US News A former police officer from Loveland, Colorado, Daria Jalali, was sentenced to 45 days in jail for her role in the rough arrest of a 73-year-old woman with dementia in 2020. The woman suffered a dislocated shoulder and a fractured humerus bone during the interaction. Fox The US Senate passed a $430 billion spending bill after Vice President Kamala Harris voted in favor of the Democrats to break a tie against unanimous Republican opposition. Democrats say the bill will help curb inflation. DW Hundreds of Cubans and Haitians are being arrested after landing in Florida. CNN Former...
television
Cuban Missile Crisis Things
This old New Yorker piece about Curtis LeMay has some details about the Missile Crisis that I did not know and want to save here for someday. So we all already knew that 1: the USSR did already have operational short and medium range missiles in Cuba, but Khrushchev never told the Americans that. And 2 that a Communist Party official on one of the subs prevented the navy officers from launching a nuke at the American fleet enforcing the quarantine. That would have been the end of the world right there. But now so also check this out: By Presidential order, the United States military went...
Putin Threatens MLRS Transfers to Ukraine Will Provoke Strikes, UK Announces Shipment of M270 Rocket Launchers
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Western shipments of long-range rockets to Kiev will compel Moscow to hit several targets around Ukraine. In recent days the US announced it would send rockets with a range of 50 miles to Kiev. On Sunday, London announced it would also send long-range M270 rocket launchers to Ukraine.
4/22/22 Mitchell Plitnick on Israel, Iran and a Cold War in the Middle East
Download Episode. Scott interviews Mitchel Plitnick about Israeli politics and the Iran Nuclear Deal. Plitnick begins by filling us in on the political situation in Israel, where a new coalition government is working to agree upon a budget by the Fall of 2023. If they are unable to do so, the government will fall apart and new elections will take place. Next, they discuss the news about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch labeling Israel an apartheid state due to their treatment of Palestinians. Plitnick and Scott give their theories for the abrupt change in tone. They then...
The Most Famous Person In The World
Dear Friends: "Mr. McAdams, how does it feel to be the most famous man in the world?" This is not how most of my press appearances begin and it is the concluding chapter of perhaps the strangest 24 hours of my life. But thus began my interview on India's Times Now Television this morning as a follow up to one of the craziest and - even just 24 hours later - the most-watched moments of television history! For those who haven't seen it, I was invited for the first time to be a guest on one of India's top English language television stations. I figured that since India's a huge country and...
2/24/22 Greg Palast on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Scott interviews Greg Palast about the situation in Ukraine. They discuss the political, economic and religious context behind Putin's actions. Discussed on the show: Support KPFK Investigative reporter Greg Palast covered Venezuela and oil for BBC Television and The Guardian during Hugo Chavez’s presidency. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a movie available on Amazon Prime. A documentary of Palast’s work for BBC-TV, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, is available as a free download at Palast’s site, GregPalast.com. This...
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...
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...
The War on Drugs for Her
She had just turned fifteen. She was a good girl, though some of her friends had a wilder side. They did like to party. She was excited to attend a music festival, a large one geared to people under eighteen. While she was there the police were conducting an operation to curb the use of recreational drugs. Twenty or so teenagers, including herself, had been taken almost at random by the police officers. It was a hot day, so she had worn very little. As she was taken away she was roughly handled. The police officers accused her of being in possession of drugs, a girl who had not even tried...
COI #171: How the Pentagon Influences Corporate Media
On COI #171, Matthew Hoh returns to the show to discuss his experience with the mainstream media after becoming a whistleblower in the early Obama presidency. Hoh appeared in and on the most important US print and television outlets. However, because he was speaking out against the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon quickly worked to discredit Hoh. America’s top news outlets caved to Pentagon pressure without pushback and deprived Americans of Hoh’s important viewpoint. Matthew Hoh is a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Network...