YouTube Blocks Sputnik News Worldwide

For the first segment, George Szamuely, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Global Policy Institute and author, Bombs for Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia, 2014 joins the show to talk about Meta - Facebook’s parent company - changing its hate speech rules to allow what it calls “forms of political expression” that include calls for violence against Russian soldiers and Russian leaders - as long as the context is the "invasion of Ukraine". Then they talk about media coverage of bio labs discovered in Ukraine. And, they talk about the announcement that the US, the EU and the G7 countries will revoke Russia’s most favored nation trading status.

Next on the show, Ali al-Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs joins the conversation to talk about Saudi Arabia and China announcing on Wednesday that they would create a joint venture to design and build military drones in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia already owns Chinese-made Wing Loong II military drones and American-made Reaper drones that it actively uses in its war in Yemen. China is also in talks to sell to Saudi Arabia its FC-31 stealth fighter aircraft. And, Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, announced a joint venture with China to develop a refinery and petrochemical complex in eastern Saudi Arabia. These announcements come after reports in the US media that Saudi and Emirati leaders would not accept telephone calls from President Biden.

For the next segment, Netfa Freeman, organizer for Pan-African Community Action (PACA), member of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace, Co-Producer/Host for the radio show and podcast Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM, joins the conversation to talk about a published investigative report showing that police departments around the country have spent $1.5 billion since 2010 to settle lawsuits brought against police for misconduct. Departments across the country have had to pay settlements for individual officer misconduct multiple times. Then they talk about Johnson & Johnson apologizing for an experiment that it conducted in 1971, when it injected 50 Pennsylvania prisoners with asbestos to compare its effect on skin versus talc. Both asbestos and talc are known to cause cancer. 50 prisoners were black men and none of them knew exactly what they were being injected with.

For the last segment, Dr. Yolanda Hancock, board-certified pediatrician and obesity medicine specialist called into the program to talk about Dr Bronner’s Soap Company funding research into the mental health benefits of psychedelic drugs and making the benefits of that research available to their staff by covering ketamine therapy in the company’s insurance plan. And, they talk about a looming health disaster in this country - the coming purge of medicaid rolls. The Daily Poster reported on this earlier this week, noting that since the start of the pandemic, Medicaid, the program that provides health insurance to low income Americans, has expanded, with enrollment at 77.8 million. That is nearly a quarter of the population! Part of the reason for this is that states had halted disenrollments because of the ongoing public health emergency - so they weren’t going to check on whether someone’s income had tipped over the income threshold according to Dr. Hancock.

It's Friday, the Misfits close with "stories of the weird."