Scott interviews activist Basir Bita about the economic calamity that’s hit Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal this past summer. With the U.S. and IMF freezing Afghan government funds as well as widespread market corrections after the fall of the previous regime, Afghanistan has been thrown into turmoil. Food prices have tripled since the summer and many Afghans face issues with food security. Bita argues that the Biden Administration and others should get over their hesitation to work with the new government of Afghanistan. And that a refusal to do so reveals how little they truly...
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COI #208: Biden Signs Massive Pentagon Funding Bill
On the final COI of 2021, Kyle Anzalone discusses Biden's phone call with Putin, the 2022 NDAA, and recent news about Israel's oppression of Palestinians. Odysee Rumble Donate LBRY Credits bTTEiLoteVdMbLS7YqDVSZyjEY1eMgW7CP Donate Bitcoin 36PP4kT28jjUZcL44dXDonFwrVVDHntsrk Donate Bitcoin Cash Qp6gznu4xm97cj7j9vqepqxcfuctq2exvvqu7aamz6 Patreon Subscribe Star YouTube Facebook Twitter MeWe Apple Podcast Amazon Music Google Podcasts Spotify iHeart Radio Support Our Sponsor Visit Paloma Verde and use code PEACE for 25% off our CBD...
12/30/21 Daniel Larison: US Militarism Should Have Died With the Soviet Union
Scott is joined by Antiwar.com contributing editor Daniel Larison to discuss his most recent piece. Larison argues that the period following the peaceful breakup of the USSR was the best moment for the U.S. to shed the militaristic blob it had built up in the name of fighting communism. Instead, the military-industrial-congressional complex scrambled to find a new enemy. And the next thirty years of meddling in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have resulted in today’s messy geopolitical status quo. Discussed on the show: “US Militarism Should Have Died With the Soviet Union”...
News Roundup 12/28/2021
Covid The CDC says people who test positive for covid but do not have symptoms only need to quarantine for five days. The CDC then recommends five days of mask-wearing. The World Bank says nearly 100 million people fell into poverty during the covid pandemic. [Link] The State Department sends over 600,000 Pfizer covid vaccines to Nepal through Covax. [Link] US News Biden extended the student loan payment freeze to May 1, 2022. [Link] Las Vegas will pay over $500,000 to Jason Funke who was shot in the back by a police officer. The officer is still employed. [Link] Cedric Lofton was killed...
Salafis Throwing Bombs: How American and British Planners Partnered With Al-Qaeda Affiliated Groups At the Start of the Syrian Civil War
Introduction In the mainstream view, al-Qaeda did not play a role in the Syria conflict until Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched his deputy, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, to Syria in August 2011 to establish a wing of the group there, called Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front. Additionally, al-Qaeda allegedly did not carry out any military operations until December 2011 and did not announce its establishment until January 2012. However, there is evidence that al-Qaeda affiliated militants were involved in the Syrian conflict much earlier. Saudi intelligence...
News Roundup 12/27/21
Covid Massachusetts halts all elective procedures. [Link] The USS Milwaukee will remain in Cuba after several sailors tested positive for Covid. [Link] USAID is running out of money to distribute covid vaccinations. [Link] The US donates 1.5 million vaccine doses to Egypt through Covax. [Link] Biden will lift the travel restriction from eight African countries on January 1st. [Link] US News LAPD officers killed a 14-year-old girl. [Link] The Pentagon cuts the cost of living stipend it gives to tens of thousands of soldiers living in high-cost areas in the US. [Link] Stu Scheller - who...
Is Virtue Signaling Vicious?
Virtue signaling—the practice of highlighting what one takes to be one’s own moral superiority, often by loudly denouncing the character and comportment, including the speech, of other people—has become a dominant mode of rhetoric throughout social media and network television. Virtue theory, in contrast, is a teleological approach to normative morality concerned with how actions affect one’s soul or character. Historians of philosophy usually trace virtue theory to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the first extant articulation of ideas such as that habits build character, and virtues...
For One Day, Protestors Stopped the War Machine
I’ve attended most of the major antiwar protests in Washington since 9/11. At a 2005 protest, a cop tried to whack me on the head with a wooden pole. At a 2007 protest, I snapped a picture showing George W. Bush hanging next to the U.S. Capitol. But my favorite protest was a potent little ruckus that I almost missed. On a sunny late summer day in 2013, I ambled to downtown Washington to hike with a bunch of folks who enjoyed bantering as much as I did. The route for the jaunt started on the National Mall, passing by the Smithsonian, heading toward the World War II Memorial and points...
12/22/21 Gareth Porter on Iran and Afghanistan
Scott celebrates eleven years on the radio by interviewing Gareth Porter about Biden’s first year in office. They discuss the negotiations between the Administration and Iran over a return to the JCPOA. Despite many crossovers with the team that reached an agreement with Iran back in the Obama years, Biden’s people appear set on squeezing more concessions out of the Iranians. But Porter points out that, as he had predicted, the U.S. reluctance to return to the deal led to hardliner victories in Iran’s last elections. But even with a more anti-American regime, Porter sees no evidence...
Joe Norman On Why Localism Is Coming
We don’t need “the global village”; we need a “globe of villages”. And when I say need here I don’t mean it in an ethical, or moral, or aesthetic sense. I mean it in the most practical sense: in order to survive we must re-localize. The global village idea is a non-starter. It misses that complex adaptive systems of a certain class typically have a characteristic scale. That is, a certain size at which they necessarily are realized. Nearly every adult human being you will ever meet will be between five and seven feet tall. And you will not find a land mammal larger than an elephant....