This summer, theAnalysis.news is revisiting some of our best episodes. Today’s pick, The Significance of the “Shit Show” Debate, originally published on September 30, 2020.

Paul Jay is joined by Prof. Leo Panitch, Jacobin writer Meagan Day, and historian Gerald Horne to break down the presidential debate and the deeper reasons behind the dysfunction in U.S. politics. They also discuss how a people’s movement might respond if Trump attempts a coup after losing the election.



Leo Panitch passed away on December 19, 2020, at the age of 75.

In part one, filmmaker and journalist Paul Jay joins host Shalaj Lawania for a personal reflection. Jay argues that Canadian and American identity sit on a foundational lie: stolen land, slavery, and corporate rule masked as liberal democracy. He says most mainstream journalism focuses on the actors, but rarely on who owns the stage.

He traces his “red diaper” upbringing, the Cold War myths he didn’t internalize, and the way mainstream and algorithmic media turn politics into a billionaire-run wrestling show while keeping us on the brink of nuclear war. Any honest account of personal identity, Jay says, has to start with knowing the society we live in, how we got here, and the brutal history that continues today.

Rank-and-file delegates amended the UAW Constitution at the union\'s 39th Constitutional Convention, requiring the union to divest from Israel Bonds after a grassroots campaign led by auto workers, academic workers, and graduate employees.

In the second part of Barry Stevens\' conversation with international law expert Michael Byers, the focus shifts to the \"tragedy of the commons\" unfolding above our heads. As thousands of satellites are launched by companies such as Elon Musk\'s SpaceX and millions of pieces of debris accumulate in orbit, the risk grows of a collisional cascade—known as the Kessler Syndrome—that could render parts of near-Earth space unusable for generations. Byers says that the rapid commercialization of space is linked to US military priorities and great power competition, as satellite networks sold as civilian infrastructure become essential tools of modern warfare and domination. The pace of expansion is outstripping the ability of international institutions to protect and govern the orbital environment. In the process, the spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty is being steadily eroded. Space was envisioned as a realm of peaceful cooperation and a province of all humankind. This analysis shows how one of its last great global commons is being stolen and squandered.

Article 1 of the Outer Space Treaty, signed at the height of the Cold War in 1967, declares that space \"shall be the province of all [hu]mankind.\" That remarkable consensus, with its benefits to science and communication, has held for more than half a century— until now. In this conversation, host Barry Stevens talks with Michael Byers— Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at UBC and co-author of Who Owns Outer Space? — about how, behind breathless media coverage of rockets landing by themselves and astronauts circling the moon, Donald Trump\'s reframing of space as a \"warfighting domain\" and his Golden Dome fantasy are eroding fifty years of restraint and triggering an arms race. With Pentagon-backed companies like Musk\'s SpaceX, the commons of space is being crowded, enclosed, monetized, and militarized. But as Byers insists, \"it is not too late.\"

From the Cold War bomber gap to the Iraq WMD fraud to Golden Dome, America’s permanent war economy has spent 80 years converting real geopolitical conflicts into manufactured existential threats — and turning fear into profit.

The Iran war follows the same playbook: no confirmed nuclear weapon, no IAEA finding of a bomb program, no U.S. intelligence assessment authorizing one — but billions in new contracts, spiking defense stocks, and a president whose portfolio was moving through Palantir, Nvidia, and Broadcom while praising their “war-fighting capabilities.”

This isn’t about Iran’s human rights or a nuclear threat. It’s about contractors, client states, oil markets, and an imperial order that needs permanent danger to survive.

Jay says we must take up the recommendations of the 1934 Senate Nye Committee: take profit out of war.

What if the arms race isn\'t a problem to solve — it\'s the business model? Paul Jay, founder of theAnalysis.news and director of the upcoming documentary How to Stop a Nuclear War, breaks down the machinery behind Golden Dome, lunar data centers, AI militarization, and the trillion-dollar boondoggle playbook that\'s been running since the Cold War. Plus: why \"corruption\" misses the point, the Pentagon as America\'s largest socialist institution, and what a bipartisan Senate committee concluded in 1933 that nobody wants you to remember.

James Early argues the indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro is less about prosecuting a decades-old case and more about creating a political and legal framework for intensified U.S. pressure against Cuba. He says the move fits within a long history of American efforts to destabilize the Cuban government through sanctions, economic isolation, and covert pressure dating back to the Eisenhower administration.