The Watchdog

Via the Twitter Files, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has helped to reveal several hair-raising stories about the extent of U.S. national security state operations on social media. However, as today’s guest explains, Musk himself is a key cog in the military-industrial and surveillance states being built by Washington.

Joining Lowkey today is return guest Alan MacLeod, a Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017, Alan published two books: “Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting” and “Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent,” as well as a number of academic articles.

The podcast begins with Alan discussing Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, a space firm and military contractor with close links to the CIA. He describes how SpaceX’s Starlink communications devices are being used by both the Ukrainian military and by anti-government activists in Iran to further Washington’s goals in those two countries.

As Alan explains, Starlink is “an internet service which allows anyone with a terminal to directly connect to one of many thousands of satellites that are orbiting the earth.”

Such channels of communication can prove to be of use towards the CIA and other intelligence services in the region, such as Mossad, which retains an illustrious reputation of purporting misinformation to support the overthrow of democratically elected governments in the Middle East. Stalinks also allow ways for U.S.-backed groups inside the country to remain online and in communication with one another without the knowledge of the government.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been one of the U.S.’ prime targets for regime change.

Suspicion towards Musk continued to rocket, as we delved further into his relationship with both NASA and more generally the National Security State. Alan describes how, from the very outset, Musk’s company was nurtured by the CIA in with the explicit expectation that it would work closely with Washington and become a key asset once established. SpaceX was also bankrolled by the U.S. government to the tune of billions of dollars.

The dialogue then shifts to the revelations discovered from the Twitter Files, the direct involvement of American intelligence personnel in the production of the video game series “Call of Duty,” and later the role played by U.S., Israeli and even German intelligence agencies in carrying out the assassination of Iranian general and statesman, Qassem Soleimani. The pair also discuss the disastrous effects of U.S. militarism, noting that at least 6 million people have died in America’s post-9/11 wars, a crusade that has only resulted in destroying the region.

Watch the whole interview here, exclusively at MintPress News.

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The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

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Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Support for the British Monarchy has rapidly declined, especially among young people, where near equal amounts of respondents say the country should become a republic as continue with the current system. In this episode of “The Watchdog,” Lowkey speaks to Symon Hill, a British activist who was recently arrested for questioning the proclamation of Charles as King following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth.

Lowkey begins by scrutinizing the infrastructure of information in British society. In doing so, the British-Iraqi rapper makes multiple references to the coordinated smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, and how it was orchestrated by private organizations following his nomination to lead the Labour Party. The conversation then shifts to the main topic of today, the unpopularity of King Charles III. Charles has been pelted in public with eggs on two separate occasions since his mother’s death.

Protesting the proclamation of King Charles III, Symon Hill, who had been arrested, stressed how he:

Talking about his detention, Hill added:

Formerly a campaigns manager at the Peace Pledge Union, Hill currently teaches history via evening courses for the Workers' Educational Association. “…If you can be arrested for saying a couple of sentences in the street that the establishment don’t like, then I think we’re in a very scary place,” he said.

The conversation steers to the absurdities of the recently passed Police Crime Sentencing Courts Act (2022). Equipping the Metropolitan Police with arbitrary powers, the law will “restrict movement at protests…it allows them [the police] to close down protests that are considered too noisy,” Hill warned. According to many domestic organizations, the act itself is a fundamental threat to the ideals and standards of British democracy and should be repealed immediately.

Watch the whole interview here, exclusively at MintPress News.

 Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic, political campaigner, and a MintPress video and podcast host. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique, and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network, and The Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.

In this week’s episode of “The Watchdog,” Lowkey begins discussing how the mainstream media silences academics, musicians to award-winning filmmakers, such as Ken Loach, for their outspoken stance on Palestinian rights.

Lowkey is joined by Professor David Miller, formerly of Bristol University and Zeeshan Ali, who runs the successful YouTube channel, Smile2Jannah. David, who was subjected to a coordinated three-year campaign by the Zionist lobby, is a leading British scholarly critic of Israel.

Kick-starting the podcast, Lowkey wastes no time in discussing the ousting of Professor David Miller from Bristol University, drawing attention to the support of Zeeshan Ali, who published a petition in support of him. The petition accumulated over 40,000 signatures. “This is getting ridiculous now. Enough is enough…it’s just a matter of time till it comes knocking on your doorstep and there’s no one left to defend you,” Ali said.

But when did all this type of censorship begin? Was it during the Corbyn era, or did it precede that?

The topic of discussion then shifts to the 2022 World Cup, and the way the success of the Moroccan team was dealt with in the mainstream media. Teams from the Global South succeeding was not taken well in many places in Europe. Commentators on Danish television, for example, compared the scenes of Moroccan players hugging family members with monkeys.

Later to the anatomy of the campaign against Qatar, with Miller identifying several Israel lobby groups as key to the groundswell of pushback against Qatar hosting the World Cup.

The final section of the podcast focuses on the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, and his recent pro-Israel turn. Lowkey reveals some interesting connections between his employer, The Daily Wire, and key Israel military and intelligence institutions – connections you will only find out about if you watch the interview here, exclusively at MintPress News.

Watch the whole interview here, exclusively at MintPress News.

 Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic, political campaigner, and a MintPress video and podcast host. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique, and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network, and The Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Rishi Sunak is Britain’s new prime minister. Sunak was not elected, even by Conservative Party members, who, just weeks earlier, had chosen Liz Truss. However, she was immediately turned upon by senior party members.

Sunak is the darling of the establishment, chief amongst it the British state broadcaster, the BBC. In 2020, the BBC presented him as a literal superhero, describing him as the chancellor who would “save the country’s economy.” In reality, government incompetence over COVID, Brexit and sanctioning Russia wrecked the economy, leading to rampant inflation and a pressing cost of living crisis affecting all Britons.

For this latest episode of “The Watchdog”, Lowkey again talks to Alan MacLeod, this time about the BBC’s extremely close links to the ruling Conservative Party. While often criticized by right-wingers as a bastion of liberalism, a multitude of top BBC executives and directors are directly linked to Toryism. For example, BBC chairman Richard Sharp was a senior adviser to many top Tories, including both former prime minister Boris Johnson and Sunak himself. Sharp has also donated at least £400,000 to the party.

Meanwhile, as MacLeod noted, the BBC’s former head of political programming, Robbie Gibb – the brother of a Tory cabinet minister – left the broadcasting corporation to become the director of communications for Conservative prime minister Theresa May.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer and Podcast Producer for MintPress News. He has worked at the company since 2019. Before joining MintPress, he was an academic and a freelance journalist specializing in Latin America and in analyzing media and propaganda. His latest article, “The BBC-to-NATO Pipeline: How the British State Broadcaster Serves the Powerful,” explores how the United Kingdom’s state broadcaster is nowhere near as independent as it insists it is.

A dangerous unit

In the second half of the podcast, the pair discuss MacLeod’s latest findings on Israeli military surveillance organization Unit 8200. In a new investigation, MacLeod found that hundreds of former Unit 8200 agents have been appointed to influential positions in some of the biggest and most influential Silicon Valley tech and communications companies. This includes Google, Amazon, Twitter and Microsoft. There, they oversee much of these companies’ development and security.

This is an alarming finding because, as is well-documented, Unit 8200 has carried out massive spying operations on Palestinian citizens, compiling sensitive information such as medical records and sexual histories, and used it to blackmail and extort them. Its graduates are also responsible for designing many of the most controversial and invasive hacking tools ever created, including the infamous Pegasus spyware that was used to eavesdrop on tens of thousands of politicians, journalists and activists across the world.

Watch or listen to this interview exclusively at MintPress.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

In episode 45 of The Watchdog podcast, Lowkey explores the issue of life inside Israeli prisons. Currently, 30 Palestinians are on hunger strike, protesting the Israeli government’s policy of indefinitely detaining their political enemies without trial or evidence. Last week, 900 further prisoners refused their meals as a sign of solidarity.

“We will continue with our struggle, knowing what awaits us of repression, abuse, isolation, confiscation of our clothes and pictures of our children, thrown into concrete cells devoid of everything, except for our bodies and our pain,” the prisoners said in a statement.

The most high profile of the hunger strikers is Salah Al-Hamouri, a French-Palestinian human rights defender. Detained without charge or trial for six months, Al-Hamouri has refused all food since September 25. In response, Israeli authorities unleashed a series of punitive measures, including transferring him to solitary confinement. He is now isolated in a 2x2 meter cell with little to no ventilation.

This, according to Milena Ansari, is par for the course for Palestinians who object to Israeli domination. “I don’t think there is any violation that hasn’t taken place on Salah,” she told Lowkey today, noting that he was detained while still a schoolboy, shot at, and arrested six times. Milena Ansari is the international advocacy officer for Addameer, a prisoner support and human rights association. Addameer monitors the treatment of people arrested in the West Bank and Gaza by both the Israeli police and by the Palestinian Authority.

Also joining us on the Watchdog podcast today is Rula Jamal LLM, head of monitoring and documentation at al-Haq, an independent Palestinian human rights organization based in Ramallah. Al-Haq was established by a collective of human rights lawyers in 1979.

Last year, the Israeli government designated both Addameer and al-Haq as terrorist groups, a move that was condemned by Amnesty International and other leading organizations.

Jamal explained that Al-Hamouri’s case was far from unusual, except in the worldwide attention it was receiving, telling Lowkey that,

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

The Israeli state has been losing the battle for Western public opinion for quite some time now. Even in the United States, its closest ally, support for Israel is waning, while sympathy for Palestine has more than doubled since 2013, according to a series of Gallup polls.

Knowing this, Israel has redoubled its efforts in soft power. Joining Lowkey today are three people who have closely monitored these efforts: Dr. Ramzy Baroud, Jessica Buxbaum, and Alan MacLeod.

One example of Israel trying to launder its image in pop culture is the character of Sabra, an Israeli superhero and Mossad agent. Sabra features in the upcoming Marvel blockbuster, “Captain America: New World Order.” Baroud asked Lowkey the question, “why now?” Why had this controversial character made a return, noting,

Baroud explored this in detail in his recent MintPress News article, “From Exodus to Marvel: The Israelification of Hollywood.”

 This latest attempt at woke imperialism is particularly notable, Baroud said, as,

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, as well as a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs. He is the author of six books, including “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out,” co-written with Professor Ilan Pappé.

Jessica Buxbaum highlighted the many connections Marvel Studios – particularly its senior executives – have with the apartheid state. Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac Perlmutter, for example, grew up in 1948-occupied Palestine and served in the IDF during the 1967 Six-Day War, alongside Marvel CEO Avi Arad. Her recent investigation found that many other Marvel senior figures had donated to Zionist organizations, or even to campaign funds for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Also joining Lowkey today is Alan MacLeod, whose latest investigation goes through emails published by WikiLeaks showing that many of Hollywood’s most influential producers work closely with the Israeli government and the IDF in order to whitewash its crimes, promote its image, and stamp out any pro-Palestine sentiment in the entertainment world. This went so far as senior entertainment executives introducing IDF officers to other celebrities in an effort to spread Israeli narratives throughout the profession. Hollywood’s top brass also attempted to “cancel” actors and directors who spoke out against Israeli aggression, using their financial clout to intimidate venues and festivals into cutting ties with them.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Lowkey begins this latest episode by delving into recent revelations around the case of Shamima Begum, a British national who fled the U.K. as a teenager and joined ISIS in Syria.  Lowkey examines the new admission that a Canadian secret service agent trafficked at least 140 British citizens into Syria. He also examines Turkish police claims that this agent’s handler was believed to be British intelligence working out of the Canadian Embassy. It is important to remember that the British Monarch is the head of state in Canada.

When asked about these activities, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau responded that his intelligence agencies must be “creative and flexible.” To gauge the response to this, Lowkey is joined by Sally Letts, the mother of Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen who is currently detained in a prison in Northern Syria after travelling there during the war. Both Letts and Begum have had their British citizenship stripped by the government, despite the question marks surrounding their journeys there.

As a direct reply to Trudeau, Sally Letts suggests his statement could be read as meaning that it is “perfectly acceptable for the Canadian Security Service here to engage in child trafficking.”

Richard Walton, former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, sought to justify this policy:

During the podcast, Sally and Lowkey explored the Active Change Foundation and its curious role in obtaining the conviction of her and her husband for funding terrorism. Their son had been imprisoned three times by ISIS and his family sought to rescue him. Discussing how this Prevent-backed counter-extremist organization, which initially portrayed itself to be an ally to the family, was secretly gathering intel and giving false impressions to the family about rescuing their son. This in turn led to the conviction of Jack’s parents. Thus, the steps taken by Active Change Foundation toward the Letts family are eerily reminiscent of FBI entrapment cases in the United States.

Sally Letts identifies parallel similarities between her son’s case and Shamima Begum, pointing out that the person who facilitated Jack’s journey to Syria has gone uncharged by the police, despite ample evidence. Sally told Lowkey that the family now believes it likely that the person that facilitated Jack’s entry is an informant of the intelligence services. She laments the dehumanization of both Shamima Begum and her son Jack have been,

Join Lowkey today for a critically important discussion about current events and the future of the world, and do not forget to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.

In today’s episode, former Google employee Ariel Koren joins Lowkey and articulates her experience at the big tech giant, claiming it has gradually developed an institutionalized pro-Israeli bias. She also reveals ways in which employees attempting to hold the company accountable for unethical contracts, such as that of Project Nimbus, are being targeted and intentionally silenced.

Google, alongside Amazon, has signed a contract worth $1.2 billion, titled “Project Nimbus”, which will provide a cloud system service for both the Israeli military and the Israeli government.

Disturbingly, the project was announced May in 2021, the same month Israel killed at least 260 Palestinians in Gaza. Adding insult to injury, it was during this period that Amnesty International found Israel guilty of practicing Apartheid against the Palestinian people.

Former employee Ariel Koren claims that:

According to Google’s spokesperson, Shannon Newberry:

However, there is also evidence that Project Nimbus will also empower Israeli mechanisms of surveillance, data collection and even interrogation.

As Lowkey explains:

Lowkey then posits Project Nimbus as the climax of a long push by Israel to harness Google to do what it wants. Lowkey points to a mission creep over the last decade which saw several key Israeli organizations set up to move both big tech jobs to the apartheid project and former Israeli military personnel into the companies themselves. The aim of this, he asserts, is to make a meaningful BDS project an impossibility by integrating Israel into big tech companies vital to the global economy.

Want to hear more about this issue? Join Lowkey and Ariel Koren today for a critically important discussion. Keep updated for many more interesting topics to be discussed by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media. 

European countries, as well as the United States, continue to be imperiled by an economic crisis following the imposition of sanctions on Russia. The policy has backfired spectacularly and has had worse economic ramifications on those levying the sanctions, than those being sanctioned. In this week’s episode, Lowkey speaks to respected U.S. economist Dr. Richard Wolff, discussing the links between the war in Ukraine, inflation, and the class war at home.

Before exploring the people's definition of inflation, Dr. Wolff contextualizes the economic crisis currently unfolding across the West.

In the conversation, Lowkey and Dr. Richard Wolff expose ways economic policy can be a code term for class war. They delve into the way the cost of enmity towards Russia is being placed on the shoulders of the working class in the West, which recently experienced one of the worst crashes of capitalism in its history.

Lowkey then questions Dr. Wolff on the threat to the primacy of the dollar posed by pushing billions of people in Russia, China, and India into trading with each other in currencies other than the dollar.

He asked Dr. Wolff, why is it that the political leaders across Europe and the US might have carried out such an act of economic self-harm.

According to Dr. Richard Wolff:

They conclude that this war has hastened the inevitable rise of China as the world's economic powerhouse.

Want to hear more about this issue? Join Lowkey and Dr. Richard Wolff today for a critically important discussion. Keep updated for many more interesting topics to be discussed by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.

You can find this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, and other streaming platforms.

Support this podcast by becoming a member of our Patreon.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.

It is a story that is straight out of a dystopian science fiction novel. Big social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, have gone on a hiring spree, recruiting dozens of CIA officers to run their most important, politically sensitive departments – and almost no one is talking about it.

In episode 39 of “The Watchdog” podcast, Lowkey speaks to Alan MacLeod, a  journalist who has spent months painstakingly combing through employment databases and corporate social media sites like LinkedIn to catalog this national security state infiltration of many of the largest social media platforms.

One of these platforms is Facebook, the world’s most influential news distributor. Recently, the Silicon Valley giant released a PR video featuring a man they identify as “Aaron” – the company’s Senior Product Policy Manager for Misinformation. Aaron informs viewers that he and his team think deeply about how to balance their commitment to freedom of speech with their duty to protect users from harm and violence, and underlines that “transparency is incredibly important in the work I do.”

There is one problem with this, as MacLeod explained:

Nor was he a minor pen pusher at the CIA. In fact, he was so high up that he wrote the President’s Daily Brief, a document read out to the commander-in-chief in the Oval Office every day. The fact that a former high-ranking CIA member is now influencing content moderation on Facebook should concern everyone, MacLeod notes, telling Lowkey that,

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer and Podcast Producer for MintPress News. He has worked at the company since 2019. Before joining MintPress, he was an academic and a freelance journalist specializing in Latin America and in analyzing media and propaganda.

His series of articles for MintPress News has highlighted the connections between the national security state and big social media outlets like Reddit, Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter. To understand more about this worrying trend, follow the links above or watch the interview exclusively at MintPress News.

Support the show

The Watchdog is 100% independent and listener-supported.

We don’t take corporate ad money. We don’t have billionaire backers. Episodes like this are only possible because of you.

If you value fearless journalism and critical conversations, please consider joining our community of supporters:

 🔗 Support us on Patreon

Together, we can keep this work going.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.