nuclear war. This exposé reveals why Silicon Valley tycoons like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are bankrolling a Trump/Vance ticket that promises to make voting obsolete and impose a religious techno-authoritarian state. Does this represent the teachings of Jesus?

In part two, historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov discusses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decisions to prolong the plight of the Israeli hostages and the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza in order to remain in power. Bartov also derides the U.S. billionaires who pressured university presidents to break up pro-Palestine student encampments.