American Exception
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Episode 77: The Devil’s Grand Chessboard (LS9/11 Part 2)
🕑 Added 2022-10-06 17:24:03 +0000 UTCBen Howard and Aaron continue the Long Shadow of 9/11 series with a discussion on the history of USUK imperial support for reactionary Islamism.
The first article in the series is now up at American Exception: “Prequel to Terror: The 9/9 Massoud Assassination.”
Special thanks to Seamus McGuinness for his editorial work on the article and to Dana Chavarria for the sound engineering!
Music: "High Octane Punk Mode" by Mock Orange
The image in the episode art is of the Al-Baqi cemetery before its 1926 demolition by the Saudis.
The episode title is a mishmash of three relevant book titles: Dreyfuss' 'Devil's Game', Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard, and Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard.
Comments
Aaron Good
Well, hopefully...depends on a number things, esp. Ben's schedule.
John Kennedy
Hi Aaron. Will there be another episode? Arrived here late but really appreciating this particular series and religion theme.
Max Barnett
Howard, not Norton
Max Barnett
Really love your conversations with Ben
Peter T.
It really feels like the news is reporting on Wag the Dog everyday. Who the f* really is this guy Zelensky??
Brendan Garcia
“It was good to be a puppet while it lasted.” Feel like you just wrote Zelensky(y)‘s epitaph Aaron.
Jesse mead
Aaron I hear you about Sam Harris he does have a kick ass meditation app though. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like his podcast any more but I think you basically broke it down thank you.
Louis Waweru
Thanks for dropping the name, I'd never heard about the Brotherhood connection to empire before and would have forgotten to look further into it.
Louis Waweru
I've read a few of Harris' books, and even some of his smaller works, and I can see how he could come off as a racist, but I don't think he sounds racist because he is one. He has a brilliant way of framing an argument and if you allow him to unroll his thesis all by himself, it's hard not to be convinced by whatever it may be. If there's anything to learn from Harris, it's how his formula for constructing an idea works, because misused, it can obviously be quite dangerous. But yeah, I had to stop listening to him because I found he just offended me way too often for me to seek that out. Unfortunately, this was after I'd already read his essay, Lying, which continues to influence my real world behavior.
Aaron Good
My point was that it is funny how right wingers seem to believe that Hillary's association with H.A. is somehow indicative of Hillary having sympathy for sharia law and/or its imposition in the US.
William
Somewhere around 63min Aaron, it seems like you express incredulity at the idea Republicans (in general) would make a tenuous connection to Hilary being friends with someone "connected" to the Muslim Brotherhood; to me, this just seems like par for the course. Sorry, don't mean to sound condescending - just trying to square my observations with your reactions
Angleton
Sayyid Qutb no a big fan of the Christmas classics Baby It’s Cold Outside. As for Ayman al-Zawahiri connection to Sayyid Qutb is that his uncle who knew Qutb as a student then became Qutb’s Lawyer.
Salt M. Bank
This has become my new AE miniseries. Excited for the next installment
Jon Croteau
On Freemasonry and empire (from Stephen Knight's 'The Brotherhood'): "For some years membership of the Lodges set up in the empire (grouped in Provinces' under English, Scottish or Irish jurisdiction) was confined to Europeans, apart from a handful of Indian princely exceptions. But after 1860, at first Parsees, then other Indians were brought into the Brotherhood. In British West Africa and the West Indies there were black' Lodges as well as 'white' Lodges (as in the USA), and eventually mixed Lodges were formed. Associating the native upper and middle classes on a peculiar, profitable and clandestine basis with theft white rulers, some historians believe, did much to defuse resentment of imperial domination. Despite his colour, any man rather better off than the mass of the people - who were not sought as members - could, by being a Freemason, feel that he belonged in however humble a way to the Establishment. Just how far Masonry reached is shown by the fact that on the small island of Jamaica there were no fewer than twelve Lodges, some in townships of little more than a couple of streets." https://archive.org/details/TheBrotherhoodKnightStephen
Jon Croteau
Our clever imperialists likely contrived Christianity for political ends, borrowing heavily from the mythologies of the Judean rebels, and promoting the docile Pauline Christianity as opposed to the revolutionary Christianity practiced in Jerusalem. I am just getting started on these books.
Chase Padusniak
I appreciate you guys handling such a contentious topic with sensitivity.
