"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Those truths are well established. They are read in every page which records the progression from a less arbitrary to a more arbitrary government, or the transition from a popular government to an aristocracy or a monarchy." — James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
Carrington, Damian. "Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown." The Guardian (October 10, 2018)
Greenhouse, Steven. "One Job Should be Enough: How workers’ voices were silenced in America—and how they’re fighting back." American Scholar (August 23, 2019) ["Steven Greenhouse was the labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times for 19 years. His last book, The Big Squeeze, is a detailed report on how American workers are being abused by corporations and bosses: freezing wages; replacing long-term employees with contractors, subcontractors, and freelancers; reducing hours. And where full-time employees are to be found, bosses are replacing pensions with 401Ks; trimming down paid holidays, vacations, and sick days; pressuring workers to do more per hour; forcing arbitration instead of lawsuits; mandating non-compete causes—not to mention off-shoring jobs to countries with fewer labor or environmental protections and cheaper wages. In the 10 years since Greenhouse’s book appeared, corporations haven’t exactly changed their tune—but the labor movement has. There’s been a surge in organizing from the service industry to Silicon Valley: the Fight for Fifteen, #REDforED teachers’ strikes, walkouts at Google and Wayfair, and, this month, 11,000 airline catering workers across 28 cities voting to authorize a strike for better conditions. Where did this momentum come from? In his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, Steven Greenhouse tries to answer that question, alongside its corollaries. Why did worker power decline so much over the past 50 years? And what can we do to rekindle that collective power?"]
Hampton, Rachelle, Inkoo Kang and Marissa Martinelli. "Who Is The Hate U Give For?" Spoiler Specials (October 19, 2018) ["In this week’s episode, assistant editor Marissa Martinelli, editorial assistant Rachelle Hampton, and culture writer Inkoo Kang discuss The Hate U Give, starring Amandla Stenberg. How does this adaptation of the YA novel by Angie Thomas represent black trauma? Does the ending take away from its overall message? And who, ultimately, is the movie trying to reach?"]
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. "Hitler is Not Your Friend: Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (Toronto International Film Festival)." Film International (September 19, 2019)
High Life (Germany/France/UK/Poland/USA: Claire Denis, 2018) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Hussain, Murtaza. "War on the World: Industrialized Militaries Are a Bigger Part of the Climate Emergency Than You Know." The Intercept (September 15, 2019)
Merchants of Doubt (USA: Kim Roberts and Robert Kenner, 2014: 93 mins) ["Merchants of Doubt looks at the well established Public Relations tactic of saturating the media with shills who present themselves as independent scientific authorities on issues in order to cast doubt in the public mind. The film looks at how this tactic, that was originally developed by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the health risks of smoking, has since come to cloud other issues such as the pervasiveness of toxic chemicals, flame retardants, asbestos, certain pharmaceutical drugs and now, climate change. Using the icon of a magician, Merchants of Doubt explores the analogy between these tactics and the methods used by magicians to distract their audiences from observing how illusions are performed. For example, with the tobacco industry, the shills successfully delayed government regulation until long after the health risks from smoking was unequivocally proven. Likewise with manufacturers of flame retardants, who worked to protect their sales after the toxic effects and pervasiveness of the chemicals were discovered. This is all made analogous to the ongoing use of these very same tactics to forestall governmental action in regards to global climate change today."]
Monsanto (Multinational Agricultural Biotechnology Corporation) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Saini, Angela. "Junk Science: How belief in biological racial difference pollutes the world of science, from eugenics to genetics." American Scholar (August 9, 2019) ["For our 100th episode, we welcome back science journalist Angela Saini, whose work deflates the myths we tell ourselves about science existing in an apolitical vacuum. With far-right nationalism and white supremacy on the rise around the world, pseudoscientific and pseudointellectual justifications for racism are on the rise—and troublingly mainstream. Race is a relatively recent concept, but dress it up in a white lab coat and it becomes an incredibly toxic justification for a whole range of policies, from health to immigration. It is tempting to dismiss white-supremacist cranks who chug milk to show their superior lactose tolerance, but it’s harder to do so when those in positions of power—like senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller or pseudointellectual Jordan Peterson—spout the same rhetoric. The consequences can be more insidious, too: consider how we discuss the health outcomes for different groups of people as biological inevitabilities, not the results of social inequality. Drawing on archives and interviews with dozens of prominent scientists, Saini shows how race science never really left us—and that in 2019, scientists are as obsessed as ever with the vanishingly small biological differences between us."]
No comments:
Post a Comment