Iraq, Oil, Capitalism and U.S. War w/ Prof. Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt

August 9, 2022Posted inForeign Policy, Peoples' History

Bob had a great talk (Scott’s on assignment) with Professor Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt of Cal State-Stanislaus, author of “The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq” about Iraqi history from the Ottoman Empire to the present, with an emphasis on the period from 1958 to the 1970s.

Listen in: https://apple.co/3dmOwpu

Before Iraq became the target of a massive U.S. intervention, it was a British colony, and then a kingdom, which achieved sovereignty in a 1958 revolution led by Karim Kasim. However, the U.S., especially President John Kennedy, began to oppose the Kasim regime and helped engineer a 1963 coup against him and then sending support to the new regime to isolate and kill Kasim backers and others, especially communists.

Ukraine and A Brief History of Atrocities in Warfare and Empire

April 16, 2022Posted inForeign Policy, Peoples' History

Websters defines atrocity as “a shockingly bad or atrocious act, object, or situation.”

Russian atrocities on Ukrainian civilians have been the top of the 24 second news cycle since the invasion began. Since the advent of industrial warfare at the end of 19th century, war has been waged increasingly on civilian populations than opposing military forces. Wars of attrition have had the goal of subjecting the populace to “shockingly bad” actions to force the downfall of its ruling regime or submission of a resisting insurgency. The 20th century is full of examples of this by the British, the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians, and of course, the Americans.

Listen in: https://apple.co/3vt9eth

As the stories emerge from the war between Ukraine and Russia, detailing atrocities committed on civilian populations, we thought it was a good moment to talk about some of this history. We start with the Civil War and World War One (early industrial wars), the advent of air power, brutal occupations in Nanking, Korea and Vietnam, bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima, U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, Central American death squads and the forever wars in the Middle East.

The U.S. Empire and Ukraine w/ Prof. Clinton Fernandes

March 15, 2022Posted inForeign Policy, politics

Our latest episode on the Ukraine is a wide-ranging conversation with our good friend Prof. Clinton Fernandes on the U.S. empire and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. We discuss Russia and Putin’s adventures in Georgia and Ukraine to the lack of strategic empathy from the West (particularly the U.S.). We break down the motives of the U.S. drive to expand NATO and encircle Russia, and the effect it has on global politics.

Listen to part one here: https://apple.co/3I9zY6v

Listen to Part Two Here: https://apple.co/3JlgYn7

We discuss the tensions in the South China Sea and the impact of the Ukraine conflict on Australia’s coming election. Finally, we get an update on Clinton’s law suit trying to get the Australian government to release documents showing intelligence agencies supporting Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973.