Deconstructed

The normally reserved International Committee of the Red Cross recently made a surprisingly direct statement about the unfolding economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. They said, “Can the international community” — meaning the U.S. — “hold 39 million people hostage to the fact that they do not want to recognise the authorities that are now in place in Kabul and in Afghanistan?”

Masood Shnizai is a journalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan...

“I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism." So declared famed Marine Corps officer Smedley Butler in 1935, at the end of a long career spent blazing a path for American interests in Cuba, Nicaragua, China, The Philippines, Panama, and Haiti. In a new book on Butler’s career, Gangsters of Capitalism, Jonathan Katz details Butler’s life and explains how it dovetails with the broader story of American empire at the turn of the century.

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In his new book, congressman Ro Khanna tackles the question of how the prosperity generated by technology can be more broadly shared. In the foreword, Indian economist Amartya Sen writes “just as people can move to technology, technology can move to people. People need not be compelled to move from one place to another to reap the benefits offered by technological progress”. Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in Congress, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the book and more...

In the waning hours of his presidency, Donald Trump issued an order designating the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist organization; one of Joe Biden’s first actions upon taking office was to reverse that designation. Now, under pressure from the United Arab Emirates, he may be having second thoughts. Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein and Michigan State University assistant professor Shireen Al-Adeimi join Ryan Grim to discuss the potential consequences of restoring Trump’s last-minute order...

The proposed Social Security 2100 Act would bolster the nearly century-old social insurance program through additions like caregiver credits and increased minimum benefits. Connecticut Rep. John Larson, the architect of the plan, joins Intercept reporters Ryan Grim and Jon Schwarz to discuss why he thinks an expansion of Social Security is overdue.

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“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” This conception of Ukrainian history forms the bedrock of Putin’s justification for invading the former Soviet republic, independent since 1991. On this week’s podcast, Ryan Grim talks with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko about his country’s history, from the Dark Ages up the current war...

The CERAWeek conference took place this week in Houston. CERAWeek is an annual gathering of major players in the energy sector; CEOs, government officials, and financiers are among the conference's attendees. The major theme this year, of course, was the effect of Russia’s war in Ukraine on global oil and gas markets — in particular, President Joe Biden’s announcement Tuesday that the U.S. would move to ban imports of Russian oil...

In standard economic theory, prices are simply expressions of information about the scarcity of (and demand for) goods. But in his new book “Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World,” writer and filmmaker Rupert Russell argues that the modern era of algorithm-driven speculation has normalized unpredictable price swings in commodity markets and turned prices into “engines of chaos.” Russell joins Ryan Grim to discuss.

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