Tom Roche

BRICS Rising As Neocons Destroy The West W Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Jim Chanos, the president and founder of Kynikos Associates and well-known investment manager talks to Rob about the post-pandemic financial system, which has become more steeped in a casino culture than it has been in a very long time, and whether China's financial situation serves as an example or as a warning.

Last month, the United Auto Workers took part in a historic election. Shawn Fain was elected president of the union, who represents a reform group, looking to give more power to its workers. At the same time, DHL workers have been engaged in a unionizing push, at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport; the Teamsters, a union with a rollercoaster of a history, are trying to organize the DHL workers. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Brandi Dale and Steve Fightmaster, two DHL workers active in the unionizing efforts at the airport. Then, Grim is joined by labor reporter Alex Press, who breaks down developments with the United Auto Workers leadership and provides an update on Amazon’s unionization attempts.

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Strength can look like a lot of things and, in this first episode of the stand-up series exploring women's weightlifting, comedian Jessica Fostekew starts at the most dirty, functional end of things - strongwoman. It's where weightlifting meets theatre. You might have seen on the telly at Christmas, the one with Geoff Capes running around with a fridge on his little finger or giving an entire train a tow with his body. Jess talks to four-times Britain's Strongest Woman Andrea Thompson and multiple world-record holder Mayyah Blair to get their take on strength, aesthetic and why the strongest women in the world still have to work part-time. And she tells us about the time she pulled an actual bus. Lets face it, she goes on and on about it. Written and Performed by Jessica Fostekew Producer: Lyndsay Fenner Executive Producer: Victoria Lloyd Sound Recordist: David Thomas A Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4

AN UNLOCKED BONUS: Corner Späti media correspondent and person I personally blame for England, Josie Parkinson, comes along to give her insights into Eurovision and this years entries.

Remember 13th of May at 8pm German time will be live for our Gyrovision commentary for this years show on twitch.tv/cornerspaeti

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Special Guest: Josie Parkinson.

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If there’s one thing you can say for sure about Elon Musk, it’s that he has a huge number of opinions and loves to share them at high volume with the world. The problem here is that his opinions are often stunningly wrong.

Generally, these stunningly wrong opinions are the conventional wisdom among the ultra-right and ultra-rich.

In particular, like most of the ultra-right ultra-rich, Musk is desperately concerned that the U.S. is about to be overwhelmed by the costs of Social Security and Medicare.

He’s previously tweeted — in response to the Christian evangelical humor site Babylon Bee — that “True national debt, including unfunded entitlements, is at least $60 trillion.” On the one hand, this is arguably true. On the other hand, you will understand it’s not a problem if you are familiar with 1) this subject and 2) basic math.

More recently, Musk favored us with this perspective on Social Security:

Big reckoning coming due to low birth rate. Japan is a leading indicator.

— Harry B?lz (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to know where to start explaining, but let’s try.

First of all, Musk is saying that the U.S. will have difficulty paying Social Security benefits in the future due to a low U.S. birth rate. People who believe this generally point to the falling ratio of U.S. workers to Social Security beneficiaries. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, founded by another billionaire, is happy to give you the numbers: In 1960, there were 5.1 workers per beneficiary, and now there are only 2.8. Moreover, the ratio is projected to fall to 2.3 by 2035.

This does sound intuitively like it must be a big problem — until you think about it for five seconds. As in many other cases, this is the five seconds of thinking that Musk has failed to do.

You don’t need to know anything about the intricacies of how Social Security works to understand it. Just use your little noggin. The obvious reality is that if a falling ratio of workers to beneficiaries is an enormous problem, this problem would already have manifested itself.

Again, look at those numbers. In 1960, 5.1. Now, 2.8. The ratio has dropped by almost half. (In fact, it’s dropped by more than that in Social Security’s history. In 1950 the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was 16.5.) And yet despite a plunge in the worker-retiree ratio that has already happened, the Social Security checks today go out every month like clockwork. There is no mayhem in the streets. There’s no reason to expect disaster if the ratio goes down a little more, to 2.3.

The reason this is possible is the same reason the U.S. overall is a far richer country than it was in the past: an increase in worker productivity. Productivity is the measure of how much the U.S. economy produces per worker, and probably the most important statistic regarding economic well being. We invent bulldozers, and suddenly one person can do the work of 30 people with shovels. We invent computer printers, and suddenly one person can do the work of 100 typists. We invent E-ZPass, and suddenly zero people can do the work of thousands of tollbooth operators.

This matters because, when you strip away the complexity, retirement income of any kind is simply money generated by present-day workers being taken from them and given to people who aren’t working. This is true with Social Security, where the money is taken in the form of taxes. But it’s also true with any kind of private savings. The transfer there just uses different mechanisms — say, Dick Cheney, 82, getting dividends from all the stock he owns.

So it’s all about how much present day workers can produce. And if productivity goes up fast enough, it will swamp any fall in the worker-beneficiary ratio — and the income of both present day workers and retirees can rise indefinitely. This is exactly what happened in the past. And we can see that there’s no reason to believe it won’t continue, again using the concept of math.

The economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank, has done this math. U.S. productivity has grown at more than 1 percent per year — sometimes much more — over every 15-year period since World War II. If it grows at 1 percent for the next 15 years, it will be possible for both workers and retirees to see their income increase by almost 9 percent. If it grows at 2 percent — about the average since World War II — the income of both workers and retirees can grow by 20 percent during the next 15 years. This does not seem like the “reckoning” predicted by Musk.

What Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

What’s even funnier about Musk’s fretting is that it contradicts literally everything about his life. He’s promised for years that Tesla’s cars will soon achieve “full self-driving.” If indeed humans can invent vehicles that can drive without people, this will generate a huge increase in productivity — so much so that some people worry about what millions of truck drivers would do if their jobs are shortly eliminated. Meanwhile, if low birth rates mean there are fewer workers available, the cost of labor will rise, meaning that it will be worth it for Tesla to invest more in creating self-driving trucks. So what Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

Finally, there’s Musk’s characterization of Japan as a “leading indicator.” Here’s a picture of Tokyo, depicting what a poverty-stricken hellscape Japan has now become due to its low birthrate:

That is a joke. Japan is an extremely rich country by world standards, and the aging of its population has not changed that. The statistic to pay attention here is a country’s per capita income. Aging might be a problem if so many people were old and out of the workforce that per capita income fell, but, as the World Bank will tell you, that hasn’t happened in Japan. In fact, thanks to the magic of productivity, per capita income has continued to rise, albeit more slowly than in Japan’s years of fastest growth.

So if you’re tempted by Musk’s words to be concerned about what a low birth rate means for Social Security, you don’t need to sweat it. A much bigger problem, for Social Security and the U.S. in general, are the low-functioning brains of our billionaires.

The post Elon Musk Wants to Cut Your Social Security Because He Doesn’t Understand Math appeared first on The Intercept.

Twitter last month submitted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to GitHub — a web service designed to host user-uploaded source code — demanding that certain content be taken down because it was allegedly “[p]roprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” Twitter subsequently filed a declaration in federal court supporting its request for a DMCA subpoena, the ostensible aim of which was “to identify the alleged infringer or infringers who posted Twitter’s source code on systems operated by GitHub without Twitter’s authorization.”

However, Twitter appears to have revised its DMCA notice, essentially a claim of copyright infringement, the same day it was filed to request not only information about the uploader, but also “any related upload / download / access history (and any contact info, IP addresses, or other session info related to same), and any associated logs related to this repo or any forks thereof.” In other words, Twitter is now seeking information not only about the alleged leaker, but also about anyone who interacted with the particular GitHub repository, the online space for storing source code, in any way, including simply by accessing it. Trying to strong-arm GitHub into revealing information about visitors to a particular repository it hosts via a request for a subpoena is a move reminiscent of the Justice Department attempting to compel a web-hosting company to reveal information about visitors to an anti-Trump website.

DMCA: The Doxxing and Censorship Tool of Choice

This isn’t the first time that corporations have tried to use DMCA subpoenas to identify leakers. A Marvel Studios affiliate recently petitioned for DMCA subpoenas to force Reddit and Google to reveal information about someone who uploaded a film script to Google and posted about it on Reddit before the movie was released. DMCA claims also have a sordid history of being used in doxxing attempts. False DMCA claims can be filed to lure a targeted user to then file a counterclaim, which necessitates that they fill in their name and address, which in turn gets passed on to the original filer. At other times, the DMCA is used simply to censor content, whether to muzzle members of civil society or for reputation management.

No Subpoena Required?

GitHub has seemed all too willing to provide information about both its repository owners and its visitors, even without a subpoena. When the owner of another, unrelated repository recently asked GitHub to provide access logs of users who had visited it, GitHub appears to have readily complied, obscuring only the last octet of the visitor IP address, with the unredacted portion still potentially revealing information such as a user’s internet service provider and approximate location.

There are also any number of public ways to extract user information from GitHub, such as email addresses associated with a particular GitHub account. Ironically, some scripts hosted on GitHub are designed to automate the exfiltration of a GitHub user’s email address. Once an email address is learned, the process of requesting a subpoena for further information about a particular user may be repeated in an attempt to obtain yet more sensitive data.

Musk’s Bag of Tricks

Aside from claiming to use watermarking methods to catch leakers, Musk’s other companies have also sought subpoenas to force service providers to reveal information about leakers. For instance, when Musk zeroed in on (and subsequently harassed) a suspected leaker who provided internal documents to a reporter about large amounts of waste being generated at Tesla’s “Gigafactory,” Tesla moved to subpoena Apple, AT&T, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Open Whisper Systems (the organization formerly behind the secure messaging app Signal), and WhatsApp. The proposed subpoenas “commanded” their targets to preserve any information about the suspected leaker’s accounts, as well as all documents that the suspected leaker “has deleted from the foregoing accounts but that are still accessible by you.”

In addition to proposed subpoenas, Tesla has reportedly tried to identify leakers by reviewing surveillance footage to see who had been taking photos (the original Business Insider story that prompted the Tesla investigation mentioned that the source had provided images to corroborate their claims of waste at the factory). The company has also checked file access logs to see who had accessed data that was provided to the news outlet.

Following identification of the suspected leaker, Tesla reportedly engaged in an extensive surveillance campaign, including hacking the suspect’s phone; requesting that the suspect turn over their laptop for an “update” that was, in fact, a forensic audit; deploying a plainclothes security guard to monitor the suspect on the factory floor; and hiring private investigators to conduct further surveillance.

Takeaways for Leakers

Given the lax approach to divulging user information by service providers, coupled with the aggressive tactics employed by companies to reveal sources, the takeaway for would-be leakers is clear: Do not trust service providers to protect any information they may have about you. Websites may reveal information about the leaker, intentionally or not, and whether legally obligated or of their own accord. Leakers would do well to avoid using their home or other proximate internet connection and to further obfuscate it using tools such as the Tor Browser. Additionally, it’s best to ensure that any information required to set up a particular account, such as an email address or phone number, not be traceable to the leaker.

The post Twitter Deploys Classic Musk Tactics to Hunt Down Leaker appeared first on The Intercept.

That was really a sidebar in his piece ridiculing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s attack on “woke” money, but it is worth taking a second to appreciate how protecting the rich is so completely the accepted norm in American politics. The piece is directed against DeSantis’s bizarre attack on the idea of a digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve Board.

It’s not clear whether DeSantis has any real concern or is just trying to convince the MAGA crowd that he can be every bit as crazy as their hero Trump, in spite of his Harvard Law degree. However, insofar as there is some discernible issue that is bothering DeSantis, it seems to be that a Fed digital currency may make it more difficult to evade taxes and commit other crimes. So much for “LAW AND ORDER!”

But the part of Krugman’s piece that really needs more attention is his comment in passing on how banks would respond to the prospect of a digital currency from the Fed. The basic story of a digital currency is a simple one. We could all be given transaction accounts at the Fed, from which we could conduct our ordinary business, like paying bills and getting our paychecks, at near zero cost.

This would mean tens of billions in savings annually on bank fees and penalties. It would be an especially big deal for lower income households, who disproportionately pay these fees and often don’t have bank accounts at all.

Krugman comments:

“What it [the Federal Reserve Act] doesn’t say is that any attempt to create such accounts would provoke a firestorm of opposition from the banking industry, which doesn’t want to have to compete for customers with a basically infallible government bank. So if a digital currency were to be created, it would be run through private-sector intermediaries.”

Krugman is just describing the political reality as it is, but this comment really requires a bit of reflection. We have the means to eliminate tens of billions of dollars of waste from the economic system. My guess is that we are talking in the range of 0.2-0.3 percent of GDP, an amount that is around half the size of the annual Food Stamp budget and more than twice the cost of President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program.

But it ain’t going to happen, because it would provoke “a firestorm of opposition from the banking industry.”

Well, many measures for increasing efficiency provoke opposition. Many unions opposed the terms under which China was admitted to the WTO because it would cost hundreds of thousands (actually, millions) of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs and put downward pressure on the wages of the jobs that remains.

That didn’t matter because the forces that wanted access to cheap labor were far more powerful. Also, the cheap labor lobby had a powerful ally among the intellectual class, nearly all of whom denounced opponents of the WTO as knuckle-scraping Neanderthal protectionists in media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, etc.

However, the “neoliberal” types who were appalled at the idea that we would allow protectionist barriers to block more open trade with China are just fine with saluting the banking lobby and its efforts to block the Fed from offering digital accounts. There are no editorials denouncing the knuckle-scraping Neanderthal bankers on Wall Street who want us to throw tens of billions annually into the garbage so that they can keep getting paychecks in the millions and tens of millions of dollars. (The CEO of Silicon Valley Bank got $9.9 million for his work in 2021.)

Anyhow, this is just another example how the claim that anyone is a market fundamentalist is a complete lie. It is understandable why the proponents of protectionism for the rich would like to claim their good fortune is just due to the natural workings of the free market; but it is a serious mystery why progressives seem to think it is smart to go along with this obvious nonsense.  

 

Note: This is corrected from an earlier version which put the pay of Silicon Valley Bank’s CEO at $9.9  billion.

The post Krugman Reminds us That Protectionism for Bankers Is a Very Powerful Political Force appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Congressman Ro Khanna joins Useful Idiots to answer the question once and for all: can we still call him, or any member of Congress for that matter, a progressive?

Aaron and Katie come ready with hard-hitting questions on the Ukraine proxy war, the strangling sanctions on Syria, Biden’s drilling hypocrisy, and more, challenging the corporate establishment’s propaganda, constantly shoved down the throats of progressive members of Congress.

But did the establishment get to Ro?

Watch the full episode as the interview turns to debate, with Aaron confronting the congressman’s version of history in both Ukraine and Syria; the idea that the US wants peace, even after multiple top officials have denounced a ceasefire as unacceptable; and the blind trust in a president who hasn’t fulfilled a single progressive promise.

Katie and Aaron don’t pull punches, citing facts and history when given the White House narrative, calling out the president’s lies.

In a time when sitting for an opposition interview is almost unheard of for US politicians, it’s a big deal to have Ro Khanna, the last willing member, on the show. Hopefully, other politicians will follow his lead and allow their policy to be challenged. We’re looking at you next, Adam Schiff…

Plus, watch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: even Trump-crazed media can’t get it up for the indictment.

And join the Absurd Arena live discussion board with Katie and Aaron every Tuesday at 12pm est in the Substack app.

Watch the full interview here:

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The UN Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to condemn sanctions. The only countries that expressed support for unilateral coercive measures were the US, UK, EU member states, Georgia, and Ukraine. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q8vQSpXHtmM Sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/04/06/west-sanctions-un-human-rights-council

This week, David Sirota speaks with Naomi Oreskes about the mythology of “market fundamentalism” that exists deep within the American psyche. A Harvard Professor of history, Oreskes explains how the total belief in the wisdom of the free-markets (in opposition to the ‘evil’ big government), went from being on the fringes of public debate to a dogmatic ideology that is unique to the United States. It’s a fascinating history involving key figures of the 20th century, including Herbert Hoover, industry groups, and a massively popular show called “General Electric Theater that starred a Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan. (02:49)

If you’d like to leave a tip for The Lever, click the following link. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism. levernews.com/tipjar

Read a transcript of this episode here.

We’re joined by Wisconsin correspondent Kath Krueger to discuss Judge Protasiewicz’s victory overturning 15 years of conservative judicial rule in the Badger state. We also look at new reports of Clarence Thomas’ rampant corruption, read analysis of Brandon Johnson’s victory in Chicago from johnkassnews.com, and finally…Catholic Cemetery Magazine.

Should be a few tickets left for the late show of our screening of John Carpenter’s “In The Mouth of Madness” at the Roxy Cinema on April 27th, come thru. Will and Hesse will be speaking at both screenings: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/chapo-trap-house-movie-mindset-presents-in-the-mouth-of-madness-35mm/

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Part 1 of 2 on the Anglo-German Naval Race. We start with a modern theorist, Paul Kennedy, and his thesis that industrial power translates to military power. Then some earlier imperialist theorists we’ve mentioned before: Mahan and Mackinder, who Justin finally read. Then, the practitioners of naval power, Admiral Tirpitz on the German side and … Continue reading "World War Civ 14a: Anglo-German Naval Race pt1 – Theorists and Practitioners of World Domination"

Grayzone Radio with Max Blumenthal excerpts investigative reports from The Grayzone podcast.

The global de-dollarization campaign is gaining momentum, challenging the hegemony of the US dollar. China and Russia are trading in their own currencies. Beijing and Brazil dropped the dollar in bilateral trade. The UAE is selling China its gas in yuan, through a French company. Southeast Asian nations in ASEAN are de-dollarizing their trade, promoting local payment systems. Kenya is buying Persian Gulf oil with its own currency. The Financial Times acknowledges that a "multipolar currency world" is emerging. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kz5UmwhQuiU Sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/04/06/dedollarization-china-russia-brazil-asean China & Russia pledge ‘changes not seen in 100 years’: Xi & Putin take aim at US dollar hegemony: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/25/china-russia-xi-putin-dollar-economy Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/22/brazil-argentina-latin-american-currency-dollar

Historian Aaron Good discusses US President John F. Kennedy's policies toward Africa, particularly Congo and its anti-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba, as well as Indonesia's leftist nationalist President Sukarno. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=V_h_3SYc0c8 This is the Empire and the Deep State series that Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton is co-hosting with Aaron Good and Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast. This is part 3 of our historical analysis of the JFK administration. PLAYLIST with past episodes in the series here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hNArLl765PXe8tsTKmOciGL You can support American Exception at https://Patreon.com/AmericanException

The Joe Biden administration invited numerous authoritarian far-right leaders to the US State Department's so-called "Summit for Democracy", including Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, Poland's Andrzej Duda, India's Narendra Modi, Italy's Giorgia Meloni, and Pakistan's coup regime. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OK9F27WIcec Sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/04/01/us-authoritarian-summit-for-democracy Mexico’s AMLO calls out US ‘oligarchy’ at Biden’s ‘democracy’ summit: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/30/mexico-amlo-us-oligarchy-democracy-summit

From inside Russia, economists Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman report on the impact of Western sanctions and the Ukraine war. They discuss Moscow's integration with Asia and move away from neoliberal economics. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lxgiJj5FyYg Radhika and Alan are directors of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group: https://geopoliticaleconomy.org

We’re joined by wonk whiz-kid @ettingermentum to discuss some of his recent elections analysis. We take a look at how today’s arraignment might affect Trump’s 2024 outlook, the electoral history of transphobia for the GOP, and analyze the art of losing from some recent Democratic stars.

Follow @ettingermentum on Twitter

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And keep an eye out for his livestreams at: http://twitch.tv/zevonmentum

NYC! We are doing a special Movie Mindset mini-series launch party & screening of a 35 mm print of John Carpenter’s “In The Mouth of Madness” on Thursday, April 27th at the Roxy Cinema, followed by a special talk back pod recording with Will & Hesse. Tickets here: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/chapo-trap-house-movie-mindset-presents-in-the-mouth-of-madness-35mm/

And submit any questions for a Hell on Earth wrap up stream and/or ep over at calls@chapotraphouse.com

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We're joined by Nimrod Flaschenberg, Michael Sappir and Jehuda to talk about Israel, protests, radical Jewish organisations and of course, Germany's weird reaction to all of that.

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In this episode, Matt sits down with Gaurav Vankataraman (Trisk Bio) to talk about how human memory is physically realized.

Where do your memories live? In the brain, right? They’re, like, imprinted there somehow? We often think of memories as analogous with recordings, like when you do an audio recording and the air vibrations get translated into an electrical signal which reorients the magnetic particles on some tape. But is that really how it works? Is the brain some tape waiting to get recorded to, or a hard drive waiting to get data written to it? We don’t exactly have definitive answers to those questions, but in this episode, our distinguished guest discusses a line of research into whether memories could be stored outside the brain, in RNA. He then notes that there is also a lot of RNA in the human brain itself, which means that a similar mechanism for storing memories could exist there as well.

This research, as it turns out, originated in some rather astonishing scientific work from the 1950s involving planarian flatworms. Planarian flatworms have the extraordinary ability to regenerate: if you cut one in half, each of the two halves can actually grow back into a new worm. At that time, there was some preliminary evidence to suggest that if a planarian flatworm learned something, and you cut it in half, when the half that didn’t have a brain grew back, it still retained what the original worm had learned. What the what? It could remember something even though it had a brand new brain? Those initial studies went through a period of being discredited, but in recent years a number of researchers have been exploring new, more rigorous evidence that something of this nature could be going on. Perhaps the flatworms could actually be storing some of their memories in their RNA or DNA, and perhaps RNA has the ability to preserve some of that information both in and outside of the brain.

In this episode, Gaurav Venkataraman argues that the RNA in the brain not responsible for making proteins (called non-coding RNA) has a specific type of mathematical structure that is particularly well-suited for transmitting information both fast and accurately. Not only that, but entities with that kind of structure transmit information more accurately the faster they transmit it. So the fact that RNA in the brain is structurally arranged in the way it is actually makes it a viable candidate for being sort of like the brain’s “software” for storing and manipulating memories.

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Chris McCausland asks a panel of comedians to live in an audio only world, deciphering brainteaser sound cues for points and pride whilst trying not to muck about too much along the way. In this episode, contestants try to figure out what on earth is being advertised on the TV, guess what famous objects or locations children are trying to describe, and work out the age of women based solely on the sound of their voice. The competing comedians are Rhys James and Donna Preston, taking on Alasdair Beckett-King and Ria Lina. Producer: Sasha Bobak Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Co-ordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Sound editor: Jerry Peal Theme music ‘Colour me Groovy’ by The Rich Morton Sound Recorded at the Backyard Comedy Club, Bethnal Green

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's lead over Desantis exploding after the indictment news, Trump en route to NYC for surrender, Asa Hutchinson enters the 2024 GOP primary race, Marianne Williamson has a surge poll despite media blackout, a Pro-Russian blogger is blown up by a bomb in St. Petersburg, Fox News on Trial facing a 1.6 billion payout, Elon Musk strips the New York Times of their Blue Checkmark, Saagar looks into how Douglas Mackey an Anti-Hillary Meme Lord was just convicted by the Biden administration, and Krystal looks into Biden letting 15 million people lose their healthcare.

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To discuss the war on whistleblowers, the U.S. government’s prosecution of Julian Assange and how the case against him poses a threat to journalism everywhere, Rania Khalek spoke to Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, co-host of the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast and author of the newly published book “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.” 

You can purchase Kevin’s book here: https://www.project-censored.org/shop/p/guilty-of-journalism-the-political-case-against-julian-assange 

Follow Kevin’s work at Shadowproof: https://shadowproof.com/ 

You can listen to every episode of Rania Khalek Dispatches anywhere you get podcasts.

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Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

When most people in the West think of the war in Ukraine, they think of February 24, 2022 when Russia launched its invasion. But for 8 years prior, there had been a war raging in the eastern part of the country that received little attention because its reality was inconvenient for mainstream Western narratives.

In the Donbas region, an estimated 15,000 people had died following what many there described as a US-backed coup in 2014 that gave rise to an anti-Russia government and helped empower far-right sentiments across Ukraine. 

To discuss the war in the Donbas, Rania Khalek was joined by Fergie Chambers of Berkshire Communists and a journalist who recently published a piece in Globetrotter about his time in the Donbas, titled “A Donbas Diary: Looking Back at Early Stages of Conflict in Ukraine.”

Fergie’s article discussed in this episode: https://www.newsclick.in/donbas-diary-looking-back-early-stages-conflict-ukraine?amp

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Thieves have made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in artillery equipment, unspecified “weapons systems,” and specialized ammunition meant for U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, according to exclusive documents obtained by The Intercept.

The thefts, which occurred on, or in transit to, far-flung U.S. outposts in the region, remain unsolved. They are just the latest evidence of a persistent problem that has allowed enemy forces from ISIS in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan to arm themselves — and even kill Americans and their foreign partners — at U.S. taxpayer expense.

The previously unreported thefts illuminate America’s shadow wars in the region, where a U.S. contractor was killed and six other Americans were wounded last week in a suicide drone assault on a U.S. base in northeast Syria. The kamikaze airstrike on the outpost known as RLZ was one of roughly 80 attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria since January 2021 that the U.S. has blamed on Iranian proxy groups. President Joe Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes in response to the latest attack “in order to protect and defend the safety of our personnel.”

The thefts and losses uncovered by The Intercept are just the latest weapons accountability woes to afflict the U.S. military in Iraq and Syria. A 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that Special Operations Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that works with America’s Syrian allies, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for those local surrogates.

Losses of weapons and ammunition are exceptionally significant — and the military has taken pains to prevent them. When the U.S. withdrew forces from an outpost near Kobani, Syria, in 2019, it conducted airstrikes on ammunition that was left behind. The military also destroyed equipment and ammunition during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Nevertheless, groups like Amnesty International and Conflict Armament Research have found, for example, that a substantial portion of the Islamic State group’s arsenal was composed of U.S.-made or U.S.-purchased weapons and ammunition captured, stolen, or otherwise obtained from the Iraqi Army and Syrian fighters.

The criminal investigations files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal evidence of at least four significant thefts and one loss of U.S. equipment — roughly $200,000 worth — in Iraq and Syria between 2020 and 2022, including 40mm high-explosive grenades stolen from U.S. Special Forces.

Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, which oversees America’s war in Iraq and Syria, does not even know the extent of the problem.

“This is shocking and tragic,” said Stephanie Savell, the co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. “These stolen weapons will circulate and intensify political and illicit violence and make it more lethal, as we’ve seen happen in other wars and conflicts.”

Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, which oversees America’s war in Iraq and Syria, does not even know the extent of the problem. The task force has no record of any thefts from U.S. forces, said a spokesperson. “[W]e do not have the requested information,” Capt. Kevin T. Livingston, CJTF-OIR’s director of public affairs told The Intercept when asked if any weapons, ammunition, or equipment were stolen in the last five years.

U.S. troops are ostensibly deployed to Iraq and Syria — alongside Iraqi Security Forces, Kurdish troops, and Syrian surrogates — to defeat ISIS, but they also increasingly fight Iran-backed militia groups in a legally murky sideshow war. Americans operate on bases where anonymity is sometimes the norm and local partners such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led group, are not always trusted. With little outside oversight or unembedded coverage of American operations, information about these conflicts is largely limited to dubious statements by U.S. commanders, military press releases, and officially sanctioned reporting. The criminal investigation files obtained by The Intercept offer a rare, unvarnished glimpse at how the U.S. wars in Iraq and Syria are actually fought.

Sometime in late 2020 or early 2021, according to the files, “multiple specialized field artillery tools and equipment” were stolen from a military vehicle while being transported to Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq. When the truck arrived at the outpost in that country’s Kurdistan region, U.S. personnel found it was missing gear valued at $87,335.35. “All probative leads were exhausted,” according to the investigation file. No suspects were identified.

In February 2021, 400 armor-piercing rounds and 42 40mm “High-Explosive Dual Purpose” grenades, which are “capable of penetrating three inches of steel,” according to the Army, were stolen from a Special Forces ammunition supply at Mission Support Site Green Village in northeast Syria. A criminal investigation found “negligent ammunition handling and accountability practices” allowed “unknown person(s) to … pilfer the ammunition,” which was valued at $3,624.64.

Sometime in July or August 2021, “five weapons systems” valued at a total of $48,115 were stolen while being transported via “ground convoy” from Mission Support Site Conoco — a base not far from Green Village — to RLZ, Syria. The weapons were taken from a shipping container. No witnesses were found nor were any leads developed.

Last January, according to the documents, thieves broke into a shipping container en route to Erbil Air Base in Iraq and stole more than $57,000 worth of unspecified military equipment and personal items. Four months later, approximately 2,100 full metal jacket rounds that can pierce body armor and three boxes of unspecified “repair parts” were loaded onto a Blackhawk helicopter at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq and flown to Erbil Air Base, where they were supposedly provided to personnel from a unit called Task Force Attack. That unit, however, claimed that they never received the ammunition, kicking off the investigation. About a month later, Task Force Attack personnel allegedly located a crate containing 1,680 rounds of the missing ammunition, but the records do not account for the remainder of the bullets and parts.

In all but the last case, Army criminal investigators determined that there was probable cause to charge those responsible with larceny of government property or government weapons — if they could only find the thieves.

The 2020 Pentagon inspector general report that detailed improper accounting for more than $700 million in equipment bought for America’s Syrian partners found that Special Operations forces did not “maintain comprehensive lists of all equipment purchased and received.” Another unit, the 1st Theater Sustainment Command, improperly stored weapons such as machine guns and grenade launchers, according to the audit. Both units “left thousands of … weapons and sensitive equipment items vulnerable to loss or theft.” Because of sloppy record keeping and security measures, 1st TSC could not even “determine whether items were lost or stolen.”

Losses of arms and ammunition have been a persistent problem for the Pentagon. By the mid-2010s, the U.S. had already lost track of hundreds of thousands of guns in Afghanistan and Iraq according to research led by Iain Overton of Action on Armed Violence, a London-based charity.

U.S. troops left behind $7 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan.

Even before the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, the Taliban had captured significant quantities of American weaponry. When U.S. troops withdrew in 2021, they left behind $7 billion worth of military equipment. The results have sometimes been disastrous. From Afghanistan to Iraq, these U.S.-supplied weapons were turned on U.S. allies and likely even on American troops.

“Every single one of these weapons that will be provided to our partner forces will be accounted for and pointed at #ISIS,” CJTF-OIR pledged in a 2017 tweet. But CJTF-OIR does not seem to have any information about the thefts, let alone a certainty that American weapons and ammunition stolen between 2020 to 2022 have not been turned on U.S. forces or their partners.

The U.S. military has a long history of cover-ups regarding weapons losses. A 2021 Associated Press investigation found that “at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes” and that the “U.S. Army has hidden or downplayed the extent to which its firearms disappear, significantly understating losses and thefts … [a] pattern of secrecy and suppression [that] dates back nearly a decade.”

CJTF-OIR’s lack of records and transparency make it impossible to know how often U.S. weapons have been lost or stolen in Syria and Iraq and if those arms have been used against U.S. troops or their allies, but Savell of the Costs of War Project fears history will repeat itself. “More people will be injured and killed as a result,” she said of the thefts documented in the criminal investigation files. “This is yet another reverberating consequence of having U.S. military operations in so many overseas locations.”

The post Thieves Rip Off U.S. Weapons as Shadow War in Syria Escalates appeared first on The Intercept.

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“It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever witnessed in my life. I’ve never come across this amount of misinformation.”

The Middle East, known geographically correct as West Asia, is fogged with years of propaganda and misinformation, lies told to us from within and out. And from just reading western media, the perspective of the region is wholly different than what’s really going on.

But Sharmine Narwani, columnist at The Cradle, is actually there, interviewing people in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and more, discovering the real story of West Asia. And now she’s sharing her findings with Useful Idiots.

She explains the truth about the war in Syria and the propaganda coming out of it, lamenting that “a picture is no longer worth a thousand words.” She shares the unreported stories of the women in Iran and the truth about hijab laws. And she reveals a truth about Israel that isn’t told by the protective US media: “Israel is being hit from all sides. It’s so deeply fractured from within.”

It’s a chance to learn about a culturally-rich region, outside the veil of western propaganda. Watch the full interview with Sharmine Narwani on the US’s “no values” policy on dictators in the region, the truth about the morality police in Iran, and the lie of the US fight against ISIS in Syria.

Plus, watch this week’s Thursday Throwdown about Aaron’s testimony at the United Nations: “Aaron Maté vs British Diplomat at UN.”

And join the Absurd Arena live discussion board with Katie and Aaron every Tuesday at 12pm est in the Substack app.

Watch the full interview here:

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At a United Nations meeting that addressed a Syria cover-up scandal at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Aaron Maté of The Grayzone responds to a challenge from British diplomat Thomas Phipps. Support Pushback: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate