Tom Roche

Ryan and Emily fill in for Breaking Points to discuss China's zero Covid, Twitter File controversy, immigration reform, chaos in Peru, a foiled coup in Germany, guilty verdict for Trump organization and MORE!

To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/

To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and Spotify

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl 

Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/

Ryan Grim: https://badnews.substack.com/ 

Emily Jashinsky: https://thefederalist.com/author/emilyjashinsky/ 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our panel of astute observers as they take us on an tour of the highs and lows of 2022.  Guests: James Schloeffel - founder and head writer at satirical news website The Shovel and one of the stars of the live show War on 2022. Amy Remeikis - Guardian Australia's political reporter and the author of the bestselling book, On Reckoning.  Dana Morse – Federal political reporter, ABC. Rick Morton - The Saturday Paper’s senior reporter. Award-winning author of three non-fiction books- 100 Years of Dirt, On Money and My Year of Living Vulnerably.

Today someone asked in OCaml’s Discord “How do you call a variable that refers to a filename without its extension?”. I always thought there was no specific term for this and I always named such variables filename-sans-extension (or similar), but it turns out I was wrong. It’s never too late to learning something new! But first a bit of (subjective) terminology:

• /path/to/some_file.foo - filepath
• /path/to - directory
• some_file.foo - filename/basename
• foo - extension
• some_file - ???

I hope that makes things clear. Now we can proceed!

So what’s the term we’re looking for? Turns out it’s stem and it’s present in a few popular programming languages:

• C++ (std::filesystem lib)
• Python
• Rust

Why stem? While I can’t be sure I’d say it’s either a nod to the tree terminology that’s pretty pervasive when we’re talking about directories, or a nod to linguistics:

In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question.

If I had to guess - probably the term originated with C++, given it’s the oldest language I could find that’s using it. If someone knows the origin of the stem terminology, please do share! At any rate - I kind of like it and I’ll probably use stem or the more descriptive file_stem going forward.

That’s all I have for you today. Keep hacking!

Advising Brazil’s President-elect Lula, Ecuadorian economist and leftist presidential candidate Andrés Arauz made a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” to unite Latin America, including an international currency to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar and IMF. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4acHVf_rnJ8 Sources here: https://multipolarista.com/2022/12/01/latin-america-us-dollar-currency Brazil’s Lula proposes creating Latin American currency to ‘be freed of US dollar’ dependency: https://multipolarista.com/2022/05/04/brazil-lula-latin-america-currency-us-dollar

The dominant political story emanating from Washington, D.C., these days centers around the battles between the Trumpist movement and the bipartisan “adults in the room” caucus — the Democratic Party and fragments of the Republican Party consisting of lawmakers and politicians who have affirmed the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Often obscured by the media focus on this clash is the enduring influence of a long-standing faction of the U.S. power structure: the bipartisan war caucus. Throughout the Trump and Biden administrations, the U.S. has been on an escalating trajectory toward a new Cold War featuring the prime adversaries from the original, Russia and China. The ratcheted-up rhetoric from U.S. politicians — combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between China and Taiwan, and Beijing’s major advancements and investments in weapons systems and war technology — has heralded a bonanza for the defense industry.

Congress will soon vote on a record-shattering $857 billion defense spending bill that authorizes $45 billion more than Biden requested. Included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, finalized on December 6, is the establishment of a multiyear no-bid contract system through which Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other weapons manufacturers are being empowered to expand their “industrial base” and business. Lawmakers determined that “providing multi-year procurement authority for certain munitions programs is essential,” in part because it will “provide the defense industrial base with predictable production opportunities and firm contractual commitments” to “increase and expand defense industrial capacity.”

The NDAA authorizes $800 million in new military aid to Ukraine, which is separate from the supplemental funding measures the U.S. has implemented since Russia’s invasion. The unprecedented flow of weapons to Ukraine has included a substantial transfer of weapons from the U.S. stockpile, amounting to approximately $10 billion worth of weapons. U.S. lawmakers have used this fact to push for expanding the scope of not only weapons procurements to “replenish” the arsenal, but also to maintain the pipeline of weapons to Ukraine and European-allied nations through at least the end of 2024. The defense industry position is that such multiyear acquisitions are preferable to emergency surge-demand scenarios, in part because such contracts allow for a long-term expansion of production facilities and increased workforce. It appears that Congress is heading in that direction.

On November 30, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. Army had awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Raytheon to produce six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems “in support of the efforts in Ukraine.” The estimated completion date was listed as November 2025. The next day, the Defense Department announced a $431 million contract for Lockheed to produce M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers to replenish those transferred to Kyiv. In November, Lockheed also received a $521 million contract to resupply the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems given to Ukraine.

The lion’s share of major defense contracts goes to a handful of companies: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. The Pentagon routinely engages in no-bid contracts or awards contracts that are, by default, single-bid contracts. What lawmakers are seeking to do with the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, however, is to extend that practice to the refilling of weapons stockpiles. The legislation would empower the Pentagon to engage in no-bid contracts to replenish arms supplies if the weapons were transferred “in response to an armed attack by a foreign adversary of the United States.” While the legislation specifically refers to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it could also apply to officially designated adversaries such as China, Iran, Cuba, or North Korea. The NDAA authorizes more than $2.7 billion in new funds to “boost munitions production capacity.” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante recently said the Pentagon has already put into contract $4 billion worth of deals “to replenish our inventories of equipment we have sent to Ukraine.”

The war industry is clearly elated. “We spend a lot of money on some very exquisite large systems and we do not spend as much on the munitions necessary to support those,” said Raytheon’s CEO Gregory Hayes at the recent Reagan National Defense Forum. “We have not had a priority on fulfilling the war reserves that we need to fight a long-term battle.” Politico reported that discussions at the forum, which featured defense company CEOs, members of Congress, and U.S. military officials, identified China as the greatest “long-term threat.” But the China focus “was eclipsed by the need to kick into much higher gear to tackle a problem that many here didn’t imagine just a year ago: a hot proxy war with Russia in Ukraine that has sent the Pentagon and the defense industry scrambling.” Noting recent moves by Congress to increase munitions production, the U.S. Army’s top weapons buyer, Doug Bush, said, “I think we’re closer to a wartime mode, which has been something I’ve been working on to build.”

In pushing their case for expanding the weapons acquisitions process, some lawmakers are striking somber notes about the danger of depleting the U.S. arsenal. “Our nation’s ability to defend itself should never suffer because of bureaucratic policies and red tape,” declared Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. “As the United States continues to lead the global military aid response to Ukraine amid Putin’s unprovoked war, it has become increasingly critical that we simultaneously ensure the sustainment of our defensive weapons stockpile while also providing the materials our allies and partners need to defend themselves,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who spearheaded the no-bid procurement legislation. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., asserted that the “lethal aid provided to Ukraine has diminished U.S. stockpiles and left defense contractors with uncertainty on timing and orders for backfill, negatively affecting their ability to quickly ramp up production.” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the legislation would ensure that “helping our allies and partners doesn’t diminish our ability to protect ourselves.”

There is no actual shortage of defensive weapons in the U.S.

This rhetoric is largely a parlor game. There is no actual shortage of defensive weapons in the U.S. The “stockpile” is based on U.S. war-gaming theory and preparation for various imagined future wars and simultaneous campaigns. Ultimately, this NDAA would represent the latest narrative triumph for the hawks who falsely complained that Bill Clinton and the Democrats had gravely endangered America by “gutting” defense spending in the 1990s. Declaring war against the threats posed by nation states like Russia and China is a far better vehicle to sell large-scale defense spending than Osama bin Laden or the Islamic State group, in part because it justifies massive expenditures on the most expensive weapons systems.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains a central focus, the appetite for countering China’s own expansive weapons and technology development is on track to grow for years to come. The 2023 NDAA expands military support for Taiwan with a five-year package worth up to $10 billion in financing to purchase U.S. weapons, as well as a contingency fund of up to $100 million a year through 2032 to maintain a munitions stockpile. It also provides for running “wargames that allow operational commands to improve joint and combined war planning for contingencies involving a well-equipped adversary in a counter-intervention campaign” and exercises that “develop the lethality and survivability of combined forces against” China. Under the NDAA, the Pentagon would develop a plan “to expedite military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a crisis or conflict.” All of this is aimed at maintaining “the capacity of the United States to resist a fait accompli that would jeopardize the security of the people on Taiwan” by deterring China from using force to “invade and seize control of Taiwan before the United States can respond effectively.”

Since taking office, Biden has stewarded the multi-administration expansion of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. In September, he approved a new round of more than $1 billion in weapons, the largest authorization Biden has made since taking office. In its October 12 National Security Strategy, the White House claimed that “Russia’s strategic limitations have been exposed following its war of aggression against Ukraine” and designated China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.” It asserted that China “presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge.” While noting that “Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally,” the White House report said Russia “lacks the across the spectrum capabilities of” China.

“This Isn’t Just Another Airplane”

On the evening of Friday, December 2, in a ceremony attended by senior U.S. officials, members of Congress, and industry executives, Northrop Grumman unveiled the Pentagon’s next-generation nuclear-capable strategic bomber, the B-21 Raider. The first new stealth bomber produced in more than 30 years, the Raider “will form the backbone of the future Air Force bomber force.” The $700 million bat-winged aircraft will be capable of both manned and unmanned operations, and a first flight is scheduled for 2023. The Pentagon reportedly plans to build at least 100 of the warplanes, with an estimated cost of $32 billion, including research and development, through 2027.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with an almost religious reverence for the nuclear bomber as a large tarp was pulled from its body in a sort of baptismal ceremony at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. “This isn’t just another airplane. It’s not just another acquisition. It is a symbol and a source of the fighting spirit that President Reagan spoke of,” Austin said. “It’s the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that we all love.” He declared that “50 years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft. Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky,” adding, “This bomber will be able to defend our country with new weapons that haven’t even been invented yet.” Prior to his nomination to be defense secretary, Austin served on the board of Raytheon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin should be given some scraps of credit for aiding the U.S. war party. His decision to invade Ukraine helped obliterate the (admittedly paltry) roadblocks to even more massive payouts to war corporations. For many D.C. politicians, the Ukraine war is not just the U.S. coming to the aid of a victim of aggression by a U.S. adversary; the endeavor also emits a strong scent of domestic political dynamics involving Donald Trump and the allegations that his 2016 election was part of a Russian Manchurian candidate operation. With Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January, it seems that all these factors will begin to converge in a carnival of congressional hearings. Presumptive House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged to bring oversight to Ukraine expenditures. But when pressed, he has made clear that his promise to end the “blank check” for Ukraine does not alter his fundamental support for arming and aiding Kyiv.

For months, Trumpist political figures in the House, led by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been pushing legislation to “audit” the Ukraine aid spending. While it is difficult to take Greene seriously for a volcanic flow of reasons, including her own purchase of as much as $15,000 in Lockheed Martin stock two days before the Russian invasion in February, there is a reasonable case to make for investigating the money being spent, the weapons flowing to Kyiv, and who is ultimately benefiting. “As of early November, U.S. monitors had performed just two in-person inspections since the war began in February — accounting for about 10 percent of the 22,000 U.S.-provided weapons,” according to the Washington Post. The Biden administration, the paper reported, has said it does not want to send inspectors to the front lines in Ukraine because the inspectors would likely require armed guards, potentially creating “a situation that risks being interpreted by the Kremlin as direct American involvement in the war.”

On Tuesday, Greene’s resolution, which would have required the Biden administration to hand over all documents related to Ukraine spending within 14 days, failed to pass the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee. Democrats, who united to block the proposal, portrayed the resolution as undermining the war effort against Russia. “This is not the time for us to be divided,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Democratic chair of the committee. “We’ve held together with NATO and the E.U. and our allies. Let’s not fall into this trap.” While the loudest opponents of Ukraine aid on Capitol Hill have been far-right Republicans — many but not all aligned with Trump — Greene’s resolution showed that more mainstream Republicans are getting on board the audit train ahead of January when the GOP takes control of the House. Most Republicans support Biden’s Ukraine weapons transfers, with some saying they would back a Ukraine audit “because it did not claw back any current or future funding for Ukraine.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a supporter of the Ukraine war cause, led a successful bipartisan effort to include some oversight provisions in the NDAA. The bill would require the Pentagon’s inspector general to report to Congress any and all efforts to oversee and track the weapons and other aid delivered to Ukraine. The Senate Armed Services Committee described the authority in the bill as requiring “a report on the framework the Inspectors General have adopted to oversee U.S. assistance to Ukraine and whether there are any gaps in oversight or funding for such activities.” It requires the inspector general by next March to present congressional defense committees “with a comprehensive briefing on the status and findings of Inspector General oversight, reviews, audits, and inspections of the activities conducted by the Department of Defense responds [sic] to Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”

Throughout the year, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been pushing for a special inspector general to oversee Ukraine spending and temporarily delayed a Ukraine spending measure in May to prove his point. “You shouldn’t shove all $40 billion out the door without any oversight,” Paul said. “And having a special inspector general, we did it in Afghanistan — it didn’t stop all the waste — it at least makes the thieves think twice about stealing the money.” In May, 57 House Republicans and 11 Senate Republicans voted against the Ukraine spending bill. No Democrats voted against the measure.

The Biden White House has shown no sign of pumping the brakes on Ukraine spending and arms transfers. Biden also has made clear he intends to push ahead with the aggressive U.S. military buildup in preparation for future conflict with China, a position with widespread backing across the aisle. With a divided Congress, the 2024 elections looming, and the Trump question hovering over it all, a lot of the Democrats’ legislative agenda will be tough to implement after the new year. But the short and long-term future looks bright for the Russia and China hawks, the defense industry, and its Democratic and Republican patrons on Capitol Hill. On these matters, bipartisanship remains alive and well. The House could vote on the NDAA as soon as this week, and the Senate is expected to swiftly follow suit to get the bill to Biden’s desk.

The post The War Caucus Always Wins appeared first on The Intercept.

For this episode we are talking to Ghraim and Max of Brödrafolkens Podd because Sweden had an election recently and have a new government. Also Ally McBeal.

FIND OUR GUESTS:
https://twitter.com/brodrafolkens
https://twitter.com/ghraim
https://twitter.com/railtragedy

HOW TO SUPPORT US:
https://www.patreon.com/cornerspaeti

HOW TO REACH US:
Corner Späti https://twitter.com/cornerspaeti
Julia https://twitter.com/KMarxiana
Rob https://twitter.com/leninkraft
Nick https://twitter.com/sternburgpapi
Uma https://twitter.com/umawrnkl
Ciarán https://twitter.com/CiaranDold

Support Corner Späti

In his new book Nomads: The wanderers who shaped our world journalist Anthony Sattin chronicles the contributions that nomads have made to human progress and development and celebrates a way of life that has long been overlooked or, worse, vilified.  Guest: Anthony Sattin - British journalist, broadcaster and author. His latest book is Nomads: The wanderers who shaped our world published in Australia by Hachette.

EU leaders are furious that the US is making lots of money from the proxy war in Ukraine by selling weapons and exporting expensive natural gas. Meanwhile European industries are being destroyed as high energy prices and US subsidies push its companies to go overseas. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=N3wWaoOtVZI Sources in our article here: https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/28/europe-us-profits-ukraine-war-economy

It is not clear from Ivanka Trump’s Instagram record of her family’s three-day visit to the World Cup in Qatar if she or her husband, Jared Kushner, heard any of the chants and songs in support of the Palestinians voiced by Arab fans at multiple venues during the first round of matches.

But the outpouring of support — which was also expressed on huge “Free Palestine” banners displayed in the stands, and by fans who intruded on Israeli television interviews to wave Palestinian flags and berate Israeli reporters — made it clear how badly Kushner had miscalculated, as his father-in-law Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, when he convinced a handful of Arab autocrats to sign economic cooperation deals with Israel that did not respect the rights of Palestinians.

Hours after 5 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, Arab fans at the World Cup in Qatar chanted (in Arabic) “With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, O Palestine” https://t.co/94S6fYrnxv

— Yumna (@yumna_patel) November 29, 2022

In his White House memoir, “Breaking History,” Kushner claims to have orchestrated “a true turning point in history” when “five Muslim-majority countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco and Sudan — signed peace agreements with Israel.”

According to Kushner, whose agenda seemed to be dictated from the start by his old family friend, Benjamin Netanyahu, the agreements he brokered with nations that were never central to the conflict “have the potential to bring about the complete end of the Arab-Israeli conflict that has existed ever since the founding of the State of Israel.”

Despite Kushner’s inflated claims, it was clear from the start that there was little public support in the Arab world for any nation to make peace with Israel while millions of Palestinians still live under Israeli military rule.

Survey data from 2020, when Morocco agreed to sign the deal — in exchange for the Trump administration recognizing the kingdom’s sovereignty over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara — showed that 88 percent of Moroccans rejected diplomatic recognition of Israel. Polls conducted the same year showed that 89 percent of Tunisians and 88 percent of Qataris agreed that “the Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs.” Just 6 percent of Saudis surveyed said they would support recognition of Israel.

"To our beloved Palestine, the most beautiful of all countries"

Morocco World Cup fans sing in solidarity with Palestine in Qatar. The North African country went on to beat Belgium today in a historic 2-0 win, their first World Cup victory in 24 years pic.twitter.com/Ir2iEtZsp3

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 27, 2022

Broad support for a continued boycott of Israel was clear when the tournament kicked off, and social networks were flooded with video of fans from across the Arab world rejecting the emirate’s own tentative step toward normalizing relations with Israel: its decision to allow Israeli journalists to report on the tournament.

When approached by an Israeli channel covering the @FIFAWorldCup in Doha, this Qatari made his stance on normalisation very clear.

Qatar has refused to normalise with Israel as long as it continues its occupation of Palestine. pic.twitter.com/SIgrk3tl92

— Doha News (@dohanews) November 18, 2022

"It's Filisteen, FILISTEEN"

A Lebanese visitor to Qatar corrects Israeli journalist on his poor geography. #Qatar2022 #Lebanon #Palestine #FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/anpb6DVGRh

— Robert Carter (@Bob_cart124) November 21, 2022

The fact that even fans of Morocco, one of the five nations that signed Kushner’s “Abraham Accords,” were unwilling to appear on Israeli TV seemed to baffle one Israeli reporter. “But we have peace, huh?” the journalist yelled, as the Moroccan fans walked off and shouted support for Palestine. “You signed the peace agreement!”

A thread of World Cup fans refusing to engage with Isr@eli reporters:

1. Reporter: “BUT YOU SIGN PISS, YOU SIGN PISS, YOU SIGN PISS AGREEMENT” pic.twitter.com/QGQWnE1cDh

— Jennine (@jennineak) November 26, 2022

One of the most watched clips to come out of the World Cup’s opening round showed a Saudi fan telling a reporter for Israel’s public broadcaster, in English, “There is only Palestine! There is no Israel!”

???? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ???????? "??? ???? ??????? ???? ?????? ???" …. "??? ??? ???? ?? ???" pic.twitter.com/1fLzuhRGiM

— Haitham El-Tabei ??????? (@Haithamtabei) November 26, 2022

“Israeli reporters realizing that their country is despised by Arabs is hilarious and informative,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, an Israeli-Palestinian think tank based in Jerusalem, observed on Twitter. “They actually thought that if they normalize with Arab authoritarian regimes it means Arabs will forget Israeli oppression of Palestinians.”

Linah Alsaafin, a Palestinian journalist who has worked for Qatar’s state-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera, pointed out that Raz Shechnik of the Israeli news site Yedioth Ahronoth had shared a compilation of clips of his failed interviews with Arab fans — including the tense exchange with the Moroccan fans. (The interviews are almost all in English, even though Shechnik’s Twitter caption is in Hebrew.)

?? ?????, ??? ?????

?????, ?? ????? ????? ?? ?????? ????. ???? ????? ??? ?????, ?????????, ?? ??????. ??? ?? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ?????? ??? ???????????. ??? ???? ???? ???? ?????, ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ?? ????? ????? ???. ?? ???????? ??????. ????? ??????? ??????, ?????> pic.twitter.com/nMTApXtBWb

— Raz Shechnik (@RazShechnik) November 26, 2022

In one revealing exchange, as Shechnik suggests that the problem is between “only governments,” not people, a man holding a Palestinian flag says, “There’s nothing called Israel. It’s only Palestine. And you just took the land from them. … Bro, there is nothing called Israel. Israel does not exist.”

In an ensuing thread on his experiences in Qatar, Alsaafin wrote, Shechnik “demonstrated his delusion in thinking Arabs in particular would be welcoming just [because] some of their governments normalised relations with Israel.”

“Israeli journalists say they were surprised at the level of enmity that they faced in Qatar at the World Cup,” Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist, added. “I am surprised that they are surprised since what they are doing daily in Palestine is all over the world media (except in Israel maybe) but every action has a reaction.”

As the Reuters Qatar correspondent Andrew Mills reported, while Qatari authorities permitted displays of support for the Palestinians, they cracked down hard on other forms of protest — like refusing to allow fans to wear rainbow-colored hats, shirts, or even watch straps into matches (to prevent shows of support for LGBTQ+ rights in a country where same-sex relationships are criminalized), and tackling and arresting Iranians who wore T-shirts with the words, “Women Life Freedom,” to support women’s rights in Iran.

One of the oddest aspects of Kushner’s boast about the Abraham Accords as a Middle East peace deal was the fact that the non-Arab nation of Kosovo was included as a signatory. Kosovo, which is in the Balkans and not the Middle East, is a former province of Serbia where ethnic Albanian Muslims make up a majority. The republic did not strike a peace deal with Israel — for the very good reason that it had never been at war with Israel — but did agree to open an embassy in Jerusalem as part of an economic deal with Serbia brokered by the Trump White House and signed in Kushner’s presence.

Even though there was only a brief mention of Israel in the agreement signed by Kosovo’s prime minister in Washington in September 2020, and the economic cooperation with Serbia it enshrined was minor, Trump described it at a campaign event that month as a “major breakthrough” that — along with the deals between Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE — might help him win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump on ?? – ?? deal

"We are stopping MASS KILLINGS between Kosovo and Serbia. They have been killing each other for so many [years]."

"Stop Killing', I said 'fellas, let's get together."

"You know, they've been doing it for hundreds of years frankly under different names," pic.twitter.com/JSpicEGroz

— kos_data (@kos_data) September 20, 2020

“We’re stopping mass killings between Kosovo and Serbia,” Trump told supporters in North Carolina, inaccurately describing an economic agreement between two nations that stopped fighting more than 20 years earlier. “They are going to stop killing.”

While Kosovo did not qualify for the World Cup, tensions over the nation’s frozen conflict with Serbia — which still refuses to recognize its independence — were in evidence at a match between the Serbian national team and that of Switzerland, which features two stars whose families are refugees from Kosovo.

Before the match, a social media photograph of the Serbian dressing room showed a flag hanging above the lockers of the players with an old map of Serbia, showing Kosovo as part of their territory, and the slogan “No surrender!”

The @FFK_KS is a full member of @FIFAcom.

Serbia's chauvinistic rhetoric against the Rep.of Kosova through sport, and within official facilities is an aggressive act against human and sportsmanship values, and must be condemned.

Taking no measures is a loud act in itself. pic.twitter.com/XbFPxXTmGP

— Daulina (@DaulinaOsmani) November 25, 2022

During the match, which Switzerland won, with a goal from one of the Kosovan-Swiss players and a commanding performance by the other, ultranationalist Serb fans could be heard chanting death threats and slurs at ethnic Albanians.

Update: December 4, 2022, 9:20 pm ET
After this article was published, an English fan ended a live interview on Israeli television, in which he assured a reporter that England would bring the World Cup home, by saying, “But more importantly, Free Palestine!”

The post How Jared Kushner Lost at the World Cup in Qatar appeared first on The Intercept.

The US and Europe have tried to make Africa a battleground in their Cold War against Russia and China. They‘ve even labeled Africa as NATO’s “Southern Neighborhood” and are using AFRICOM as a mechanism to control the continent under the guise of protecting it from malign Chinese and Russian influence.

What does this mean for sovereignty and independence across Africa and how are African countries pushing back?  To help break it all down Rania Khalek was joined by Mikaela Nhondo Erskog, a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research and a member of No Cold War and the Dongsheng News Collective.

Article discussed in the episode: Africa Does Not Want to Be a Breeding Ground for the New Cold War

https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/africa-new-cold-war/ 

Listen to every episode of Rania Khalek Dispatches anywhere you get podcasts.

Apple: https://apple.co/3zeYpeW 

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3za9DRK

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches. They're joined by Colin Hoult, Laura Lexx and Jordan Gray.

Anna Mann (Colin Hoult) shares advice about the cost of living crisis, Laura Lexx looks ahead to Prince Harry’s autobiography, and musical guest Jordan Gray debunks a controversy about Mr Potato Head.

The show was written by the cast with additional material from Rebecca Bain, Laura Major, Nathan Cowley and Jade Gebbie.

Voice actors: Luke Kempner and Katie Norris

Sound: Marc Willcox & Gary Newman Executive Producer: James Robinson Producer: Rajiv Karia Production Coordinator: Sarah Nicholls

A BBC Studios Production

Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

Senior Crypto-correspondent Ben McKenzie stops by to catch up on the FTX collapse and SBF’s downfall. We also take a look at the general state of crypto, the fate of crypto holders, political complicity in the industry, and more.

You can pre-order Ben and Jacob Silverman’s new book on Crypto now: https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/easy-money

Get bonus content on Patreon

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 

The New York Times has found another neo-Nazi militia to fawn over in Ukraine. The Bratstvo battalion “gave access to the New York Times to report on two recent riverine operations,” which culminated in a piece (11/21/22) headlined “On the River at Night, Ambushing Russians.”

Since the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014, establishment media have either minimized the far-right ideology that guides many Ukrainian nationalist detachments or ignored it  completely.

Anti-war outlets, including FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeatedly highlighted this dynamic—particularly regarding corporate media’s lionization of the Azov battalion, once widely recognized by Western media as a fascist militia, now sold to the public as a reformed far-right group that gallantly defends the sovereignty of a democratic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org,  10/6/22).

That is when Azov’s political orientation is discussed at all, which has become less and less common since Russia launched its invasion in February.

‘Christian Taliban’

The lesser-known Bratstvo battalion, within which the Times embedded its reporters, is driven by several far-right currents—none of which are mentioned in the article.

Bratstvo was founded as a political organization in 2004 by Dmytro Korchynsky, who previously led the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Korchynsky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s paramilitary wing, is a Holocaust denier who falsely blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and peddled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrmacht.” He has stated that he sees Bratstvo as a “Christian Taliban” (Intercept, 3/18/15).

In the 1980s, the Times portrayed the religious extremists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiving US training and arms—as a heroic bulwark against Soviet expansionism. We all know how that worked out.

In an echo of that propaganda campaign, the Times neglected to tell its readers about the neo-Nazi and theocratic politics of the Bratstvo battalion. Why should anyone care who else Bratstvo members would like to see dead, so long as they’re operating in furtherance of US policymakers’ stated aim of weakening Russia?

Modern-day crusade

The article’s author, Carlotta Gall, recounted Bratstvo’s Russian-fighting exploits in quasi-religious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hinted at the unit’s guiding ideology came in the form of mythologizing the unit’s Christian devotion.

Of Bratstvo fighters embarking on a mission, Gall wrote, “They recited a prayer together, then loaded up the narrow rubber dinghies and set out, hunched silent figures in the dark.” Referring to battalion commander Oleksiy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost mythical renown for surviving close combat with Russian troops.”

The piece even featured a photograph showing militia members gathered in prayer. Evoking the notion of pious soldiers rather than that of a “Christian Taliban,” the caption read, “Members of the Bratstvo battalion’s special forces unit prayed together before going on a night operation.”

The Times also gave voice to some of the loftier aims of Bratstvo’s crusade, quoting Serediuk’s musing that, “We all dream about going to Chechnya, and the Kremlin, and as far as the Ural Mountains.” Nazi racial ideologues have long been enamored by the prospect of reaching the Urals, which they view as the natural barrier separating European culture from the Asiatic hordes.

While plotting Operation Barbarossa, Hitler identified the Urals as the eastern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, referring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid European Russia of Asiatic “untermenschen” so the land could be settled by hundreds of millions of white Europeans, Himmler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way forward little by little to the Urals.”

‘Mindset of the 13th century’

The only two Bratstvo members named in the piece, meanwhile, are Serediuk and Vitaliy Chorny. While Chorny—who the Times identified as the battalion’s head of intelligence gathering—is quoted, his statements are limited to descriptions of the unit’s fighting strategy. Serediuk’s recorded utterances are similarly lacking in substance.

Far more illuminating is an Al Jazeera article (4/15/15) titled “‘Christian Taliban’s’ Crusade on Ukraine’s Front Lines,” which quotes both Serediuk and Chorny extensively. Serediuk, Al Jazeera reported, “revels in the Christian Taliban label.” In reference to his decision to leave the Azov battalion, the piece went on to say:

Serediuk didn’t leave the Azov because of the neo-Nazi connections, however—extreme-right ideology doesn’t bother him. What does irk him, however, is being around fighters who are not zealous in their religious convictions.

In the same piece, Chorny invoked the violently antisemitic Crusades of the Middle Ages to describe Bratstvo’s ideological foundation:

The enemy—the forces of darkness—they have all the weapons, they have greater numbers, they have money. But our soldiers are the bringers of European traditions and the Christian mindset of the 13th century.

To circumvent the Times’ exultant narrative, one has to do a certain amount of supplementary research and analysis. But even the most basic inquiry—searching “Bratstvo battalion” on Google—reveals the far-right underpinnings of the unit with which the Times embedded its reporters.

The seventh search result is a June 2022 study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which reported, “Another such far-right entity is the so-called Brotherhood (Bratstvo) ‘battalion,’ which includes Belarusian, Danish, Irish and Canadian members.”

The ninth result is an article from the Washington Free Beacon (4/6/22), which quoted a far-right Canadian volunteer as saying on Telegram that he was “fighting in the neo-Nazi ‘Bratstvo’ Battalion in Kyiv.”

SS memorabilia

In a world where journalists actually practiced what they preached, someone at the paper of record surely would have noticed the Nazi insignia appearing in two photos in the piece. In this world, however, the Times either forgot how to use the zoom function—though the paper made extensive use of this capability when reporting on China’s Communist Party Congress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they simply did not want to report on this ugly and inconvenient discovery.

One soldier is seen wearing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a photo of Bratstvo’s prayer circle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in German, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfverbande—an SS unit that participated in Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, and guarded the concentration camps where Nazi Germany condemned millions of Jewish men, women and children to death.

Individuals donning the Totenkopf also took part in the murder of millions of others in these camps, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, trade unionists, persons with disabilities, homosexuals and Romani people.

In September, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted—and then quietly deleted—a picture on social media of himself with a number of soldiers, one of whom was wearing a Totenkopf patch similar to that seen in the Times’ photo of Bratstvo’s prayer meeting. One can easily find this particular iteration on Amazon or eBay.

 

Later in the Times article, another photograph of a soldier wearing a slightly different version of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an interior room and staring out from the very center of the image, the Totenkopf is even harder to miss. Amazon’s product description for this specific variant reads, “This gorgeous replica piece takes you back to World War II.”

If the Times simply failed to identify the Totenkopf in two separate photos—both of which were taken by a Times photographer while he was embedded with Bratstvo, and were then featured prominently in the article—that would certainly amount to a journalistic failure.

The alternative scenario is that the Times did recognize the SS memorabilia worn by the soldiers they chose to embed with, and decided to publish the images anyway without commenting on the matter.

 

ACTION:

Please remind the New York Times to clearly identify neo-Nazi forces when they appear in coverage, and to refrain from depicting such movements as heroes.

CONTACT:

Letters: letters@nytimes.com

Readers Center: Feedback

Twitter: @NYTimes

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

The post ACTION ALERT: NYT Has Found New Neo-Nazi Troops to Lionize in Ukraine appeared first on FAIR.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Click here for the full interview, where Kit Klarenberg reveals plots from UK operatives to blow up Ukrainian bridges, more Western destruction of peace talks, and how the US uses Britain to spread propaganda

Journalist Kit Klarenberg’s latest article at the Grayzone, “FTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga,” sheds new light on the money-grabbing schemes emerging from the Ukraine proxy war.

The report details how Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, the crypto exchange that saw its valuation implode from $32B to $0 in a single day, used a Ukraine fundraiser to raise $60 million from donors. This was followed by the mass selloff of FTX currency and a declaration of bankruptcy from the scam company. This raises the question: where did the money for Ukraine go?

Kit Klarenberg joins the Useful Idiots with the scoop.

He, along with his fellow Grayzone writers, has been the subject of multiple attacks for uncovering stories like this and his other new piece: “Leaked documents: British spies constructing secret terror army in Ukraine.” It seems that when government officials and the corporate media don’t want the truth uncovered, they don’t argue against the story but make personal attacks against the writer as character assassination.

And sadly, it works all too often.

One such corporate official, Useful-Idiot-favorite of Scary Poppins fame Nina Jankowicz, went after Klarenberg on Twitter. Kit describes the online beef in the extended episode. (turns out we can’t see those tweets because…)

Subscribe to hear the full interview, where Klarenberg reveals plots from UK operatives to blow up Ukrainian bridges, more Western destruction of peace talks, and how the US uses Britain to spread propaganda.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

Plus, catch our Thursday Throwdown on the near-nuclear Armageddon, Trump’s big announcement, and Aaron getting canceled by Olena Zelenska.

Nathan Blakely was a popstar. But he was useless, died, and was reincarnated. The comedy about Nathan’s adventures in the afterlife returns for a third series, starring Daniel Rigby, Ashley McGuire and guest-starring Mike Wozniak. In the first episode of the new series, Nathan is brought back to life as the leader of a wolf pack. But there’s a catch - his pack are rubbish and aren’t brave enough to kill anything. Can Nathan transform them into ruthless hunters? And will he ever it make it back to human again? Cast: Ashley McGuire - Carol Daniel Rigby – Nathan Hammed Animashaun – Bull Elk Tom Craine – Sniffly Ian Henry Paker – Lupo Freya Parker – Wolverina Mike Wozniak – Wolmenides Writers: Tom Craine and Henry Paker Producer: Harriet Jaine Sound: Jerry Peal Music Composed by: Phil Lepherd A Talkback production for BBC Radio 4

A transmission from the future, hosted by the show’s then-current hosts, Girl God.

Girl God shows at: https://linktr.ee/aprilc47

Our Ft. Lauderdale show is THIS SUNDAY, grab tickets while you can: https://www.jointherevolution.net/concerts/chapo-trap-house/

Get bonus content on Patreon

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A leaked confidential strategy paper shows Germany is preparing for a potential war with Russia, as it boosts its budget and plans to become the world’s third-biggest military spender. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=toyPvPg7Yaw Sources here: https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/24/germany-military-war-russia

Beloved guest David J. Roth returns to the pod to break down some of our Turkeys of the Year with Kanye West and Elon Musk reaching new lows of embarrassing and goofy behavior. Then, we celebrate the impending return of a TRUE visionary with a profile exploring the alpha mindset of Mr. James Cameron.

Find more David Roth over at https://defector.com/

Get bonus content on Patreon

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former banker and author Satyajit Das explains the Galbraith concept of a 'bezzle' in a warning that the effects of the loss of wealth from the markets, high interest rates and continuing global unrest will continue to be felt by the markets well into 2023.  Guest: Satyajit Das, former banker and author of several books including 2021’s A Banquet of Consequences Reloaded and 2022 Fortunes Fool: Australia’s Choices.

We should all recognize that Sam Bankman-Fried is much smarter than the rest of us. After all, outwardly he looks to be one of the biggest frauds of all time. By the age of 30 he amassed a fortune that dwarfs that of your average billionaire. He did it by running a crypto Ponzi-scheme. While claiming to be using his wealth to support philanthropies that were carefully selected to maximize human welfare, he was actually living a high life-style with his friends.

Now that the Ponzi has collapsed, the investors who trusted him look to be out of luck. And, of course there is no money for the philanthropies that he supported, many of which will are now struggling because they won’t get contributions they had been counting on.

That all looks pretty reprehensible, but maybe that’s the point. See, Sam Bankman-Fried was so committed to his philosophy of effective philanthropy that he was prepared to make himself appear to be the epitome of a despicable human being, and spend many years in prison, all to teach us that finance is a wasteful cesspool that needs to be reined in for the good of humanity. And, the place to start is his particular corner of the cesspool: crypto.

Philanthropy verse Reform: How Best to Save Humanity

The point here is straightforward. Suppose that Mr. Bankman-Fried was actually able to accumulate tens of billions of dollars through his brilliance, which he would then donate to the worthy causes he had carefully selected to have a maximum impact on human well-being. That would undoubtedly benefit some number of people in the United States and around the world.

But think for a minute about the financial sector. It has expanded enormously relative to the size of the economy over the last half century.

The broad finance, insurance, and real estate sector has more than doubled as a share of GDP over the last half-century, increasing from 5.5 percent of GDP in 1971 to 12.0 percent in 2021.[1] The additional 6.5 percent of GDP being devoted to finance in 2021 is equivalent to more than $1.4 trillion being absorbed by the sector. That comes to more than $11,800 a year for an average family.

The more narrow securities and commodity trading sector, along with investment funds and trusts, more than quadrupled as a share of GDP, rising from 0.55 percent of GDP in 1971 to 2.56 percent in 2021. This increase of 2.0 percentage points of GDP comes to more than $500 billion a year in the current economy, or almost $4,400 a year per family.

There is little to show for the massive expansion in the size of the financial sector. Finance is an intermediate good, like trucking. While both sectors are essential to the functioning of a modern economy, they don’t directly provide value to people in the way that the housing, food, or health care sectors do.

We need these sectors, but we want them to perform their economic functions as efficiently as possible. In the case of finance, those functions are facilitating payments to households and businesses and allocating capital to its best uses.

Clearly we have developed better mechanisms for paying our bills and carrying on other transactions, but the biggest developments are hardly new. Direct deposit of our paychecks and automatic payments for bills are great innovations that save lots of time for both sides of the transactions. However, these innovations date back more than four decades.

The same holds with credit cards and debit cards. The overwhelming majority of transactions are now made with these cards, but this is not especially new technology. Credit cards were already widely available in 1971, even if they were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today.   

We can give the financial sector credit for the increase in the convenience of our system of payments, but how much is this worth? Is the time saved from using credit cards or having a direct deposit of your payments worth $11,800 a year to you? That seems a bit steep. I suspect given the option, most people would prefer an extra $11,800 in their paycheck and be given the check by hand rather than having it deposited automatically in their bank account.   

How about the other part of the financial sector’s function, allocating capital to its best uses? There is no simple way to evaluate how effective our enlarged financial sector has been in allocating capital, primarily because we don’t have a counterfactual. We can’t point to an America with a smaller financial sector over the last half-century. (Steven Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubbi did a cross-country analysis which found a larger financial sector boosted growth, but after reaching a certain size relative to the economy, it was a drag on growth.)

We can make a comparison of productivity growth in recent decades with productivity growth in the decades before the financial sector was consuming such a large share of the country’s output. In the years from the beginning of the Bureau of Labor Statistics productivity series in 1947 to 1972, productivity growth averaged 2.8 percent annually. From 1972 to 2022, productivity growth averaged just 1.8 percent.

If anything, productivity growth has slowed further as the financial sector has expanded relative to the economy. While there was a strong decade of productivity growth from 1995 to 2005, in the years from 2005 to 2019, productivity growth averaged just 1.4 percent.

The expanded financial sector may not be responsible for the slowing of productivity growth, and it’s certainly possible that it would have slowed even more without a larger financial sector. But, it is not easy to make the case that the financial sector has somehow led to faster productivity growth.

We pay for the waste in the financial sector not only through fees on financial transactions and our 401(k)s, and being front-run on our stock trades, but also through higher prices for housing and other items. Finance has created many of the great fortunes in the economy, not just Sam Bankman-Fried’s. When these people spend money buying bigger and/or more houses, it makes housing more expensive for the rest of us. They also hire people as their servants and demand workers for a wide range of activities from driving their cars to massaging their backs. Because the rich tie up so many workers meeting their luxury consumption, we have fewer people to work in child care centers or as teachers.

Sam Bankman-Fried Exposes the Corruption in Finance

So Bankman-Fried, being a genius, recognized the incredible waste and corruption in the financial sector. He knew that the best way to help humanity is to downsize the financial sector. The gains would dwarf the impact of anything he could hope to do with the money he could accumulate in his business dealings.

After all, even if he gave his entire Ponzi fortune of $15 billion to the best causes, this would be dwarfed by the good he could do by seriously downsizing the financial sector. After all, $15 billion is just over 1.0 percent of the $1.4 trillion increase in the relative size in the financial sector over the last half century. It is only 3.0 percent of the size of the increase in the relative size of just the narrow securities and commodities trading sectors.

Even if he managed to accumulate a pre-Twitter Elon Musk size fortune of $200 billion it would barely change the picture. That is less than 15 percent of the size of the bloat in the larger financial sector and just 40 percent of the bloat in the more narrow securities and commodities sector.

And, these are annual figures. The financial sector bloat is pulling these sums from the economy every year. A Musk-size fortune, accumulated over a life-time, would just be equal to 15 percent of a single year’s waste in the financial sector.

Obviously, Bankman-Fried is aware of this situation. He therefore realizes that the gains to humanity from reducing the waste in the financial sector would dwarf any benefits that he could hope to provide from the wealth he accumulates.

Bankman-Fried’s Brilliant Strategy

Recognizing the enormous waste and corruption in the financial sector, Bankman-Fried decided that the best way to attack it was by putting himself at the center of a scandal hitting finance at its most vulnerable point: the crypto craze. Most sectors of finance involve a mix of productive uses with speculation and waste. This is true of the stock and commodities markets, which do allow for businesses to raise capital and for primary goods producers to lock in prices, even if most trading is speculative in nature. Even private equity firms can occasionally turn around troubled businesses, as their supporters claim.

However, crypto does nothing for the economy. If all crypto currencies disappeared tomorrow, the only effect would be that some illicit transactions may become more risky for the people carrying them through.

This means that cracking down on crypto poses no real risks to the economy, only to crypto speculators. If we put a hefty tax on crypto trades, treating it like the gambling it is, it can raise revenue for the government and hugely reduce the amount of resources wasted in crypto trading.

Even more importantly, it can be a great foot in the door for a more general crackdown on finance. A crypto trading tax should introduce people in policy positions to the idea of taxing financial transactions (they should already be familiar with financial transactions taxes, but they aren’t), and ideally open the door to cracking down on finance more generally.

The potential benefits here are enormous. If we can just downsize the financial sector by 10 percent, it will free up more than $300 billion a year for productive purposes. That comes to more than $2,500 a year for every family in the country. As the effective philanthropy folks say, you can buy a lot of mosquito netting with $300 billion a year.

So, Bankman-Fried knew what he was doing in running a Ponzi-scheme and making himself look like one of the most despicable people alive. He may spend a lot of time in prison and be viewed with universal contempt for the rest of his life, but if his crimes lead to a crackdown on finance, he will have provided a great service to humanity.  

[1] These data are taken from National Income and Product Accounts Table 6.2B, with the total share being Line 52 divided by Line 1 for 1971 and Table 6.2D, Lines 57 and 62, divided Line 1 for 2021. For the narrow securities and commodity trading sector, and holding and trust accounts, the calculation uses Line 55 and Line 59, divided by Line 1 for 1971. For 2021, it uses Line 59 and Line 61, divided by Line 1. These tables only give data on labor compensation. The implicit assumption is that the industry’s value added is proportional to labor compensation in the sector. While this will not be precisely accurate, it should be reasonably close.  

The post Sam Bankman-Fried’s Truly Effective Philanthropy: Teaching appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Hakeem Jeffries takes the reins of house leadership from Nancy Pelosi. Trump officially announces his 2024 run. Herschel walker battles monsters. I’m trying to post this on deadline before running to a family dinner so apologies for brevity.

Tons of programming and subscriber announcements, find all the updates here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-hell-74753159

Get bonus content on Patreon

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everybody hates slide decks. Jeff Bezos even famously banned them from Amazon. Still, most of us who are called upon to give a presentation will make slides the center of that presentation. There are, of course, dedicated programs like PowerPoint, Keynote, and the various clones that come with packages like LibreOffice but few Emacs users are going to want to wade into that swamp.

Happily there are several Emacs packages that let you prepare slides from the comfort of your editor. David Wilson over at System Crafters has an informative video that explores one of those packages: org-tree-slide.

Based on Wilson’s video, I’d judge that the application doesn’t produce slides as nice looking as some of the other packages but it does have the advantage of not needing any other packages. You just load the org-tree-slide package and you’re good to go. The input is very simple: you just make an Org file and the headers become the slides. On the plus side, you can have images and code blocks and these get exported to the slides. Wilson shows how to control things like the font and image sizes and simple animation effects.

The video is 31 minutes, 38 seconds long so you’ll need to schedule some time. If you’re looking for a simple package to generate simple slides, this package is certainly worth taking a look at.

We’re here with our Midterms 2022 analysis. Felix’s “normal whites” thesis vindicated, GOP in disarray as weirdness on display, the future of L. Ron Santis vs. Toxic Trump…all this and more state by state, race by race coverage within. Plus, we finish on an almost psychedelically incomprehensible column from the one and only John Kass! Get bonus content on Patreon

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Click here for the full episode, including the extended interview with Medea Benjamin on the AOC protest and the benefits of activism.

With AOC (and the Squad by extension) being recently heckled for their support of sending weapons to Ukraine and prolonging the proxy war, Useful Idiots had anti-war activist Medea Benjamin on to explore the question: when did US progressives become pro-war?

Benjamin, known for such bold acts as announcing “Here comes the war criminal!” as Donald Rumsfeld entered the White House Correspondents Dinner, is the founder of Code Pink, a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism.

She discusses how building an anti-war movement was easier during the Iraq War, while the left now has become more divided and often in support of proxy wars like Ukraine. This, she explains, stems from US demoralization efforts:

“During the Iraq War, we were able to build a movement that got hundreds of thousands of people out into the street. The problem is, that did not change Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, and so many people were demoralized. It made people question putting their energies in front of this war machine.”

But Benjamin urges us not to give up hope.

“We have to recognize that it is our absolute responsibility right now. And I do feel as I travel around the country that there are many people recognizing the need to go in front of the offices of their representatives and protest, to educate their friends and families, I think we are in the midst of building up again.”

And, importantly, we need to “keep the pressure up on the Biden administration.”

To educate yourself, your friends, and family, Medea Benjamin’s book and short video are great learning tools. And follow Code Pink to support their activism and their coalition Peace in Ukraine.

Plus, this week we announced two new features:

• Thursday Throwdowns: Our new mini-episodes premiering each Thursday to get your exclusive dose of midweek media madness. This week, we watched the Tapper/Biden interview.

• The Absurd Arena: The Useful Idiots discussion board for people who think you can talk back to a podcast. Share your opinions and get your questions and comments read on the show.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

Subscribe now

Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell confessed the West’s neoliberal economic model was “based on cheap energy coming from Russia,” “access to the big China market,” and low-paid Chinese workers. Europe has now lost that, and is thus in crisis. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ajIRkk1FOkM Read more here: https://multipolarista.com/2022/10/18/eu-prosperity-china-russia-energy-market Check out our previous episode "West’s neoliberal ‘age of abundance’ is over, as war and sanctions boomerang home": https://multipolarista.com/2022/08/27/west-end-neoliberalism-abundance

Ross Caputi and Scott Spaulding join us to discuss The Sacking of Fallujah, both the event and the book which Ross co-wrote.  Fallujah is seen by the American empire as a great victory over the burgeoning Sunni insurgency during the early years of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but for the people of Fallujah and their descendants, it is nothing less than the entire destruction and poisoning of their people and land.  Birth defects are rampant among the population, spurred by the use of heavy munitions like white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and thermobariacs, which have destroyed the environment for generations.

Ross’ book, The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History (Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond), is a great primer on the subject, as well as a detailed microcosm of the war in Iraq and its tactics.  I consider it a must-buy.

---

We’re now on Telegram!!!!  Please come join us and talk about militarism and anti-imperialism: https://t.me/fortressonahill

Main website: https://www.fortressonahill.com

Let me guess.  You’re enjoying the show so much, you’d like to leave us a review?!  https://lovethepodcast.com/fortressonahill

Email us at fortressonahill@protonmail.com

Check out our online store on Spreadshirt.com.  T-shirts, cell phone covers, mugs, etc.: https://bit.ly/3qD63MW

Not a contributor on Patreon? You’re missing out on amazing bonus content! Sign up to be one of our patrons today! – https://www.patreon.com/fortressonahill

A special thanks to our Patreon honorary producers – Fahim Shirazee, James O’Barr, James Higgins, Eric Phillips, Paul Appell, Julie Dupris, Thomas Benson, Janet Hanson, Tristan Oliver, Daniel Fleming, Michael Caron, Zach H, Ren Jacob, Howard Reynolds, Rick Coffey, and the Statist Quo Podcast. You all are the engine that helps us power the podcast.  Thank you so much!!!

Not up for something recurring like Patreon, but want to give a couple bucks?!  Visit https://paypal.me/fortressonahill to contribute!!

Fortress On A Hill is hosted, written, and produced by Chris ‘Henri’ Henrikson, Danny Sjursen, Keagan Miller, and Jovanni Reyes. https://bit.ly/3yeBaB9

Intro / outro music “Fortress on a hill” written and performed by Clifton Hicks.  Click here for Clifton’s Patreon page: https://bit.ly/3h7Ni0Z

Cover and website art designed by Brian K. Wyatt Jr. of B-EZ Graphix Multimedia Marketing Agency in Tallehassee, FL: https://bit.ly/2U8qMfn

Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts alone, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.