E260 - Imperialist Realism w/ @dbessner.bsky.social Co-host Danny Bessner joins Derek to talk about his book "Imperialist Realism" and how the concept plays out in American foreign policy and pop culture. americanprestigepod.com/episodes/455...

American Prestige

“American Prestige” takes a comprehensive look at U.S. foreign policy and int'l affairs, providing listeners with everything they need to know about what's going on in the world.

americanprestigepod.com

"NHS staff have been called "dirty foreigners" and "monkeys" amid a "noticeable" and "unacceptable" rise in racism from patients, a survey has found" news.sky.com/story/nhs-st...

Patients refusing to be treated by non-white staff as NHS reports shocking rise in racism

Paul Awah, a Bedfordshire-based diagnostic radiographer originally from Nigeria, said: "It's definitely got worse – people are more expressive."

news.sky.com

Far from thinking that ‘might makes right’, the great historian’s analysis of war identifies a vice common to all states aeon.co/essays/thucy...

struck by this clip of Josh Johnson standup: he doesn't really develop the theme, no real punchlines. he just says what people have been complaining about re: The Odyssey and everyone laughs for *3 minutes* because a professional comedian *could not improve upon it* www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKcv...

Some people were so mad about the casting of The Odyssey

YouTube video by Josh Johnson

youtube.com

Accounts from former child soldiers shed light on the use of children and the role of Colombian mercenaries in Sudan’s civil war. The children tell the AP they were chained to anti-aircraft guns and beaten when they refused orders. apnews.com/article/suda...

AP Exclusive: Child soldiers recount horrors of Sudan’s war and presence of Colombian mercenaries

Teenagers conscripted by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces to battle the army in the country's war say they were trained by Colombian mercenaries.

apnews.com

How Silicon Valley tech firms remade US defense contracting. And then opened the Pentagon’s checkbook—wide. thebulletin.org/2026/07/the-...

The rise of the military-technology complex

How Silicon Valley tech firms remade US defense contracting. And then opened the Pentagon’s checkbook—wide.

thebulletin.org

They examine how the AI industry relies on inflated expectations, question what AI can genuinely do and whether that even matters when selling a product, and explore how the technology is supercharging problems already embedded in our society ... open.spotify.com/episode/1iOC...

AI and the Enshittification Era with Cory Doctorow

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart · Episode

open.spotify.com

It is rather bizarre to see so many on the European and American Left embrace myths of Iran's supposed 2500 year continuity as a state that have their origins in Pahlavi-era nationalist identity narratives

I wonder how many older people die not simply because of health but because they are no longer able to maintain the project management of health that is required

What I learned when I reopened the Lockerbie bombing files www.bbc.com/news/article...

What I learned when I reopened the Lockerbie bombing files

Almost four decades on I delved into this complex case with fresh eyes - who really was behind the bombing?

bbc.com

‘In Germany, I learned how often young men on leave had confided hideous things they had seen to their mothers or sisters. In the last year of the war, the fear that gripped Berliners was not just of military defeat but of vengeance.’ Neal Ascherson on Berlin at war. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Neal Ascherson · Dancing on a Volcano: Wartime Berliners

As a British wartime child living near secret things and sites, I can remember easily respecting the instruction: ‘...

lrb.co.uk

History isn’t just a set of facts. It’s a story we tell about who we are. My contribution to Odyssey discourse is about how the American right wants a history where only white men feature because they want a future where only white men rule. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-new-vand...

The New Vandals

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" offends right-wingers' notion that only white men make history.

liberalcurrents.com

Two years ago I wrote about the death of disability activist Engracia Figueroa in 2021 after an airline broke her wheelchair. She died after developing pressure sores from an inadequate loaner chair and her family had no way to hold the airline accountable for her death.

‘The captain told me to wear a nappy on board’ – why is air travel so humiliating for disabled passengers?

From being abused by staff and other travellers to being denied access to toilets, flying is an increasingly distressing and frustrating experience for many wheelchair users. Here, they share their st...

theguardian.com

The death toll in Haiti is rising. The UN Security Council says conditions are worsening. A top Trump official says Haiti has become a "violent playground" for dictators. Yet the Trump admin is still trying to force 350,000 people back to Haiti, most of whom have never violated any immigration law.

US Calls Haiti a Death Trap While Planning for Mass Deportations

Haiti remains mired in a lawless miasma even as the US is threatening to force hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Caribbean nation back home, after the Supreme Court ruled that President Don...

bloomberg.com

Perrault’s Bluebeard warned young women: don’t look too closely. Gisèle Pelicot, Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Sarah Wynn-Williams looked anyway. Dr Kate Maltby on three memoirs that refused silence:

Inside Bluebeard’s castle: Wynn-Williams, Roberts Giuffre and Pelicot

Three recent books—by Sarah Wynn-Williams, Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Gisèle Pelicot—open a door on male power and its abuses

prospectmagazine.co.uk

Russia's shadow fleet is aging, and a growing number of its ships are getting scrapped in Turkey's Aliağa ship-breaking yards. @woutermassink.bsky.social reports with @alidnc.bsky.social, Daniel Thorpe & @sofiacherici.bsky.social supported by @journalismfund.bsky.social & MOST Investigative grants.

The shadow fleet’s graveyard: Sanctioned Russian tankers quietly scrapped in Turkey

ALIAĞA—Hidden at the edge of the Aliağa peninsula, an industrial town on Turkey’s western Aegean shore, lies the world’s third-largest ship-breaking hub.

turkeyrecap.com

The frankness of this seems important. No pretending to be democratic, no facade elections to please donors or IOs. Just self-proclaimed dictatorship plain and simple.

Reuters@reuters.com · 2w ago

Nicaragua's long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, said the Central American country will no longer hold elections, eliminating the possibility of an electoral challenge when his term ends next year and further ‌entrenching the rule he shares with his wife reut.rs/4fMmqSk

Another one bites the dust.

The brutal geopolitical shockwave plunges millions more into poverty. A mother in Sokoto sits beside her infant, watching helplessly as the child relapses into severe malnutrition. Half a world away, Middle East conflicts spike global energy costs, destroying livelihoods of Nigerian taxi drivers.

Nigerian children pay the price for the Iran war as malnutrition and poverty surge

Health workers in northern Nigeria say more children are relapsing into malnutrition and cite knock-on effects from the war in the Middle East.

apnews.com

Why you should never go to your 40th high school reunion.

While Vienna’s coffeehouses bred modernism, in Belgrade’s kafanas grew conspiracy and rage. Their clash consumed Europe aeon.co/essays/vienn...

This morning in 1979 at 5:30 AM MDT, at Church Rock, New Mexico, a 50-foot earthen dam containing the radioactive and toxic byproducts of a United Nuclear Corporation uranium mine failed, resulting in the largest single unintentional release of radioactive materials in the United States.

Elon Musk's xAI has installed more than double the number of gas turbines than it has publicly acknowledged to power its Colossus 2 data center project, without federal permits, and the pollution is hitting predominantly Black neighborhoods the hardest reut.rs/4bIghEm

Oklahoma approved oil field wastewater injection within a half-mile of a public water well, without making the company prove this would not pollute the city’s water. The site has repeatedly failed tests since, indicating a potential wastewater leak. with @readfrontier.bsky.social

To Protect Its Drinking Water, This City Has to Appeal to the Oil Regulators That Put It at Risk

Oklahoma restricts oil field wastewater injection within a half-mile of public water wells. Regulators have let companies do it anyway. But in the city of Enid, officials are pushing back against one ...

propublica.org

“We’re just killing people left and right.” The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division employed its new kamikaze drones in a major training environment, where it quickly became clear how useful those drones — Switchblade 600s — would be in combat.

‘Like a God-gun’: Armor unit adopts Switchblade kamikaze drones

The Switchblade 600 is a GPS-guided loitering munition with an anti-armor warhead. Troops found out quickly how useful they can be in combat.

stripes.com

Challenger parties don't just confront mainstream foreign policies-they redefine what counts as national security in the first place. New open-access article on political entrepreneurs and foreign and security policy⬇️ link.springer.com/article/10.1... @jird-jour.bsky.social @eui-sps.bsky.social

Politics defying threats: how political entrepreneurs reconfigure national security agendas - Journal of International Relations and Development

The emergence and election of new parties challenging mainstream status quo in democratic countries is one of the most critical features affecting the definition of national security priorities today....

link.springer.com

It may be possible to prove that disinformation is being spread in order to influence an outcome; in some cases, it may be possible to identify the people, or the state responsible. That is incidence: we know it happened. Impact is much harder to measure. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/less...

Lessons from the Cold War's disinformation front

Britain's Cold War propagandists fought Moscow with lies and forgeries. The adversaries and the technology have changed; the same threats remain.

engelsbergideas.com

In anticipation of NATO's summit in Ankara next week, @galipdalay.bsky.social & I talked about what Türkiye & other allies are hoping for, prospects for defense industrial cooperation, &, of course, Donald Trump. Join our conversation on @crisisgroup.org's War & Peace podcast.

NATO in Türkiye/Türkiye in NATO | International Crisis Group

This week on War & Peace, Olga speaks with Galip Dalay, senior research fellow at Chatham House, about Türkiye’s evolving relations within NATO and with the EU as Ankara prepares to host the upcoming ...

crisisgroup.org

A maternity ward doctor donated his own blood during surgery to keep a pregnant patient alive. One woman gained fewer than 10 pounds over her entire pregnancy. Another collapsed and had seizures during labor. (Published Dec. 2025)

What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid

Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.

propublica.org