US Continues to Lash Out at Signs of Empire’s Demise

Finland Joins NATO and Bakhmut Battle, Saudi Arabia Joins Shanghai Cooperation Organization, What’s Behind Twitter’s Doge Joke

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by international affairs and security analyst Mark Sleboda to discuss Finland’s accession to NATO and what it will mean for the militarization of FInland’s border with Russia, how this is likely to decrease security and negatively affect trade for both countries, the latest in the conflict in Ukraine and mischaracterizations about ongoing fighting in Artemovsk (Bakhmut), and what strategic importance the city has for the tactical goals of both Russia and Ukraine.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Mazda Majidi, long-time antiwar and social justice activist who is from Iran and has written extensively on the nuclear deal and other issues pertaining to Iran and the Middle East to discuss Saudi Arabia requesting to joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a dialogue partner, what this means for the growing role of China in the Middle East and in global politics more broadly, and why Saudi Arabia is moving away from its formerly close relations with the US and what that may symbolize about US influence in the Middle East.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by technologist Chris Garaffa, co-host of the CovertAction Bulletin podcast to discuss on ongoing lawsuit involving Elon Musk and his promotion of Dogecoin and how it’s related to the changing of Twitter’s icon to the Doge meme, the NYPD’s refusal to comply with regulations on surveillance technology and failure to disclose information about its current and future use of surveillance technologies, and Meta’s* attempts to work around European Union regulations on personal data collection by having EU users fill out on application to opt out of that data collection.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Bryce Greene, Contributor to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting to discuss the ongoing drive for war against China and how it is related to efforts to ban TikTok, how some efforts at a ban currently in Congress would grant sweeping powers to the US national security state, the ongoing circus over the arrest of Donald Trump and how the focus on it is reminiscent of the media focus on Donald Trump’s presidential run in 2016, ongoing questions about the mainstream press narrative about the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, and the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beyond Vietnam speech and its message of peace that reverberates today.

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* Meta, Facebook are banned in Russia over extremist activities