The Marianne Williamson Podcast Kast Media

Status Coup’s Jordan Chariton can be found at some of the most important events of the last decade. His on-the-ground reporting from Flint, Standing Rock and the 2020 BLM protests among others brings us the in-depth coverage the corporate media ignores. So why is his material being suppressed? Jordan and Marianne sit-down to discuss the state of the news media, how big tech squashes independent outlets while propping up corporate behemoths and the importance of independent media.
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According to journalist Andrew Cockburn in his latest book, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine, our bloated $778 billion defense budget doesn’t necessarily provide for our safety. Cockburn, the Washington editor of Harper’s, has spent decades covering the Pentagon and defense industry and says money and power - not legitimate security concerns - is what drives our ballooning military budget.
Our podcast conversation details how we got here. According to Cockburn, “The US defense complex is best thought of not as an organization, but as a living, insatiable, creature, dedicated only to its own defense and power.”
With our government so held hostage by the defense industry, it’s we the people who are going to have to change that.
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Routing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a successful exercise in brute force. But keeping them out - and helping the Afghans keep them out - was something that required skills not currently in America’s tool box. If anything, we proved the ultimate futility of endless violence. We succeeded at waging war, but we failed miserably at providing the conditions of a sustainable post-war state of peace. 
THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: An Effort to More Deeply Understand, is compiled from interviews that provide meaningful reflections on the war. The individual interviews can be found here: https://mariannewilliamson.substack.com/s/reflections-on-afghanistan
On Afghanistan, as on so many issues, it’s imperative that we push against the grain of shallow and ultimately meaningless narrative that dominates our politics. This podcast was produced by Jon Ehrens, with interviews from Sarah Chayes, Laura Jedeed, Zainab Salbi, Tom Freston, Joe Cirincione, and Obaidullah Baheer.
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Visit FreeDonziger.com to learn more about Steven and his case.
 
Follow Steven Donziger on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sdonziger
 
Steven Donziger is a Harvard law school graduate who went to Ecuador in the 1990’s. He was traveling with a team of lawyers and doctors to view the horrific evidence that Texaco, an oil giant since bought by Chevron, had poisoned a huge swath of the Ecuadorian Amazon during oil drilling in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. What they saw were the results of a massive and man-made environmental disaster that poisoned the water, earth and food of tens of thousands of people. Worst of all, the evidence indicated it was done deliberately as part of an engineering plan to save $3 per barrel. This horror was not an accident.
 
Ultimately, Steven led a team of lawyers in procuring a $9.5B judgement against Chevron that was affirmed by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court. Yet that was not the end of the story. For Chevron - while note even arguing the veracity of the disaster - chose not to pay the judgment. Instead, they chose to come after the lead lawyer who held them accountable: namely, Steven Donziger. In Donziger’s words, “The company’s goal is to silence my advocacy, bankrupt my family, and intimidate activists and environmental allies.”
 
Donziger has now spent more than 780 days under house arrest. He stands to be sentenced on Oct. 1 for contempt of court charges stemming from his refusal to turn over to Chevron his cell phone and computer containing confidential data on environmental activists here and in Ecuador. The Department of Justice having chosen not even to pursue the case, it was turned over- incredibly -to Chevron itself to prosecute.
 
Most Americans would not believe that here in the United States, a corporation could literally use an American court to criminally prosecute its critics. And yet that is exactly what has happened: a show trial that leaves an American environmental lawyer punished harshly and at risk of imprisonment, for the not-to-be-tolerated crime of standing up to Chevron.
 
Attorney General Merrick Garland has not intervened in this private corporate prosecution, although he should. The request has been simply that he return the case from Chevron’s law firm to the US justice system. He has not chosen to do so despite pleas from Senators, Congresspeople, legal groups and Nobel Laureates. And this point you and I have to speak up, and speak up loudly - for justice, for the earth, and for Steven Donziger.
 
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REFLECTIONS ON AFGHANISTAN: A lecturer of conflict resolution at the American University in Afghanistan, Obaidulluh Baheer decided to stay in Kabul when many were trying to escape during the US evacuation. His family history made him feel he could have a unique role to play in helping the country make a palatable transition to Taliban rule.
 
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REFLECTIONS ON AFGHANISTAN: My guest for this episode of Conversations with Marianne is Joe Cirincione, a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC. Previously Joe worked for the US House of Representatives on the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Government Operations.
 
In our conversation we talk about Afghanistan, the military industrial complex, President Biden, Pakistan, China, and more. The only way we’re going to transform the world is if we stop farming out our thinking, and our conscience. Don’t think these subjects are things other people should think about, but not you. That’s the kind of thinking that got us here. Let’s change our thinking about the power of citizenship so that citizens can change the world.
 
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