Documentaries:

• Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)

• Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (Netflix)

• Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)

• Hollywoodgate (Ibrahim Nah'at)

• The Mauritanian (Kevin Macdonald)

Books:

• Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam

• Alfred W. McCoy: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

• Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict

• Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil & War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

• Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put it in the White House & What Their Influence Means for America

• Valerie Kaur, See No Stranger (Link)

• Barton Gellman: Angler: The Dick Cheney Vice Presidency and Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State

• Robert Fisk, Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East

• Michael C. Ruppert: Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (Note to reader: serious conspiracy/crank material is found mixed quite freely with fact herein, read with due hazard in mind)

• Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantánmo Diary

Follow Sabrina Jennings on Bluesky or Patreon:

⁠Note To Self // Patreon⁠

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Follow William Engels on Bluesky or Patreon

Bluesky

Patreon

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

⁠⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠⁠

Further References:

The Carlyle Group (US-Saudi Investment Firm of Bush Family Provenance)

Clinton Destroys Pharmaceutical Factory in Sudan as Distraction

US Military Attacks on Journalists in Iraq War / Gulf War 2 (Wikipedia)

False Intel on Iraqi Buildup at Saudi Border in 1990 (Christian Science Monitor)

FDR and Abdul Aziz Meeting in 1945

The Onion Router (Tor) Web Anonymization Tool

PEGASUS - Zero Day iPhone Exploit

A truly decadent and indulgent episode for the genuinely twisted wordheads and storyfreaks still crawling on all fives. Cheers, you beautiful bastards.

⁠Music by Anapse⁠, track Bisector off Streamsafe Essentials

Books

Hells Angels by Hunter S Thompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson

Better Than Sex: The Gonzo Papers Vol 4 by Hunter S Thompson

Freak Power: Hunter S. Thompson's Campaign for Sheriff by Daniel Joseph Watkins

Dark Alliance by Gary Webb

Goebbels by Peter Longerich

HST's Best Audiobook Narrator: Scott Sower

Film

⁠Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb⁠

⁠Fear and Loathing in Aspen⁠

⁠Inherent Vice⁠

⁠Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas⁠

⁠The Rum Diary⁠

Sundry Fed, Spook, and Military Initiatives

COINTELPRO (FBI)

MHCHAOS (CIA)

Project Plowshare (DARPA)

With special guest Deputy Dick filling in (for) Richard Sinex.

⁠Music by Anapse⁠, track Bisector off Streamsafe Essentials

--Books--

Hells Angels by Hunter S Thompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson

Better Than Sex: The Gonzo Papers Vol 4 by Hunter S Thompson

Freak Power: Hunter S. Thompson's Campaign for Sheriff by Daniel Joseph Watkins

Dark Alliance by Gary Webb

Goebbels by Peter Longerich

HST's Best Audiobook Narrator: Scott Sower

--Film--

⁠Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb⁠

⁠Fear and Loathing in Aspen⁠

⁠Inherent Vice⁠

⁠Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas⁠

⁠The Rum Diary⁠

--Sundry Fed, Spook, and Military Initiatives--

COINTELPRO (FBI)

MHCHAOS (CIA)

Project Plowshare (DARPA)

Music Credit: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 30 performed by Paavali Jumppanen, available on Museopen.

The Alan Shapiro translation of the Oresteia is my favorite.

Another episode (Hemlock #5) I did about Aeschylus can be found here. It talks in greater depth about the metaphor of the net, and centers Clytemnestra as the hero/main character of the post-Trojan scene.

For fun and profit: reading the Wikipedia page on the Eleusinian Mysteries.

He who learns, must suffer.
Even in our sleep, pain: which time cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart.
Until, in the fullness of time, against our will and in our despair
Through the awful grace of God
Comes wisdom-

-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying,

Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

Matthew 26:48

Watch Judas and the Black Messiah:

https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/judas-and-the-black-messiah

Follow Sabrina on Bluesky or Patreon:

⁠Note To Self // Patreon⁠

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

⁠⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠⁠

References, Books, Mentions

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

• The Riot Report (DocDocs 6)

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• Weathermen

• Rainbow Coalition

• G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

• One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Organized Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein (Two Volumes) by Whitney Webb

• FBI Suicide Letter to Martin Luther King Jr

• An African American and Latinx History of the US by Paul Ortiz

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

• COINTELPRO

• MHCHAOS / Operation CHAOS

• Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb

• Drugs as Weapons Against Us (Documentary)

-//-

⁠Support me on Patreon⁠ - or leave a review for the show.

Hubert "Bert" Dreyfus (1929-2017) was a ⁠professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley⁠ who specialized in phenomenology, 20th century Continental philosophy, artificial intelligence, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and the aesthetics/literature of existentialism from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard to ⁠Terrence Malick⁠. He is probably most famous for his ⁠exposition of Heidegger's early masterpiece⁠ "Being and Time" (German: Sein und Zeit), and for his ⁠negative predictions about artificial intelligence.⁠ He taught multiple courses through MOOCs from roughly 2006-2012 about Greek philosophy, existentialism in film and literature, Heidegger's opus Being & Time, and the limits of AI. In this course he uses the ⁠Fitzgerald poetic translation⁠ of the Odyssey with his own amendments and R. Lattimores' meaning-literal translation.

He was also extremely kind to me.

Arete, techne, poesis, aletheia, gnosis...

Books Mentioned:

The Discovery of the Mind - Bruno Snell

The Greeks and the Irrational - E. R. Dodds

-//-

Watch "Cruel and Unusual" on Kanopy!

https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/cruel-and-unusual

Follow Sabrina and I on Bluesky or Patreon:

⁠Note To Self // Patreon⁠

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Hemlock // Patreon

William Engels // Bluesky

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Rulin and Family⁠⁠

⁠⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠⁠

⁠⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠⁠

⁠⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠⁠

Books and Sources Mentioned:

Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison by Chris Hedges

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour Hersh

The Minds of Men (YouTube Documentary)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Aramark and Prison Industrial Labor (Article)

Watch Vita Activa on Kanopy!

https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/vita-activa-spirit-hannah-arendt-1?vp=newschool

Follow Sabrina on Bluesky or Patreon:

Note To Self // Patreon

Sabrina Jennings // Bluesky

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠

⁠Rulin and Family⁠

⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠

⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠

⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠

Books and Sources Mentioned:

Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, and Weil by Deborah Nelson

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

"Evil resides in the pretended necessity that we claim for those choices which we make that at are, at bottom: mere preferences."

-me, a few days ago

The final book in Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, on the compatibility of divine omniscience and human free will, the eternal and the continual, and the rarefaction of intelligence.

Cheers! Virginia Woolf is next...

Music: Beethoven, String Quartet No 13, "Cavatina", Orion String Quartet. I also recommend the Lindsay String Quartet version, and the Takács Quartet on Decca.

English translation by WV Cooper, with some modifications by the host (e.g. dropping some 'thee' and 'wherefore' archaisms)

McNamara at War is available September 23rd from Amazon! There's an audiobook as well for the audio-inclined...

Summary (AI Generated, Model = NotebookLM)

The podcast features an insightful conversation between host William Engels and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William Taubman, co-author of the recent book "McNamara at War". Taubman, a distinguished Cold War expert, has also penned biographies of Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The discussion delves into the complex life and career of Robert McNamara, who served as US Defense Secretary during the early years of the Vietnam War. Topics covered include McNamara's personal biography, the controversies surrounding his strategic approach to Vietnam, his profound regrets, and his role in pivotal Cold War events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The conversation explores McNamara's impressive pre-Pentagon career, characterized by his "brilliance" and a methodical, data-driven approach he applied at Harvard Business School and in reorganizing the US Air Force during World War II. He notably became the first non-Ford family president of Ford Motor Company. However, this trajectory of success ended with his leadership of the Vietnam War, a conflict that ultimately "mastered him". The US involvement in Vietnam was largely fueled by the "domino theory," a deeply held, though ultimately "paranoid," belief within the US government that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would trigger a cascade of communist takeovers across Southeast Asia, eventually isolating the United States. The sheer scale of the US aerial bombardment in Vietnam was staggering, with more bombs dropped than by all sides in all of World War II, leading to immense death and destruction.

A significant point of discussion is the American government's perceived failure to understand its adversaries during the Cold War. Engels references McNamara's assertion in the documentary "The Fog of War" that the US had empathy for the Soviets but lacked it for the Vietnamese. Taubman, however, counters that even the Soviets, particularly Khrushchev, were never fully understood, leading to dangerous misinterpretations of his intentions in crises like Berlin and Cuba. McNamara emerges as a "tragic figure" – a man of intellect and a "highly developed moral conscience," influenced by his pushy mother and distant father, who nonetheless became embroiled in a military system that he failed to control. Despite his growing conviction that the war was unwinnable, McNamara found it difficult to express these doubts to President Johnson, constrained by bureaucratic consensus and a desire to mitigate even greater escalation from within.

Fundraisers, Palestine Support, and Good Programs:

⁠Amjad Hamad and his Family⁠

⁠Rulin and Family⁠

⁠Sammar and her Husband⁠

⁠MSF (Doctors Without Borders)⁠

⁠Palestinian Youth Movement⁠

Articles

"The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double" in The Atlantic

Trump Pushing Japan, South Korea to Nuclearize (Japan Times)

Books

• The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb by Philip Taubman

• Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

• Rage by Bob Woodward

• Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

• War by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

  In Retrospect by Robert McNamara