Well, they’re not the shittiest podcasts I guess…

Age of Napoleon guy is at least left-adjacent, he had Christman on for a whole episode just to talk about The Eighteenth Brumaire.

And full disclosure, I have a massive soft spot for Dan Carlin, so I may not be objective in talking about him. His podcasts were the thing that pulled me out of whatever my politics were a decade ago (he’s big into “money has corrupted the political system” thinking). He isn’t just a lib. He has a big anti-imperialist streak (he was talking about how the US shouldn’t meddle in Ukraine in 2014; and the American Peril ep is basically him saying the Spanish American War was the birth of American Imperialism) and tbh he seems like a good dude whose heart is in the right place.

Buuuuut I had to stop listening to his history podcast years ago, because frankly it just isn’t very good. I can see why Musk likes it. He tries to be about more than just “war” but somehow war is all he ever talks about w/r/t history and is almost exclusively focused on “the west”. It’s kind of a lib cliche but Carlin really is what people who don’t actually know history think a historian sounds like. Dan pays lip service to being against Great Man Theory but his scope of history is so anti-materialist it’s hard to listen to. He connect some dots correctly but come to some really weird conclusions.

But idk doubtful that Musk actually listens to any of this anyway.

Time for some real Battleship Potemkin hours…

I’m starting to think it’s such an obviously bad idea, is there something Israel knows that we don’t? Like, they plan on dropping a nuke on Beirut or something? Or that Biden has guaranteed 100,000 US troops and 2 carrier groups? Is there anything strategically we might be missing here?

Back when inbred nobles decided when to go war, I can see massive blunders like this. But presumably there are professional military folks on the IOF who can understand the costs and risks and know it’s suicidal go after Hezbollah.

Was listening to Warren Mosler talk about this on Varn Vlog. Interesting stuff. It’s stimulus, but incredibly unequal stimulus as it’s not like the working class is the one holding all the T-bills.

Yes. Nuclear scientists have estimated that if the US and Russia were to set off just 5% of their arsenals then that’s about enough to effectively end most life on earth.

Need to tack on another zero to that number.

America is so bought off by the corporate oligarchy that the Ralph Lauren logo is the same size if not larger than the US flag patch.

European capital is too deeply entwined with the fate of American economic imperialism to allow deviation from being aligned with them.

Just another characteristic of fascism - borrow a populist, working class aesthetic but serve the interests of capital.

95% of the world’s land could become degraded by 2050

Jesus fucking Christ.

I really do wonder if we will eventually see a Potemkin-style mutiny in Ukraine.

I am 1,000,000% convinced that US vets in Vietnam did in fact experience extraordinary levels of PTSD - not from hippies spitting on them or even seeing their buddies get killed (happens in every war), but from all the crimes against humanity they committed against Vietnamese civilians.

Gaza aid leader faces backlash over Labour Party run

Melanie Ward, CEO of the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) charity, faces major backlash from volunteers and workers after deciding to run as a Labour Party candidate in Scotland. Some 2,250 healthcare workers, medical volunteers, supporters, and donors signed a letter expressing concern.

On June 5, a protest letter was filed by workers and volunteers at MAP, expressing their dismay to the board over Ward’s candidacy with the UK Labour Party. To run for the position of MP in Scotland’s Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, Ward has taken a leave of absence but has not stepped down from her position.

Despite Ward’s pledge to make real progress for the Palestinian people if elected to Parliament, MAP is currently without an acting CEO during a healthcare collapse in Gaza. Some fear her actions could jeopardize the aid organization’s efforts on the ground, leading to threats of referring MAP to the Charity Commission.

Ward has a history of affiliations with pro-Israel lobby groups, starting with her first trip to Palestine, organized by the Israeli Embassy-funded Union of Jewish Students (UJS). She blogged about meeting Israeli politicians and visiting settlements but shifted her perspective after a second visit to the West Bank. However, her relationship with UJS continued, including participating in a 2017 UJS panel called “Bridges Not Boycotts,” opposing boycotts of Israel.

Ward also supported the anti-Semitism “witch hunt” during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, which purged much of Labour’s pro-Palestinian base, including many Jewish anti-Zionists. She tweeted, “Farewell to Jeremy Corbyn, who really was a truly terrible Labour Party Leader. He will be missed not one little bit by those of us who want to see Labour in government again.”

In 2016, she signed a letter calling for Corbyn’s resignation, shared an article urging the public not to vote for him and tweeted the former Labour leader in 2015, “Corbyn unable to think of situation where he’d commit Forces to military action. Should think a bit harder if he wants to be PM,” in response to his anti-war stance.

I always thought MAP was a pretty good org (and it’s possible/probable they are, just bad leadership) but no reason to give them money so long as Ward is in charge and good orgs like PCRF exist.

an attempt at appeasing and winning the approval of the empire

I swear to god Gorbachev was such a pathetic little worm. Apparently he once wrote a letter to the US state dept where he asked “what kind of government would like us to have?” And the US just never responded.

Only time I’ll ever give even a little bit of credit to the US government, you shouldn’t respond to such a weakling.

The Soviets also had credible intel that pointed to, after getting their asses whupped at the Bay of Pigs, the US was starting to plan a for real large scale actual US military invasion of Cuba.

Hezbollah is the strongest force militarily in the resistance, and have only gotten stronger since 2006

Just to add, this was all very true on October 6th. And since then consider just how much weaker the Israeli military has gotten and how much stronger Hezbollah has gotten (or at least, how much stronger Hezbollah will get very soon given the closer ties in recent months to Russia and the DPRK).

I thought this was largely fake news that crypto sites were generating. That specifically, the US and KSA are just in the process of hammering out a new agreement. And that even if some oil contracts are in other currencies, they are still indexed to the USD.

As someone who has kids, best advice someone gave me was to try and visualize your kid at various stages of life, and think about how they would feel in those stages of life about their name. This helped us eliminate names that sounded nice to us but I had a hard time seeing my kid being an older adult and liking that name.

Looks like Western governments and Western media have finally gotten their ducks in a row w/r/t Biden’s “peace plan”. Olaf Scholz, the US ambassador to the UN, and others now saying “it’s on Hamas to accept this deal”. Despite the fact that Israel hasn’t agreed to shit and Hamas is politely asking that language in the agreement that obviously allows Israel to resume the genocide once they get their hostages back (which they will even more obviously taken advantage) be clarified and changed.

It’s gaslighting right before our very eyes.

Unrelated: it’s a shame Stephen King turned into such a lib. But The Stand - along with most of his early work i.e. when he was writing high as a kite - is actually very good.

Fascinating. I’m curious about the current makeup of Russian exports - I assume oil is a very component?

International currency economics is among the more complex aspects of economics IMO, so I don’t know I have any thoughts on the details. But zooming out on the situation… I can’t help but wonder if the American side has some ideological blinders on. We often say “it’s easier for some people to imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism”. It does seem to me that westerners - including our politicians, politicians, and economists - cannot imagine a world where nations voluntarily choose to back away from neoliberalism; even if they are “losers” in the periphery. This is a huge blind spot they have and I think it plays a part in what made the first round of sanctions ineffective. I don’t doubt the West fully believes Russia will not stray from the neoliberal path.

So it comes down to, what does Russia think? Before the SMO, I think the leadership in Russia (both political and financial) were on board with neoliberalism because they personally benefitted from it (even if the Russian people didn’t). So what have they learned in the last two years? Clearly, what they been doing has worked. They’ve had a peak behind the curtain of neoliberalism and they can now see it for what it is.

If I had to guess, I’d say Russia decides to take a stronger position against neoliberalism and they won’t let the ruble fall. Because right now the SMO is going great for them and there isn’t a path to victory outside of a collapse of Russia’s economy. What they are doing is working so no reason to deviate. Even if you are a high up, powerful person in Russia (political or financial) and you think neoliberalism is the future for Russia… a collapse of the economy and losing the war will be very bad for your bank account, if nothing else.