Blood Work

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

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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

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

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.