Meanwhile, in Afghanistan…
More comics at the Webcomic Factory. Videos at YouTube, Bitchute and Rumble.
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Inflation Can Become A Political Bitch
“But inflation becomes a political bitch. People – those who work for a living – hate it when they lose purchasing power, and they hate it when their raise gets eaten up by inflation, and they hate it when their dividends and interest income get eaten up by inflation. Putin understands this. Among US policy makers, this understanding has not yet fully sunk in, though they’re signs that it is slowly spreading.”
More here at Wolf Street
Realignments In The Middle East And Africa Featuring Isa Blumi
Great interview of Isa Blumi by Joanne Leon. Isa reviews in detail the realignment of power with the change from Trump to Biden, the fight for natural resources, trade routes and influence in the Middle East and Africa.
Guest: Dr. Isa Blumi. This is a wide-ranging discussion about the political realignments in the Gulf states, new partnerships in the Middle East and Africa, Qatar’s involvement in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, developments in Yemen, quiet military repurposing of strategic island of Socotra, the long and complicated exploitation of East Africa, the Red Sea region and Horn of Africa, the mass of military bases in Djbouti, the Turkey-Russia relationship and more.
For those listening to the audio version of this podcast, we have added many maps and other visual enhancements to the video version that you might find helpful during some of this discussion so if you are interested you can find those versions on Youtube and Rokfin right now and other video platforms in the not too distant future.
Dr. Isa Blumi is an historian, an author and Professor of Global History, Islamic World, Ottoman Empire, Yemen, Albania. His most recent Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us about the World tells the story of the wars in Yemen but also “ultimately tells an even larger story of today’s political economy of global capitalism, development, and the war on terror as disparate actors intersect in Arabia.” He also authored the book Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World
FOLLOW Isa Blumi @IsaBlumi and find his work at Google Scholar and his latest book at UCPress.edu.
Around the Empire aroundtheempire.com is listener supported, independent media.
RIP Colin Powell
Should Generals be Diplomats?
“Retired General Colin Powell was appointed US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, and you may recall his colorful powerpoint presentation before the UN General Assembly in the run-up to the 2003 war on Iraq—yellow cake, aluminium tubes, mobile chemical laboratories (think: Breaking Bad). Powell did not convince very many of his colleagues at the UN that Iraq needed to be invaded in order to thwart Saddam Hussein’s allegedly imminent transfer of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to Al Qaeda, but the US government went to war anyway. Why? Because the Bush administration wanted to, and UK Prime Minister Tony “Poodle” Blair had pledged that he was “absolutely” with Bush, “no matter what”. (See the Chilcot Report and its implications.) Even more important than having a tiny “coalition of the willing” was the congressional conferral on Bush of the 2002 AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force), giving him the liberty to wage war on Iraq as he saw fit and at a time of his choosing. The rest is history.”
full article from We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age blog
The Antiwar Comic: Germ Warfare
RE: TGIF: Inflation Is Evil
“Thank god for Bitcoin and other non-fiat currencies that transcend the irresponsibility of government”
RIP Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
RIP Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a sixteen-year-old U.S. citizen killed in Yemen on this day in 2011 by a missile launched from a U.S. drone. “We murdered some folks.”
thedroneage.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/we-
The Monopoly Of Violence
Not to be confused with “The Monopoly On Violence”.
In this stimulating, sometimes shocking, and altogether powerful documentary about police violence in contemporary France, filmmaker and journalist David Dufresne examines the ways in which a government justifies brutal acts against its own citizens. Taking its title from sociologist and political economist Max Weber, who wrote that the state establishes a “monopoly on violence” by claiming the legitimate use of force, Dufresne’s film mixes footage of attacks on protestors—largely of the gilet jaunes, or “yellow vest,” political movement—and interviews with intellectuals, police officers, and victims of police assault. The Monopoly of Violence is an essential and timely work, showing the dangers of police serving the state rather than the people, and identifying the growing tendency among Western democracies to enact totalitarian methods to keep the populace under their control.
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