Chomsky, Noam. "We Must Confront the 'Ultranationalist, Reactionary' Movements Growing Across Globe."Democracy Now (April 12, 2019)
Digital Disconnect (USA: Jeremy Earp and Robert McChesney, 2018: 63 mins) ["Tracing the Internet’s history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet’s so-called “democratising potential” has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnectdigs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication."]
Ehrenreich, Ben. "After the Storm: Progress and the Demented Quest for Historical Purity." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Ellerby, Kara and Sumita Mukherjee. "How Empire Uses ‘Feminist’ Branding to Sell War and Occupation." Citations Needed #65 (February 6, 2019) ["Since the dawn of the American Empire, thin moral pretexts in our politics and press have been used to justify our wars and conquest. The invasion of Cuba and Philippines in 1898 was declared to be a fight for freedom from Spanish oppression. Vietnam was about stopping Communist tyranny. The pioneer myth of Manifest Destiny and “westward expansion” was built about “taming” and “civilizing’ the land from violent savages. But one current that flows through all of these imperial incursions has been the idea that the United States – as well as its allies the Great Britain and Israel – are out to protect women. Today's endless occupations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are, in large part, justified in perpetuity because the United States is a self-declared, unique protector of modernity and women’s rights. All the same, the Pentagon is increasingly promoted, in press releases and media puffy pieces, as a place where women can exercise their agency: the ultimate apex of meritocracy and a vanguard of equality. But what if this approach misses the point of equality altogether? What if this is simply a craven branding exercise, putting a liberal face on what is a fundamentally oppressive system of violence? On this episode, we explore various ways women’s rights and empowerment has been used to sell colonial objectives and how one can differentiate between actual progress and the superficial language of inclusion used cynically in service of mechanized violence."]
Robiou, Marcia. "A New Report Sheds Light on an International Rohingya Trafficking Network." Frontline (April 5, 2019)
Seymour, Gene. "Taming the Savage White Man: The Western Mythos Remade in the Age of Trump." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Smith, Tracy K. "With Joy Harjo." The Lannan Foundation (February 6, 2019) ["Tracy K. Smith was appointed the 22nd United States poet laureate in 2017 and was reappointed for a second term in 2018. During her first term, Smith gave readings and led discussions as a part of a pilot project in rural communities in New Mexico, South Carolina, and Kentucky. She has continued to pursue engagements in small towns across America, stating, “Poetry invites us to listen to other voices, to make space for other perspectives, and to care about the lives of others who may not look, sound or think like ourselves.” Her poem “The United States Welcomes You” begins:
Why and by whose power were you sent?Her memoir Ordinary Light (2016) was described by the Guardian as “A powerful meditation on being a daughter and, by the end, on being a mother, too.” In it she writes of her mother’s impending death: “When the dark outside was real*not just the dark of approaching winter, and not just the dark of rain, which we’d had for days, too*her dying came on. We recognized it. We circled her bed, though we stopped short of holding hands, perhaps because that gesture would have meant we were holding on, and we were finally ready to let her go.” Smith has published four books of poetry: Wade in the Water (2018); Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book; Duende (2006); and The Body’s Question, winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard, earned her MFA at Columbia, and was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University from 1997 to 1999. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities and director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey."]
What do you see that you may wish to steal?
Why this dancing? Why do your dark bodies
Drink up all the light?
Waldman, Paul. "The Bias Against Change and Medicare for All." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["A year out from the 2020 Democratic primary, "Medicare for All" has emerged as a potent rallying cry and vision for a new American healthcare system. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Beto O'Rourke have all expressed support for some form of universal healthcare. Yet, Republicans and right-wing media have already begun discrediting the idea, similar to how they went after Obamacare beginning a decade ago. It is not surprising that the hefty price tag associated with some of the proposals has been wagged at by Fox News hosts and the like. After all, socialized medicine has been a conservative bugaboo for a century. But according to Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, the allegation of basic unaffordability has seeped, mainly unchallenged, into media coverage. In this segment, he and Bob parse through the messaging for and against Medicare-for-All, and discuss the biases that stymie the discussion."]
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