Blood Work

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

On January 20, 1942, a group of SS officers and mid-level bureaucrats from the ministries of the Third Reich convened at a lakeside villa. The agenda: Genocide.

Image: A photograph of one of the interior corridors of 56-58 Am Wannsee (Credit: Werner Zellien)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Bozo Time

We return to Grégoire Chamayou’s Theory of the Drone to meditate on sacrifice, preservation, and what happens when warrior virtue must be retooled for riskless killers.

Image: A photograph of the setup of the ‘shock generator’ equipment for Stanley Milgram's famous 1960s studies on authority and obedience. (Source: Stanley Milgram Papers (MS 1406). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

If you enjoyed this episode:

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: The Jean Claude Van Damme Military Academy for Attention Deficit Presidents

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Kelsey joins Gregk to discuss his ten-year beat covering military tech, drones and autonomous weapons and talk about emergent modes of war in the 2020s.

For more from Kelsey D. Atherton:

Image: The remnants of a commercial quadcopter drone manufactured by Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI) shot down with an anti-drone laser produced by Raytheon. (Courtesy of Kelsey Atherton)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: The Road Not Taken

We look at Grégoire Chamayou’s groundbreaking 2015 book on Drone Warfare to examine the phenomenon of killing without vulnerability, and the troubling ethics such technologies induce.

If you enjoyed this episode:

Image: An 18-year-old factory worker named Norma Jean Dougherty poses for a photograph at the Radioplane factory in Burback, Califorina, in 1944. Shortly after, she would achieve international stardom under the stage name ‘Marilyn Monroe’.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Supply & Demand

Josef enters the Zone to talk about his experience working in the U.S. State Department and discuss the quiet violence work of diplomats, administrators and functionaries.

For more from Josef Burton:

Image: A photo of the exterior of the Writers’ Building in Kolkata, originally built as an office for junior clerks in the East India Company and which served as the effective seat of British power on the Indian subcontinent.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Crack-up

This week, we’ve got excerpts from two essays recently published in Foreign Affairs for you, which are striking in their candour about ‘the current situation’ and surprising in their proposed routes out. Capping it off, we briefly dwell on Mark Carney’s recent remarks about the ongoing US-Canada trade war.

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Josef enters the Zone to talk about his experience working in the U.S. State Department and discuss the quiet violence work of diplomats, administrators and functionaries.

For more from Josef Burton:

– Follow him on Bluesky and Twitter

– Listen to his appearance on QAA discussing Iranian Monarchists

– Read his 2023 essay ‘Impolite Society’ in The Baffler

Image: A photo of the exterior of the Writers’ Building in Kolkata, originally built as an office for junior clerks in the East India Company and which served as the effective seat of British power on the Indian subcontinent.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Crack-up

ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

This week, we’ve got excerpts from two essays recently published in Foreign Affairs for you, which are striking in their candour about ‘the current situation’ and surprising in their proposed routes out. Capping it off, we briefly dwell on Mark Carney’s recent remarks about the ongoing US-Canada trade war.

The girls from No Gods No Mayors swing by to talk about mayoral megalomania and the evolution of the violence inherent to municipal politics.

Listen to No Gods No Mayors

For more from Mattie Lubchansky:

– Read Simplicity

If you enjoyed this episode:

Image: Former Mayor of New York City Eric Adams holding a picture of a gun.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Power Trip

Last week, Israel carried out airstrikes on a defunct airbase in northwestern Syria, in an action both stated and perceived as aimed at Turkey. We offer a little background on Israel and Turkey’s regional rivalry in the context of Syria’s civil war, and speculate on how Israel’s actions might have another target in their sights: Turkey’s NATO membership. 

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We take another dive into the Blood Work theory zone, looking at Cameroonian postcolonial thinker Achille Mbembe’s seminal 2003 essay on the production of death as the crowning political activity of our era.

Image: Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (2019), Duke University Press

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Time to Hedge

ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

Last week, three countries across the Middle East and South Asia signed a new defence pact which has several potential ramifications for the region, and indeed security arrangements around the world. This week, we’re going to discuss that announcement and why we should hope it never has to be worth more than the paper it’s printed on. Because if it does, things could get silly.

We explore the modern history of putting big guns on wheels, then dive into the history of Chad and its border dispute with Libya to learn how a humble pickup truck became a quintessential weapon of war.

If you enjoyed this episode:

Image: A Nigerien military convoy on a counter-terrorism patrol in the Sahara Desert (UNICEF)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Tatmadaw’s Shiny Happy People Committee for Lo-Fi Beats to Study To

Sources:

Mario J. Azevedo (1998), Roots of Violence: A History of War in Chad

Michael Maren (1997), The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Blood Work’s EU Correspondent joins us to discuss Europe’s sclerotic struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing world, why NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is such a freak, and what the heck actually went down in Ceuta.

For more from Ciarán Dold:

– Follow him on Bluesky

– Follow CS on Instagram

– Visit operationglad.io

Image: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Southern Discomfort

ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

For this week’s newsletter, we offer a brief overview of some of the violences plaguing the border regions of Thailand before taking a closer look at the twenty-year Malay separatist insurgency which has claimed thousands of lives in the country’s ‘Deep South’.