We dive deep into German Walter Benjamin's seminal essay 'Towards A Critique of Violence' to try and understand violence not only as a phenomen, but also as a powerful force in society, politics, and everything around us.

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of Kyle Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

How did the American police get access to a nation's war chest? 

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of Kyle Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

What is Blood Work, and who profits from violence?

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of Kyle Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

A show examining the Economies of Violence. 

Episodes 1&2 coming 07/10/25

You have been listening to Blood Work A Scam Goldin Production

Follow us on Bluesky, @bloodwork.show On Instagram, @bloodworkshow and on Twitter @bloodworkshow

Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of Kyle Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

What has 4 wheels, a steering wheel, and massive destructive potential?

You have been listening to Blood Work A Scam Goldin Production

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

Come join us, won’t you, for a deep dive into one of the twentieth century’s biggest assholes. Say hello to Carl Schmitt: Jurist, legal scholar, political philosopher… Nazi? Look: We’re only showing you him so you know how to get away from him.

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel

Sources:

Gopal Balakrishan – The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt

Angus Brown – ‘The Left Should Have Nothing to Do with Carl Schmitt’, Jacobin

Stuart Elden – ‘Reading Schmitt Geopolitically: Nomos, territory and Großraum’, Radical Philosophy

Carl Schmitt – Dictatorship

Carl Schmitt – The Concept of the Political

Carl Schmitt – The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum

Carl Schmitt – Political Theology

(Image: Carl Schmitt’s grave in Plettenberg, Germany. The Greek inscription reads, “KAI NOMON EGNŌ” / “And I Know the Law”) If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

We take a break from scheduled programming to commemorate the passing of one of the greatest monsters of the early 21st century, looking back at some of his greatest hits of being a rancid asshole and how they show our exceptional times might not be all that exceptional.

This episode is a little thing we've been calling internally, "The Gregk Directive", for when the news simply is too good to resist.

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You have been listening to Blood Work A Scam Goldin Production

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

In the mid-1990s, the political philosopher Giorgio Agamben began a 20-year project exploring the origin of what Michel Foucault called biopolitics – the governance of populations through technocratic management of aspects of their biological lives and the conditions intended to make live, or let die. Performing an archaeology of politics tracing back to the Greeks, Agamben identified a number of governmental apparatuses through which our world is both split, and bound, in two, between the included and the excluded; the inside and the outside; the human and the not-quite-yet.

In this episode, we talk to Serene Richards, a Lecturer in Law at New York University London, and author of the book Biopolitics as a System of Thought. During our conversation, we discuss the origins of two of Agamben’s most famous political concepts: Homo Sacer, the sacred man or ‘bare life’; and the State of Exception, the mechanism by which Law establishes its own ‘inside’ through the creation of an ‘outside’ that lies beyond it, and yet which must be included. Later we discuss Serene’s book, her concept of Smart Being, and how our techno-capitalist moment has seen biopolitical logics extend beyond the political realm, penetrating even how we think, perceive and understand our own lives.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/biopolitics-as-a-system-of-thought-9781350412095/

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

With the quotidian workhorse of urban terror now well on its way, we round out our story by looking at how the car bomb became conscious of the city as its object, target and victim, its proliferation during the Iraq War years, and its seeming culmination as both a herald and producer of escalatory political nihilism.

You have been listening to Blood Work A Scam Goldin Production

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Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time

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.

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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

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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:

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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)

What are ‘libidinal politics’? What the fuck is a ‘machinic assemblage’? Why are these men all terrified of women? This week, we explore four key ideas in the fascist imaginary and head down to the stables to look at some freaks.

If you enjoyed this episode:

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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 – Hit & Run

This week, I take a look at some articles about drone warfare in Ukraine, Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, and the transfer of those tactics to the US’ steady approach to War on Venezuela, and meditate on what these might portend about the new rules of engagement for warfare in the 2020s. Plus: Some further thoughts on a man and his horse, childhood romance, and the death of intimacy.

Available now for Patreon supporters.

Sources:

Walter Benjamin (1999), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ [1935], Illuminations

Richard Evans (2003), The Coming of the Third Reich

Richard Evans (2005), The Third Reich in Power

Roger Griffin (1991), The Nature of Fascism

Mark Neocleous (1997), Fascism

Klaus Theweleit (1987 [1977]), Male Fantasies, Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History

Image: German Freikorps soldiers standing by an armored car during the German Revolution, January 1919.

In 1971, a group of people cast aside by the state rose up and attempted to reclaim their humanity and political subjectivity. This week, we look at the Attica Prison Uprising to see what that event might tell us about the relationship between politics, law and violence.

If you enjoyed this episode:

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– Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Ground Zero

The first in a weekly series of posts where I share recent articles that have caught my attention and some brief commentary, along with some broader musings on the nature of violence. 

Available now for Patreon supporters.

Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel

Sources:

‘15 Practical Proposals of Attica Prisoners’ (1971), People’s Law Office

The Attica Liberation Faction Manifesto of Demands and Anti-Depression Platform (1971), Freedom Archives

Traci Curry & Stanley Nelson (Dir., 2021), Attica

Fred Ferretti (Sept. 13, 1971), ‘Attica Prisoners Win 28 Demands, but Still Resist’, New York Times

Brad Lichtenstein (Dir., 2001), Ghosts of Attica

Charlotte Rosen (May 26, 2025), ‘How Should We Remember Attica?’, The Nation

Wendy Sawyer, ‘How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?’ (2017), Prison Policy Initiative

Heather Ann Thompson (2021), Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Image: Participants in the Attica Prison Uprising raise their fists during a negotiating session on Friday, September 10, 1971 (AP)

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

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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)

Gareth and Gregk discuss what happens when a group of football hooligans decide to elevate their violent bloodlust into a fully-fledged political movement. (Spoiler: Bad, stupid things.) Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky

Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New Statesman Read his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New Socialist Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast

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: OLD WORLD BRB, NEW WORLD AFK ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we took a look at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent address at Davos in which he declared the end of the ‘rules-based international order’ (while conceding this had always been US hegemony draped in a convenient fiction) plus recent developments regarding Trump’s grotesque Board of Peace foundation, and provide some thoughts on where we now stand, how we got there, and who walked us there, step by step.

Sources:

Nick Lowles (2014 [2001]), White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We situate the favourite tool in the U.S. arsenal in its historical context, and try to make sense of that silent, peaceful, deadly weapon.

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

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Witness, No Witnesses

This week, we look at two news stories which demonstrate the differing approaches to advancing right-wing politics in the US and UK. The rise of Donald Trump and his dominance of political discourse over the past decade has placed spectacle front-and-centre in our understanding of right-wing thought and, indeed, placed right-wing thought front-and-centre in our perception of dominant political ideology.

But as our second news story hopefully demonstrates, the brazenness of Trump’s particular political style at times serves to aid the advancement of right-wing cruelty and sadism elsewhere, when a comparative lack of ripples across the water creates the illusion that less is occurring beneath the surface. Now available in audio

Image: An Iraqi mother nurses her sick child at a hospital in Baghdad in 1994. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

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:

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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.

Gareth and Gregk reconvene to tell the second chapter in the C18 saga which, naturally, features some sunlit uplands, a Swedish man named ‘Pie’, and a wizard.

Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky

Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New Statesman Read his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New Socialist Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast

Image: A title card from a C18 propaganda video tape, sourced from the third World in Action documentary about the group.

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

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: SURGES, EMISSIONS, FLOWS ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO Following a few weeks in which the news has focused heavily on events which continue to unfold in Minneapolis and the broader United States, this week we’re shifting the focus to West Africa and the Middle East, to two conflict zones which still swirl and churn amidst the fallout of the 2011 Arab Spring, and the long first two decades of the twenty-first century.

We begin our history of the most famous firearm of all time with a prologue: Because in order to understand how we got here, you gotta understand where we came from.

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: Little Marco’s Big Speech ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we discuss the thinly-veiled white nationalist vision laid out by Marco Rubio in his Munich Security Conference speech. But first, we provide a little background on the man himself and what it means that a man like that would be giving such a speech—because this might be one of those cases where the medium is the message.

Sources:

C. J. Chivers (2010), The Gun: The Story of the AK-47

Larry Kahaner (2008), AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War

Chris McNab (2001), The AK-47

Image: The American-British entrepreneur Hiram Maxim posing with his eponymous Maxim Gun.

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Josh drops by the Blood Work studio to talk about one of the most mentally unhinged prestige TV shows of the early millennium and what it might tell us about America’s relationship with violence. Follow Josh Boerman on Bluesky Listen to The Worst of All Possible Worlds Listen to Ill Conceived

Image: Jack Bauer interrogating Marie Warner in Season 2 of 24.

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:

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Zombie Liberalism ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we took a look at Nancy Pelosi's response to a question on the topic of Iran at the Munich Security Conference, examining what her answer (or non-answer) can tell us about the state of establishment liberalism as we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, and whether these obstinate, self-ordained standard-bearers of the liberal international order are sufficiently equipped to bring the fight to an ascendant Fascist International drawing the knives out on nearly every continent. (Bad news. Sorry.)

Prompted by a meditation on mercenaries, Gregk consults the henchest man in ancient history to discuss ancient forms of violence work and whether our current conjuncture is really a rupture, or more a return to form. Follow Patrick Wyman on Bluesky Listen to Past Lives Listen to Tides of History 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

Image: A group of unidentified mercenaries operating in Gaza, 2025.

THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: WEST MIAMI ANTISOCIAL CLUB ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

For this week’s newsletter, we situate the United States’ latest wave of aggression against Cuba within the longer histories of the the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, stripping back the various narratives the western hemisphere’s imperial master has layered, like wallpaper, over its designs on Cuba over decades.

In the first of a two-parter, we trace the evolution of the modern city from industrialisation to the 1970s, when a trio of crises laid the foundation for an anti-political backlash

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

Image: A photograph taken on Leyden Street, London, during the 1979 ‘Winter of Discontent’ (Source: Maurice Hibberd/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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: Even in Death, They Will Still Degrade You ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, Gregk uses a resurfaced comment by filmmaker Joe Russo from 2023 to provide some commentary on the modern AI craze and the historical ties between technology, pornography, and violence.

Sources:

Robert A. Beauregard (2006), When America Became Suburban

Jordan T. Camp & Christina Heatherton [eds.] (2016), Policing the PlanetL Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter

Peter Eisinger (2000), ‘The Politics of Bread and Circuses: Building the City for the Visitor Class’, Urban Affairs Review [35:3]

Antonio Gramsci (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Stuart Hall et al (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order

Margaret Kohn (2004), Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatisation of Public Space

Mark Neocleous (2021), A Critical Theory of Police Power

Paul A. Passavant (2021), Policing Protest: The Post-Democratic State and the Figure of Black Insurrection

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Gregk and Thomas pause to reflect on some of the topics covered since they last spoke, and meditate on recent events.

Image: A still from Werner Herzog’s 1992 documentary Lessons of Darkness

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

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Look What They Made Us Do ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we use a recent piece from The New Republic to question America’s flailing attempts to disentangle itself from a war of its own making – in narrative, if not in actuality. 

Joe and Gregk use Gregory Stanton’s ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’ to discuss the tactics & techniques states deploy to legitimise and perpetrate mass murder.

Image: Remains of victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide retrieved from a mass grave in Huye District in January, 2024.

Follow Joe Kassabian on Bluesky

Listen to Lions Led by Donkeys

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: Blue Danube ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, enjoy some brief thoughts on the election results which rolled out of Hungary last week, and what it might mean for that country and Europe now that the American right’s favourite lap-dog is hitting the skids.

Sources:

Gregory Stanton (1996), ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’, available at Genocide Watch

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We take a foray into the world of euphemisms, turns-of-phrase and the disingenuous world of militarese

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

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THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Stupid Games ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we offered some commentary on the (then ongoing) peace talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad, some surrounding issues, and predictions on the course those talks might take. (News moves fast these days.)

We look at the history of women’s participation in suicide bombing attacks and how society has tried to make sense of women who carry out the most extreme political act of all.

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: If You Want Blood… ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we take a look at a recent essay by Iranian diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif in Foreign Affairs and provide some commentary on what he gets right and why, and also why neither Washington nor Tehran are likely to listen to him.

Sources:

BBC, ‘UK Fire girl still defiant’, BBC

Burku Pinar Alacoc (2018), ‘Femme Fatale: The Lethality of Female Suicide Bombers’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

Mia Bloom (2007), ‘Female suicide bombers’, Daedalus

John Campbell (2020), ‘Women, Boko Haram and Suicide Bombings’, Council on Foreign Relations

Paige Whaley Eager (2008), From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence

Freedom Fighters of Israel Heritage Associaton (FFI-LEHI), ‘Raskin, Fania – Freedom Fighters of Israel Heritage Association’

Jordan Galehan (2019), ‘Instruments of Violence: Female suicide bombers of Boko Haram’, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice

Audrey Gillan (17 Feb 1999), ‘'We came here not to get out alive. We're ready for anything'’, The Guardian

Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra (2018), ‘Witness and martyrdom: Palestinian female martyrs’ video-testimonies’, Journal for Cultural Research

Vesna Markovic (2019), ‘Suicide Squad: Boko Haram’s Use of the Female Suicide Bomber’, Justice, Law, and Public Safety Studies Department Faculty Articles

Tanya Narozhna and W. Andy Knight (2016), Female Suicide Bombings: A Critical Gender Approach

Al Chukwuma Okoli, ‘Gender and Terror: Boko Haram and the Abuse of Women in Nigeria’, available at Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Ann Preesman (2021), ‘Female Suicide Bombers: An Uncomfortable Truth’, available at King’s College, London

1. G. Julie Rajan (2011), Women Suicide Bombers: Narratives of Violence

Leandra Bathal Serrano (2024), ‘Female Suicide Bombers As A Security Threat: Towards A More Comprehensive And Inclusive Approach’, available at European Student Think Tank

Keren Wang (2025), ‘Boko Haram’s Strategic Use of Female Suicide Bombers: Where Women Have No Choices’, Politics and Security Governance

Image: A photograph of Sana’a Mehaidli, 16, a Lebanese woman who became the first female suicide bomber in 1985.

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

In the conclusion to our series, we look at what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the rifles it had been making for over four decades started leaking out into a rapidly changing world.

Image: A screencap from a video dated June, 2001, showing al-Qaeda militants wielding Kalashnikov rifles at al-Farouq training camp, Kandahar, Afghanistan

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: A Quiet Place ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we return to the civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, spurred by new in-depth reporting of the RSF’s devastating siege and assault on El Fasher in October of last year.

Gareth and Rocz join Gregk to account for the many crimes of modernity’s slow, silent killers – engineers, technicians, and urban planners.

Follow Gareth and Rocz on Bluesky

Watch Well There’s Your Problem on YouTube

Watch RailNatter on YouTube

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: The Pendulum ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we’ve got two stories about different pendulum swings in the political world, and the people attempting to ride the wave and come out unscathed. They’re stories about elites in political media, and so there are no winners, only losers. But spare a thought for them, won’t you? Or don’t. They're all reprehensible.

Image: An overhead photograph of the ‘Futurama’ diorama presented at the 1939 World’s Fair created by Norman Bel Geddes with sponsorship from General Motors [GM].

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

As the Soviets entered the Cold War, they had a gun they could use as conduit, commodity, or currency. The US, meanwhile, hit the snooze alarm. In Vietnam, a rude awakening awaited them.

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: The Stinging Tree ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we look at the long arc of US-Iran relations during the twentieth century, and place the Persian state’s current horizontal deterrence strategy against its American and Israeli aggressors in its proper historical context.

Image: A Viet Cong soldier posing with a Type 2 AK-47 rifle during a POW exchange in 1973. (Source: SSgt. Herman Kokojan, Defence Visual Information Centre)

We trace the evolution of international arms transfers from mercantilism to the modern era, and the perverse incentives produced by the symbiosis of private enterprise and state imperatives in arms production.

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: Killstreak Inbound ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO Inspired by the Pentagon’s recent deployment of computer game graphics to promote its illegal bombardment of Iran, producer Thomas takes a longer view at the relationship between the United States military and the video games industry.

Sources:

Amnesty International (June 1995), ‘RWANDA: Arming the Perpetrators of the Genocide’, available at Amnesty.org

Jonathan Beatty and S. C. Gwynne (1993), The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart Of BCCI

Steve Boggan (Nov. 23, 1996), ‘Bloody trade that fuels Rwanda's war (Operation Insecticide), available at The Independent

Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

George Cryle (2003), Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

Owen Greene and Nicholas Marsh (eds.) (2012), Small Arms, Crime and Conflict: Global Governance and the Threat of Armed Violence

Nicholas Kotarski (2018), ‘Whose Monster? A Study in the Rise to Power of al Qaeda and the Taliban’, History Theses, 47

Keith Krause (1992), Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade

Mamello Mosiana, Hennie van Vuuren and Daniel Ford (Nov. 13, 2024), ‘Unaccountable 00040 | Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers – apartheid’s secretary turned genocide arms dealer’, available at Open Secrets

John U. Nef (1950), War and Human Progress: An Essay on the Rise of Industrial Civilization

Robert Pear (Apr. 18, 1988), ‘Arming Afghan Guerrillas: A Huge Effort Led by U.S.’, available at The New York Times(archived)

Frederic S. Pearson (1994), The Global Spread of Arms: Political Economy of Economic Security

Peter Dale Scott (2007), The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

William Shawcross (1988), The Shah’s Last Ride

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] (2010), ‘End-User Certificates: Improving Standards to Prevent Diversion’, available at SIPRI

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] (2024), ‘The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-Producing and Military Services Companies, 2024’, available at SIPRI

Rachel Stohl and Suzette Grillot (2009), The International Arms Trade

Joe Stork (Nov. 1, 1995), ‘The Middle East Arms Bazaar After the Gulf War’, available at Middle East Research and Information Project

Andrew T. H. Tan (ed.) (2010), The Global Arms Trade: A Handbook

Adam Tooze (Mar. 23, 2023), ‘Chartbook 204: Iraq’s economic impasse twenty years after the invasion’, available at Chartbook | Adam Tooze

Mark Townsend (Oct. 28, 2025), ‘UK military equipment used by militia accused of genocide found in Sudan, UN told’, available at The Guardian

Matt Wells (Feb. 10, 2000), ‘Arms firm linked to Rwandan army chief’, available at The Guardian

Brian Wood and Johan Peleman (2000), The Arms Fixers. Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents

Image: Soldiers patrol outside of Goma International Airport in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo (2022)

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

It’s time to tell the story of Mikhail Kalashnikov, his eponymous gun, the horrors of the Eastern Front, and one of the biggest fumbles in US military history.

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: Pox Americana ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we provide a little Blood Work commentary on two morbid eruptions borne from the American imperial violence machine. Chronic and acute, all at once.

Image: Mikhail Klashnikov posing with the AK-47 at an event commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the gun’s creation in 2007