Trip the Beltway Fantastic With Kelley Vlahos and Friends

We talk a lot about the military industrial complex here but a growing threat to our liberty is the disinformation/misinformation industrial complex, or what our next guest Jim Bovard and others call the Censorship Industrial Complex. 

One could say this began shortly before the 2016 election when the Obama administration began investigating the Donald Trump campaign for links to the Russians. When Trump was elected, the Democrats, including the losing candidate Hillary Clinton, accused the Russians of colluding with Donald Trump to win. Aside from cyberhacking, the Russians were accused of manipulating our own social media to meddle and influence voters in favor of Trump (subsequent research has dispelled the notion that such manipulation even worked).

After an extensive investigation that roiled the country no Russian collusion with Trump was never found. 

The legalities have never quite mattered, as the narrative of collusion combined with Russia’s actual attempts to sway voters by deploying troll farms and fake accounts on social media, plus the usual spycraft that all major powers do by the way, combined for enough justification for agencies within the government — even while Trump was president — to create a massive weaponized apparatus dedicated to ferreting out and punishing what it saw was “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” 

In practice, these government entities, often working with quasi-government or government funded non-profit organizations, are monitoring speech on the most controversial highly politicized issues of our day: the war in Ukraine being one of the biggest examples. Also COVID. The attempts to control speech and how it was affecting the 2020 election were reported after the fact by Matt Taibbi and his team in the Twitter Files: reams of accounts and posts pulled down that were deemed Russian propaganda and/or COVID misinformation/disinformation, right down to the eve of the 2020 presidential with the Hunter Biden laptop story being blacked out right before polls opened. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, admitted as much and more recently he fessed up to the pressures he was put under by federal entities during the COVID pandemic.

What we are concerned about here is how the censorship industrial complex can chill domestic media dissent on issues of foreign policy and war. If reporters and analysts are challenging the company line on hyper-partisan issues like the Ukraine War and Israel, how long will it take before they are considered a threat to national security, too?

We talk to longtime author and all-around Big Government critic Jim Bovard. Jim is a regular columnist at the New York Post and published Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty in 2023. Also joining us is author Mike Vlahos, who has done a lot of work on the political and social dynamics that precede Constitutional crisis.

More from Jim Bovard:

Hillary Clinton, queen of disinformation, issues two-faced call for censorship

Supreme Court’s censorship ruling lets Biden muzzle us online — and meddle in the election

We can’t trust politicized FBI to handle probe of Trump assassination bid

The war in Gaza continues today with scores of Palestinians dead, mostly from airstrikes on shelters and schools and neighborhoods outside hospitals. The displaced have nowhere else to go. In the meantime, the Israeli military has expanded its bombing and ground campaign into Lebanon, with more than 1400 dead and a million displaced since mid-September. 

A new generation of reporters and editors at Antiwar.com, which has been challenging U.S. national security policy and militarism since the Bosnia War, has been working non-stop to provide readers with comprehensive, independent news on Israel’s war on Gaza and now its neighbors, since Oct. 7. It represents the libertarian right, a stalwart non-interventionist orbit that draws in fellow travelers from across the ideological and political spectrum and counts as its lodestars Ron Paul and the late Justin Raimondo.

Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of the Conflicts of Interest podcast.

Dave DeCamp is host of the Antiwar News podcast, and news editor/writer at Antiwar.com

They join me to talk about what it is like to report on the war in this space, how libertarians are processing Israel’s war, and the frustration with Washington’s lack of ability or will to stop it (or at least American investment in it).

In the last two weeks we have witnessed a wave of aggressive tactics from Israel that have finally expanded the war in Gaza beyond the borders of the Gaza strip and West Bank and now into neighboring Lebanon, Yemen and possibly Iran. 

We have seen Israel redefine terror tactics by simultaneously blowing up pagers connected to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, killing scores and injuring thousands. They have assassinated top Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Naasrallah. They have invaded Lebanon on the ground, while pounding the country with unrelenting airstrikes, including central Beirut overnight on Thursday. Over 1400 Lebanese have been killed in the most recent strikes. Meanwhile, Israeli bombing of Gaza has not abated either, the most recent being attacks on an orphanage and shelter killing 17 on Wednesday.

In a brazen retaliatory move earlier this week, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at military targets in Israel, resulting in damage. The Israelis and their American partners have played down the impact of these strikes, but it is clear that some of the missiles had breached Israel’s vaunted missile defense systems and made direct hits.

Does this mean war with Iran? If that is the case, will the U.S. be dragged into it? Certainly there are hawks in Washington who have been salivating for that opportunity for a long time. 

We talk to Retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis about this and more. Danny is a retired member of the U.S. Army who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, and the host of the Deep Dive podcast. 

More from Danny:

Israel's conduct in the war will consume us all

Our last chance to avoid war in the Middle East

‘Blinking red’: The risk to America’s national security greater than appears

NY Mayor Eric Adams took a bite out of the Big Apple of temptation and is choking now, charged with foreign taking bribes, campaign donations, luxury items and more 

New York politics is exploding this week as its Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted  on charges of bribery, wire fraud, and seeking illegal campaign donations from foreign sources. In the latest revelations, gleaned from an unsealed indictment on Thursday, the Democratic mayor allegedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Turkish companies and the Turkey government before, during, and after his campaign in 2021. Not surprisingly, the Turks allegedly started asking for favors immediately after Adams won his election to what is probably the most powerful mayoral seat in the United States.

In a press conference the mayor was defiant. “I’m the mayor of the city of New York. From here, my attorneys will take care of the case so I can take care of the city. My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”

But the accusations against him come amid a litany of other scandals in which U.S. politicians can’t seem to say no to foreign influence, whether it be direct campaign contributions or luxury gifts, all in exchange for serving as a conduit for foreign interests in Washington, or in Adams’ case, the Big Apple.

To talk more about this are my Quincy Institute colleagues Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout. They both focus on campaign finance corruption, foreign influence, lobbying, transparency and the revolving door for our organizations Democratizing Foreign Policy project. 

From Nick and Ben:

 Foreign Lobbying in the U.S.

From Ben Freeman: 

NYC Mayor Adams charged in illegal foreign $$ scheme

Report: Razzle dazzle Deion's staff made play for Saudi cash

Menendez's corruption is just the tip of the iceberg

From Nick Cleveland-Stout:

Witnesses backed by military, foreign $$ hype war with Iran

'Poison' Ivy Lee, America's first foreign lobbying tycoon

DOD defies order to clean up 'forever chemicals' in Arizona

It has been a tremendously brutal week in the Middle East. The war in Gaza continues apace with no ceasefire in sight. Meanwhile, thousands of Lebanese have been injured and at least 32 killed after pagers and other electronic devices reportedly connected to Hezbollah members exploded on Tuesday and Wednesday across the country. 

It is still not clear how many civilians and bystanders were among those killed and injured. According to the New York Times, current and former defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack say the Israelis were behind it, describing the operation as complex and long in the making.  While vocal supporters of Israel are calling the “Trojan Horse” attack “impressive” and “targeted,” others say it was sophisticated boobytrapping which is not only illegal under international law, but simply terrorism.

Meanwhile, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia said this week that the kingdom would not normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians have their own state, joining Oman in throwing cold water on President Biden’s “grand bargain” for the Abraham Accords. 

And in Iraq, a new deal to bring U.S. troops home for good is running smack into headlines that ISIS is enjoying a resurgence in the region, possibly due to the war in Gaza and upheaval in the region overall.

I Invited my Quincy Institute colleague Adam Weinstein to talk about all of this and more this week. Aside from being a very astute analyst of Middle East geopolitics, with a particular expertise in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Adam is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, having served in an Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company in the Afghanistan War in 2012. 

More from Adam: 

Troops in Peril: The Risks of Keeping U.S. Troops in Iraq and Syria

Shame: Afghanistan withdrawal politics miss the point of everything

Attacks on US troops in Middle East resume

You Can Go Home Again: A Proposal for Phased Military Withdrawal from Iraq and Normalizing U.S.–Iraq Relations

This week we’re talking about diplomacy — or the lack of it — in the now 31-month war in Ukraine. I have the honor to welcome Ian Proud who was a member of His Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023 and served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019. Prior to Moscow, he organized the 2013 G8 Summit Northern Ireland, working out of 10 Downing Street. 

He recently published his memoir, A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019.

Simply put, he has the chops to talk about the degradation of diplomacy, not only in Western relations with Russia, but how the West mismanaged critical events, beginning with the Maidan revolution in Kyiv, the Russian takeover of Crimea, and the years leading up the current war in Ukraine.

Irish professor and author Geoff Roberts wrote recently that Proud is “a very welcome addition to the ranks” of Western ambassadors such as Jack Matlock and Chas Freeman in the United States, Britain’s Tony Brenton, and Tony Kevin in Australia. Why? Because they are “dissident voices that are needed more than ever amid fevered lobbying for yet further escalation of the (Ukraine) conflict.”

We tap into Proud’s experience and institutional wisdom this week to challenge the conventional narratives undergirding today’s headlines: the Ukrainian’s invasion of Kursk, the pressure to allow Ukraine to use U.S/UK weapons to strike deep into Russia, and the dangers of today’s aversion to “talking to dictators.” 

More from Ian Proud:

Russian asset seizure scheme will prolong war

Will Kursk be a sideshow that turns into tragedy for Ukraine?

President Joe Biden was reportedly “visibly shaking” as he got off Air Force One two weeks ago and was unable to get into an SUV on his own. This was a report not by a MAGA-inspired X account but by the Daily Mail’s Emily Goodin the week after Biden spoke at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

“Walking slowly down the plane’s stairs, he struggled to step up into the SUV waiting to take him to the 8,000-acre Santa Barbara ranch where he and his family have just enjoyed a week-long vacation,” she wrote. “One of his Secret Service agents moved to shield him from the watching cameras, before giving him a helpful boost into the car.”

Biden’s apparently worsening condition, which plagued his July debate against Donald Trump and at least one speech given during the NATO anniversary that month in which he mixed up the names of Russian President Putin and Ukraine President Zelensksy and his VP Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, led to his replacement as Democratic nominee for a second presidential term. After endorsing Harris to take his place, Biden has all but slipped from view, albeit brief appearances, notably one with Harris on Labor Day in Pittsburgh.

Sure there are serious politics at play and we don’t dismiss that here, but let’s get down to brass tacks. There are currently two major, very bloody and brutal land wars being fueled by U.S. weapons and assistance, one in Ukraine and the other in Israel. There seems to be wide acceptance that Biden was not fit to run again for president, but little discussion about how he is running the country through these fraught foreign policy situations. Who is running the foreign policy if not him? Does it matter, or have we just put so much emphasis on the commander-in-chief that we’ve forgotten that this is a republic with balancing branches of government to prevent disaster if one is not able to perform at 100 percent? 

We talk to conservative Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age and — to show we are not making this a red-blue issue — James Carden, who writes for both the Nation and the American Conservative, about whether this is a unique moment in history as we ascertain who is really pulling the levers behind the curtain.

More from James Carden:

Will Philip Gordon Be President Harris’s National Security Adviser?

The Foreign Policy Establishment Licks Its Chops for Harris 

More from Dan McCarthy: 

Democracy Beyond Elections

From Reagan to the New Right

This week I’m happy to welcome back Stephen Semler who is co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute. He also writes the Polygraph newsletter on Substack. He just published a true deep dive on Responsible Statecraft entitled Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes. I thought it would be helpful to have him come on the podcast and explain all of the data in the piece, and what we need to take away from it. 

Stephen points out that the Biden administration had already greenlit more than 100 separate weapons deals for Israel, or about one every 36 hours, on average, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The total value is vague because the administration approved them at levels that are under the threshold for which Congress, and therefore the public, has to be notified. But we know that, according to the Israeli Defense ministry this week, 500 hundred transport planes and 107 ships have delivered more than 50,000 tons of weapons and military equipment from the US to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza. 

This would include U.S.-made aircraft like the F-35, F-16, and F-15 to drop U.S.-made bombs, including the MK-84 (2,000 pounds), MK-83 (1,000 pounds), MK-82 (500 pounds), and 250-pound “small diameter” bombs, which can be fitted with U.S.-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits. It also includes armored vehicles and fuel for all the planes. 

But the goal with this article was not so much to create a laundry list of all the weapons but how they are  being used in the war and to tie specific incidents in which likely war crimes were committed against Palestinians since Oct. 7 with U.S weaponry. 

More from Stephen:

Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier

Israel’s Priority Is Killing Gazans, Not Freeing Hostages

A Pentagon budget of $1 trillion is looming. Here’s how to stop it

This week the Democratic party faithful are gathered in Chicago to engage in the quadrennial ritual of formally nominating the presidential ticket as well as whipping up support for their candidates in the homestretch of the election. No longer a forum for contest, the national convention is a multimillion dollar infomercial not only for the candidates, but their policy agendas, strategic messaging, and especially in the modern area, identity politics. We saw this at the Republican confab in July and the Chicago event is no different. In Milwaukee, Donald Trump appeared after an assassination attempt, giving the proceedings a bit of a surreal tinge to the GOP’s message of security and America First. For the DNC, everything seems to be geared toward saying goodbye to the old, in the visage of Joe Bden, who up until this month was the party nominee, and hello to the new, a fully politically rehabilitated VP Kamala Harris, whose official tagline now is, “don’t look back.”

My friend James Carden, a writer for The American Conservative and The Nation, and a keen observer of Washington politics, is in Chicago this week and is taking a few minutes to talk about what he is seeing there and more importantly, how the Gaza protests and foreign policy in general have been abusively sidelined by the party elites. 

More from James Carden:

Can Harris Bridge the Great Divide?

Will Philip Gordon Be President Harris’s National Security Adviser?

Neoconservatism by Another Name

For years the U.S. military has been faced with the reality that for decades water contamination on its bases and installations throughout the United States has affected the health and well being of servicemembers, military families, as well as entire communities that have hosted the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines since the early 20th century.

It is also the reality that the military has dragged its feet in the clean-up and restitution of said problem, not surprisingly.

A major culprit of contamination is what is called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals." As of August 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed that more than 700 military bases are likely contaminated with PFAS, are described as “a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals that have been used in consumer products around the world since about the 1950s.” They are man-made, fire-resistant, and repel water, oil, and grease. They've been used in firefighting foam called AFFF on the bases since the mid-20th Century, but are also used in clothing and food containers to make them water and oil-repellent. 

PFAS don't break down over time and have contaminated drinking water and food. Research has linked them to cancer, heart and liver problems, developmental issues, and other illnesses. Water tests by the non-profit Environmental Working Group show nearly 3,000 private wells located near 63 active and former U.S. military bases are contaminated with “forever chemicals.” 

According to the group, which analyzed Department of Defense testing data in 2023, 2,805 wells spread across 29 states were contaminated with at least one of two PFAS, above 4 parts per trillion, which is the limit proposed earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, there is a trainwreck of a PFAS problem in Tucson where testing has revealed super high levels at the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site, which is “likely to enter into the Tucson public water system,” according to the EPA. These chemicals are suspected to come from the use of AFFF at nearby airports and military bases. Other chemicals may have migrated from a Raytheon (now RTX) weapons-making facility north of Tucson.

In this episode we will talk to my friend and Quincy Institute research fellow Nick Cleveland Stout who points out in a new Responsible Statecraft article, that the military is finding new and creative ways to avoid the full cost and energy of fulfilling cleanup and other mandates to prevent further contamination.

More from Nick:

DOD defies order to clean up 'forever chemicals' in Arizona

Space Force wants to 'Fly Me to the Moon'

Military officials:​ 'Widowmaker' Osprey will fly with a faulty clutch

Jet fuel in Hawaii's drinking water the latest example of military's negligence