Last month, the Democratic-controlled House voted in favor of appropriating $768 billion for the 2022 defense budget. This week on Intercepted: Senior writer for The Intercept Jon Schwarz talks with Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, longtime national security journalist, and author of “The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine.” Cockburn and Schwarz discuss the legacy of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and how private defense companies have historically maximized profits from horrific wars. join.theintercept.com/donate/now Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Making a Killing: The Business of War Profiteering

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The past week in Gaza has seen a major escalation in Israeli attacks against the besieged and starving Palestinians trapped in a killing cage. The Biden administration has aggressively sought to portray itself as being increasingly at odds with Israel’s tactics, mostly focusing on U.S. threats to withhold some weapons shipments if Benjamin Netanyahu conducts an invasion of Rafah. But the cold reality is that Israel has already bombed and occupied large swaths of Rafah. 
The regime has ordered the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, not only from Rafah, but also from areas of northern Gaza, once again thrusting masses of civilians — many of whom are wounded, starving, dehydrated, and traumatized — on a desperate hunt for a place to pitch a makeshift tent as they await either death or a ceasefire.
Despite the White House leaking stories to insider media outlets about how Biden is fed up with his great friend Netanyahu, the U.S. has made clear it continues to arm and support the Israeli regime.
This week on Intercepted, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the feminist antiwar organization Code Pink, speaks with Jeremy Scahill. Since the launch of the so-called war on terror in 2001, the 71-year-old activist has spent more than two decades disrupting congressional hearings, chasing members of Congress through the halls of the Capitol for answers, and traveling to countries the U.S. has labeled as enemies. Benjamin discusses her personal path to activism and the siege on Gaza, and offers a guide on how ordinary people can disrupt business as usual in the chambers of power in Washington, D.C.
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Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine

Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, reached a deal with students to work toward divesting from “companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories.” It is one of the few schools to reach deals with students protesting Israel's war on Gaza as demonstrations spread to more than 154 campuses nationwide.
This week on Intercepted, we bring you a special episode from inside the student movement for Gaza. Prem Thakker, a politics reporter for The Intercept, breaks down the campus protests and students' demands for schools to cut off financial ties with Israel and weapons makers. Thakker is joined by Gillian Goodman, a freelance writer and journalism graduate student at Columbia University. Gillian takes us inside the protest encampment at Columbia, which inspired similar demonstrations nationwide before it was violently dismantled by police.
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“A New Sense of World-Building”: Inside the Student Movement for Gaza

Last month, the famed American philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler was thrust into the center of a controversy after remarks Butler made about the October 7 attacks in Israel. A longtime critic of Zionism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Butler had condemned the attacks in the immediate aftermath. But at a March roundtable in France, Butler offered a historical context for the Hamas-led operations and stated that the attacks constituted armed resistance. The blowback was swift, and Butler was criticized in media outlets across Europe and in Israel. This week on Intercepted, Butler discusses the controversy and their position on Hamas, Israel, and crackdowns on student protests. Butler is currently a Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School. They are the author of several books, including “The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind,” “Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism,” and most recently, “Who's Afraid of Gender?”
For full show transcript visit the episode page. 
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Judith Butler Will Not Co-Sign Israel’s Alibi for Genocide

In the face of growing international pressure, the Biden administration has continued to double down on a policy of blanket support for Israel, even as it presses ahead with a possible military offensive against the town of Rafah that many observers have warned could trigger the largest humanitarian crisis of the war so far. This week on Intercepted, co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the Biden administration's approach to the conflict with Thanassis Cambanis, director of the foreign policy think tank Century International. Cambanis explains how Biden’s policy toward Israel is pushing the entire Middle East to the brink of a regional war that could inflict far greater suffering than we have seen to date, in an area which U.S. policymakers claim to be trying to exit.
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Biden’s Indifference to Palestinian Lives Is Sending the Middle East Into the Abyss

The war in Gaza has been among the deadliest for civilians, including children, of any war in the 21st century. After spending five weeks volunteering and administering at a field hospital in Rafah, Mohammad Subeh, an American doctor, describes what he saw to Intercepted co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain. Subeh spent weeks treating wounded Palestinian children, many of them orphaned by Israeli attacks. He also described treating those who survived the aftermath of “mass casualty incidents” in which dozens of civilians were killed or wounded; many of these attacks appeared deliberately targeted at civilians, Subeh says, rather than “indiscriminate.” As the Strip reels from the consequences of a breakdown of public health infrastructure following the destruction of most Gazan hospitals, Subeh says that ordinary civilians are paying a gruesome price for Israel's military assault.
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And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Making a Killing: The Business of War Profiteering

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