Just eight states still require high school students to pass an exit exam in order to graduate. So why did a policy that once commanded bipartisan support fall by the wayside? And what accounts for the seeming paradox that the public turned against high-stakes tests for students while continuing to support high-stakes tests for schools? Special guests Ethan Hutt and Katie McDermott help guide us through the complex and ever-evolving world of high-stakes testing. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast

Benjamin Ferencz died last week at the age of 103. Ferencz was the last surviving member of the team of prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, which led to the convictions of many top Nazi officials and since been understood as the exemplar of justice for war crimes.

Ferencz served in the U.S. Army during the war and in its aftermath investigated the conditions at the Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau concentration camps. He spent the rest of his life advocating for the creation of an international criminal court and accountability for war criminals generally.

These facts appear in his obituaries. What’s missing from all of them in major outlets — including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, and the Associated Press — is Ferencz’s belief that top members of the George W. Bush administration, including Bush himself, should have been tried for war crimes for the Iraq War.

This is not obscure, difficult-to-obtain information. In 2002, the Times published a letter to the editor from Ferencz stating that “a preemptive military strike [on Iraq] not authorized by the Security Council would clearly violate the UN Charter that legally binds all nations.” In December 2003, Ferencz said in an interview, “The invasion by the U.S. of Iraq, I think, would also qualify under the Nuremberg principles as a violation of international law. … If you’re going to have that kind of a factual situation as we have in Iraq, I think the first trial should be a trial which is absolutely fair and should include all the principle perpetrators and planners of the crimes which occurred.” Ferencz wrote the foreword to a 2009 book titled “George W. Bush, War Criminal?: The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes.” He also wrote the foreword for another book, “Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.”

Yet the Times published an almost-2,000 word obituary for Ferencz without mentioning this. It somehow includes the sentence, “Critics say the [International Criminal Court] has focused on prosecutions in Africa while American wars have not even been investigated,” without mentioning that one of the most vociferous critics of this was Ferencz.

The Post’s obituary for Ferencz is 1,500 words long and mentions that after Nuremberg, he “devoted much of the rest of his life to the cause of international justice.” It also quotes Ferencz at Nuremberg as saying, “Death was their tool and life their toy. If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning, and man must live in fear.” But there’s nothing about Iraq.

The BBC informs us that “[i]n his later years, he became a professor of international law and campaigned for an international court that could prosecute the leaders of governments found to have committed war crimes, writing several books on the subject.” There’s no mention of Iraq and Bush.

Ferencz’s Iraq perspective also goes unmentioned in Reuters. The Guardian found space to tell us, “Guided by his motto, ‘Law, Not War,’ Ferencz was still giving television interviews last year – arguing that those responsible for atrocities in Ukraine must be brought to trial.” His words about Iraq do not appear anywhere.

CNN likewise mentions Ferencz’s words on Ukraine, but not Iraq. NPR said nothing about Iraq not once, but twice. The list continues with CBS, Bloomberg, the New York Daily News, the Guardian again, the Associated Press, UPI, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Le Monde, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and the New York Sun.

Yahoo News does manage to say that Ferencz’s principles led him to “strongly criticize the George W. Bush administration for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for what he described as a refusal to abide by international norms.” However, there’s no information indicating that Ferencz thought Bush & Co. should be tried.

The media’s erasure of Ferencz’s views is especially distressing given his lifelong emphasis on the importance of remembering the past. In a speech just as the Iraq War commenced, Ferencz reminded the audience that the United Nations charter is “international law binding on all nations. We owe it to the memory of the dead to honor these commitments to peace.”

One thing worth remembering in this context are the famous opening remarks at Nuremberg by Robert Jackson, the chief justice:

If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. And we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.

Sadly, by the end of Ferencz’s life, he understood why Jackson’s confidence was misplaced and might not be surprised by the glaring omissions in his obituaries. “No country that prefers to use its power rather than the rule of law will vote for the rule of law, it’s logical,” he said in a recent documentary. “There are some people who do not trust the rule of law, and they prefer to use military power to achieve their goals as they decide, when they decide. That’s led by the United States. … War will make mass murderers out of otherwise decent people. … It’s inevitable, whether they are Americans, or they’re Germans, or anybody else.”

The post Obituaries for Nuremberg Prosecutor Erase His Beliefs About the U.S. appeared first on The Intercept.

Democracy Now! 2023-04-12 Wednesday

• Headlines for April 12, 2023
• "Terrorism from the Sky": Burmese Junta Bombs Civilians, Killing 100, Escalating Attack on Resistance
• Filipino Activist Condemns U.S. Military Drills, Warns That War with China Would Devastate Philippines
• Leaked Pentagon Docs Show U.S. & U.K. Special Forces Already in Ukraine as War Heads to Stalemate

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Democracy Now! 2023-04-11 Tuesday

• Headlines for April 11, 2023
• No Justin, No Peace: Expelled TN Rep. Justin Jones Reinstated After Unanimous Nashville Council Vote
• "Devastating": GOP Texas Gov. Moves to Pardon Man Convicted of Murdering Black Lives Matter Protester
• "Spyfail" Author James Bamford: What Leaked Pentagon Docs Show About Ukraine War, U.S. Spying on Allies

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Before 2011, Syria was a relatively stable country that had decent electricity, one of the best medical sectors in the region and produced much of its own food and medicine. Today Syria has collapsing infrastructure, dire food insecurity, crippling fuel shortages, severe brain drain and only has control over part of the country’s territory. Mainstream US media places all the blame on President Assad while covering up the role of US sanctions. 

To discuss the decades-long US war on Syria, Rania Khalek was joined by Greg Shupak, author of the book “The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media” published by OR books. Greg also has a chapter in the book “Sanctions As War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy,” which was published by Brill and Haymarket.

You can find the book here: https://brill.com/display/title/61285?language=en 

New details about Clarence Thomas’ billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow keep coming to light, forcing us to contemplate new questions like: What do Lenin, Mao and Hagrid’s Hut have in common? And, do Hitler’s napkins force us to confront the evil in the hearts of men? We contemplate this plus: DeSantis flails, Kanye’s school has no stairs, and the Dalai Lama sucks tongue. All this and more on today’s ep.

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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Before it collapsed and its billionaire depositors were bailed out by the US government, Silicon Valley Bank successfully lobbied Congress to remove regulations on it. A senator admitted, “I understand why Americans are angry, even disgusted”. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-OwLg5odg5k Sources and more information here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/04/09/silicon-valley-bank-bailout-billionaires-corruption US government bailout of Silicon Valley and banks is $300B gift to rich oligarchs: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/19/fed-bailout-silicon-valley-banks Why 3 US banks collapsed in 1 week: Economist Michael Hudson explains: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/14/us-banks-collapsed-economist-michael-hudson

Krystal and Saagar discuss a massive trove of leaked documents released to us that show inner details on Ukraine War, China's Red Lines on the Ukraine War, and how Mossad worked to foment the protests in Israel, the Pentagon racing to censor the leaks, Elon declaring war on SubStack and Matt Taibbi by removing Substack links from Twitter, did the Texas BLM Shooter act in self defense, Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene battle for Trump's affection, Saagar looks into how Jon Stewart destroyed a Pentagon official on their Failed Audits, and Krystal looks into how the Abortion Pill question melted a Republican Rep's brains.

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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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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

And subscribe to his very good Substack here: https://ettingermentum.substack.com/

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