Content Tagged “journalism”
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USAID and the CIA’s Covert Wars
After Trump dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025, there was a huge outcry by many people who focused on the agency’s stated mission to provide international aid. The fact that USAID was well known as having a dual purpose as a dark budget for CIA covert action programs was (and still is) being ignored or, at best, branded a “conspiracy theory” by its defenders.
It is, in fact, anything but. The dark side of USAID has been known publicly for decades. On 8 June 1970, The New York Times published the following in a thin column on page 2:
Dr. John A. Hannah, director of the Agency for International Development, acknowledged today that the United States aid program was being used as a cover for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency in Laos. He said President Nixon might propose divorcing such intelligence work from over seas economic assistance in the future in proposals on foreign aid reform to be sent to Congress.
“Well, I just have to admit that that is true,” Dr. Hannah said when asked if his agency's economic aid “is being used as a cover for C.I.A. operations in Laos.” He was questioned on the Metromedia radio news program “Profile.” Dr. Hannah made it clear that he disapproved of the Central Intelligence Agency's use of his agency. He said Laos was the only country in which this was being done and that it stemmed from a 1962 decision that such activity was in the national interest.
It is unusual for an executive‐branch official to acknowledge publicly that his organi zation is being used for under cover work abroad.
Unusual as the statement might have been, it is also doubtful that it was entirely truthful. By many accounts published in books by ex-CIA people since, USAID was used for these things worldwide, probably until 2025. What exactly did the CIA due with such funds under the cover of international aid, you ask? Well, in the case of Laos, they waged all-out war. On 3 August 1971, The New York Times published this, buried below the fold on page 1:
The Nixon Administration acknowledged today, through a Senate subcommittee staff report, that the Central Intelligence Agency was maintaining a 30,000‐man “irregular” force now fighting throughout most of Laos. Many news articles in recent years have described C.I.A. sponsorship of an irregular army in Laos. However, the subcommittee report represented the first time that the agency publicly and officially confirmed its military activities in Laos. The report indicated that the use of the irregular units in Laos was more widespread than had been indicated in the news accounts.
You might think this news from the 1970s isn’t relevant. You would be mistaken. The funding might be routed diffently today, but beyond that, nothing much has changed. The CIA is doing the exact same stuff right now. They are waging war in Ukraine and until USAID was demolished by Trump, the CIA was using it to pay journalists in Ukraine to spread pro-Western propaganda. That much was obvious.
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→ The Final Episode, No Agenda
No Agenda has officially come to an end with episode 1916. A sad day for everyone who enjoys podcasts and is in favour of people thinking for themselves. But after JCD’s passing, it was inevitable.
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While the Propellers Knotted like Pretzels
In 1937, Time magazine had this to say about Amelia Earhart crashing her plane on the second leg of her world-circling flight. The press really hit different back then.
For Earhart and Putnam, the crash in Hawaii was a public relations disaster. The March 29 issue of Time magazine drew on the title of a popular Eugene O’Neill play for a piece titled “Mourning Becomes Electra.” After pointing out that several people had flown around the world on commercial airlines, the article said, “Last week Aviatrix Amelia Earhart Putnam took off from Oakland ‘to establish the feasibility of circling the globe by commercial air travel.’ … With her as navigators she took three men, but not her publicity-wise husband, who stayed at Oakland to sell her autographs at $6 each.” Time’s description of the accident was no less sarcastic: “Down the long concrete runway of Luke Field the ship shot at 60 m.p.h. Suddenly the left tire blew out. Lurching, the plane crumpled its landing gear, careened 1,000 feet on its bottom in a spray of sparks while the propellers knotted like pretzels. With sirens screaming, ambulances dashed to the wreck just as Flyer Amelia stepped out white-faced. Said she, ‘Something must have gone wrong.’
— From the book One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy by Ric Gillespie, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2024
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“No Agenda” Is Over
On No Agenda 1912, Adam Curry has just announced that he will be quitting the show after the episode on 29 October and thus completing 19 years of the podcast. After the death of John C. Dvorak, this spells the end of No Agenda, at least for me. Adam has hinted that the show might continue in some way, with other hosts, but that is definitely not for me.
Adam explained on the episode that he really hadn’t been feeling No Agenda for a while now, since he became religious and actively practicing the Christian faith, and that he simply hadn’t managed to bring that up to John before his heart attack. I think there is definitely some truth to that and everyone who was a regular listener to the show probably detected some of this change in Adam. He says he now wants to concentrate on his “kingdom work”, which I guess means religious evangelising, and that this is why he’s quitting the show. But I do feel a big pat of that decision might also be that the listenership numbers have obviously been in a steep decline ever since John died.
No Agenda just didn’t work without John C. Dvorak’s singular brand of irreverant criticism and acerbic wit and I think many listeners worked this out and stopped listening. I certainly only tuned into the show a few times, and only for short parts of episodes, since John’s passing. Of course, for me personally, it also didn’t help that Adam kept leaning into his newfound Christian faith bullshit and his pro-AI stance. I already vehemently disagreed with him on his very pro-Trump attitude, but this just made it so that I couldn’t logically follow most of his reasoning anymore. And since there was no John there to vehemently push back on some of this stuff and bring another perspective, No Agenda died for me with John. And I guess now it’s finally officially been declared dead.
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My Last Email from Dvorak
While looking though my email archive this morning, I found this email by John C. Dvorak, where he replied to me sending some information to the No Agenda show. This was less than a month before his death. That signature made me laugh every time I saw it. What a character! 😄😭
SENT from my bakelite rotary phone
one letter at a time
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John C. Dvorak Has Passed Away
I just learned that John C. Dvorak has died on Monday. JCD had a heart attack earlier this year, but he was doing much better and I just listened to the last No Agenda episode he recorded on Sunday (episode 1887) this morning, so this comes as a bit of a shock.
I will miss John very much. He was one of my journalistic heroes. He almost single-handedly alerted me to all the bullshit that goes on in Silicon Valley and that it wasn’t an exception, but rather the standard modus operandi in that part of the tech industry. Calculated to mislead the public by generating a lot of overblown hype to sell more product. John stood up to this crap for decades. He was one of the journalists who, through his work, encouraged my natural scepticism and my inherent tendency to always ask questions when everyone around me would just accept something. He taught me that this is a good quality in a journalist — and every other human being for that matter — one that we want to encourage, rather than an annoyance that is to be chastised.
We need more people like John C. Dvorak in this world, not less. People who want to get at the truth of the matter, rather than placate other people’s emotional or financial needs. His tendency to always ask the next question, to never accept conventional “wisdom” and to just be the one stubborn old man in the room (even when he was quite young) who will always take the more unpopular — but probably closer to the truth — side of the argument will be sorely missed. This is a bad day. For tech journalism and for the world at large. Goodbye, John. I know that, wherever you are now, the powers that be over there are not to be envied. Give ’em hell!
John C. Dvorak (1946 - 2026) — journalist, podcaster, curmudgeon (Photo: No Agenda)
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Get Lit
After America This Week ended in February, due to some sort of undisclosed falling out between Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, Racket News launched a new show with Matt Taibbi and Michael Tracey that pretty much ended in a disaster after five episodes. In a follow up move, Matt has dispensed with both Tracey and the news angle of the show and is instead concentrating on the literary classics portion that made his show with Walter such a success. On the new show, Get Lit with Matt and Brad, Brad Pearce is the second co-host to try and replace the pretty much irreplacable Walter Kirn.
The first episode is out, discussing Aristophanes’ 391 BC play Assemblywomen. It was decent entertainment and I learned some things, though I must say, like most who enjoyed ATW, I miss Walter. This seems to be the main theme in the comments to the video, at YouTube and Racket News at least. I am not sure that the concept alone will keep the show afloat. This is certainly better than the Michael Tracey disaster, but what made the literary discussions on ATW work was specifically the interplay between Matt and Walter and the audience seems to be well aware of this. Needless to say, Walter Kirn isn’t a fan of the new arrangements.
Man, I would love to know what happened between the two of them. It must have been brewing for a while, they both don’t seem like people who fly into drama mode at the drop of a hat. I bet there was some stuff going on behind the scenes for a while before something made the pot boil over. And the fact that they both maintain pretty much silence about the causes is either very professional or points at something more sinister.
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JCD is back!
It was very nice to hear John C. Dvorak again on the No Agenda show. It sounds like he has recovered well from his recent hospitalisation for a heart attack. He sounded very good! Actually, better than before.
Welcome back, John!
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JCD in Hospital
Ah, crap. I just listened to the latest No Agenda episode. Looks like John C. Dvorak is in hospital for a double heart bypass. The man has been one of my journalistic heroes ever since I decided to become a podcaster (and later also a professional journalist). He remains one of the great tech journalists, maybe the only great tech journalist, of our time.
Get well soon, John!
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America This Week Implodes
Last week, America This Week with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn ceased to exist. I still don't understand why this happened. Matt's explanation really wasn't an explanation at all.
All I can say is that I enjoyed this podcast immensely and I will miss it a lot, now that it is gone. I am not sure how I feel about the new direction for Racket News yet. But I do know that wherever Walter Kirn decides to get behind a microphone next, I will be there.
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Introducing “The Uncertain Times”
I’ve created a newspaper! It is inspired by old-school zines and a desire to go back to physical media. Because I can’t get a proper broadsheet printed like County Highway, I made it A4 so that everyone can print it out for themselves — I use Avery Zweckform 100 g/m² bright white paper for my copy. If you keep the content and presentation intact, you’re free to share the PDF or printed copies of it!
One of the reasons for me to create this was to teach myself print layout, and I think I did quite a good job for my first attempt. It was also a lot of fun to adapt my writing style to this project. The first issue comprises two pages on AI, Greenland and Minnesota and you can download it here. Check it out!
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Snow
Snow at EDDLWe woke up this morning to a world sheathed in white. It had snowed. As is kind of tradition here in western Germany, we didn’t get a white Christmas, but it snows at the very beginning of January instead. This has been going on for decades and it has actually snowed at the beginning of January every other year or so. Usually, when it snows here, it is at the start of January.
The press, of course, has been telling us for over 25 years now that kids will never see snow again. But this continues to be proven wrong for one generation after the other. When I look out my window right now, I see several kids happily building a snow man. It’s almost like most of these predictions are utter bullshit. 🤔
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Back from Poland
I’ve just returned from my trip to Poland and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. It was a very interesting trip, as part of which I not only got a tour of the memorial and museum, but I also had the opportunity to see parts of the memorial not open to regular visitors. We were even shown around a newly-preserved barracks building in Birkenau that had so far only been accessed by museum staff. We also got to see the archives and preservation labs and attended a number of interesting lectures, including by the director of the museum and a staff historian.
It was a very taxing trip. I travelled over 1600 kilometres to get there and back and every day at the memorial, I spent 8 hours straight just absorbing information, with a lot of walking in between. I took over 600 photos on the memorial grounds.
In the coming days and weeks, I will be writing about my experience and you can also expect me to publish some of those pictures here, of course.
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Auschwitz Seminar
I’ve just gotten the news that I have been accepted to attend a seminar for journalists in Auschwitz at the end of the month. Despite my lifelong interest in World War II history, I have never been there. I have never been in Poland, in fact, even though part of my family is from the now-Polish part of Pomerania. I just never had the opportunity. So I’m doubly happy I get to attend this. This is quite exciting for me!
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What I’ve Been Up To
You’ve probably noticed that there hasn’t been much going on here lately. This is mostly because I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to bring the website up to version 3.0, which includes a visual refresh for the site’s theme. I’ve also spent a week on the road, hosting a stage at the secIT 2025 conference as well as doing a lot of networking and sourcing for stories around the event.
I then promptly got the obligatory conference flu, which laid me out for about a week. I completely lost my voice for a few days and was also very tired, the combination of which prevented me from getting any work done. So naturally, there is now quite a backlog to get through.
The work on the new website version is still ongoing behind the scenes. This refresh is made up of three new colour schemes that took me a few weeks to nail down. There are also new features which had to be implemented and tested properly. That’s all finished now. But there is still a lot of work to be done, because I’ve had to touch every single piece of content on the site to change some code that has to do with a new, improved categorisation scheme that’s part of the new design. It’s a lot of work, but will be well worth it in the end. I hope I’ll have that completed soon, so that everyone gets to see the new version of the site that I’ve been working on. Until then, hang tight.
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Radio Nowhere
Photo by Jay HeikeToday, I’ve launched a new weekly podcast I call Radio Nowhere. What is it about, you ask? Let me quote right from the website:
RADIO NOWHERE is a political podcast that promotes free thought and independent research. The show is hosted by tech journalist and writer Fabian A. Scherschel. It is recorded in his home studio and on the road and released weekly.
Loosely inspired by such shows as No Agenda and The Daily, I pick a political topic every week to discuss in-depth. Could be anything really. Something that happened recently, something from the past few years or a development that’s been going on for a while. If it’s interesting to me, I will probably talk about it at some point. The first episode deals with Trump’s Ukraine phone call and the impeachment inquiry it has launched.
As is always the case with my shows, you get ample show notes and access to all the sources I have used in producing the episode. I am trying to encurage people to do their own research, think out of the box and stop believing everything they see and hear. The show also lives and dies by audience participation, so please go have a listen and tell me what you think. Contact details are in the show notes. I hope you like Radio Nowhere and it can add something meaningful to your podcast listening.
At this point I would be remiss if I don’t thank Dan Lynch, who’s arranged and recorded the wonderful version of the song Radio Nowhere that I’m using as this podcast’s theme. It just works perfectly for the show, I feel.