Blood Work

Gregk speaks to the award-winning national security journalist Spencer Ackerman about the long shadows of 9/11 and the War on Terror, how America’s response to those events contributed to its current condition, the media’s role in justifying and legitimating state violence, and much more. Spencer Ackerman is a national security journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Wired, The Nation, Zeteo and many other publications, and whose career has spanned almost the entirety of the Global War on Terror. In 2014, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his work at The Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures surrounding the NSA’s global surveillance programme. In 2021, he published Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He also recently wrote a ten-issue run on IRON MAN for Marvel Comics, currently available in two trade paperbacks. His latest book is The Torture and Deliverance of Majid Khan: A Father, A Son and the War on Terror, forthcoming from Penguin. Spencer is also the founder and proprietor of FOREVER WARS, an ongoing chronicle, investigation and interrogation of the continuities, departures and permutations of the War on Terror If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – DEI-Codi For this week’s newsletter, Gregk shares some of his thoughts on the extra-judicial killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026, and reflects on the homologies between the Trump administration’s paramilitaries and the death squads that operated in Central and South America during the latter half of the twentieth century – in many cases backed, trained and coordinated by the United States. Image: U.S. Military Police guard detainees within Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2002. (Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images) 

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. We look at the history and philosophy of a doctrine so broad and plastic that even its theorists concede it might not mean anything at all—because if it doesn’t mean anything, then maybe it means everything. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FLORIDA RASHOMON   A few days ago, the United States knocked over Nicolás Maduro, Head of State of Venezuela, in arguably the most brazen U.S. regime change operations in the Western Hemisphere since the arrest of Manuel Noriega on the very same day in 1990. Everyone in the Trump administration agrees it was an act of bold, decisive leadership from America’s Commander-in-Chief – and yet no one can agree why it was done. This week’s newsletter takes a look at some of the competing justifications for the action from the mouths of America’s best and brightest. Image: American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians walking through the streets of Huế in Central Vietnam (Getty Images)  

For their first ever Christmas episode, Gregk and producer Thomas get together for a casual fireside chat, discussing some of the key questions animating Blood Work, reflecting on the project’s progress so far, where they’d like to take it next year, and offer some perspectives on how this thing that we call violence connects to that other thing that we call politics. And then, as a little Christmas Treat, Gregk tells Thomas about the history of one of the worst hangovers of ‘90s counter-consumer culture jamming, and how it’s connected to some of the worst people in US culture today. New Yorkers, you knew it was bad, but if only you knew how bad it really is. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – AUMF LAMF The US’ Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) 2001 is an authorisation so broad and loosely defined that it renders the problem of the square peg and the round hole moot; the hole’s aperture can always be widened, and virtually any peg can be hammered through. This week, I’ve picked three articles which demonstrate how its passage inaugurated a permanent, global State of Exception for US warmaking, how recklessly this aperture has been exploited, and how dangerous that is for global governance. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: Cover artwork from the 1985 The Christmas issue of An Phoblacht/Republican News. Source: The Irish Republican Digital Archive

This week, Gregk speaks to Anthropologist Florin Poenaru about his essay for North South Notes, published on the one-year anniversary of Romania’s cancelled Presidential elections, in which ‘outsider’ candidate Călin Georgescu was alleged to have benefitted from a Russian-coordinated TikTok interference campaign. In their conversation, they discuss the layers of power within a globalised political order, the capacity of intelligence services to produce as well as gather knowledge, and the question of where power resides in a country where politics, media, business and academia are constantly imbricated by a large and unruly security apparatus.   Read Florin’s article, ‘The Forest’ in North South Notes. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FAFO-FI-FUM This week, I share three pieces on wars old, new and prospective which reflect the festering wounds of America’s most recent imperial project; the licking of wounds and casting around for a space in which to reassert itself; and the early nicks and scratches we’re already seeing as both the war machine and US consent manufacturing apparatus (brrrrrrr) leap a little too enthusiastically on the latest champion of peace, liberty and justice only to learn that she… well, just might not actually be very ‘bout it ‘bout it. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: A satellite shot of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (Serviciul de Informații Externe/SIE), situated within the Băneasa Forest in northern Bucharest.

In 1823, US President James Monroe declared an end to European colonial ambitions in the Americas. By the end of that century, his declaration had morphed into a license for the United States to pursue unilateral political, economic and military actions across the Western Hemisphere. This week, we examine the history of the Monroe Doctrine and the wider geospatial order of the Americas, and see how, even two centuries later, Latin America continues to tremble in the shadow of that fateful doctrine. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – The ‘Whatever’ Doctrine This week, I share an excellent 2022 essay by Nathan DuFord which builds on the closing themes of last week’s episode on the fascist imaginary; my thoughts on a rancid essay about Venezuela by ice-chewing ghoul Elliot Abrams; and some thoughts on the ongoing criminality of US murder strikes in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea courtesy of Demented Donny and Pete ‘Drinks His Coffee on the Rocks’ Hegseth. It’s all so lazy and stupid – but after twenty years of the GWoT, it’s not like we should expect anything better. Available now for Patreon supporters. Sources: Manuel de Campo (2019) ‘Splitting the world in two: the 525th anniversary of the Treaty of Tordesillas’, available at Languages across Borders: Language Collections at the University of Cambridge Citations Needed Podcast (2021), ‘Episode 139 — Of Meat and Men: How Beef Became Synonymous with Settler-Colonial Domination’, available at Citations Needed (Transcript available at Medium) John Gast (1872), ‘American Progress’ [Painting], available at The Library of Congress Greg Grandin (2006), Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic Greg Grandin (2019), The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America George C. Herring (2008), From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 CLR James (1938), The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution Stephen Kinzer (2013), The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their Secret World War Lester D. Langley (2002), The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 Randall Lesaffer (2015), ‘The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815)’, available at Oxford Public International Law James Martell (2017), The Misinterpellated Subject James Monroe (1823), ‘December 2, 1823: Seventh Annual Message (Monroe Doctrine)’, available at The Miller Center, University of Virginia ‘National Security of the United States of America’ (November 2025), available at The White House James Polk (1845), ‘December 2, 1845: First Annual Message’, available at The Miller Center, University of Virginia Theodore Roosevelt (1904), ‘Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1905)’, available at The US National Archives Treaty of Ghent (1814), available at The US National Archives Giles Tremlett (2020), ‘Operation Condor: the cold war conspiracy that terrorised South America’, available at The Guardian Sylvia Wynter (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review (Vol. 3:3) Image: An official from the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) inspects bunches of bananas in preparation for export from Honduras. (AP Photo)