Abrams, Eliot. "Identity, Values, and the Conduct of US Foreign Policy." Conversations with History (April 19, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Elliot Abrams former deputy National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush for a conversation on the values and interests that define U.S. foreign policy. Reflecting on his formative experiences, he recalls the influence of his parents, his education, and his work experiences under Senators Jackson and Moynihan. After discussing the skills and temperament necessary for the work of foreign policy, he analyzes the challenges of navigating the tensions between security and human rights. Reflecting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he offers his assessment of the preconditions for its resolution. He also discusses his analysis of Jewish support for Israel in the United States, and concludes with advice for students preparing for a future in international affairs."]
Adams, Lena, et al. "Generation Z and the Future of Democracy." Democracy Works (April 17, 2018) ["Over the past few months, the members of Generation Z have combined the tenets of traditional social movements with the power of social media to reimagine what it means to protest in a democracy. That energy was on display during the March for Our Lives events held around the world on March 24. We interviewed several students from State College, Pennsylvania who attended March for Our Lives events locally and in Washington, D.C. They speak passionately and articulately about what they believe in and how they’re working to carry forward the energy they’ve create"]
Adler-Bell, Sam. "The Story Behind the Green New Deal's Meteoric Rise." The New Republic (February 6, 2019) ["On November 13, 2018, just days after Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives, dozens of young activists filed silently into Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill. Some sat down along the walls of the office, unfurling banners and forming a circle. Others stood in the center and told their stories. A teenage woman from Northern California began, “There were fires at my school. There was ash falling from the sky for a week.” She and her companions in the Cannon Office Building that day carried manila envelopes containing pictures of the people and places in their lives that climate change would destroy—or already had. On one side of the envelopes were the words “Dear Democrats”; on the other, “What Is Your Plan?” After some time, they began to sing—the protest songs of another generation, like “Which Side Are You On?,” and new ones they’d written themselves, about waters rising up and people rising, too. Their voices echoed down the marble halls."]
Ahmari, Sohrab. Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It. Crown Publishing Group, 2023. ["The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”. Drawing on original reporting and a growing chorus of experts who are sounding the alarm, Ahmari chronicles how private tyranny has eroded America’s productive economy and the liberties we take for granted—from employment agreements that gag whistleblowers, to Big Finance’s takeover of local fire departments, to the rigging of corporate bankruptcy to deny justice to workers and consumers—illuminating how these and other developments have left millions feeling that our livelihoods are insecure. And he shows how ordinary Americans can fight back, by restoring the economic democracy that empowered and uplifted millions of working-class people in the twentieth century. Provocative, original, and cutting across partisan lines, Tyranny, Inc. is a revelatory read on the most important political story of our time."]
Ahmari, Sohrab and Matthew Sitman. "The New Right." Open Source (November 10, 2022) ["The hatching of a New Right Republican party, under fire, is the substance of this radio hour. It was simpler in Gilbert and Sullivan when the song said: every boy and every gal that’s born into the world alive was either a little liberal, or else a little conservative. The difference this year is the multiple relabelings of Republicans on the right, by factions. You can find, say, an educated version of cultural conservatives and even some lifestyle liberals at odds with evangelicals and nationalists; you can find anti-interventionists, too, in a party of neo-conservatives. Every syllable of those labels can mean something—something to fight about, or to start a new magazine around. Meet the New Right this hour: the anti-liberal and wannabe populist future of the Republican party. Our guest to start the conversation is Sohrab Ahmari, the editor of the combative, young Compact magazine. The left-liberal podcaster Matt Sitman will put him to the test. Sohrab Ahmari is known for his way with radical ideas, and also for his journey, to the age of 37: born a modern Muslim in Tehran, he’s been moving west since his teens, through many varieties of politics and also journalism, mostly on the right, on the opinion pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. But then he made a very public turn to an articulate Catholicism. And his politics—he calls it conservative—has turned militantly anti-establishment. He could sound like a shape-shifter, or maybe a model of improvisation and growth."]
Akuno, Kali. "Worker Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, and Black Self-Determination." Left Out (January 18, 2018) ["In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi. ... In Jackson Rising, Akuno helps chronicle the history, present and future of one of the most dynamic yet under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States. The book follows the surprising story of the city’s newly elected Mayor, Choke Antara Lumumba, whose vision is to “encourage the development of cooperative businesses” and make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet.” In the first part of the interview, we ask Akuno about the ongoing organizing and institution building of the black, working-class political forces concentrated in Jackson dedicated to advancing the “Jackson-Kush Plan.” We then dive deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations. Cooperation Jackson is one of the most important stories for those of us struggling for social justice, for human emancipation and self-determination, and for a solidarity economics as a base for working class political struggle and the fight against the systematic economic strangulation."]
Alberta, Tim. "COVID, Trump, Q-ANON: Evangelical Extremism." Breaking Points (December 9, 2023) ["Krystal and Saagar are joined by author Tim Alberta to talk about his new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism." Book description: "Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal. For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD. Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing. Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?"]
Ali, Zahra, Matt Howard and Sami Rasouli. "'It Was a Crime': 15 Years After U.S. Invasion, Iraqis Still Face Trauma, Destruction & Violence." Democracy Now (March 20, 2018) ["It was 15 years ago today when the U.S. invaded Iraq on the false pretense that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The attack came despite worldwide protest and a lack of authorization from the United Nations Security Council. At around 5:30 a.m. in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, air raid sirens were heard as the U.S. invasion began. The fighting has yet to end, and the death toll may never be known. Conservative estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at 200,000. But some counts range as high as 2 million. In 2006, the British medical journal Lancet estimated 600,000 Iraqis died in just the first 40 months of the war. The U.S. has also lost about 4,500 soldiers in Iraq. Just last week, seven U.S. service members died in a helicopter crash in western Iraq near the Syrian border. The war in Iraq has also destabilized much of the Middle East. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others have directly blamed the U.S. invasion of Iraq for the rise of ISIS. We speak to the Iraqi-French sociologist Zahra Ali, who teaches at Rutgers University; Matt Howard, co-director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, the organization formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War; and Sami Rasouli, founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq."]
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Anders, Christopher. "Don’t Let Congress Give Trump a Blank Check to Declare Worldwide War." Speak Freely (April 13, 2018)
Anderson, Elizabeth S. "Q and A with Elizabeth Anderson, author of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)." Princeton University Press (ND)
---. "What is the Point of Equality?" Ethics 109.2 (1999): 287 - 337. ["What has gone wrong here? I shall argue that these problems stem from a flawed understanding of the point of equality. Recent egalitarian writing has come to be dominated by the view that the fundamental aim of equality is to compensate people for undeserved bad luck-being born with poor native endowments, bad parents, and disagreeable personalities, suffering from accidents and illness, and so forth. I shall argue that in focusing on correcting a supposed cosmic injustice, recent egalitarian writing has lost sight of the distinctively political aims of egalitarianism. The proper negative aim of egalitarian justice is not to eliminate the impact of brute luck from human affairs, but to end oppression, which by definition is socially imposed. Its proper positive aim is not to ensure that everyone gets what they morally deserve, but to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others."]
Anderson, Pamela and Srećko Horvat. "On Europe's Turmoil." Jacobin (December 17, 2018) ["Pamela Anderson spoke to Jacobin and philosopher Srećko Horvat about the protests in France, the crisis in the European Union, and her own activism."]
Antončič, Emica, Metka Mencin Čeplak and Mirjana Ule. "Struggles for Equality: Feminism in Slovenia." Eurozine (October 9, 2018) ["Liberal feminism has completely overlooked class and other axes of inequality and subjugation, says Metka Mencin Čeplak, as the economically and politically imposed commodification of women comes to the fore, warns Mirjana Ule. What is to be done? In interview, two leading Slovenian feminists consider the options in light of a century of feminist thought."]
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. "The Defender of Differences." The New York Review of Books (May 28, 2020)
Applebaum, Anne, et al. "A Kind of Permanent Battle." On the Media (August 7, 2020) ["As we approach November’s contentious presidential election, what lessons can we learn from divided societies abroad? This week, On the Media travels to Poland, where conspiracy, xenophobia and the rise of illiberalism have the country in an existential fight for its future. On the Media producer Leah Feder reports in this 3 part episode: 1) Anne Applebaum on the conspiracy theories around a 2010 plane crash that redrew lines in Polish politics. 2) Pawel Machcewicz on the Law & Justice party's takeover of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk. Also featuring Anne Applebaum, Janine Holc, and Angieszka Syroka. 3) An exploration of left and right strategies in contemporary Poland, with Igor Stokfiszewski, Anne Applebaum, and Jaroslaw Kuisz."]
Ariel, Dan. "Labeling Antifa A Terrorist Group Latest Attempt To Usher In Fascism." It's Going Down (July 24, 2019) ["... addresses a recent attempt by a few GOP politicians to label “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization." Michael Benton: Not only are republicans providing cover for the violent actions of white supremacist/nationalist groups, they are also trying to label as terrorists & criminalize the people, like those involved in the antifa movement (we have Mark Bray's history of the antifa movement in BCTC's library), that defend communities targeted for violence by white supremacist hate groups. Ask yourself how many people have been killed by people operating in antifa movement activities? None that I can find (which in the massive propaganda campaign seeking to demonize them you would think that there would be some claims along those lines) How many people have been killed by those espousing white supremacist/nationalist ideologies in the 21st Century? Let's make it easy, how many have they killed in the last week? Why is the former attacked/condemned/demonized by our politicians (including Democrats) and why are the violence/hatred of the latter protected/minimalized by Republicans. Amy Goodman yesterday reported: "Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that crime driven by racism and white supremacy is on the rise compared to the previous year and that his agency recorded around a hundred arrests for domestic terrorism in the past nine months." Christopher Wray stated: "A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we have investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence." Also, former FBI supervisor Dave Gomez told The Washington Post, quote, “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor,” he said.]
Armstrong, Sally, Paul Heinbecker and James Orbinski. "Five Freedoms: Freedom from Want." Ideas (April 11, 2019) ["Poverty has always been a defining issue in the quest to build a better world. Most political systems lay claim to the idea that they alone can create a better world. It's a kind of litmus test: if our political systems can't raise almost everyone out of relative poverty, then what exactly have we achieved? Why poverty exists at all in otherwise wealthy, prosperous democratic countries is a very incisive question, and it's not enough to just shrug and say our system is still better than any other alternative. And those alternatives? Dictatorships take us into the abyss. Right-wing libertarianism has little to offer as solutions to poverty. Soviet-style Communism didn't exactly work either, which leaves some version of western liberal democracy, either what we have now, or some variation that is still to emerge. So once we've got past that, and accepted that we've failed on the poverty file, how do we go about making things more equitable right now, making sure that wealth is distributed to those in need, and creating opportunity for the weak to become stronger?"]
Arnoff, Kate. "Trump Curbs the Circulation of Science." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["Last weekend, The New York Times reported on a host of aggressive new obstacles placed by Trump administration to stymie the dissemination of federal climate research. One new rule prevents certain agencies from publishing findings after 2040. A second will omit the National Climate Assessment's "worst case scenario" projection. And finally, a panel of climate deniers will oversee and regulate the release of all federally funded climate research. In this interview, Bob speaks with Kate Aronoff, who recently wrote about these regulations for The Guardian. She explains how these alarming new restrictions fit into the Trump administration's larger pattern of limiting public access to the truth about the climate."]
Aron, Hadas. "Free Speech #56: The Populist Attacks on Academia." Think About It (May 21, 2019) ["Why do populist movements, which exist on both the left and the right, attack universities? Is there any justification for their suspicion of elites who tell us what's true, how to live our lives, and how to solve our problems? What's the relation between populism, academia, and the idea that everyone's opinion should matter, regardless of their education, birth and academic degrees? Hadas Aron is a political scientist who studies populist movements in various countries to understand the underlying problems and tensions that drive such movements. We talked about the attacks on academia, how best to understand them, and whether there are some issues that are non-negotiable even in the most robust and raucous political disputes."]
Arreaza, Jorge. "A Coup in Progress? Venezuelan Foreign Minister Decries U.S. & Brazil-Backed Effort to Oust Maduro." Democracy Now (January 18, 2019) ["The United States and allied nations in Latin America are ratcheting up pressure on Venezuela in what appears to be a coordinated effort to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office. Maduro was sworn in last week to a second 6-year term following his victory in last May’s election, which was boycotted by the opposition. Days before Maduro was sworn in, opposition figure Juan Guaidó became head of the National Assembly, which soon voted to declare Maduro a “usurper” in an effort to remove him from office. The United States, Brazil and other nations have welcomed the effort. As the political crisis intensifies, Maduro has reached out to the United Nations to help establish a peace dialogue in Venezuela. We speak with Jorge Arreaza, Venezuelan foreign minister. He met with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres this week."]
Auerbeck, Michael. "White-Collar Criminals Got Off Scot-Free After the 2008 Financial Crisis — and That Helped Fuel President Trump’s Rise." Naked Capitalism (August 28, 2018)
Auxier, Jonathan, et al. "Award Winning Authors on Borders, Real and Imagined." Ideas (December 12, 2018) ["Borders are everywhere. They're also a central topic in politics, media, and public conversation, as migrants and refugees continue to arrive on the figurative doorsteps of the nations that they hope will give them a chance at better lives. All around these dividing lines, there blooms debate and defensiveness, as well as the threat of desperation, separation, and violence."]
Bacevich, Andrew. "The Age of Illusions." Open Source (January 30, 2020) ["Soldier and citizen, Andrew Bacevich is the overqualified expert who turns the standard take on our distress inside out. It’s not President Trump that divides us, Bacevich says. Rather, Trump got to be president because the country was worse than split: it’s in a 30-year slow-burn rage around a loss of our restraint, our reputation, our identity. Donald Trump is the loathsome cover on our confusion, he says, but the confusion comes out of Clinton, Bush, and Obama time, in the arrogance of military might, unleashed by a Cold War victory, as if we were licensed to rule the world. The reckoning Bacevich wants, with Trump or without, is about what three reckless decades have cost us abroad and at home."]
---. "The U.S. Needs to Abandon 'Militarized Approach' to Middle East and Build Peace." Democracy Now (January 9, 2020) ["We continue our conversation with Andrew Bacevich, president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is a retired colonel, Vietnam War veteran and author of, most recently, of “The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory.” Bacevich says the crisis with Iran, sparked by President Trump’s assassination of top general Qassem Soleimani, is just the latest in a long series of ill-advised American actions in the Middle East. “The only conceivable way for us to begin to extricate ourselves from this terrible mess in the region … is to abandon this militarized approach and to take a more balanced position with regard to the rivalries in the region,” Bacevich says."]
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. "Brazil's Tenuous Relationship with Democracy." Democracy Works (March 4, 2019) ["To say Brazil has had a complicated history with democracy is an understatement. The country has bounced in and out of authoritarian regimes for hundreds of years, with democracy never having quite enough time to really take hold. Following the election of Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018, many are wondering whether the cycle is about to repeat itself again. Gianpaolo Baiocchi is a professor of individualized studies and sociology at NYU, where he also directs the Urban Democracy Lab. He's from Brazil and has written extensively about the country's politics and social movements. He joins us this week to talk about Bolsonaro's appeal, the use of misinformation on WhatsApp during the election, and why Bolsonaro is often called the "Trump of the tropics." We also discuss Brazil's history of activism under authoritarian governments and whether we'll see it return now."]
Bajoghli, Narges. "Soleimani’s Death Could Galvanize Shia Coalitions Against One “Foreign Aggressor” — The U.S." Democracy Now (January 6, 2020) ["Fallout continues to mount following the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last week. Iranian media reports that over a million mourners took to the streets of Tehran today for the funeral of Soleimani, who headed Iran’s elite Quds Force. On Sunday, Iran announced it would suspend its commitments under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which the U.S. pulled out of in 2018. Trump has also threatened to target 52 locations in Iran, including cultural sites, if Iran retaliates against the U.S. The targeting of cultural sites is widely viewed as an international war crime. Meanwhile, Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has revealed he had plans to meet with Soleimani on the day he was killed to discuss a Saudi proposal to defuse tension in the region. From Washington, D.C., we speak with Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.”"]
Baker, Russ, Sander Hicks and Peter Dale Scott. "Facing The Failing Culture Of Control - 5 (Deep State Control Freakery You May Have Missed)." Unwelcome Guests #712 (May 2, 2015)
Balzarini, John and Les Bernal. "Gambling and Neoliberal Rot - How Our Most Regressive Tax Flies Under the Radar." Citations Needed #63 (January 23, 2019) ["As more and more states turn to casinos and lotteries to ‘fill the gap” in 'falling' state budgets, the predatory and regressive nature of gambling as an alternative to increasing taxes on the rich avoids nearly any media scrutiny among centrists and liberals. Even the Left has mostly ignored the issue––ceding criticism of our most regressive tax to the Christian Right, who largely oppose gambling for all the wrong reasons. In this episode, we explore how lotteries and casinos have come to represent the last throes of the false neoliberal promise of "jobs” and “growth.” Throughout much of the United States, specifically the Rust Belt and Midwest, casinos and prisons are increasingly the only growth industries, entrenching the shift from an industrial economy to one that exclusively preys on the poor and desperate in a never-ending race to the bottom. Beyond the glitz and easy “tax revenue” lies a massive transfer of wealth from the poor, black and elderly to the super wealthy - achieved, slowly over decades, with zero sustained criticism from the media."]
Banaji, Mahzarin and Michael Rosenfled. "Radically Normal: How Gay Rights Activists Changed The Minds Of Their Opponents." Hidden Brain (April 8, 2019)
Perpetual War and the Anti-War Movement: The United States of America has been in a perpetual state of war since September 11, 2001 and before that almost continuously since 1918. The United States has overthrown democratically elected governments it could not control since the invasion of Mexico in 1848. It has overturned elected government and assassinated or attempted to assassinate many heads of foreign states. World War I was a massive slaughter between imperial powers with the United States, France, Britain and Russia on one side against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other. In one week alone, Great Britain lost 250,000 young men. The war wiped out almost an entire generation. It had been billed as “the war to end all wars.“ November 11th is known as the armistice between the hostile countries and was made a national holiday to venerate peace. It was called Armistice Day. But by 1953 Armistice Day was turned into “Veterans’ Day” and fighting was glorified. Donald Trump plans to spend $30 million on a massive military parade in Washington DC this coming November 11, Veterans’ Day. Tanks, missiles and troops will be paraded through the streets of our nations’ capital in a show of military force and adulation of Trump. A coalition of antiwar organizations are planning mass actions against this military parade and the normalization of war, violence and authoritarianism Guest – Ajamu Baraka, an initiator and leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, an organization which is part of the coalition. He has also just returned from a meeting of international leaders because the USA’s involvement of a possible overthrow of the government of Venezuela. Ajamu Baraka helped organize a conference in Baltimore Last month concerning USA’s 800 bases abroad particularly the new ones in Africa."]
Barber, William. "Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Jokes About Hangings, But Her Policies Will Strangle the Poor." Democracy Now (November 26, 2018) ["Mississippi voters will head to the polls Tuesday in the state’s hotly contested runoff senate election, as incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces off against Democrat Mike Espy. In a state that Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points two years ago, Espy is attempting to become Mississippi’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction. His opponent, incumbent Sen. Hyde-Smith, attended and graduated from an all-white segregationist high school and recently posed for photos with a Confederate Army cap and other Confederate artifacts. Earlier this month, a viral video showed Hyde-Smith praising a campaign supporter, saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Mississippi was once considered the lynching capital of the United States. We speak with Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. He recently traveled to Mississippi to get out the vote."]
---. "Racist Gerrymandering Created a GOP Stronghold in the South. We Must Fight Back." Democracy Now (June 10, 2019) ["Longtime civil rights leader Rev. Dr. William Barber joins us to respond to his conviction Thursday for trespassing during a 2017 protest against gerrymandering and attacks on healthcare at the North Carolina Legislature. Barber had refused to leave the General Assembly as ordered, after he organized a sit-in at the legislative building when Republican leaders refused to meet with him about concerns with voter ID requirements and redistricting plans that would weaken the power of the black vote. “We must start connecting systemic racism, most seen through systemic voter suppression and gerrymandering, poverty, the lack of healthcare, environmental devastation and the war economy,” says Barber, the former president of the North Carolina NAACP and a leader of the national Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This Wednesday he will join faith leaders and religious groups in Washington, D.C., for a march to the White House to protest the Trump administration’s attacks on the nation’s most vulnerable communities, and next week he hosts the three-day Poor People’s Campaign Moral Action Congress in Washington, D.C., that will draw hundreds of people from across the country for a presidential forum, where both Republican and Democratic candidates will speak."]
Barkan, Ross. "The Gray Zone Lady." The Baffler #50 (Match 2020) [The New York Times, "particularly in its approach to national political stories, has clung to a horse race model of coverage that should have been discredited decades ago. The model, long derided but shockingly durable, operates from a rather simple premise: How do we figure out who’s going to win? It is rarely curious about anything else, and it can be applied to political campaigns and governing policy alike. Horse race coverage treats politics as a glorified sporting event, each side reduced to a combatant of equal moral stature, and tries desperately to divine the future, with all the arrogance of science and none of its corresponding rigor. It regards political reportage as theater criticism, diminishing pivotal and thorny questions about policy. The other question horse race coverage may ask: How does this play? Instead of asking whether a certain candidate will support more drone strikes in the Middle East or will pursue a health care policy that makes coverage cheaper and more humane, the horse race paradigm is most concerned about tactics. Will an embrace of x lead to victory or defeat? What is the underlying strategy? Political coverage becomes inseparable from gossip. Such an approach relishes artificial events constructed specifically to make news, like the press conference, the diner visit, or the rally with surrogates, campaign operatives tasked with massaging the truth, repeatedly, for the benefit of the press, who must decide whether to be “spun” or not."]
Barnes, Rhae Lynn. "Historian: Americans Must Face Violent History of Blackface Amid Virginia Gov. Racist Photo Scandal." Democracy Now (February 4, 2019) ["We discuss the history behind calls for Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to resign after a photo surfaced on his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page showing a man wearing blackface posing next to a man wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit. The yearbook also features an image of a white man in a wig, dress and black face. The photo’s caption reads, “'Baby Love,' who ever thought Diana Ross would make it to Medical School!” Another photo in the yearbook shows three men in blackface. We are joined by Rhae Lynn Barnes, assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book “Darkology: When the American Dream Wore Blackface.” Her new article for The Washington Post is headlined “The troubling history behind Ralph Northam’s blackface Klan photo.”" Also: Part 1 - "Virginia Legislative Black Caucus: Governor Northam Must Resign over Blackface Yearbook Photo." and Part 2: "As Virginia Governor Waffles on Blackface Yearbook Photo, NAACP Leader Calls His Apology “Invalid”."]
Barragán, Nanette. "'Unconscious and Unacceptable': : Rep. Barragán Decries Detention of Migrant Children in Prison Cells." Democracy Now (July 11, 2019) ["Yazmin Juárez, the Guatemalan mother whose child died after being held in an ICE detention center from a lung infection, testified before members of a congressional panel Wednesday. She shared the story of her daughter, 19-month-old Mariee, who died last year shortly after being released from the South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas. Juárez filed a $60 million lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Health and Human Services. The House subcommittee convened to examine the treatment of refugees in U.S. detention, just over a week after lawmakers flocked to the U.S.-Mexico border to observe the horrible treatment of refugee children and families in immigration jails amid reports of continued unsafe and unsanitary conditions for asylum seekers. Meanwhile, NBC reports that migrant children jailed in Yuma, Arizona, have been subjected to mistreatment and sexual violence. We speak with Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán from California, who recently visited detention centers in Texas. She’s the second vice-chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security."]
Barro, Josh, et al. "Impeachment." Left, Right and Center (September 27, 2019) ["Nancy Pelosi says the inquiry is on, and it now has the support from nearly every Democrat and therefore, a majority of the House. This may be a rapid impeachment — just two months and just about the new Ukraine scandal. Should this be quick and easy? Or should there be more hearings and more charges? Spoiler alert: no one on the show expects the Senate to actually remove President Trump if he is indeed impeached, so what then is the strategic reason to impeach him? And how might this affect Democrats, including those running for president against Trump and those running for down-ballot races in 2020? President Trump railed against the whistleblower, insinuating that people who passed along information to that person were spies and spies should be executed. Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security issues and whistleblower protections, joins the panel to talk about President Trump’s comments, protocols for whistleblowers, and how this story saw daylight in the first place."]
---. "Trump Faces Probe into Tax Fraud After NYT Exposes How He Helped Parents Scam Millions from Gov’t." Democracy Now (October 4, 2018) ["The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has opened an investigation into President Trump for fraud and tax evasion following a major exposé by The New York Times revealing that Trump inherited nearly half a billion dollars of his family’s wealth through tax dodges and outright fraud. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also called for a city probe, and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has urged the IRSto investigate the president. The Times’ 13,000-word investigative report found the late Fred and Mary Trump transferred more than $1 billion in wealth to their children, paying less than 5 percent of the $550 million in taxes they should have paid under inheritance tax rates. Donald Trump also helped his parents undervalue real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on IRS tax returns in order to reduce taxes."]
Bazelon, Emily and Jena Griswold. "'Can Democracy Survive the Pandemic': : Election Hangs in the Balance as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting." Democracy Now (May 15, 2020) ["The coronavirus pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to the November presidential election, as President Trump and the GOP capitalize on the moment to attack voting rights. We speak with Emily Bazelon, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, whose new cover story examines the bureaucratic and political challenges of mobilizing widespread vote-by-mail by November. We also speak with Jena Griswold, secretary of state of Colorado, which already has universal vote-by-mail and the second-highest voter turnout in the country."]
Bazerman, Charles. "Talk of Anti-Semitism is Filled with Doublespeak and Doublethink." The Daily Doublespeak (February 14, 2019)
Beauchamp, Zack. "The controversy over laws punishing Israel boycotts, explained." Vox (January 9, 2019)
Becker, Richard. "Our Low Voter Turnout and How to Fix It." LEO Weekly (October 31, 2018)
Beckett, Lois. " Nearly all Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful despite Trump narrative, report finds." The Guardian (September 5, 2020)
Bejan, Teresa. "On Free Speech, Tolerance and Civility." Mindscape #116 (September 28, 2020) ["How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? “Free speech” is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing it consistently and fairly is a tricky business. Political theorist Teresa Bejan comes to this question from a philosophical and historical perspective, managing to relate broad principles to modern hot-button issues. We talk about the importance of tolerating disreputable beliefs, the senses in which speech acts can be harmful, and how “civility” places demands on listeners as well as speakers."]
Belew, Kathleen. "Understanding the White Power Movement." On the Media (March 22, 2019) ["When events like Christchurch happen, the elements may indeed be obvious: Guns. Sociopathy. Alienation. But the obvious is also reductive, and risks obscuring larger forces at play. The same goes with the vocabulary of race violence: White nationalist. White identity. Alt-right. White supremacy. White power. They’re used interchangeably, which further clouds the picture. Christchurch, says University of Chicago professor Kathleen Belew, is the latest manifestation not just of resentment and paranoia, or even radical racism, but of a clearly defined revolutionary movement: the white power movement. Belew is author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, which describes the history of the white power movement that consolidated after the Vietnam War. She argues that if society is to wage an effective response to the white power threat, we need to work to understand it."]
Bello, Warden. "Crisis of the US Empire." Needs No Introduction (November 2, 2005)
Beloff, Zoe, J. Hoberman and Nicolas Rapold. "Art and Fascism." Film Comment Podcast (February 27, 2019) ["This week, the Film Comment Podcast digs into Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and the ways in which the reputation of the notorious film—and that of its maker—have shifted over the years. In a feature article on the legendary Nazi-propaganda project in the latest issue of Film Comment, contributing editor J. Hoberman writes that, “Triumph of the Will is an organic product of cinema history, a synthesis of Metropolis’s monumental mass ornament, Potemkin’s pow, and Hollywood extravagance.” Once denounced as fascist propaganda, the film came to be celebrated as a masterpiece of formal daring in the 1960s and 1970s, a rehabilitation that culminated with Riefenstahl receiving a controversial tribute at the 1974 Telluride Film Festival. Film CommentEditor in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Hoberman and filmmaker and professor Zoe Beloff for a discussion of the film’s relevance to the current historical moment (Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes are purportedly big fans) and the larger question of artistry in the service of evil."]
Benjamin, Ruha. "The Social Dimensions of Science, Technology and Medicine." Northwestern Digital Learning Project #12 (June 5, 2019)
Berg, Kirsten and Moiz Syed. "Under Trump, LGBTQ Progress Is Being Reversed in Plain Sight." Pro Publica (November 22, 2019) ["Donald Trump promised he would fight for LGBTQ people. Instead, his administration has systematically undone recent gains in their rights and protections. Here are 31 examples."]
Berger, Dan, et al. "Prison Abolition Syllabus." Black Perspectives (November 20, 2016)
Bessner, Daniel. "Making Sense of Soros." The Dig (August 11, 2018) ["That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1, however, not only sketches out the right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist—coming to the conclusion that Soros' hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here's Soros's response in The Guardian. "]
Bey, George. "Redefining success: Archaeology as a way to embrace the world." Ted Talks (February 3, 2015) ["George Bey is an anthropology professor and associate dean of international education at Millsaps College. Bey led efforts to establish 4,500 acres of wilderness in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula as an archeological and biocultural reserve to study the archeological remains of the ancient Maya civilization of Kaxil Kiuic. In 2012, discoveries made by Bey and his team were featured in a 2012 National Geographic documentary, “Quest for the Lost Maya.”"]
Biagetti, Samuel. "Making the Modern State: Spain, Portugal, and the Inquisition." Historiansplaining (February 5, 2018) ["European monarchs’ early quest to consolidate royal power and establish their subjects’ direct loyalty to the crown. In particular, we trace the early triumphs and slow declines of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, driven by the pioneering ambitions of Isabella of Castile, Philip II of Spain, John II of Portugal, and the formidable Marques de Pombal. We also examine the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, which served as a crucial cornerstone of the modern bureaucratic state, with its systems of mass surveillance, ideological propaganda, and obsession with extracting confessions from the accused. Suggested further reading: Henry Kamen, "Golden Age Spain" and "The Spanish Inquisition.""]
---. "Myth of the Month 6: Political Left and Right." Historiansplaining (January 2020) ["As new political parties -- left-populists, neo-fascists, and secessionists -- rapidly rise and fall across Europe and other Western countries, and spontaneous protests blur partisan boundaries in the streets of Paris, the old left-to-right scale of political ideology is just not working. What value does this one-dimensional model of politics have, and where did it come from? In fact, it has to do with where you sit at a formal dinner party."]
---. "Myth of the Month 9: The US Constitution and the Origins of the Senate and Electoral College." Historiansplaining (September 2019) ["Why does our government work the way it does? Is it supposed to represents citizens, or states? We consider the origins of the U. S. Constitution, particularly the creation of the controversial bodies (Senate and Electoral College) that represent the public in skewed and disproportionate ways. We dispel the false notion that these bodies were created in order to protect small states, tracing instead the Framers' quest to tamp down the "excess of democracy" of the 1780s, wrest control over monetary policy away from the poor majority, and strike a careful balance between slave and non-slave states."]
---. "The Road to Civil War: Class Conflict and Constitutional Crisis in Stuart England, 1603-1650." Historiansplaining (September 28, 2019) ["Struggles between chief executives and legislatures are dominating the news on both sides of the Atlantic, as Americans debate impeachment and the UK is engulfed by a Brexistential crisis. Most of the terms and precedents for these struggles go back to the 1600s and King Charles I's efforts to govern without the support of Parliament, which led to political backlash, civil war, and social upheaval from the halls of Westminster to the smallest peasant farmsteads."]
Biaggi, Alexandra and Yuh-Line Niou. "Child Victims Act: Hundreds File Suits as New York Extends Statute of Limitations on Sex Abuse Cases." Democracy Now (August 15, 2019) ["Hundreds of child sex abuse victims filed lawsuits in New York on Wednesday under the Child Victims Act, a new state law that allows survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the state to bring their perpetrators to court who previously were barred due to statutes of limitations. Lawsuits were filed against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, a number of schools and hospitals and the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. The Child Victims Act was signed into law in February. It allows prosecutors to bring criminal charges against alleged abusers until the accuser turns 28. Accusers can file a civil lawsuit until they reach the age of 55. In addition, the “lookback window” will allow accusers of any age to bring charges against their alleged perpetrators — no matter how long ago the abuse occurred — for a period of one year starting Wednesday. We speak with two New York legislators that spearheaded the new law, state Senator Alessandra Biaggi and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou. They are both survivors of childhood sexual abuse." Part two: "New York Lawmakers Behind Child Victims Act Say It Will 'Transform Trauma into Real Action.'"]
Binney, William. "NSA Whistleblower – Government Collects Everything You Do." The Real News (April 17, 2019) ["Abby Martin interviews former Technical Director of the National Security Agency, Bill Binney, who blew the whistle on warrantless spying years before Edward Snowden released the evidence. They discuss the US empire's mass surveillance program and dangers of the Intelligence Industrial Complex."]
Blanc, Eric, et al. "Teachers at the forefront of a resurgent progressive labor movement." Best of the Left #1250 (February 15, 2019) ["Today we take a look at recent teachers union strike in the Los Angeles school district and see it as another event in an emerging pattern of progressive uprisings that have been stirring for the last decade, fighting back against the status quo, the neoliberal instinct to privatize everything for the ultimate benefit of billionaires."]
Blanco, César and Fernando Garcia. "El Paso Shooting Probed as Domestic Terrorism After Anti-Immigrant Gunman Kills 22 People." Democracy Now (August 5, 2019) ["Over the span of 13 hours, the United States was shaken by two mass shootings. Saturday morning, a heavily armed gunman opened fire inside a crowded Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people, including a number of Mexican nationals. Federal authorities are treating the El Paso attack as an act of domestic terrorism. The suspected gunman has been identified as a 21-year-old white man named Patrick Crusius, who lived 600 miles away in a suburb of Dallas. Shortly before the attack in El Paso, the gunman posted an anti-immigrant manifesto on the far-right message board 8chan. Some of the language in the manifesto echoed remarks by President Trump, including his use of the word “invasion” to describe immigrants crossing the southern border. We speak with César Blanco, Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, and Fernando Garcia, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso."]
Blotnick, Robin and Rachel Lears. "Knock Down the House." Film at Lincoln Center Podcast (May 8, 2019) ["Knock Down the House, Rachel Lears’s remarkable documentary following four female politicians as they challenged local Democratic incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections. Featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearengin and Amy Vilela, Knock Down the House is an emotional portrait of the changing profile of America’s political hopefuls."]
---. "Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election: Part 2." Trending Globally: Politics and Policy (October 24, 2018)
---. "Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election: Part 3." Trending Globally: Politics and Policy (October 29, 2018)
Bombach, Alexandria. "On Her Shoulders: Stunning Film Follows Nobel Peace Winner Nadia Murad’s Fight to End Sexual Violence." Democracy Now (January 3, 2019) ["We look at the remarkable story of Nadia Murad, the Yazidi human rights activist from Iraq who was recently awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Murad was kidnapped by the Islamic State in 2014 and repeatedly raped as she was held in captivity. After managing to escape, Murad fled Iraq and has dedicated her life to drawing international attention to the plight of the Yazidi people. The documentary “On Her Shoulders” follows Murad as she shares her story with the world. The documentary has been shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and recently received the Columbia Journalism duPont Award. We speak with the film’s award-winning director Alexandria Bombach."]
Bond, Sarah E. "The Origins of White Supremacists’ Fear of Replacement." Hyperallergic (August 22, 2019) ["Stoddard’s fear of non-white population growth was coupled with his recommendation of immigration restriction in the US. That recommendation was born out in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. It seems clear to me that today’s white supremacists not only advance the same fears of non-white population growth but have also found similar success in influencing nativist policy, as evidenced by Trump’s proposed Muslim ban and the caging of children at our southern border. Third, Stoddard proposed a separation of races at a national level i.e. white nations for white people. That argument is still advanced, even by Penn law professors!"]
Bonifaz, John and Chris Hedges. "To Impeach or Not to Impeach: What Should Congress Do Next?" Democracy Now (October 1, 2019) ["House Democrats subpoenaed President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani Monday, seeking documents related to his work in Ukraine. Last week, Guliani admitted on television that he had urged the Ukrainian government to investigate Trump’s political rival and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. This comes as House Democrats continue to build their case for impeaching the president, following a whistleblower complaint focused on a phone call in which Trump asked the Ukranian president to do him a “favor” investigating the actions of Democrats, including Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Meanwhile, Trump is continuing to threaten lawmakers who are pushing impeachment, and publicly admitted he is trying to find out the identity of the anonymous whistleblower, in possible violation of whistleblower protection laws. We host a debate on impeachment with John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech for People, one of the organizations demanding Trump’s impeachment, and Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, award-winning author and activist."]
Bray, Mark. "For Antifa, Not All Speech Should Be Free." On the Media (February 10, 2017) ["Those who subscribe to liberal values are supposed to “defend to the death” the rights of their enemies to speak their minds. But anti-fascist activists, or “antifa,” believe history demonstrates the perils of giving a platform to hate -- and they'll go to great lengths to suppress such views. Mark Bray, a visiting historian at Dartmouth College and author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, talks with Brooke about the history, ideology, and recent resurgence of the anti-fascist movement."]
Bregman, Rutger. "Rutger Bregman's Utopias, and Mine." The Ezra Klein Show (July 22, 2019) ["Universal basic income. A 15-hour work week. Open borders. These ideas may strike you as crazy, fantastical, maybe even utopian... but that’s exactly the point. My guest today is Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, whose book Utopia for Realists is not only about utopian visions but about the importance of utopian thinking. Imagining utopia, he writes, “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.” He’s right. And so this isn’t just a conversation about his utopia, or mine. It’s a conversation about how to think like a utopian, and why doing so matter most when the days feel particularly dystopic."]
Bregman, Rutger and Rebecca Solnit. "When Things Fall Apart." Throughline (January 26, 2023) ["Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Warner Herzog calls, "a thin layer of ice on top of an ocean of chaos and darkness." In the United States, polls indicate that many people believe that law and order is the only thing protecting us from the savagery of our neighbors, that the fundamental nature of humanity is competition and struggle. This idea is often called "veneer theory." But is this idea rooted in historical reality? Is this actually what happens when societies face disasters? Are we always on the cusp of brutality?" Rutger Bregman is the author of Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) and Rebecca Solnit is the author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2010)]
Bremmer, Ian. "On the Failure of Globalism." Democracy Works (March 14, 2019) ["This episode is a discussion with Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. Ian is a political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory and consulting firm. In this episode, Ian talks with Future Hindsight host Mila Atmos about populism, authoritarianism, and some of the other trends we’ve heard about over the past few weeks. Think of it as a 30,000-foot view of what we’ve covered in individual countries like Hungary and Brazil."]
Britt, Lawrence. "Fascism Anyone?" Free Inquiry 23.2 (Spring 2003) [In which he outlines the 14 characteristics of fascism]Bremmer, Ian. "On the Failure of Globalism." Democracy Works (March 14, 2019) ["This episode is a discussion with Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. Ian is a political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory and consulting firm. In this episode, Ian talks with Future Hindsight host Mila Atmos about populism, authoritarianism, and some of the other trends we’ve heard about over the past few weeks. Think of it as a 30,000-foot view of what we’ve covered in individual countries like Hungary and Brazil."]
Broockman, David, et al. "Definitely, Maybe." Nancy #54 (October 29, 2018) ["To win in Massachusetts, trans activists have adopted a counterintuitive strategy: leaning into the worst things their opponents say about them."]
Brophy, Megan. "In Iowa, Pioneering Undergrad Workers Union Keeps Growing." Labor Notes (November 6, 2018)
Brown, Alleen. "Pipeline Opponents Strike Back Against Anti-Protest Laws." The Intercept (May 23, 2019)
Brown, Wendy. "A Neoliberal Pandemic." Economics & Beyond (June 18, 2020) ["UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown talks to Rob Johnson about how the pandemic and protests against police brutality lay bare a crisis of neoliberalism."]
Buford, Talia, et al. "Home sweet home (Housing and Homelessness)." Best of the Left #1040 (September 2, 2016) ["Today we take a look at a couple of solutions to homelessness as well as some of the forces at play that effect how and where people live across the country."]
"Busted: America's Poverty Myths." On the Media (5 part series: September 28 - October 28, 2016) ["On the Media’s series on poverty is grounded in the Talmudic notion that 'We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.' Brooke Gladstone traveled to Ohio to learn from people living the varied reality of poverty today, and to unpack the myths that shape our private presumptions as well as our policy decisions. In each episode, we feature the voices and complex stories of individuals, as well essential context from scholars, to lay open the tales we tell ourselves."]
Butler, Judith. "Capitalism Has Its Limits." Verso (March 20, 2020) ["One reason I voted for Sanders in the California primary along with a majority of registered Democrats is that he, along with Warren, opened up a way to re-imagine our world as if it were ordered by a collective desire for radical equality, a world in which we came together to insist that the materials that are required for life, including medical care, would be equally available no matter who we are or whether we have financial means. That policy would have established solidarity with other countries that are committed to universal health care, and so would have established a transnational health care policy committed to realizing the ideals of equality. The new polls emerge that narrow the national choice to Trump and Biden precisely as the pandemic shuts down everyday life, intensifying the precarity of the homeless, the uninsured, and the poor. The idea that we might become a people who wishes to see a world in which health policy is equally committed to all lives, to dismantling the market’s hold on health care that distinguishes among the worthy and those who can be easily abandoned to illness and death, was briefly alive. We came to understand ourselves differently as Sanders and Warren held out this other possibility. We understood that we might start to think and value outside the terms that capitalism sets for us. Even though Warren is no longer a candidate, and Sanders is unlikely to recover his momentum, we must still ask, especially now, why are we as a people still opposed to treating all lives as if they were of equal value? Why do some still thrill at the idea that Trump would seek to secure a vaccine that would safeguard American lives (as he defines them) before all others? The proposition of universal and public health reinvigorated a socialist imaginary in the US, one that must now wait to become realized as social policy and public commitment in this country. Unfortunately, in the time of the pandemic, none of us can wait. The ideal must now be kept alive in the social movements that are riveted less on the presidential campaign than the long term struggle that lies ahead of us. These courageous and compassionate visions mocked and rejected by capitalist “realists” had enough air time, compelled enough attention, to let increasing numbers – some for the first time – desire a changed world. Hopefully we can keep that desire alive, especially now when Trump proposes on Easter to lift constraints on public life and businesses and set the virus free. He wagers that the potential financial gains for the few will compensate for the increase in the number of deaths that are clearly predicted, which he accepts, and refuses to stop – in the name of national health. So now those with a social vision of universal health care have to struggle against both a moral and viral illness working in lethal tandem with one another."]
Call, Tristan and Nicole Ramos. "As Caravan of Migrants Begins Entry at U.S.-Mexico Border, Trump Admin Attacks Legal Asylum Process." Democracy Now (May 3, 2018) ["A standoff continues on the U.S.-Mexico border, where scores of asylum seekers are attempting to cross into the United States after taking part in a month-long caravan that began more than 2,000 miles away in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Many of the caravan participants are migrants fleeing violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Around 100 have been accepted for processing, but scores remain camped out by the border near San Diego, California, as officials claim the border entry point has limited capacity. President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have attacked the migrants in statements and tweets. “It’s very clear that President Trump and Attorney General Sessions do not understand this section of federal law,” says attorney Nicole Ramos, director of the Border Rights Project of Al Otro Lado, who represents members of the caravan. “The caravan members that are camped out at the border are trying to access a legal process which has existed for decades.” We speak with Ramos, who is in Tijuana, Mexico, and with Tristan Call, a volunteer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, just back from spending time with the caravan."]
Callanan, John, Alison Hills and David Oderberg. "Kant's Categorical Imperative." In Our Time (September 21, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn."]
Cantú, Francisco. "When the Frontier Becomes the Wall." The New Yorker (March 11, 2019) ["What the border fight means for one of the nation’s most potent, and most violent, myths."]
Caro, Robert. "From LBJ to Robert Moses: Robert Caro on Writing About Political Power & Its Impact on the Powerless." Democracy Now (April 29, 2019) ["Robert Caro is always working. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner published his first book, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” 45 years ago and has spent the decades since meticulously chronicling the life and times of Lyndon B. Johnson. The result is four sweeping volumes that total more than 3,000 pages and offer an unprecedented window into the inner world of one of the country’s most influential presidents. And he’s not done yet—Caro is currently writing the fifth and final installment of the collection. Robert Caro has been described as “the greatest political biographer of our times,” but to reduce his work as simply biographies of great men misses the point. Caro uses both Moses and Johnson to show how political power works. Robert Caro has just released a new book—by far the smallest volume in his collection—titled “Working.” It offers an inside look into the author’s meticulous research and writing process. We speak with Robert Caro in our New York studio." Part Two: "Robert Caro Shares Reporting Tips from His Legendary Career Exposing Dealings of LBJ & Robert Moses." ]
Challenger, "Animals in the Room: Why We Can and Should Listen to Other Species." Emergence Magazine Podcast (2022) ["How might our human systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the nonhuman creatures they involve and impact? In this week’s narrated essay, writer and ethicist Melanie Challenger considers what it would take to expand the democratic imagination to include and represent animal voices in the decisions that affect them. Advocating for a quieting of our own narratives so that we might recognize political signals from the behaviors of the vast community around us, she envisions the revolutionary mechanisms which could make present the expressions of animals within our systems of power."]
"Chelsea Manning Talks with Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)." Talkhouse (April 26, 2018) ["The program includes a talk by Manning on resisting “the data-driven society and the police state”; a conversation between her and Tolokonnikova on their experiences in resistance, incarceration and prison reform; and a talk by Tolokonnikova on bringing “punk feminism” to Russia and the problems with Putin. The two also share their views on how neighborhood communities have better answers than think tanks, the ways empathy can help make real change, and — powerfully — how political action can be more than voting."]
Chenoweth, Erica. "How to Topple Dictators and Transform Society." The Ezra Klein Show (January 2, 2020) ["The 2010s witnessed a sharp uptick in nonviolent resistance movements all across the globe. Over the course of the last decade we’ve seen record numbers of popular protests, grassroots campaigns, and civic demonstrations advancing causes that range from toppling dictatorial regimes to ending factory farming to advancing a Green New Deal. So, I thought it would be fitting to kick off 2020 by bringing on Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard specializing in nonviolent resistance. At the beginning of this decade Chenoweth co-authored Why Civil Resistance Works, a landmark study showing that nonviolent movements are twice as effective as violent ones. Since then, she has written dozens of papers on what factors make successful movements successful, why global protests are becoming more and more common, how social media has affected resistance movements and much more. But Chenoweth doesn’t only study nonviolent movements from an academic perspective; she also advises nonviolent movement leaders around the world (including former EK Show guests Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement and Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere) to help them be as effective and strategic as possible in carrying out their goals. This on-the-ground experience combined with a big-picture, academic view of nonviolent resistance makes her perspective essential for understanding one of the most important phenomena of the last decade -- and, in all likelihood, the next one."]
Cho, Joshua. "Corporate Looting as ‘Rescue Plan,’ Robber Barons as ‘Saviors.'" FAIR (May 1, 2020)
Chomsky, Aviva, et al. "#DontLookAway from US Concentration Camps for Asylum Seekers." Best of the Left #1288 (July 10, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history, legality, conditions and consequences of US concentrations camps erected to house asylum seekers fleeing from unspeakable violence only to land in the hands of Trump's intentionally torturous immigration detention system."]
Chomsky, Noam. "Condemns Israel’s Shift to Far Right & New 'Jewish Nation-State' Law." Democracy Now (July 30, 2018) ["Israel has passed a widely-condemned law that defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and gives Jews the sole right to self-determination. It also declares Hebrew the country’s only official language and encourages the building of Jewish-only settlements on occupied territory as a “national value.” The law has drawn international condemnation and accusations that Israel has legalized apartheid. For more we speak with world-renowned political dissident, author, and linguist Noam Chomsky. He is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years."]
---. "Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change & the Undermining of Democracy Threaten Future of Planet." Democracy Now (April 12, 2019) ["As President Trump pulls out of key nuclear agreements with Russia and moves to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Noam Chomsky looks at how the threat of nuclear war remains one of the most pressing issues facing mankind. In a speech at the Old South Church in Boston, Chomsky also discusses the threat of climate change and the undermining of democracy across the globe."]
---. "Trump Radically Interfered with Israel’s Election to Help Re-elect Netanyahu." Democracy Now (April 12, 2019) ["Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to a record fifth term in office after narrowing defeating former military chief Benny Gantz. In a discussion with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky talks about how President Trump directly interfered with the Israel election by repeatedly helping Netanyahu, from moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem to recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in defiance of international law."]
Chomsky, Noam, et al. "Israeli right-wing politics has lead to some strange, fascist bedfellows." Best of the Left #1254 (March 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at how the illiberalism of the Israeli government has alienated the vast majority of democratic nations and individuals who support human rights, leaving the country with some of the most far-right, fascist, white-supremacist, anti-Semitic people in the world as their only remaining allies."]
Chossudovsky, Michael. "The Globalization of War." Needs no Introduction (June 8, 2018) ["The lecture is based on Professor Chossudovsky's book, The Globalization of War: America's Long War on Humanity. In this speech, he postulates that the U.S. and its Western allies have embarked on a hegemonic war of conquest, using the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a pre-text. Further exacerbating this agenda is the complicity of media and co-opted movements which refuse to challenge the pre-text of a war on terrorism."]
Christakis, Nicholas. "How Our Genes Build Good Societies." Ideas (June 13, 2019) ["We humans carry within us genes that help write a blueprint for a better world according to Nicholas Christakis. He argues that our genes help create societies, that are for the most part, intrinsically similar and good."]
Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019)
Citton, Yves. "Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019)." New Books in Communications (September 28, 2020) ["We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social and political destinies are shaped by the will of the people without realizing that ‘the people’ are always produced, both as individuals and as aggregates, by the media: we are all embedded in mediated publics, ‘intra-structured’ by the apparatuses of communication that govern our interactions. In his new book Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019), Yves Citton maps out the new regime of experience, media and power that he designates by the term “mediarchy.” To understand mediarchy, we need to look both at the effects that the media have on us and also at the new forms of being and experience that they induce in us. We can never entirely escape from the effects of the mediarchies that operate through us but by becoming more aware of their conditioning, we can develop the new forms of political analysis and practice which are essential if we are to rise to the unprecedented challenges of our time. This comprehensive and far-reaching book will be essential reading for students and scholars in media and communications, politics and sociology, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the multiple and complex ways that the media – from newspapers and TV to social media and the internet – shape our social, political and personal lives today."]
Clarke, Cheryl, et al. "The Fire This Time." Public Seminar (April 3, 2019) ["Violence against African American people creates pain and outrage, but policy makers offer us few solutions. In this episode, we ask: how can the fight for racial justice be accelerated, even as racism remains as persistent today as it was before the modern Civil Rights movement? In the spirit of writer James Baldwin’s vehement call for black liberation, this Exiles on 12th Street episode, the second in our series, gives voice to local activists and artists fighting for change. Come think with us about civil rights with our guests: civil rights lawyer Douglas White, community organizer Cidra Sebastien, the Reverend Marcus McCullough, and poet Cheryl Clarke. The episode is presented by your host, historian Claire Potter, executive editor of Public Seminar."]
Clarke, Kristen. "Dark Money & Barrett Nomination: The Link Between Big Polluters & the War on ACA, Roe & LGBT Rights." Democracy Now (October 16, 2020) ["During confirmation hearings this week for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island opted not to ask the judge any questions. Instead, he gave a 30-minute presentation on how right-wing groups, including the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, use dark money to shape the nation’s judiciary. We air excerpts from his presentation and get reaction from Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law."]
Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair. "The Preacher and Vietnam: When Billy Graham Urged Nixon to Kill One Million People." Counterpunch (September 27, 2017)Cockburn, Patrick. "'A Shakespearean Act of Betrayal': Trump Agrees to Let Turkey Invade Kurdish-Controlled Syrian Area." Democracy Now (October 7, 2019) ["U.S. troops have begun withdrawing from northeast Syria as Turkey prepares to invade Kurdish-controlled areas of the country. For years, the Kurds have been close allies to the United States in the fight against ISIS. On Sunday, however, the White House released a statement that surprised many in the region, announcing that Turkey would be “moving forward with its long-planned operation in Northern Syria,” following a phone call between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in that operation, and the United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial 'Caliphate,' will no longer be in the immediate area,” the statement said. The announcement marks a major shift in U.S. policy, since as recently as January President Trump threatened to “devastate Turkey economically” if it attacked Kurdish forces in Syria. Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq, the death toll continues to rise as police and soldiers fire on people defying a government-imposed curfew in mass anti-government protests. For more on events in the region, we speak with Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper."]
Cohen, Julie and Betsy West. "RBG: New Documentary Celebrates Life of Groundbreaking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg." Democracy Now (January 22, 2018) ["One of the most talked-about documentaries at this year’s Sundance Film Festival looks at the groundbreaking life of the nearly 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 2018 marks her 25th year on the court, and she has no plans to retire. Ginsburg first gained fame in the 1970s when she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. In recent years, Ginsburg’s public profile has soared as the court has swerved to the right. Ginsburg often now finds herself on the dissenting side of opinions. We feature excerpts from the new film and speak with its directors, Julie Cohen and Betsy West."]
Cohen, Michael A. and Micah Zenko. "Threat-Mongering in America." Yale University Press Blog #72 (March 28, 2019) ["The greatest threats to America are often overblown, and the world is a much safer place than we’re led to believe. How does this happen and what can we do about it?"]
Cole, David. "Free Speech #63: The ACLU's Defense of Liberty." Think About It (May 21, 2019) ["The ACLU defends your liberties - whether you're on the right, the left, and entirely off the political spectrum. The 100-year old organization has argued and won landmark decisions before the Supreme Court to defend individual rights. Is it right to put principle above all other consideration and offer legal aid to Neo-Nazis? Or are there factors beyond the ideals of the law that inform such actions?"]
---. "Trump Fires AG Sessions, Installs New Loyalist Whitaker to Oversee Mueller Probe." Democracy Now (November 8, 2018) ["President Donald Trump has fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, replacing him with a Trump loyalist who has called special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation a “witch hunt.” Matthew Whitaker, formerly Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, will now take charge of the Russia inquiry, prompting questions about the future of the Russia investigation and whether Trump will target Robert Mueller next. Some experts are raising questions about the legality of putting Whitaker in charge rather than Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had been overseeing the Russia probe. The ACLU wrote in a statement, “Jeff Sessions was the worst attorney general in modern American history. Period. But the dismissal of the nation’s top law enforcement official shouldn’t be based on political motives.” We speak with David Cole, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University Law Center. His most recent book is “Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law.”"]
Cole, David and Elizabeth Holtzman. "Ex-Congresswoman Who Voted to Impeach Nixon: Trump Firing Sessions Brings Back Troubling Memories." Democracy Now (November 8. 2018) ["Democrats have seized control of the House of Representatives, flipping more than two dozen seats in a historic midterm election that gives Democrats subpoena power for the first time since President Donald Trump was elected two years ago. A day after the election, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump’s firing of Sessions has led to many comparisons between Trump and former President Richard Nixon. On Wednesday, CNN’s Jake Tapper called Sessions’s ouster another chapter in “a slow-motion, multi-monthed Saturday Night Massacre.” He was referencing the infamous Saturday Night Massacre in 1973, when then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned after President Richard Nixon ordered Richardson to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. We speak with Elizabeth Holtzman, former U.S. congressmember from New York who served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon. Her new book, “The Case for Impeaching Trump,” is out on Monday. And we speak with David Cole, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University Law Center."]
Collins, John, Danny Kushlick and Michael Shiner. "Why haven't we won the War on Drugs?" LSE IQ #5 (2018) ["For nearly 50 years, governments around the world, led by the US, have been fighting a war on drugs. The aim? To reduce the production, supply and use of certain drugs and ultimately create a 'drug-free society'. But, having cost the US more than $1 trillion to date and taken hundreds of thousands of lives, it’s a war with high collateral damage. In this episode Jess Winterstein asks why, after nearly half a century of global cooperation, haven’t we won the war on drugs? To find out what the problems with the policy are, and why the belief that prohibition is still the best way to manage drugs, still persists, she speaks to: John Collins, Executive Director of the LSE IDEAS International Drug Policy Project and coordinator of the Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy; Michael Shiner, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy and head of teaching at the International Drug Policy Project at LSE; and Danny Kushlick, founder and head of external affairs of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation."]
Connelly, Matthew. "Erasing History: The National Archives Is Destroying Records About Victims of Trump’s ICE Policies." Democracy Now (February 6, 2020) ["Last month, the National Archives and Records Administration apologized for doctoring a photo of the 2017 Women’s March to remove criticisms of President Trump. The shocking revelation that the agency had altered the image was first reported in The Washington Post. In an exhibit called “Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote,” the National Archives had displayed a large image of the first Women’s March. But signs referencing Trump had been blurred to remove his name — including a poster reading “God Hates Trump” and another reading “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women.” Other signs in the photo referencing female anatomy were also blurred. The National Archives initially stood by its decision to edit the photo, telling The Washington Post that the changes were made “so as not to engage in current political controversy.” For more, we turn to a historian who says this was only the latest example of “a great and growing threat to our nation’s capacity to protect and learn from history.” The National Archives reportedly is allowing millions of documents, including many related to immigrants’ rights, to be expunged. We speak with Matthew Connelly, professor of history at Columbia University and principal investigator at History Lab. His recent piece for The New York Times is headlined “Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE.”"]
Cook, John, Ullrich Ecker and Stephan Lewandosky. "Misinformation and How to Correct It." Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. ed. Robert Scott and Stephan Kosslyn. John Wiley and Sons, 2015: 1-17.
Coppins, McKay. "The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President." The Atlantic (March 2020) ["How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election"]
---. "Pandemic Propaganda." On the Media (March 13, 2020) ["After weeks of downplaying the COVID-19 outbreak and overstating his administration's response, President Trump shifted to a more serious tone in Wednesday's national address. Over the past week, the president claimed that health officials were prepared to deploy millions of tests, and that his White House wasted no time in slowing the spread of the virus. If only. South Korea, which discovered its first COVID-19 patient around the same time as the US, is testing 10,000 people a day, roughly the same number of people tested in the US total since mid-January. Meanwhile, there are widespread reports of tests delayed and denied because of shortages of kits and personnel. And, accounts by unnamed sources close to the President say he resisted offers by domestic labs to produce virus tests — because he didn’t like the “optics” of "national emergency" that steeply rising numbers would imply. These discrepancies and contradictions between what the president, his media allies, critical journalists, and other high-ranking officials say is a tiresome pattern that has defined Trump's time in office. According to McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, our current state of information overload is called "censorship through noise": a propaganda strategy that has largely protected the president from accountability, but one that leaves us deeply vulnerable during our current public health crisis. Coppins and Brooke discuss the partisan distrust in COVID-19 news and the empty rhetoric from the White House."]
Cornum, Lou and Nick Estes. "Red Planet." The New Inquiry (May 8, 2019) ["An interview with Nick Estes about his new book, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance."]
"Costs of War." Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University (2019 Report)
Crawford, Kate. The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2021. ["The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom. What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world."]
Crawshaw, Steve. "Does Protest Really Work?" London School of Economics and Political Science (October 25, 2017) ["How do ordinary citizens become dissidents? As journalist and human rights advocate, Steve Crawshaw has witnessed extraordinary change, everywhere from Prague to Yangon. He explores what Vaclav Havel called the “power of the powerless”, and the role of creative mischief in achieving surprising change."]
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. "How Society Embraces Male Denials, from Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh." Democracy Now (October 1, 2018) ["When President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he called Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against him and the subsequent fallout a “circus” orchestrated by the Democrats. His language echoed Clarence Thomas, who nearly 30 years ago said of the Anita Hill trials, “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. … It is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.” We speak with Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University who assisted Anita Hill’s legal team. She is the founder of the African American Policy Forum. Her piece for The New York Times last week was headlined “We Still Haven’t Learned from Anita Hill’s Testimony.”"]
Crockford, Kade. "Real Sanctuary Means Ending Mass Policing." The Dig (March 25, 2018) ["Perhaps nothing has more defined the monstrosity of Donald Trump than his racist demonization and targeting of immigrants from Mexico, Muslim-majority countries, and those nations he deems "shitholes." But what's seldom reported is that one of the key mechanisms the administration has used to target immigrants was rolled out under Barack Obama. It's called Secure Communities, and it's the culmination of decades of policy-making and politicking that have intertwined the US systems of mass incarceration and immigrant enforcement — facilitating the growth of both. To fight both mass deportation and mass incarceration, localities and states must move beyond what's currently defined as sanctuary..."]
Cromwell, David and David Edwards. "Assange Arrest - Part 1: 'So Now He's Our Property.'" Media Lens (April 16, 2019)
---. "Assange Arrest – Part 2: ‘A Definite Creep, A Probable Rapist.'" Media Lens (April 18, 2019)
Çubukçu, Ayça, Armine Ishkanian and Chris Rossdale. "Can Activism Really Change the World." LSE IQ (November 14, 2018) ["In 1832, Mary Smith presented the first women’s suffrage petition to Parliament. 86 years later, after a long and often violent campaign, the Representation of the People Act granted some women the vote. But although today the suffragettes are generally seen to have won their fight, the journey was far from smooth, and while all women in the UK may now have the vote, gender equality, political and otherwise, is still very far from achieved. As the suffragette story reveals, identifying an issue is the easy part. The journey to bring about the change you want, may be far harder. So can activism really change the world? This episode features Dr Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor in Human Rights in LSE’s Department of Sociology, Dr Armine Ishkanian is Associate Professor in LSE’s Department of Social Policy and Dr Chris Rossdale is both a Fellow in the Department of International Relations at LSE."]
Currie, Morgan. "Buried, Altered, Silenced: 4 Ways Government Climate Information Has Changed Since Trump Took Office." Desmog (March 27, 2018)
Danticat, Edwidge. "'Completely Racist': Edwidge Danticat on Trump’s 'Shithole Countries' Remark Targeting Africa, Haiti." Democracy Now (January 12, 2018) ["International condemnation of Donald Trump is growing after reports the president used an expletive during a meeting about immigrants from Africa, Haiti and El Salvador. While meeting with lawmakers, Trump reportedly said, “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re shithole countries … We should have more people from Norway.” Trump also reportedly said, “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.” Earlier this morning, Trump wrote on Twitter, “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made–a big setback for DACA!” Trump’s remarks come weeks after The New York Times reported Trump had also disparaged Haitians and Nigerians during a closed-door meeting in June. Trump said Nigerians would never “go back to their huts” if they came to visit the U.S. As for Haitians, Trump said they “all have AIDS.” Trump’s latest remarks come just after his administration announced it is ending temporary protected status for up to 250,000 Salvadorans who have been living in the U.S. since at least 2001. Last year, the Trump administration announced it is also ending temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Haitian, Nicaraguan and Sudanese immigrants living in the United States. Trump’s remarks from Thursday have been condemned across the globe. We speak to Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat as Haitians mark the eighth anniversary of the devastating 2010 earthquake."]
Crawshaw, Steve. "Does Protest Really Work?" London School of Economics and Political Science (October 25, 2017) ["How do ordinary citizens become dissidents? As journalist and human rights advocate, Steve Crawshaw has witnessed extraordinary change, everywhere from Prague to Yangon. He explores what Vaclav Havel called the “power of the powerless”, and the role of creative mischief in achieving surprising change."]
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. "How Society Embraces Male Denials, from Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh." Democracy Now (October 1, 2018) ["When President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he called Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against him and the subsequent fallout a “circus” orchestrated by the Democrats. His language echoed Clarence Thomas, who nearly 30 years ago said of the Anita Hill trials, “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. … It is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.” We speak with Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University who assisted Anita Hill’s legal team. She is the founder of the African American Policy Forum. Her piece for The New York Times last week was headlined “We Still Haven’t Learned from Anita Hill’s Testimony.”"]
Crisis In Democracy: Renewing Trust in America. Aspen Institute, 2019. ["The Report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy."]
Critchley, Spencer. "Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next." New Books in Politics and Polemics (October 19, 2020) ["America is in a Cold Civil War, between people who see each other as threats to the country — but themselves as patriots. How can that be? They are patriots of two nations. In Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next (McDavid Media), national media commentator and presidential campaigns veteran Spencer Critchley shows why our current hyper-partisan division has been inevitable since the founding of the United States, as has the election of Donald Trump or someone like him. That's because America is actually two nations occupying the same territory. The two nations have different worldviews: cultures, values, and ways of understanding reality itself. One nation — the dominant one — is descended from the Enlightenment, and the establishment of reason as the ultimate source of authority. But the other is nation is descended from the Counter-Enlightenment, and it has never stopped believing in the primacy of faith, tradition, culture, ties to the land, and ethnic identity. Because the Enlightenment worldview is so dominant, the Counter-Enlightenment largely has been forgotten by history. But as Critchley reveals, in many ways it's more active now than ever — and the failure of many of us to understand it is a crucial source of our division. Uniting the two nations will require that they finally do see and understand their different realities. This book shows how we might still be able to make that happen — and why we must, if democracy is to survive. Spencer Critchley is a writer, producer, and communications consultant with experience in journalism, film, digital media, public relations, advertising, and music. He is the Managing Partner of communications consulting agency Boots Road Group."]
Cromwell, David and David Edwards. "Assange Arrest - Part 1: 'So Now He's Our Property.'" Media Lens (April 16, 2019)
---. "Assange Arrest – Part 2: ‘A Definite Creep, A Probable Rapist.'" Media Lens (April 18, 2019)
Daragahi, Haideh, Minoo Jalali and Shahin Navai. "The Stolen Revolution: Iranian Women of 1979." Ideas (March 8, 2019) ["'We didn't have a revolution to go backwards.' That was the rallying cry which brought tens of thousands of Iranian women together onto the streets of Tehran on March 8, 1979. After finally ousting the Shah, and just mere weeks after Ayatollah Khomeini took power, Iranian women marched to show their fury at the revolution, which now seemed to be turning against them. On the 40th anniversary of their protests, CBC Radio producer Donya Ziaee spoke to three women who were on the streets of Tehran, fighting to to turn the tide of history."]
Dash, Anil, et al. "Tech's Moral Void." Ideas (March 14, 2019) ["Lawyers and doctors have a code of ethics. Teachers have them. Even journalists have them. So why not the tech sector, the people who create and design our very modes of communication? Coders and designers make products that allow to us communicate with each other, across cities and nations and borders. How we speak and how many we reach determines what we buy and sell, affects our health and economy, and — as we've come to realize — influences our democracy. Contributor Tina Pittaway explores whether the time has come for tech to reckon with its moral void."]
Davies, William (read by Andrew McGregor). "Why We Stopped Trusting Elites." Audio Long Reads (December 14, 2018)
Davis, Joseph E. "When Your Authenticity is an Act, Something's Gone Wrong." Psyche (March 31, 2021) [Discusses multiple books that examine this issue.]
Dayen, David. "The Dialysis Industry is Spending $111 Million To Argue That Regulating It Would Put It Out of Business." The Intercept (October 31, 2018)
Desmond, Matthew. Poverty, By America. Crown Publishing Group, 2023. ["The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. ... The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom."]
Deveraux, Ryan and Nicole Ramos. "Journalists, Lawyers & Activists Targeted in Sweeping U.S. Intelligence Gathering Effort on Border." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019) ["Newly revealed documents show the U.S. government created a secret database of activists and journalists who were documenting the Trump administration’s efforts to thwart a caravan of migrants hoping to win asylum in the U.S. An investigation from San Diego’s NBC 7 revealed the list was shared among Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the FBI. It included the names of 10 journalists—seven of whom are U.S. citizens—along with nearly four dozen others listed as “organizers” or “instigators.” House Democrats are now calling for the full disclosure of the government’s secret list. We speak with one of the activists targeted by the government, Nicole Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project. The project works with asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico. We also speak with Ryan Devereaux, staff reporter at The Intercept. In early February, he wrote an article titled “Journalists, Lawyers, and Activists Working on the Border Face Coordinated Harassment from U.S. and Mexican Authorities.”"]
Diebel, Ann and Tyler Maroney. "Paper Terrorism." Harper's (October 2018) ["Anti-government vigilantes wield a subtle weapon."]
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville Season 36, Episode 15 (PBS, 2018: 55 mins) ["In Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and Pro Publica investigate the white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. This is the first in a series of two Documenting Hate films from FRONTLINE and ProPublica, with the second coming later this fall."]
Dreifus, Claudia. ""I’m not the Resistance, I’m a reporter’: An Interview with April Ryan." NYR Daily (November 12, 2018) ["At the top of Donald Trump’s journalistic enemies list is April Ryan, the fifty-one-year-old American Urban Radio Networks correspondent. Ryan—who has covered the presidency for more than two decades—is also an on-air political analyst for CNN and the author of three books, including the recently released Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House. Around Washington, D.C., Ryan holds the title Dean of the White House Press Corps. “I watched her get up,” the president fumed last week before departing for Paris. “I mean, you talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing… She’s very nasty, and she shouldn’t be… You’ve got to treat the White House and the Office of the Presidency with respect.” What Trump may find disrespectful is that Ryan has a penchant for asking tough questions on topics he’d doesn’t want to hear about: voter suppression, civil rights, Russia. Ryan is also black, female, middle-aged, and resolute. In January 2018, she asked, “Mr. President, are you a racist?” This boldness has made Ryan the target of Trump’s more ardent followers. She receives frequent death threats. On a reporter’s salary, she’s had to hire a full-time bodyguard. There are reports that Cesar Sayoc Jr., who is accused of sending pipe bombs to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Barack Obama, and others, also had Ryan on his mailing list."]
Dube, Oeindrila. "The Art and Science of Apologies and Forgiveness." The Best of the Left #1258 (March 22, 2019) ["Today we take a look at apologies and forgiveness, some of the building blocks for a healthy human society, at a moment in time when society is reorganizing itself in several ways at once, making it all the more necessary that we refresh ourselves on the fundamentals of how best to relate to each other."]
Dueñas, Jessica and Kelly Holstine. "We Can’t Back People Who Hate Our Kids: Kentucky & Minnesota Teachers of Year Boycott Trump Meeting." Democracy Now (May 3, 2019) ["We speak with two award-winning teachers who are trying to teach Trump a lesson. On Monday, Jessica Dueñas, the 2019 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, and Kelly Holstine, the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, boycotted a White House ceremony honoring them and other state winners of the award in protest of the Trump administration’s education policies. But Dueñas and Holstine skipped the event to register their opposition to Trump’s policies on immigration, education and LGBTQ rights, saying many of the White House policies directly impact their immigrant and refugee students."]
Duhigg, Charles. "A Tale of Two Cities." On the Media (May 15, 2020) ["Opacity, we know, is antithetical to public health in a pandemic. But there are more ways to undermine public trust and cooperation than suppressing bad news. Because when news is bad — or simply uncertain — human behavior can go in all the wrong directions. Fortunately, public health authorities have been through this before. From polio in the 1950s through H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola from 2014 to 2016, their experience has coalesced into a compendium of best practices for informing the public: a literal playbook published by the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. It’s dedicated to the dos — and the please, please, please don’ts — of pandemic communications. In a recent New Yorker article, Charles Duhigg, host of the podcast How To! With Charles Duhigg, wrote the tale of two cities, Seattle and New York, struck back to back with coronavirus outbreaks. One city’s leaders followed the CDC guidelines to the letter. The other’s... did not. Duhigg and Bob discuss the cities' experiences, and the lessons they offer as the virus continues to spread."]
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. "In Conversation with Nick Estes." Lannan Lectures (October 11, 2017) ["Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades, working with Indigenous communities on sovereignty and land rights and helping to build the international Indigenous movement. She is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. She is the author of numerous books and articles on indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico, The Great Sioux Nation, and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, which received the 2015 American Book Award. A new book, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment is forthcoming in January."]
Duncombe, Stephen. "Cultural Hegemony." Beautiful Trouble (ND) ["Politics is not only fought out in state houses, workplaces or on battlefields, but also in the language we use, the stories we tell, and the images we conjure — in short, in the ways we make sense of the world."]
Dunham, Robert and Kyle Pope. "The death penalty—myth, propaganda, and truth." The Kicker (November 15, 2019) ["On this week’s Kicker, Robert Dunham, executive director at the Death Penalty Information Center, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, discuss the mistakes national and local reporters make in their coverage of the death penalty. Dunham explains the culture of fear that sustained American execution at its peak, and the importance of reporting policy over politics."]
Edwards, David. "The Filter Bubble - Owen Jones And Con Coughlin." Media Lens (November 14, 2018) ["In a dream, the common sense rules and rationality of everyday life are, of course, suspended – we float to the top of the stairs, a cat smiles, a person is beheaded at the dinner table and the vegetables are served. In similar vein, Iraq was destroyed in a nakedly illegal oil grab, more than one million human beings were killed, and the 'mainstream' continued to treat the criminals responsible as respectable statespeople, and to take seriously their subsequent calls for 'humanitarian intervention' in oil-rich Libya. With Libya reduced to ruins, the same journalists dreamed on, treating the same criminals with the same respect as they sought yet one more regime change in Syria. This nightmare version of 'news' is maintained by a corporate 'filter bubble' that blocks facts, ideas and sources that challenge state-corporate control of politics, economics and culture. It is maintained by a mixture of ruthless high-level control and middle- and lower-level compromise, conformity and self-serving blindness."]
Edwards, David and David Cromwell. "Anatomy of a Propaganda Blitz." Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality. Pluto Press, 2018: 1-19.
Eisen, Jessica. "Animals under the law: What options are there for animals to 'lawyer up'?" Ideas (March 22, 2019) ["Under the eyes of the law, animals that live in our homes or on a farm are 'property.' But there's a growing movement to grant some animals like chimpanzees, elephants and dolphins 'non-human persons' status. Harvard Law School doctoral candidate Jessica Eisen thinks the law could do even better than that."]
Eisenbrandt, Matt. "'Assassination of a Saint': Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero Is Canonized as Murder Remains Unsolved." Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["As Pope Francis names Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint, we continue our interview with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
---. "Vatican Canonizes Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, Who Was Killed by a U.S.-Backed Death Squad." Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["Pope Francis has named Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint. Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Wearing the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was assassinated, Pope Francis praised Romero for disregarding his own life “to be close to the poor and to his people.” We speak with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
Elias, Robert. "National Pastimes: Mindless Militarism in American Sports." No Citations Needed #59 (December 5, 2018) ["F-22 flyovers, 160-foot flags draped across the playing field, full color guards, camouflage uniforms, The Star-Spangled Banner, God Bless America, Support The Troops Nights, special perks for vets. What is the origin of the runaway military worship so ingrained in our sports? How did our professional baseball and football leagues become so infused to our military state and what can fans of these sports do to deconstruct and pushback against the forces of jingoism and military fetishizing?"]
Elinson, Elaine. "'Learn the Use of Explosives!': On Jacqueline Jones’s Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical." Los Angeles Review of Books (March 20, 2018)
Elk, Mike and Jay O'Neal. "From Coal Miners to Teachers: West Virginia Continues to Lead Radical Labor Struggle in the U.S." Democracy Now (March 5, 2018) ["For decades, West Virginia has been at the forefront of labor activism in the United States. As the state’s teachers continue their historic strike, which has shut down every single West Virginia school, we look at the history of the labor activism in the Mountain State. We speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled 'West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.'"]
Elk, Mike, et al. "Teachers in Revolt: Meet the Educators in Kentucky & Oklahoma Walking Out over School Funding." Democracy Now (April 4, 2018) ["Oklahoma’s public education budget has been slashed more than any other state since the start of the recession in 2008, and its teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation. Scores of teachers are planning to begin a 123-mile protest march today from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, thousands of teachers continue to protest in Kentucky, demanding a reversal to a provision in a recently passed bill about sewage treatment that gutted their pension benefits. On Monday, every school in the state was closed either due to spring break or in anticipation of a massive rally in the capital of Frankfort, where teachers filled the rotunda of the Kentucky state Capitol, chanting “Fund our schools!” This year’s wave of teacher rebellions began in West Virginia, where teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after a historic strike. We speak to four guests: Oklahoma teacher Andrea Thomas, Kentucky state lawmaker Attica Scott, retired Kentucky teacher Mickey McCoy and labor journalist Mike Elk."]
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."]
Ellick, Adam B. and Adam Westbrook. "Operation Infektion." Times Video (November 12, 2018) ["Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue."]
Elrod, Andrew. "Elon Musk's Fall From Grace." Boston Review (April 17, 2018)
Estefan, Kareem, et al. "Understanding Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS)." Best of the Left #1249 (February 12, 2019) ["Today we take a look at both the BDS movement and the backlash response to it resulting in firings and legislation in many states (and pending federally) to restrict employment and business opportunities from those who fail to pledge in writing to not support of the boycott of Israel."]
Estes, Nick. "Indigenous Historian Nick Estes on Toppling Statues, Racist Team Names & COVID-19 in Indian Country." Democracy Now (July 6, 2020) ["President Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore comes after months of escalating coronavirus infections in Native communities, but Indigenous scholar and activist Nick Estes says South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, like many of her Republican counterparts across the U.S., has taken a “hallucination-based approach to the COVID-19 pandemic,” and notes she refused to enforce social distancing at this weekend’s event that attracted thousands of people. He also reacts to growing pressure on the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians to change their racist names." Part 1: "'He Wasn’t Invited': How Trump’s Racist Mt. Rushmore Celebration Violated Indigenous Sovereignty.".]
---. "Our History of the Future." Dig (June 29, 2019) ["Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance." Michael Benton -- This is one of the best discussions I have heard about indigenous cultures, settler colonialism, racism/apartheid in America and intergenerational indigenous resistance movements. I cannot laud this enough - totally revolutionized and extended my thinking/understanding of contemporary movements like Standing Rock and their place in the long history of intergenerational indigenous struggles against genocidal policies.]
---. "Standing Rock and the History of Indigenous Resistance in America." BackStory (September 6, 2019) ["In 2016, protests broke out at Standing Rock – a reservation in North and South Dakota – to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Indigenous peoples and other activists opposed the pipeline because they believed it violated sacred sites and threatened to contaminate the Missouri River, a major source of drinking water in the region. Taking social media by storm, the #noDAPL movement quickly became an international headline. On this episode, Nathan sits down with historian and activist Nick Estes to talk about his experience at Standing Rock, the history of Indigenous resistance, and the current state of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Estes’ new book is called Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance."]
Evans, Gavin. "The Unwelcome Revival of 'Race Science': Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever." The Guardian (March 2, 2018)
Fang, Lee. "Koch Data Mining Company Helped Inundate Voters with Anti-Immigrant Messages." The Intercept (September 9, 2019)
Fang, Lee and Levi Tilleman. "Senior Democrat Caught on Tape Pressuring Progressive Congressional Candidate to Drop Out of Race." Democracy Now (April 26, 2018) ["A new exposé by The Intercept confirms how powerful Democratic officials have worked to crush competitive progressive candidates in primaries around the country, choosing instead to back moderate, business-friendly candidates. This comes after President Obama used his farewell address to encourage Americans upset about the outcome of the 2016 election to take action by running for office themselves. We speak with Levi Tillemann, a Colorado man who heeded Obama’s call and found himself disappointed by the process, after he was repeatedly pressured by powerful Democrats not to run. In fact, he recorded a conversation in which he was directly told to drop out of the Democratic primary for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District by none other than the second-ranking House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland. We go to Denver to speak with Levi Tillemann, a candidate in Colorado’s Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional District, which includes Denver. He is featured in the new exposé by Lee Fang, investigative journalist at The Intercept, “Secretly Taped Audio Reveals Democratic Official Pressuring Progressive to Bow Out of Election.”"]
Farooqi, Salik, et al. "The Pandemics Social and Psychic Context." Trotsky and the Wild Orchids #36 (June 2, 2020) ["Salik Farooqi comes on the show to discuss the pandemic from the perspective of political sociology. For this episode we read: An Organic Crisis is upon Us; On the Concept of History; Gooseberries; Pandemic’s Lesson: Global Capitalism is Uneven and Dangerously Particularistic; The Myth of Sisyphus; and the Wiki on total football."]
Featherstone, Liza. "Consumer Society and the Curation of Culture." Citations Needed (November 21, 2018) ["Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism. But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world? We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to discuss the problems and potential of the much-maligned, but often scapegoated, focus group."]
Feidt, Dan. "The Secret Chats of the Alt-Right." On the Media (March 22, 2019) ["What happens behind the scenes as the foot soldiers of far-right groups debate and plan their next moves? One place to find out is on a chatroom platform called Discord. Popular among gamers and other internet-savvy communities, it's also become a home for those looking to meet like-minded white nationalists. A large trove of their back-and-forth was uncovered by the left-wing media collective Unicorn Riot, which then revealed the conversations of neo-Nazi groups such as Patriot Front and the now-defunct Traditionalist Workers Party. Unicorn Riot scored its first load of Discord chats in August 2017 — the weekend of the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. It reported stories, shared the leaked chats and built a database of hundreds of thousands of messages completely open to the public. Bob speaks with Dan Feidt, co-founder of Unicorn Riot, about what his team has learned since the project began."]
Feitlowitz, Marguerite. "A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture." The New York Times (Reproduction of Ch. 1 from the book of the same name)
Fekete, Andrea. "The Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: # 16 $21 Trillion in Unaccounted-for Government Spending from 1998 to 2015." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Felber, Garrett. "The Missing Malcolm X." Boston Review (November 28, 2018) ["Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy. "]
Feldman, David. "The Meanings of Antisemitism." Backdoor Broadcasting Company (February 13, 2017) ["Antisemitism has figured in British political debates in the last year as never before. In this lecture, David Feldman examines the changing meanings of antisemitism since the term was first coined. He reveals a new history of the Jews’ struggle for equality from the late-nineteenth century and explains why the politics of antisemitism today generate so much controversy. David Feldman is Director of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism and also a Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. He is currently writing an intellectual and political history of the concept of antisemitism in Britain from its introduction in the 1880s to the present."]
Feldman, Matthew, et al. "Should We Fear the Rise of the Far Right?" LSE IQ #22 (February 6, 2019)
Ferguson, Charles. "From Trump to Nixon: 'Watergate Film Explains 'How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President.'" Democracy Now (October 4, 2019) ["President Donald Trump called openly Thursday for the leaders of Ukraine and China to investigate Trump’s campaign rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter for corruption. Trump’s explicit remarks during a press conference came as leaders of the Democratic-led House pushed ahead rapidly with their impeachment investigation. President Trump is just the fourth U.S. president to face a formal impeachment inquiry, joining Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. We spend the hour looking at back at the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and is the focus of a documentary titled “Watergate — Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President.” Drawing on 3,400 hours of audiotapes, archival footage and declassified documents, the film chronicles the dramatic events surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in 1972, which precipitated Nixon’s eventual resignation two years later under threat of impeachment. We play clips from the film and speak with its director, Charles Ferguson, who won an Academy Award for his documentary “Inside Job.”"]
Ferrell, Jeff. "Drift." This Is Not a Pipe (May 9, 2019) ["Jeff Ferrell discusses his book Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge with Chris Richardson. Ferrell is Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University, USA, and Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, UK. He is author of the books Crimes of Style, Tearing Down the Streets, Empire of Scrounge, and, with Keith Hayward and Jock Young, the first and second editions of Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, winner of the 2009 Distinguished Book Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology."]
Fettig, Amy and Chase Strangio. "The Trump Administration Is Attacking Trans People in Federal Prison." Speak Freely (May 25, 2018)
Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America. Verso, 2012. ["Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."]
Fithian, Lisa. " Shut It Down: Veteran Organizer Lisa Fithian Offers a Guide to Resistance in Era of Climate Crisis." Democracy Now (September 6, 2019) ["Lisa Fithian is a longtime organizer and nonviolent direct action trainer since the 1970s. She has shut down the CIA. She has occupied Wall Street, disrupted the World Trade Organization and stood her ground in Tahrir Square. She has walked in solidarity with the tribal leaders at Standing Rock and defended communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She joined us at the Democracy Now! studio to talk about her new book, which was published this week, titled “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance.” Fithian is currently on a book tour and doing a new workshop called “Escalating Resistance: Mass Rebellion Training.”" Part Two: “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance”: Lisa Fithian Reflects on Decades of Protest."]
Flannery, Tim. "Raised by Wolves." New York Review of Books (April 5, 2018)
Foster, John Bellamy, interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou. "Climate change is the product of how capitalism 'values' nature." Monthly Review (November 18, 2018) ["Climate change is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalist industrialization has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization as we know it may require the development of a view in direct opposition to the way in which capitalism “values” nature, according to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review."]
Frank, Casey. "How Investigative Reporting & Survivor Testimony Toppled Billionaire Serial Abuser Jeffrey Epstein." Democracy Now (July 9, 2019) [ Michael Benton -- I complain a lot about the failures of corporate media. I would like to step back and give a nod of appreciation to the Miami Herald for their impressive and difficult investigative reporting - good episode looking into their work on this issue when powerful people just wanted it to go away. This is what we want to see from the fourth estate, watchdog journalism that isn't afraid to defend the powerless. -- "Billionaire hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein was charged in a Manhattan federal court Monday with sex trafficking and conspiracy. He is accused of sexually assaulting and trafficking dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005 at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein, who has counted Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton among his friends, pleaded not guilty and is being held in jail until his bond hearing next week. Several accusers were present in federal court in Manhattan on Monday. In November 2018, the Miami Herald published a series of articles by investigative reporter Julie Brown exposing Epstein’s crimes and the high-powered people, such as President Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who protected him. Epstein’s arrest after more than a decade of accusations is in part being hailed as a feat of local investigative journalism. We speak with Casey Frank, the senior editor for investigations at the Miami Herald."]
The Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Fraser, Steve. "Class Dismissed: Class Conflict in Red State America." Counterpunch (April 19, 2018)
Freeman, Chas and Jeffrey Sachs. "COVID's Cold War." Open Source (May 7, 2020) ["The coronavirus may have arrived just in time to punctuate a 50 year turn in the grand tide of events. It could mark, that is, a fresh fixation in American minds on an external enemy. It could become the opening round even of a new Cold War, with China this time. But at what price? The hybrid giant “Chi-Merica” was the name of a partnership as well as a rivalry that grew out of Richard Nixon’s first visit to China in 1972. It was the combination that made China the workshop of the world, for better and worse. In the last decade Chi-Merica has driven a huge portion of global growth. But it’s at risk suddenly in the poisoned fallout of a pandemic. Between the pandemic still spreading, and the presidential campaign taking shape, this is tryout time in the blame game. President Trump’s contentious diplomat, Mike Pompeo, has walked back his accusation that the killer virus came out of a Chinese lab at Wuhan. Probably because US intelligence wouldn’t back him up, the Secretary of State now says there’s evidence on the point, but no certainty. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is still the point man among “Blame China” Republicans. This week, he said the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for every death, every job lost, every retirement nest egg cracked by COVID-19, and he said that Xi Jinping and his comrades must be made to pay the price. Between Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, meantime, the campaign videos for both sides argue the same point: that the Other Guy was chummier with China and said sweeter things about the Chinese leadership in happier times."]
Frey, John Carlos. "Deported Parents Say Trump Administration Is Still Separating Families at Border." Democracy Now (August 15, 2018) ["Nearly three weeks after the court-imposed deadline for reuniting families forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration has admitted that 559 children remain in government custody. More than 360 of these children are separated from parents who have been deported by the U.S. government. Most of the families separated at the border were seeking asylum from violence in their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Instead, the parents were charged in federal court with a crime for illegally crossing the border, then held in jail and detention. The children, some still breastfeeding, were sent to shelters around the country. Judge Dana Sabraw, who ruled the Trump administration must reunite all separated families, said, “For every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.” For more, we speak with John Carlos Frey, award-winning investigative reporter with The Marshall Project and special correspondent with ”PBS NewsHour.” He is recently back from reporting trips in Guatemala and Nogales, Mexico, where he spoke with asylum seekers waiting for days and even weeks to enter the United States." Part two: "Military Cover-Up? 100s of Migrants Feared Dead in Mass Grave at AZ’s Barry Goldwater Bombing Range."]
Fromm, Erich. "The Authoritarian Personality." (1957: Translated by Florian Nange)
Fuentes, Agustin. "The Evolution of Belief." Against the Grain (October 23, 2019) ["Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity. But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of what makes us human."]
"Full Video: FOX News Town Hall With Bernie Sanders." Real Clear Politics (April 15, 2019)
Gaffney, Adam. "Crisis and Opportunity." Dissent (Spring 2018) ["A society’s health—and healthcare system—serves as a window into its soul: it sheds light on the balance of class power, on political struggles long settled and still underway, and on who the society privileges and who it lets die."]
Gessen, Masha. "Did a Russian Troll Farm’s Inflammatory Posts Really Sway the 2016 Election for Trump?" Democracy Now (February 23, 2018) ["The Justice Department recently indicted 13 Russians and three companies in connection with efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The indicted are accused of orchestrating an online propaganda effort to undermine the U.S. election system. The indictment claims the Russians spread negative information online about Hillary Clinton and supportive information about Donald Trump, as well as Bernie Sanders—but some are warning against overstating what Russia accomplished. For more, we speak with award-winning Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, a longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her recent piece for The New Yorker is titled “The Fundamental Uncertainty of Mueller’s Russia."]
---. "Russiagate Has Become a Conspiracy Trap Obscuring How Trump Is Damaging Nation." Democracy Now (February 23, 2018) ["Russia-American journalist Masha Gessen talks about how President Trump has benefited from what she calls the “conspiracy trap” around Russia’s role in the 2016 election. She wrote last year, “Russiagate is helping him—both by distracting from real, documentable, and documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.”"]
Gessen, Masha, Gary Hart and Martha Minnow. "American Autocracy." Open Source (August 6, 2020) ["What we know about our presidential race 90 days from the finish, perhaps all anyone knows, is that a wounded Donald Trump will not go quietly, if he goes at all, if he does not invoke emergency powers to cancel the election. The thought this hour was—and still is—to draw out the astute Russian-and-American diagnostician Masha Gessen, a resistance figure in two countries and author of a new book titled Surviving Autocracy. But then the plot thickened, particularly around the mayhem in Oregon after federal shock-troops had landed, over the objections of state governor, city mayor, and a militant wall of moms. A grave but lonely warning turned up in a New York Times guest-opinion piece. It was written by the sometime Colorado senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, who joined this week’s conversation from his cabin a few mountains away from Denver."]
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. "Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Rachel Kushner." Lannan Podcasts (April 17, 2019) ["Ruth Wilson Gilmore is director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and a professor of geography at the City University of New York. She is most famous for arguing that the movement for abolition, with its proud history of challenging slavery, should be applied today to the abolition of prisons. In an era when 2.3 million people are behind bars in the United States, she challenges us to think about whether it is ever necessary or productive to lock people in cages. She warns of the “nightmare made palatable by the terrifying numbers of prisoners and prisons produced by the last generation, while we were all, presumably, awake.” But her hope lies in the fact that “just as real was the growing grassroots activism against the expanded use of criminalization and cages as a catchall solution to social problems. In order to realize their dreams of justice in individual cases, the [freedom] riders decided, through struggle, debate, failure, and renewal, that they must seek general freedom for all from a system in which punishment has become as industrialized as making cars, clothes, or missiles, or growing cotton.” Gilmore wrote Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California(2007) and contributed to The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007). The American Sociological Society honored Gilmore with its Angela Davis Award for Public Scholarship in 2012. A tireless activist, she has co-founded many social justice organizations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network."]
Giridharadas, Anand. "How Philanthropy Lets Rich People Off the Hook." On the Media (April 19, 2019) ["Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World, explains that we're living in a century-old bargain between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of society: the rich get rich, and the rest of us get downstream benefits. Giridharadas and Bob talk about the origins of this bargain — and what needs to shift if we hope to see meaningful structural solutions to society's most pressing challenges."]
---. "Purple Episode 3: Let's Not Discount Reality." On the Media (November 25, 2019) ["One of the reasons so many Americans have lost trust and faith is democratic institutions is simple misunderstanding about how the system is designed to work. Another, however, is familiarity with how the system does work— which isn’t exactly of, by and for the People. Anand Giridharadas is author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He says the founders also didn’t plan on politicians constantly trash-talking government itself and that a decline in trust in government is the result of a concerted, private sector propaganda war waged over the last four decades."]
Giroux, Henri, Kathleen Higgins and Jason Stanley. "The Truth about 'Post-Truth.'" Ideas (July 18, 2017) ["The election of Donald Trump has ignited talk that we're now living in a "post-truth" era. But are we? Where does the idea that the truth no longer exists come from? Or the notion that the truth doesn't matter anymore? Host Paul Kennedy talks to thinkers who argue that the story began years earlier, with a kind of collective identity crisis: authoritarianism can become attractive when you no longer remember who you are."]
Glantz, Aaron and Vincent Hughes. "Modern-Day Redlining: Banks Face Probes for Refusing Home Loans for People of Color." Democracy Now (February 27, 2018) ["A shocking new investigation by Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting has uncovered evidence that African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans, even at rates far higher than their white counterparts, across the country. According to the piece, the homeownership gap between whites and African Americans is now wider than it was during the Jim Crow era. Reveal based its report on a review of 31 million mortgage records filed with the federal government in 2015 and 2016. The investigation found the redlining occurring across the country, including in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Antonio, Texas. Since its publication earlier this month, the report has sparked national outrage and, in some states, unusually swift political action. Pennsylvania’s attorney general and state treasurer have both launched investigations into redlining in Philadelphia. We speak to Pennsylvania state Senator Vincent Hughes and Aaron Glantz, senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. His new investigation is headlined 'Kept out: How banks block people of color from homeownership.'"]
Glenza, Jessica. "The One-Woman Lobby Machine Behind the 'Heartbeat' Bills." On the Media (May 17, 2019) ["For decades, the anti-abortion movement has tried to chip away at Roe v. Wade by putting up obstacles to abortion access through restrictions on clinics. Now the tactics seem to be shifting, as evidenced by this week's new abortion ban in Alabama and a series of so-called "heartbeat" bills passed in several states in recent months. For nearly a decade, Janet Porter has been a one-woman lobbying machine with her group Faith2Action. She's railed against gay marriage, advocated for "conversion therapy," and championed the racist birther conspiracy theory. She has also been pushing for a so-called "heartbeat" bill which would ban abortions after six weeks, a move that used to divide abortion groups. Jessica Glenza is a health reporter from The Guardian who recently profiled Porter. This week, she spoke to Bob about why the term "heartbeat" bill is misleading and what Porter's tactics and politics tell us about how anti-abortion groups are operating."]
Goldman, Lawrence, et al. "The American Populists." In Our Time (June 15, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the C19th MidWest and Southern farmers' struggle for a better deal, claiming they suffered while industry and railroads thrived at their expense."]
Gooding-Williams, Robert. "Membership, Citizenship and Democracy." Public Books (September 24, 2019)
Goodman, Amy. "Four Days in Occupied Western Sahara—A Rare Look Inside Africa’s Last Colony." Democracy Now (August 31, 2018) ["In this exclusive broadcast, Democracy Now! breaks the media blockade and goes to occupied Western Sahara in the northwest of Africa to document the decades-long Sahrawi struggle for freedom and Morocco’s violent crackdown. Morocco has occupied the territory since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. Thousands have been tortured, imprisoned, killed and disappeared while resisting the Moroccan occupation. A 1,700-mile wall divides Sahrawis who remain under occupation from those who fled into exile. The international media has largely ignored the occupation—in part because Morocco has routinely blocked journalists from entering Western Sahara. But in late 2016 Democracy Now! managed to get into the Western Saharan city of Laayoune, becoming the first international news team to report from the occupied territory in years."]
Goodman, Amy, et al. "Rise for Climate: Tens of Thousands March in San Francisco Calling for Fossil-Free World." Democracy Now (September 10, 2018) ["Hundreds of thousands of protesters in more than 90 countries joined a worldwide day of protest demanding urgent action to address climate change Saturday. In San Francisco, up to 30,000 people took part in the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march. It is believed to be the largest climate march ever on the West Coast. The protest came just days before the start of the Global Climate Action Summit being organized by California Governor Jerry Brown. Democracy Now! was in the streets of San Francisco for the march."]
Gordon-Reed, Annette. "Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Burden of Slavery." Conversations with History (September 28, 2016) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Harvard Professor Annette Gordon-Reed for a discussion of her work as a lawyer/historian focusing on the contradictions of the life of Thomas Jefferson. Recalling her intellectual odyssey. Professor Gordon-Reed elucidates her contribution to Jeffersonian scholarship including her most recent book “The Most Blessed of Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagination(written with Peter S. Onuf). Topics covered in the conversation include how her training as a lawyer empowered her to overturn the conventional historical view of the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Professor Gordon-Reed highlights the structural intellectual racism at the heart of Jeffersonian historiography which ignored the factual evidence which pointed to Jefferson as the father of Sally Heming’s children. In examining the evolution of Jefferson’s ideas on slavery, Professor Gordon-Reed emphasizes how Jefferson’s theory of slavery evolved as he adapted to the reality of American social and political life. She concludes with an the implications of her work for understanding the present turmoil over black/ white relations in the U.S. today."]
Gostin, Lawrence. "WHO Adviser on Meat Plants: If We’re at War, the Weapons We Need Are Tests and PPE, Not Pork." Democracy Now (April 30, 2020) ["As President Trump invokes the Defense Production Act to bar local governments from closing meatpacking plants around the United States, we get response from a longtime adviser to the World Health Organization. “When Congress passed that act, it certainly did not have in mind that the president has the power or the right to put workers’ lives and health at risk,” says Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law. Gostin also discusses why he joined 40 leading center directors in a declaration this week that urges Trump and Congress to restore and increase WHO funding."]
Grady, Danielle. "Moving the Needle: Small Groups Push Outsize Changes." LEO Weekly (July 24, 2019)
Graeber, David. "On Inequality and Human History." Against the Grain (November 21, 2018) ["Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. Graeber interrogates this chronicle of paradise lost — and much more."]
Graham, David A. "Mueller’s Damning Portrait of Trump." The Atlantic (April 18, 2019) ["The special counsel’s report shows a president who lies, acts rashly, and is routinely ignored by his own staff."]
Grandin, Greg. "On American Expansion, Part One: The Myth of the Frontier." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["What are the stories that America has told about itself? In the first of a three-part series on the notion of American Exceptionalism, Brooke speaks with historian Greg Grandin about America's founding narrative: the country's expansion westward. In his new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Grandin traces how the idea of endless, unstoppable growth has influenced US policy and psychology — and how President Trump’s call for a barrier at the southern border upends the idea of America as a country of boundless possibility."]
Grant, Melissa Gira. "Stop Whore Stigma." The Dig (July 31, 2018) ["The SESTA/FOSTA law purportedly aims to curb sex trafficking. But as my guest Melissa Gira Grant explains, it actually denies sex workers access to online platforms to more safely conduct their business. It received just two "no" votes in the Senate: from Rand Paul and Ron Wyden. It's a problem of hegemony: prohibition has long been plain common sense. So, it's our job to change that. The first step is to make it clear that there is dissent, and that prohibition is self-evidently neither good policy nor good politics."]
The Great African Scandal (BBC: Robert Beckford, 2007: 48 mins) ["Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in ‘natural resources’ is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse."]
Greenhouse, Linda. "The Impeachment Question." The New York Review of Books (June 27, 2019)
Greenlee, Carol and Gilbert King. "The Groveland Four: Florida Pardons Men Falsely Accused in Jim Crow-Era Rape Case in 1949." Democracy Now (January 14, 2019) ["Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has granted posthumous pardons to four young African-American men accused of raping a white woman near Groveland, Florida, in 1949. Two men were brutally murdered as a result of the false accusations. The case is now seen as a racially charged miscarriage of justice emblematic of the Jim Crow South. The story of the “Groveland Four,” now 70 years old, has continued to haunt the state of Florida. We speak with Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” and Carol Greenlee, daughter of Charles Greenlee, one of the Groveland Four."]
Greenwald, Glenn. "Could Brazil Return to a Dictatorship? Glenn Greenwald on Possible Election of Far-Right Demagogue." Democracy Now (October 5, 2018) ["Voters in Brazil head to the polls on Sunday in an election that could reshape the political landscape of South America. Polls show the current front-runner is the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army officer who has openly praised Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. Bolsonaro has a long history of making racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments, and has risen in the polls since September 8, when he was stabbed while campaigning. His campaign directly benefited from the jailing of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in April, who had been leading in all presidential polls before being forced to drop out of the race. Lula’s handpicked successor, Fernando Haddad, is currently placing second in most polls. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. He has been covering the election from Rio de Janeiro."]
---. "Glenn Greenwald." Lannan Lectures (September 27, 2017) ["Glenn Greenwald is an investigative journalist and author. A former constitutional lawyer, he founded the online global media outlet The Intercept with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill in 2014. He is the author of several best sellers, among them, How Would a Patriot Act?; With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful and the recent No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State. Greenwald has received numerous awards for his investigative journalism. In 2009 he was awarded the Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media for his “path breaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception, and controversial issues.” In 2010 he received an Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the arrest and detention of Chelsea Manning. In 2013 he led The Guardian’s reporting team that covered Edward Snowden and the NSA, which earned the newspaper the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013."]
---. "In a Major Free Speech Victory, a Federal Court Strikes Down a Law that Punishes Supporters of Israel Boycott." The Intercept (January 31, 2018)
---. "Roger Waters, Marielle Franco, and the Power of Inspiration in the Face of Darkness and Danger." The Intercept (October 25, 2018)
---. "White House Spread False Story About Venezuela Burning Aid Trucks to Win Support for War." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019) ["An investigation by The New York Times has found that several trucks carrying so-called humanitarian aid that were set ablaze during a showdown at the Colombia-Venezuela border last month were not caused by President Nicolás Maduro’s forces, as was widely reported at the time by the media and Trump administration officials. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. His latest piece is “NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda.”"]
Greenwald, Glenn and David Cay Johnston. "As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate?" Democracy Now (March 25, 2019) ["As congressional Democrats call on the Justice Department to release the full Mueller report, we speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who have closely followed the probes into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election: Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept and a leading critic of the media coverage of alleged Russian collusion, and David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times, now founder and editor of DCReport.org, who has written critically about Donald Trump for decades. His most recent book is “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.”"]
---. "The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More." Democracy Now (April 19, 2019) ["The Justice Department has released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report detailing Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia and President Trump’s attempts to impede the special counsel’s investigation. The report states the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,” but Mueller concluded, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller also outlined at least 10 instances where Trump attempted to impede the special counsel’s investigation, but Mueller came to no definitive conclusion on whether Trump broke the law by obstructing justice. In the report, Mueller suggests that this is a decision for Congress to make."]
Greenwald, Glenn and Tom Engelhardt. "A Conversation." Lannan Lectures (September 27, 2017)
---. "Real Resistance." The Intercept (September 15, 2018) ["A Grassroots Uprising in Amish Country Begins to Find Meaning in Politics"]
Gross, Allie. "Charterize, Privatize, Christianize: The DeVos-Backed Policies That 'Gutted' Michigan Public Schools." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is facing new criticism after she struggled in a recent “60 Minutes” interview to explain why schools in her home state of Michigan are faring poorly under the policies she has championed. DeVos is a billionaire Republican activist and the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. She once served as chair of the American Federation for Children in Michigan, where she promoted school choice and worked to expand the state’s use of private charter schools. Many educators say the results of DeVos’s policies in Michigan have been disastrous. For more, we speak with Allie Gross, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. She covered education in Michigan as a freelance reporter and was a Teach for America teacher in a Detroit charter school."]
Guisado, Angelo. "Necessary to the Security of a Free State." Current Affairs (May 8, 2019) ["On the history of the second amendment, white militias, and border vigilantism…"]
Haaland, Deb. "One of Nation’s First Native Congresswomen, Calls for Probe of Missing Indigenous Women." Democracy Now (November 8, 2018) ["Two Native American women have made history in the midterms, becoming the nation’s first Native congresswomen. Democrat Sharice Davids won the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas, unseating Republican Kevin Yoder. In New Mexico, Democrat Deb Haaland won in the 1st Congressional District, defeating Republican Janice Arnold-Jones. They will join more than 100 women in the U.S. House of Representatives—another historic first. We speak to Deb Haaland about her plans for Congress, the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women around the country, and whether she’ll attempt to impeach Donald Trump."]
Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. "The Powell Memo: A Call to Arms for Corporations." Moyers & Company (September 14, 2012) ["In this excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explain the significance of the Powell Memorandum, a call-to-arms for American corporations written by Virginia lawyer (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."]
Haider, Asad. "Way more is possible: On depoliticization, resurgent radicalism and seeing the revolutionary horizon." This is Hell! #1137 (March 2, 2020) ["Writer Asad Haider examines the problems of depoliticization in modern politics - as the dominant ideological frame blinds us to the limits of our present politics and the possibilities of future alignments, the left must confront the failures of past revolutions and realize that another world is not just possible, it's necessary."]
Hall, Anna. "In the Shadow of 'Citizens United.'" Sojourners (January 27, 2014)
Hall, Suzanne, et al. "Is the Gentrification of Our Global Cities Inevitable?" LSE IQ #19 (October 2018) ["In 1964 the sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’ to describe the process of London’s working class neighbourhoods being taken over by the middle classes. Modest two-up two down terrace houses were bought cheap, done up and made into expensive residences. Once grand Victorian houses that had fallen on hard times and become lodging houses or homes to multiple families, were restored once again and sub-divided into luxury flats. Soon the working class residents had been squeezed out of the neighbourhood and its character changed completely. Fifty years on and this process continues apace in London and many other cities."]
Hansen, Randall, Lama Mourad and Joseph Wong. "In Search of Global Freedom." Ideas (December 10, 2018) ["What does it mean to be free? All societies place restrictions on what citizens can do, but some restrictions (speed limits) may be more important than others (limiting the right to vote.) But one-size freedom doesn't really fit all: "democracy" has many faces, and ideas of freedom are shaped by culture."]
Harris, David A. "The Attack on Elected District Attorneys." Criminal Injustice (September 7, 2019) ["As reform-minded elected prosecutors gain power across the U.S., they’re increasingly coming under fire from their federal counterparts — most recently, an anti-democratic tirade by U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, who attacked progressive district attorneys for doing what voters elected them to do."]
---. "Progressive Prosecutors Slapped Again." Criminal Injustice (September 24, 2019) ["A crime summit held recently in St. Louis was a virtual who's-who of high ranking city and state government officials. Conspicuously absent from the gathering were the progressive, African American district attorneys of St. Louis and Kansas City, who were excluded despite having been elected to the top law enforcement post in Missouri's two largest cities. We look at the latest in a trend of anti-democratic attacks on reformist elected prosecutors."]
Hart-Landsberg, Marty. "Taxes, Inequality and Class Power." Economic Front (December 22, 2017)
Harvey, David. Reading Marx's Capital Volume 1 with David Harvey (Anthropologist, geographer and urban studies scholar David Harvey is a great guide to journey through Karl Marx's essential economic/historical book. Broken up into 13 episodes.)
Hasan, Mehdi. "The Noam Chomsky Interview." Deconstructed (October 31, 2019) ["Legendary linguist, activist, and political theorist Noam Chomsky has been speaking out against U.S. interventionism from Vietnam to Latin America to the Middle East since the 1960s. He’s the most cited author alive, but you won’t see him on the nightly news or in the pages of most major newspapers. On this week’s Deconstructed, Chomsky sits down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, the 2020 Democratic field, and why he opposed Trump’s Syria troop withdrawal."]
Hauser, Jeff. "The Do-Nothing Discipline: How political science fell into the thrall of fundamentalist forecasting." The Baffler #38 (March 2018)
Hayden, Michael Edison. "Prolific Alt-Right Propagandist's Identity Confirmed." Hatewatch (May 1, 2019)
Henry, Marsha. "Reimagining Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and Militarisation in the Global Order." The London School of Economics and Political Science (September 20, 2017) ["Marsha Henry argues for reimagining peacekeeping, which starts with a return to critical theories and concepts in order to acknowledge the production of gendered, racial and classed inequalities in peacekeeping spaces and relations. In particular, turning to critical concepts such as standpoint, power geometries and space-time continuum, the colour line, militarised femininities, and intersectionality, the lecture traces the practical and policy dead-ends that arise when peacekeeping studies relies on policy and practice driven objectives, alone. Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security."]
Henwood, Doug. "What Fire and Fury Reveals About Trumpism." Rising Up With Sonali (Posted on Youtube: January 2018) ["In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Wolff details in unsparing terms the President's terribly short attention span and pathological narcissism, and exposes the internal warfare between various factions comprised of Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. Wolff helps make sense of the relentless barrage of poorly thought out executive orders that emerged from Trump and the madness of Trump's method."]
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Caroline Tervo and Theda Skocpol. "How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of." The Guardian (September 26, 2018) ["In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy. But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out. Organized political mega-donors can get much more leverage through persistent organizations than from scattered, one-time contributions to particular politicians."]
Hewitt, Annie. "Why unarmed civilian protection is the best path to sustainable peace." Waging Nonviolence (July 6, 2018)
Hickel, Jason. "The Neoliberal Optimism Industry." Citations Needed #58 (November 28, 2018) ["We're told the world is getting better all the time. In January, The New York Times' Nick Kristof explained "Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History." The same month, Harvard professor and Bill Gates' favorite optimist Steven Pinker lamented (in a special edition of Time magazine guest edited by - who else? - Bill Gates) the “bad habits of media... bring out the worst in human cognition”. By focusing so much on negative things, the theory goes, we are tricked into thinking things are getting worse when, in reality, it's actually the opposite. For the TEDtalk set, that the world is awesome and still improving is self-evidently true - just look at the data. But how true is this popular axiom? How accurate is the portrayal that the world is improving we so often seen in sexy, hockey stick graphs of upward growth and rapidly declining poverty? And how, exactly, are the powers that be "measuring" improvements in society? On this episode, we take a look at the ideological project of telling us everything's going swimmingly, how those in power cook the books and spin data to make their case for maintaining the status quo, and how The Neoliberal Optimism Industry is, at its core, an anti-intellectual enterprise designed to lull us into complacency and political impotence."]
Higgins, Kathleen. "Post-Truth Pluralism: The Unlikely Political Wisdom of Nietzsche." The Breakthrough #3 (Summer 2013) ["In recent years, liberals have blamed conservatives for the declining societal respect for facts, the rise of deceptive partisan media outlets like Fox News, and the creation of an echo chamber effect in public discussion. The insinuation behind the critique is that if people only knew the truth, we wouldn’t have as many wicked problems. On the other hand, the conservative case against liberalism revolves less around declining respect for the truth and more around values such as the weakening of human will to creative greatness, which was argued by Allan Bloom. In attempting to reduce political disagreement to black and white categories of fact and fiction, liberals, like Paul Krugman, dismiss Nietzsche’s important lesson that truth is always a function of the will to describe reality, and that the plurality of viewpoints is a necessary feature, rather than obstacle, of a developed democracy."]
Hirthler, Jason. "Colonizing the Western Mind." Counterpunch (March 2, 2018)
Hochschild, Arlie. "Anger and Mourning on the American Right." Conversations with History (October 5, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Arlie Hochschild for a discussion of her book "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right." Hochschild discusses formative influences shaping her intellectual journey, describes her pioneering work on the sociology of emotions, and traces the evolution of her methodology. She then explains the decision to pursue her study of the American right in Louisiana beginning in 2011; how she undertook an empathetic engagement with citizens devastated by pollution but committed to the oil and gas industry; and how she developed a deep story to explain the emotions motivating her subjects to support right wing perspectives despite the devastation of the environment which they appreciated and loved. She also discusses their attraction to the Trump phenomena. She concludes with the lessons learned and their implications for mending the divide that is tearing the country apart."]
Holt-Giménez, Eric. "A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism." The Distillery (Season 1 - ND) ["People are not going hungry because of food scarcity but because of inequality. Introducing global food systems and how they impact farmers and consumers, Eric Holt-Giménez unpacks the intersections of class, gender, and race from the unique vantage point of the food economy."]
Honey, Michael, et al. "The Real Martin Luther King." The Back Story (January 17, 2020) ["Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have celebrated his 91st birthday this week. King is celebrated as an American hero and championed in children’s books and inspirational posters, but have Americans lost sight of the real MLK?"]
Hook, Jennifer van. "It's Good to Be Counted." Democracy Works #9 (May 8, 2018) ["The next census is still a few years away in 2020, but the U.S. Census Bureau is already hard at work on preparing to count the more than 325 million people in the United States. The census is one of the few democratic norms that’s required by the Constitution, and the data collected has wide-ranging uses. The normally routine process has been disrupted this year by Trump administration, which is pushing for the reintroduction of a question about citizenship. As you may have heard, there’s a debate going on about whether this question is appropriate, and whether the resource-strapped Census Bureau will have time to implement it before 2020."]
Hope, Mat. "Web of Power: Cambridge Analytica and the Climate Science Denial Network Lobbying for Brexit and Trump." Desmog (March 21, 2018)
Horwitz, Josh. "Republican Lawmakers Refuse to Adopt Gun Control Despite 200 School Shootings Since Sandy Hook." Democracy Now (February 15, 2018) ["Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, there have been 200 school shootings. But on Capitol Hill and in many state legislatures, Republican lawmakers have blocked efforts to enact gun control. Wednesday’s shooting in Florida comes just days after President Trump released his budget, which proposes cutting millions of dollars from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. We speak to Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He is the co-author of “Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea.”"]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Ibish, Hussein and David Shulman. "War and Dread." Open Source (October 19, 2023) ["We are listening in the dark, after a catastrophe yet to be contained: more than 1,000 Israeli civilians killed in a terrorist invasion from Gaza two weeks ago, thousands more Palestinians dead in a first round of punishment from Israel. “Only the beginning” says Prime Minister Netanyahu, while President Biden, in support, warns him against “all-consuming rage.” In all-consuming anxiety, more than a million Palestinians, under Israeli orders, have fled their homes in Gaza, without a clue where safety will be found.What we went to find in conversation was the sound of deep experience in the war zone of the Middle East, and also, in a time of dread, some measure of confidence in restraint."]
Immerwahr, Daniel. "Empire State of Mind." On the Media (April 5, 2019) ["Recently, a member of the Trump administration called Puerto Rico “that country,” obscuring once more the relationship between the island colony and the American mainland. In a special hour this week, On the Media examines the history of US imperialism — and why the familiar US map hides the true story of our country. Brooke spends the hour with Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States."]
---. "'How to Hide an Empire': Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States." Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["“How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” That’s the title of a new book examining a part of the U.S. that is often overlooked: the nation’s overseas territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, former territories like the Philippines, and its hundreds of military bases scattered across the globe. We speak with the book’s author, Daniel Immerwahr, who writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University."]
Jacobson, Jodi. "Senate Aides Knew of Second Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Claim & Tried to Rush His Confirmation." Democracy Now (September 24, 2018) ["Senator Dianne Feinstein is calling for the immediate postponement of the nomination proceedings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a second woman has come forward alleging sexual misconduct by the judge. Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, has accused him of exposing himself and thrusting his penis into her face during a college party in a dorm room. Ramirez spoke on the record to The New Yorker and is now calling on the FBI to investigate her allegations. The New Yorker revealed Republican Senate aides learned of Ramirez’s allegations last week and responded by trying to quickly move Kavanaugh’s nomination ahead before the allegations became public. This comes as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about her allegations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was 15 years old and he was 17 years old. Kavanaugh has denied both accusations." Parts two: "“Survivors Must Be Heard”: 1,100 Alumnae of Dr. Blasey Ford’s H.S. Demand FBI Investigate Kavanaugh."]
---. "'They Did Not Care': How the GOP Dismissed Assault Accusations & Confirmed Kavanaugh." Democracy Now (October 8, 2018) ["Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, just hours after the Senate voted to confirm him amid massive protests outside the Capitol. He will begin hearing cases Tuesday and could vote as early as Tuesday or Wednesday on a case that tests how much power courts would wield over the executive branch. His nomination came under intense public scrutiny after accusations of attempted rape and sexual assault surfaced. We begin our coverage with Jodi Jacobson, president and editor-in-chief of Rewire, who wrote a piece this weekend headlined “A 'Titanic Fraud': Susan Collins, the 'Moderate' Who Never Was.” Senator Collins “went on the floor of the Senate to literally gaslight the entire nation about both the process and the nominee himself,” Jacobson says, responding to Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh."]
Jaffe, Sarah. "L.A. Teachers Strike." The Dig (January 18, 2019) ["The teacher strike wave continues as more than 30,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles walk picket lines not only for the higher wages that they deserve but also for the well-funded and great schools that the city's working-class students of color have long been systematically denied—a situation that has been exacerbated by a corporate reform-led school board and superintendent dead-set on privatizing the district. UTLA has in recent years been led by a militant, rank-and-file caucus that has shunted aside the old guard's narrow vision of service unionism in favor of a big-picture movement unionism that makes the struggles of teachers, parents and students one on and the same. Sarah Jaffe is Dan's guest for a discussion of the strike, social reproduction and lessons from Rosa Luxemburg."]
Jamail, Dahr. "The Military Wants to Dictate Private Land Use -- and Washington State Might Let It." TruthOut (January 24, 2018)
Jauch, Herbert. "How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) Destroyed Africa." News Rescue (May 26, 2009)
Jayapal, Pramila. "Medicare for All Will Lower Costs & Expand Healthcare Coverage to Everyone." Democracy Now (March 6, 2019) ["More than 100 Democratic lawmakers are co-sponsoring a new House bill to dramatically revamp healthcare in the United States by creating a Medicare-for-all system funded by the federal government. This comes at a time when as many as 30 million Americans have no health insurance and tens of millions more are either underinsured or struggling to pay their health insurance premiums."]
Jayaraman, Saru, Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg. "Trumps's Sneaky Tips Theft." Building Bridges (February 13, 2018) ["The Trump Department of Labor, backed by the National Restaurant Association, is moving quickly to push a new rule that will make tips the property of restaurant owners rather than workers. It recently proposed rolling back a rule that protects workers in tipped industries, including restaurant servers and bartenders, from having their tips taken away by their employers. Under the proposal, federal law would allow restaurant owners who pay their wait staff and bartenders as little as $7.25/hour to confiscate and pocket all of the tips left by customers, without having to disclose to patrons what happens to the tips. Tips account for over half of these workersâ income which even together still adds up to poverty wages. More than $5.8 billion dollars will be transferred from workers to bosses under this proposal. Nearly 80 percent of the tips that would be stolen by employers would come from female tipped workers. Many women who work for tips already face harassment and discrimination at work, and this rule adds insult to injury."]
Johnson, Adam and Nima Shirazi. "The Root of All Evil." Citations Needed #4 (July 26, 2017) ["... we talk about a recent New York Times article — and the broader media habit of painting the US as benevolent democracy-seeker and Iran and other Official Enemies as cynical imperialists. In this episode we dissect the true history of what caused chaos in Iraq, who’s to blame and what the real motives were behind the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations designs for the country. All this in the context of a battle for control over remaining ISIS territory in Syria and Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv’s desire to stop the dreaded “Shia crescent”."]
Johnson, Jake. "Anand Giridharadas on Sanders' Victory in Nevada: 'A Wake Up Moment for the American Power Establishment.'" Common Dreams (February 23, 2020)
Jolie, Rachel Anne. "Marxist Feminism: The Struggle Against Capitalist Patriarchal Hegemony." Revolutionary Left Radio (August 28, 2017) ["Topics include: A brief summary of the history of feminism, the differences between Marxist Feminism and Liberal Feminism, Sex Work, Trans rights, connections between the LGBTQ struggle and the labor struggle, the importance of intersectional Solidarity, and much more!"]
Kalven, Jamie. "Chicago Faces a Defining Moment in Police Reform and Civil Order." The Intercept (August 15, 2018) ["Chicago has a unique opportunity to confront fundamental issues of racial justice as it debates a consent decree on police reform."]
Kaba, Mariame. "There Are Thousands of Cyntoia Browns: Mariame Kaba on Criminalization of Sexual Violence Survivors." Democracy Now (January 10, 2019) ["Cyntoia Brown was granted full clemency by Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam on Monday after serving 15 years in prison. The decision follows months of intense public pressure and outrage over her case. Brown was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder for shooting her rapist as a teenager. She had been sexually trafficked and repeatedly abused and drugged. The shooting happened when Brown was just 16 years old, but she was tried as an adult. We speak with Mariame Kaba, organizer and educator who has worked on anti-domestic violence programs, anti-incarceration and racial justice programs since the late 1980s. Kaba is the co-founder of Survived and Punished, an organization that supports survivors of violence who have been criminalized for defending themselves. She’s also a board member of Critical Resistance."]
Kelley, Robin D.G. "Black Study, Black Struggle." Boston Review (March 7, 2016)
---. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017)
Kim, Ron. "Amazon’s Defeat in NYC Galvanizes Movement to End Billion-Dollar Corporate Welfare." Democracy Now (February 19, 2019) ["New York City is still reeling since Amazon announced last week that it was scrapping plans to build a major office facility in Queens. The decision came under mounting pressure from grassroots activists and local politicians who opposed the deal. Amazon had announced the project in November after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offered Amazon nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies to come to the city. But local politicians and community organizers rallied against the tech giant and won. The lawmakers who took down Amazon say their victory is just the beginning of a major fight against tax subsidies for huge companies—which they call “corporate welfare.” We speak with New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim, who helped fight Amazon and introduced the End of Corporate Welfare Act to the state Legislature earlier this month."]
Kimball, Daryl. "'Counterproductive and Dangerous': : Nuclear Arms Race Feared as U.S. Quits Key Treaty with Russia." Democracy Now (October 22, 2018) ["President Trump has announced plans to pull the United States out of a landmark nuclear arms pact with Russia, in a move that could spark a new arms race. President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987. The INF banned all nuclear and non-nuclear missiles with short and medium ranges. The treaty helped to eliminate thousands of land-based missiles. On Saturday, Trump vowed to build new nuclear weapons. We speak with Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association. He previously led the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. He has been advocating for the U.S. and Russia to preserve the INF Treaty."]
King, Charles. "How A Few 'Renegade' Thinkers Helped Usher In A New Era Of Anthropology." Fresh Air (August 20, 2019) ["In his new book, Gods of the Upper Air, Charles King tells the story of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead and the other 20th century anthropologists who challenged outdated notions of race, class and gender."]
King, Shaun. "Law Enforcement Groups Gave $420,000 to DA Deciding Whether to Bring Charges Against Cops Who Killed Stephon Clark." The Intercept (April 25, 2018)
Klay, Phil. "The Lesson of Eric Greitens, and the Navy SEALs Who Tried to Warn Us." The New Yorker (May 17, 2018) ["The charges facing the embattled governor of Missouri have stunned voters, but in the tight-knit Naval Special Warfare community, Greitens has been a divisive figure for years."]
Klein, Naomi. "As New York City Declares War On the Oil Industry, the Politically Impossible Suddenly Seems Possible." The Intercept (January 11, 2018)
---. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018) ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]
Karma, Roge. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Myth of American Innovation." The Prospect (March 6, 2019) ["The intrepid New Yorker pulls back the curtain on how private companies profit from taxpayer-funded research."]
Kaye, Harvey, et al. "The Fight for the Four Freedoms (FDR vs Libertarianism)." Best of the Left #1247 (February 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history of FDR's "Four Freedoms" and "Economic Bill of Rights" that laid the groundwork for the fight for economic freedom for all that continues to this day."]
Kelley, Lauren, et al. "Waiting for the Roe to drop (Reproductive Justice)." Best of the Left #1262 (April 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the current state of abortion rights - Hint: They're already in tatters - and speculate about what's to come as Roe vs Wade faces relentless chipping away and the possibility of full repeal."]
Kendi, Ibram X. "The challenge of antiracist thought to a racist society." This is Hell #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses racism and antiracism in American society - from the production and maintenance of racist thought to disguise inequity and manipulate the working class, to the promise of an antiracist challenge to the power structures that divide people from each other and a future lived in communion with all people. Ibram is author of How To Be An Antiracist from One World Literature."]
Klein, Ezra. "Book excerpt: A better theory of identity politics." The Ezra Klein Show (January 23, 2020) ["A core argument of the book is that identity is the central driver of political polarization. But to see how it works, we need a better theory of how identities form, what happens when they activate, and where they fit into our conflicts. We’ve been taught to only see identity politics in others. We need to see it in ourselves."]
---. "How We Walked Into This and How We Can Walk Out." On Being (February 6, 2020) ["Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We’re Polarized. In this conversation, he’s frank and reflective about what’s at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it."]
Kloppenberg, James. "Things Fall Apart: The Origins and Future of American Democracy." Ideas (May 10, 2019) ["Does America’s early experiment with self-rule offer lessons for the U.S. today?"]
Koopman, Colin. "The Power Thinker." Aeon (March 15, 2017) ["One need not be locked away in a prison cell to be subject to its designs of disciplinary dressage. The most chilling line in Discipline and Punish is the final sentence of the section entitled ‘Panopticism’, where Foucault wryly asks: ‘Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?’ If Foucault is right, we are subject to the power of correct training whenever we are tied to our school desks, our positions on the assembly line or, perhaps most of all in our time, our meticulously curated cubicles and open-plan offices so popular as working spaces today. To be sure, disciplinary training is not sovereign violence. But it is power. Classically, power took the form of force or coercion and was considered to be at its purest in acts of physical violence. Discipline acts otherwise. It gets a hold of us differently. It does not seize our bodies to destroy them, as Leviathan always threatened to do. Discipline rather trains them, drills them and (to use Foucault’s favoured word) ‘normalises’ them. All of this amounts to, Foucault saw, a distinctly subtle and relentless form of power. To refuse to recognise such disciplining as a form of power is a denial of how human life has come to be shaped and lived. If the only form of power we are willing to recognise is sovereign violence, we are in a poor position to understand the stakes of power today. If we are unable to see power in its other forms, we become impotent to resist all the other ways in which power brings itself to bear in forming us."]
Krajeski, Jenna. "What the Kurds are Fighting For: The Idea of Rojava is at Stake." What Next (October 16, 2019) ["When the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies, it not only left the Kurds vulnerable to devastating attacks from Turkey, but it also abandoned Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region that lies in the northeast of Syria. Right now, the Kurds are fighting to preserve what they can of this unique political arrangement, but it might already be too late. And, maybe, it was always destined to fall."]
Krajeski, Jenna and Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn. "The Rojava Revolution in Peril." On the Media (October 18, 2019) ["Rojava: it’s the three cantons at the top of Syria that comprise what’s more commonly referred to as “Kurdish Syria.” Each canton is governed independently but according to a shared social contract based on principles of local democracy, feminism and ecology. It’s a land that, until recently at least, had about two million people, mostly Kurdish but with ethnic and religious diversity. And its political experiment was mainly functioning — until the abrupt retreat of the United States from northern Syria. Now Rojava is being pummeled by the invading Turks — martyred to the impulses of an unmoored American president. And so it has been reported: a ruinous betrayal of an ally that has made unimaginable sacrifices in the Ameican wars against Sadaam Hussein and ISIS. But lost in that narrative is another story: the equally unimaginable sacrifice of an equitable model of governance in a region where other models have stifled freedom for centuries. First, Bob speaks with Jenna Krajeski, a journalist with the Fuller Project for International Reporting who has reported on the Kurds. Then, he speaks with Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn, a 27-year-old activist and co-president of her local health authority in Rojava, about what it's been like on the ground."]
Kroll, Andy. "Media Giant Sinclair, Under Fire for Forcing Anchors to Read Trumpian Screed, Is Rapidly Expanding." Democracy Now (April 3, 2018) ["While Sinclair Broadcast Group is not a household name, it is one of the most powerful TV companies in the nation. It owns 173 local TV stations across the country, including affiliates of all the major networks. And it’s attempting to grow even larger by purchasing Tribune Media—a $3.9 billion deal currently under regulatory review. Sinclair has been widely criticized for its close ties to the White House. But Sinclair is facing new scrutiny after it ordered news anchors at scores of its affiliate stations to recite nearly identical “must-read” commentaries warning of the dangers of “fake news” in language that echoes President Trump’s rhetoric. The commentaries reached millions of viewers last month and drew widespread attention after the website Deadspin published a video over the weekend showing side-by-side comparisons of the broadcasts from 45 Sinclair-owned stations."]
Krugman, Paul and Richard D. Wolff. "Sanders & Socialism: Debate Between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman & Socialist Economist Richard Wolff." Democracy Now (February 24, 2020) ["As Bernie Sanders’s runaway win in Nevada cements his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the Democratic Party establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern about a self-described democratic socialist leading the presidential ticket. His opponents have also attacked his ambitious agenda. Last week during the primary debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about socialism. Invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sanders decried what he called “socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” For more, we host a debate on Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism, featuring two well-known economists. Paul Krugman is a New York Times op-ed columnist and author of many books, including his latest, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” One of his recent columns is headlined “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” Richard Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and hosts the weekly national television and radio program “Economic Update.” He’s the author of several books, including “Understanding Socialism.”"]
Kuper, Terry. "Punishment in Solitary." Against the Grain (October 10, 2017) ["According to Terry Kupers, a culture of punishment and impunity pervades solitary confinement facilities around the U.S. Because many inmates in solitary suffer from serious mental illness, they can respond to escalating punishments in ways that invite more — and more brutal — punitive measures. Kupers discusses what can be done to promote, rather than undermine, inmates’ emotional stability and prospects for rehabilitation."]
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democrat Politics. 2nd ed. Verso, 2001.
Landis, Joshua and Gayle McLaughlin. "Beating City Hall / What's Really Going On In Syria." Ralph Nader Radio Hour (April 21, 2018) ["Ralph welcomes independent candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, Gayle McLaughlin, who talks about how she and small group of progressive reformers turned around the city of Richmond, California. And one of the foremost experts on the Middle East, Professor Joshua Landis, clues us in to what exactly is going on in Syria, and what we should do about it."]
Landrieu, Mitch, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Lawler, Ophelia Garcia. "Trump Considers Terrifying New Policy to Eliminate Transgender Rights." The Cut (October 21, 2018)
Leary, John Patrick. "'Meritocracy' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["This week, fifty people were charged by federal prosecutors in a college admissions scandal. As the public dug into the details of how wealthy parents made payments to help their students get into elite (and not so elite) universities around the country, some of the discussion centered around "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. The trouble is, the myth of "meritocracy" goes much deeper than this story. The word was actually coined as satire in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young, who was criticizing the role that the UK's elite education system had in shaping the hierarchy of British society. This week, Bob speaks with John Patrick Leary about the satirical origins of the word and what it has come to mean in the US. He says there are actually two myths: "the myth that there is such a thing, and the myth that the United States is committed to that imaginary thing." Leary is a professor of English at Wayne State University and author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism."]
Lennard, Natasha. "How the Prosecution of Animal Rights Activists As Terrorists Foretold Today’s Criminalization of Dissent." The Intercept (December 12, 2019)
---. "Law Claiming to Fight Sex Trafficking is Doing the Opposite — By Cracking Down on Sex Work Organizing and Advocacy." The Intercept (June 13, 2018)
---. "On Non-Fascist Life." Politics Theory Other (August 14, 2019) ["Natasha Lennard joins me to discuss her book, 'Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life'. We spoke about whether or not Donald Trump and the movement that has coalesced around him ought to be characterised as fascist, we also talked about the contributions of Wilhelm Reich, Michel Foucault, and other figures in the anti-psychiatry movement to theorising fascism. We discussed the legitimacy and history of anti-fascist violence and its treatment by the media, and finally we spoke about Natasha's writing on suicide and how the act of suicide brings into question capitalism's positing of the idea of the sovereign individual."]
---. "What Does it Mean to Live a Non-Fascist Life." Broadly (April 9, 2019)
Leonard, Christopher. "'Kochland': : How David Koch Helped Build an Empire to Shape U.S. Politics & Thwart Climate Action." Democracy Now (August 27, 2019) ["Billionaire conservative donor David Koch died Friday at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. David Koch — who was worth some $42 billion — and his brother Charles poured massive amounts of money into funding climate change denial through conservative think tanks and politicians. The Koch brothers founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which is credited with turning the “tea party” into a full-fledged political movement. They also backed “right-to-work” efforts, which aim to weaken labor rights and quash union membership. The brothers made their fortune running Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. We speak with the business journalist Christopher Leonard, who just last week published a major new book examining the business dealings of the Koch brothers. It’s titled “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”"]
Lepore, Jill. "On the Construction of American Citizenship." At Liberty #25 (December 6, 2018) ["Almost 250 years after the adoption of the Declaration of the Independence, debates about founding principles like equality, rights, and representation are as fraught as ever. Jill Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer, discusses her latest book, “These Truths,” an ambitious exploration of the evolution of our nation from its earliest days."]
Leubitz, Brian. "California Offers Hope With Slew Of Progressive New Laws." Rising Up (October 2, 2018) ["If you’re among the millions of Americans depressed with the state of our nation, California is offering some hope in these dark times. Pressed by grassroots activists working on a variety of issues the nation’s most populous state passed a slate of forward-looking bills and Governor Jerry Brown just signed them into law one by one. Among the new laws offering hope are a ban on toxic flame retardants, an affirmation of net neutrality, stricter gun laws, transparency requirements on police misconduct, and a push for gender parity on corporate boards."]
Levin, Yuval. "The Conservative Mind of Yuval Levin." The Ezra Klein Show (January 9, 2020) ["Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just society. The second is something less discussed but equally important: temperament. It describes how we approach social problems, how fast we think society can change, and how we understand the constraints upon us. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the editor-in-chief of the public policy journal National Affairs, and the author of the upcoming book A Time to Build. Levin is one of the most thoughtful articulators of both conservative temperament and ideology. And, perhaps for that reason, his is one of the most important criticisms of what the conservative movement has become today.There’s a lot in this conversation, in part because Levin’s book speaks to mine in interesting ways, but among the topics we discuss are: The conservative view of human nature Why the conservative temperament is increasingly diverging from the conservative movement What theories of American politics get wrong about the reality of American life The case Levin makes to socialists How economic debates are often moral debates in disguise Levin’s rebuttal to my book The crucial difference between “formative” and “performative” social institutions Why the most fundamental problems in American life are cultural, not economic Why Levin thinks the New York Times should not allow its journalists to be on Twitter Whether we can restore trust in our institutions without changing the incentives and systems that surround them There’s a lot Levin and I disagree on, but there are few people I learn as much from in disagreement as I learn from him."]
Levinson, Ariana and Devon Oser. "Kentucky’s Right-To-Work Law: Unions Punch Back." LEO Weekly (August 29, 2018)
Liu, Eric. "Purple Episode 1: Is Democracy Up for Grabs?" On the Media (November 23, 2019) ["Democracy is in trouble. Not necessarily because of our current political mayhem, or even because of the accumulated sins and failures of American society, but because vast swaths of the public are giving up on the system that has governed us for 243 years. Here are some alarming data points: One, in 2018 only 33% of the general population expressed trust for government. Two, among 1400 adults asked about the importance of democracy, only 39% of younger participants said “absolutely important.” Three, in a 2018 Democracy Fund survey of 5000 Americans, 24% of respondents expressed support for “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections,” and either a “strong leader” and 18% for “army rule. The more complicated question is what as a society we are to do about it? In this mini-series we’ll be talking that over, but we’ll begin with the actual state of public sentiment and public participation. Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University and Co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. He and Bob discuss potential solutions for taking on widespread disaffection."]
Lopez, Christy E. "Defund the Police? Here's What That Really Means." The Washington Post (June 7, 2020)
Lukes, Stephen. Power: A Radical View. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005.
Lutz, Catherine. "Troop Veneration and American Empire." The Dig (January 3, 2018) ["The protest movement against the onset of the Iraq War was countered by a call to “support our troops” from militarists on the Right. But venerating American soldiers is not about supporting actual American soldiers; it's a rhetorical device to preclude questioning or criticism of the wars they are sent to fight. In a face-to-face interview at Brown University’s Watson Institute, anthropologist Catherine Lutz discusses John Kelly’s recent diatribe, Khizr Khan, Trump’s attack on protesting NFL players, and the roots of it all in the Nixon administration’s response to GI rebellion against the Vietnam War. "]
Luxenberg, Steve. "Separate and Unequal." On the Media (March 8, 2019) ["Throughout the 1800s, the question at the heart of nearly every political, cultural and academic conversation dealt in some capacity with whether Black Americans were eligible for full citizenship. Our collective understanding of 19th-century racial politics depends on the landmark civil rights legislation that came out of the era. One notorious decision was Plessy v. Ferguson, the case in which the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of racial separation, helping to pave the way for nearly 60 years of Jim Crow laws. Though the decision was overturned by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the de facto segregation Plessy codified continues into the present. But at the time, Plessy wasn’t deemed newsworthy — at least not by the white-dominated, partisan press. To contextualize the road to Plessy, Bob spoke with Steve Luxenberg, author of the new book, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation."]
Lydon, Christopher. "Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism is Destroying Our Democracy." The Nation (June 2, 2017)
Mace, Ryan. "'A Matter of Life and Death': : Trump Admin Slashes Refugee Cap to Historic Low, Imperiling Thousands." Democracy Now (September 19, 2018) ["The Trump administration has once again slashed the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the new cap on refugees would be a historic low of just 30,000 next year, down from the current level of 45,000. The actual number of refugees allowed in to the country is expected to be even lower than the 30,000 cap. Monday’s announcement represents the lowest ceiling any president has imposed on the U.S. refugee program since its creation in 1980. Under President Obama, the refugee cap reached 110,000. For more on the Trump administration’s refugee policy, we speak with Ryan Mace, refugee specialist for Amnesty International USA."]
Manning, Zander, Jessica Picard, and Jared Yellin. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #17 “Model” Mississippi Curriculum Omits Civil Rights Movement from School Textbooks." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)Marcetic, Branko. "How Washington Hacked Mongolia's Democracy." Jacobin (November 29, 2017)
Martel, James. "Histories of Violence: Why We Should All Read Walter Benjamin Today." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 3, 2020)
Martin, Abby, et al. "There you go again. Venezuela and America's addiction to imperialism." Best of the Left #1248 (February 8, 2019) ["Today we take a look, briefly, at the last 100 years of Venezuelan history to understand how they went from oil riches and inequality to revolution and social progress only to run afoul of American imperialism."]
Martin, Patrick. "The CIA Democrats." World Socialist Web Site (March 7-9, 2018)
Mason, Liliana. "The Age of 'Mega-Identity' Politics." The Ezra Klein Show (April 30, 2018) ["Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the construction of our partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. These mega-identities didn’t exist 50 or even 30 years ago, but now that they’re here, they change the way we see each other, the way we engage in politics, and the way politics absorbs other — previously non-political —spheres of our culture. In making her case, Mason offers one of the best primers I’ve read on how little it takes to activate a sense of group identity in human beings, and how far-reaching the cognitive and social implications are once that group identity takes hold. I don’t want to spoil our discussion here, but suffice to say that her recounting of the “minimal group paradigm” experiments is not to be missed. This is the kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world, but how you think about yourself. Mason’s book is, I think, one of the most important published this year, and this conversation gave me a lens on our political discord that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. If you want to understand the kind of identity politics that’s driving America in [2020], you should listen in."]
Mayer, Jane. "Dark Money and the Rise of Conservative Orthodoxy." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["William Happer, the man tapped to head Trump’s new climate review panel, is not a climate scientist. And yet, in recent years, William Happer has made a mission of attacking climate science, including at events hosted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Heritage has long worked to redirect public sentiment and policy-making away from addressing climate change and towards deregulation — which is itself part of an even bigger decades-long goal: the propagation of a conservative ideology that preserves capital for rich people. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, walks Bob through the history of the modern conservative intellectual framework."]
---. "FOX News White House." The New Yorker (March 11, 2019) ["As Murdoch’s relations with the White House have warmed, so has Fox’s coverage of Trump. During the Obama years, Fox’s attacks on the President could be seen as reflecting the adversarial role traditionally played by the press. With Trump’s election, the network’s hosts went from questioning power to defending it. Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says, “Fox’s most important role since the election has been to keep Trump supporters in line.” The network has provided a non-stop counternarrative in which the only collusion is between Hillary Clinton and Russia; Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is perpetrating a “coup” by the “deep state”; Trump and his associates aren’t corrupt, but America’s law-enforcement officials and courts are; illegal immigration isn’t at a fifteen-year low, it’s “an invasion”; and news organizations that offer different perspectives are “enemies of the American people.” Benkler’s assessment is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics.” Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find “symmetric polarization” in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America’s media ecosystem function very differently. “It’s not the right versus the left,” Benkler says. “It’s the right versus the rest.”"]
McAlevey, Jane. "It's Time to Retire the Term 'Middle-Class.'" Citations Needed #91 (October 23, 2019) ["The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.
But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty. This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center."]
McCausland, Phil. "Mixed Messages in the Heartland." On the Media (May 15, 2020) ["During Monday's White House press briefing, President Trump asserted that, "All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly." However, the White House's own data, collected by the Coronavirus Task Force's Data and Analytics Unit, paints a drastically different picture. According to an unreleased May 7 report obtained by NBC News, infections and deaths are skyrocketing around the United States, particularly in areas of the American heartland. But the keyword here is "unreleased" — the task force has been keeping its data close to the vest, releasing it in dribs and drabs. Consequently, it's up to often under-resourced state and municipal leaders to draw their own conclusions. Phil McCausland, an NBC News reporter covering rural issues, was one of the journalists who broke the hidden-data story. He tells Bob that, absent federal data and directives, civilians in rural communities are left largely in the dark about the severity of their circumstances."]
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."]
Merkley, Jeff. "Sen. Merkley Condemns Trump’s War Against Migrant Families as U.S. Moves to Indefinitely Jail Kids." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The Trump administration is moving to indefinitely detain migrant children and their families, reversing decades of U.S. policy. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to issue a new rule today to withdraw from a 1997 federal court settlement known as the Flores agreement, which put a 20-day limit on migrant family detentions. We speak with Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who made headlines last year when he was barred from entering an old Walmart where the government was detaining about 1,500 immigrant children in Brownsville, Texas."]
---. "‘One thinge that ouerthroweth all that were graunted before’: On Being Presidential." Salvage (January 30, 2018)
Miller, Andrew. "'Our House Is On Fire': Brazil Faces Global Outrage as Massive Fires Spread in Amazon Rainforest." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The United Nations is calling for the protection of the Amazon amid fears that thousands of fires raging across Brazil and some parts of Bolivia are rapidly destroying the world’s largest rainforest and paving the way for a climate catastrophe. The fires have spread a vast plume of smoke across South America and the Atlantic Ocean that’s visible from space. They’re unprecedented in recorded history, and environmentalists say most of the fires were deliberately set by illegal miners and cattle ranchers. Indigenous people in Brazil have accused far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the destruction. Bolsonaro has worked to deregulate and open up the Amazon for agribusiness, logging and mining since he came into office in January. We speak with Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch."]
Miller, James. "A Brief History of 'People Power.'" Democracy Works (February 11, 2019) ["In his book Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World, James Miller encapsulates 2500 years of democracy history into about 250 pages — making the case that "people power" will always need to be at the heart of any successful democracy. James is a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. in New York City. He is the author of Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977, and Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. He was recommended to us by Astra Taylor, and you'll hear some similarities between how James and Astra view democracy and our role within it."]
Mishan, Ligaya. "Frogs are Disappearing. What Does That Mean?"The New York Times (October 18, 2018) ["For ages, they have been symbols in human culture — of fertility, gastronomy and now the alt-right movement. But these noble amphibians are declining in numbers."]
"Mitch Part 1: 'Win This Thing.'" Embedded 7.1 (May 30, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell has been described as "opaque," "drab," and even "dull." He is one of the least popular - and most polarizing - politicians in the country. So how did he win eight consecutive elections? And what does it tell us about how he operates?"]
"Mitch Part 2: 'Money Money Money.'" Embedded 7.2 (June 6, 2019) ["A lot of us don't pay much attention to money in politics. But Mitch McConnell does. And unlike most politicians, he speaks bluntly in favor of more political spending, not less. That stance led to a long battle with one Senator, who fought McConnell harder than just about anyone else."]
"Mitch Part 3: Darth Vader Has Arrived." Embedded 7.3 (June 13, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell continues his rivalry with John McCain, and dramatically changes the role of money in American politics."]
"Mitch Part 4: Not a Happy Choice." Embedded 7.4 (June 20, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell says he never expected Donald Trump to become president. During the campaign, he was openly critical of Trump's rhetoric. So how are these two very different men working together now? And how are they changing the country?"]
"Mitch Part 5: 9 and 0." Embedded 7.5 (June 27, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell knows that he is not popular. But, he says, the only judgment that really matters is on election day. And of the people who have challenged him, he says, "so far, there have been nine losers.""]
Moody-Adams, Michele. "On John Rawls' A Theory of Justice." Writ Large (December 1, 2022) ["How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally within society? These are the kinds of questions political philosophers furrow their brows and scratch their chins trying to answer. In 1971, an American philosopher named John Rawls introduced a new answer: justice as fairness. Michele Moody-Adams is the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University. She is the author of Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy."]
Morris, Errol. "Anatomy of a Photograph: Authoritarianism in America." The Atlantic (August 22, 2020)
Moser, Bob. "Interference 2020: The Disinformation is Coming from Inside the Country." Columbia Review of Journalism (Fall 2019)
Moser, Richard. "How Corporate Power Killed Democracy." Counterpunch (December 6, 2017)
Moskowitz, P.E. "The Problem of Free Speech in an Unfree World." This is Hell! #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Writer P.E. Moskowitz examines the limits of the First Amendment in American society - as a concept rooted in an equality that will never exist in a capitalist society, and as a cultural battleground almost exclusively fought on the right's terms - for the right's gains. P.E. is author of The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent from Bold Type Books."]
Moskowitz, P.E. and Carolyn Rouse. "The Mythical Bygone Glory Days of 'Free Speech.'" Citations Needed #88 (September 25, 2019) ["We are often warned by conservatives, liberals and even some on the Left that we live in a time where “free speech” is under threat from far-left forces. “Political correctness” and “snowflakes” have shut down free inquiry, specifically on college campuses, and led to a crisis threatening the very foundation of our democracy. But the origins of the label “free speech” — as it’s currently practiced — paint a much messier picture. Rather than appealing to the Vietnam-era Berkeley protest glory days, what one sees when examining the history of the concept is a temporary tactic used by the Left in the mid-to-late 1960s that has, since that late 1980s, become a far-right wedge designed to open up space for racism, eugenics, genocide denial, trans and homophobia and anti-feminist backlash. Defense of the right to keep open this space as an appeal to a universal value hides a well-funded, coordinated far-right attempt to maintain a conservative, largely male and cishet version of political correctness. On this episode, we discuss where the contemporary concept of “free speech” comes from, what its uses and misuses have been and how a rose-tinted time of pristine, perfectly free" speech never really existed. We are joined by journalist and author P.E. Moskowitz and Chair of Princeton University's Department of Anthropology Carolyn Rouse."]
Moss, Candida. "Trump and the Christian Persecution Complex." On the Media (June 3, 2020) ["On Monday, President Trump stood outside St. John's Episcopal Church, which had caught fire the day prior in protests for racial justice. When he brandished a Bible before photographers, Trump knew exactly what message he was sending: Christianity is under siege and the president is the defender of the faith. Never mind the fact that peaceful protesters, clergy among them, were driven from the area minutes before with tear gas to make way for the photoshoot. The narrative of Christianity under attack is a familiar one. Just a few weeks ago, Trump declared that houses of worship should open amid the pandemic on the grounds of religious liberty — despite the public health risk. But it turns out, the myth of Christian persecution can be traced far further back than the Culture Wars. In fact, according to Candida Moss, Christian historians coined the idea that to be persecuted was to be righteous in the 4th Century and they exaggerated claims that Christians were persecuted in the first place. Moss is a professor of theology and religion at Birmingham University in the U.K., and author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Moss spoke to Bob just after Trump has announced his call for churches to open. In this week's Pod Extra she explains how Christian history has been revised for political means, from the early church to present day."]
"The Moth." Throughline (March 14, 2019) ["Vladimir Putin has been running Russia since 2000 when he was first elected as President. How did a former KGB officer make his way up to the top seat — was it political prowess or was he just the recipient of a lot of good fortune? In this episode, we dive into the life of Vladimir Putin and try to understand how he became Russia's new "tsar.""]
Mounk, Yascha. "The People vs. Democracy." Ideas (December 13, 2018)
["Authoritarian populists have won elections across a large swath of western liberal democracies. Populist leaders have formed government through free and (mostly) fair elections by riding a wave of popular disaffection with the status quo. But once in power, these governments have gone on to dismantle the very institutions and conventions that help keep liberal democratic principles in place. So how are we to confront this paradox wherein liberal democracy serves a growing and undemocratic illiberalism? How do we strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the popular will? And if we can't figure this out, are the best days of the liberal democratic tradition long gone?"]
Msimang, Sisonke. "Eyes on the back of our head: Recovering a multicultural South Africa." Ideas (July 27, 2018) ["Journalist and activist Sisonke Msimang speaks at a former prison complex in Johannesburg which once held Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. The setting is apt: Sisonke believes that post-apartheid South Africa has become imprisoned by its own past — a past which whites cannot recall and which blacks cannot forget. With both a mischievous sense of humour and sharp historical analyses, she pulls down the old binarism of black versus white to make way for a truly multicultural South Africa, one that welcomes other African migrants as it embraces its own racially diverse past. As she says:"We are learning to scan the wreckage of our history and mine it for gold. To look for the connections between us, even as we walk with our eyes firmly fixed on the horizon. We are moving ever more sure-footed, towards making a South Africa in which we all belong.""]
Mullen, Bill V. "The Teacher Uprising Hits the University." Verso (April 24, 2018)
Murch, Donna, et al. "The Real Black Panthers." Throughline (April 15, 2021) ["The Black Panther Party's battles for social justice and economic equality are the centerpiece of the Oscar-nominated film 'Judas and The Black Messiah.' In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party "without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country." And with that declaration he used United States federal law enforcement to wage war on the group. But why did Hoover's FBI target the Black Panther Party more severely than any other Black power organization? Historian Donna Murch says the answer lies in the Panthers' political agenda and a strategy that challenged the very foundations of American society."]
Nasser, Latif, et al. "Nukes." Radiolab (April 7, 2017) ["President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and - in 20 minutes - kill 60 million people. Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. But what if you were the military officer on the receiving end of that phone call? Could you refuse the order? This episode, we profile one Air Force Major who asked that question back in the 1970s and learn how the very act of asking it was so dangerous it derailed his career. We also pick up the question ourselves and pose it to veterans both high and low on the nuclear chain of command. Their responses reveal once and for all whether there are any legal checks and balances between us and a phone call for Armageddon."]
The Perkins Project on Workers' Rights and Wages Economic Policy Institute (Ongoing Archive) ["EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people."]
Phillips, Peter. "Project Censored." Boiling Frogs (June 4, 2010)
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020. ["Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it." This is the Harvard University Press book page, it has links to app. 50 interviews and features on the author & the book.]
Pomerantsev, Peter. "The Info War of All Against All." The New York Review of Books (August 23, 2019)
Potter, Will. "The Secret U.S. Prisons You've Never Heard of Before." TED Talks (August 2015) ["Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children. Potter, a TED Fellow, shows us who is imprisoned here, and how the government is trying to keep them hidden. "The message was clear," he says. "Don't talk about this place.""]
Prakash, Varsini, Sean Sweeney and Elizabeth Yeampierre. "Green New Deal, Yellow Vests." The Laura Flanders Show (January 30, 2019) ["Is the climate movement heating up? This week on the show, activists at all levels of the climate justice movement discuss how inter-generational, cross-coalition, and global organizing is taking control of the future without waiting for anyone. Can the U.S born Green New Deal learn from yellow-vested workers’ agitation in France? And who’s new Deal is it anyway? In this episode: Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance; Sean Sweeney,Director of Cornell Global Labor Institute’s International Program for Labor, Climate & Environment; and Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement."]Preempting Dissent (Canada: Greg Elmer and Andy Opel, 2014: 42 mins) ["The legacy of the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” includes a new logic that stretches well beyond the realm of overzealous security agencies, airport security and international relations, and into suppressing public protest; expanded surveillance aimed at entire populations, but especially activists; and mobilising fear for social control. Special police techniques have even been developed and applied in order to specifically suppress dissent and manage protests, especially in the wake of the rising anti-globalisation movements towards the turn of the millennium. Preempting Dissentprovides a quick overview of how some of this logic developed, as well as a glimpse of how political protest in the West has been shaped and controlled in the “post-9/11″ years, up to and including the so-called Occupy movement. By provoking a reflection of the implications of the logic of the “War on Terror” and how its applied to stifle political protest, Preempting Dissent aims to lay some of the groundwork to develop more effective resistance tactics."]
Prentice, Deborah and Robb Willer. "Pluralistic Ignorance: The psychology behind why people defend the norms they secretly despise." You Are Not So Smart #181 (July 30, 2020)
Press, Alex N. "A Tale of Two Prisoners." Jacobin (July 27, 2019) ["Comparing the treatment of Jeffrey Epstein to Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed Eric Garner's murder, reveals the grotesque inequality at the heart of American society. There’s one set of rules for the rich, and an entirely different set for the poor."]
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Radsch, Courtney and Sarah Leah Whitson. "Netflix Censors Hasan Minhaj in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Backlash over Khashoggi Killing, War in Yemen." Democracy Now (January 3, 2019) ["Netflix is under fire for pulling an episode of U.S. comedian Hasan Minhaj’s show “Patriot Act” from Saudi Arabia, after officials from the kingdom complained to the streaming company that it violated Saudi cybercrime laws. The episode was posted in late October, a few weeks after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Hasan Minhaj sharply criticized the Saudi royal family and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The censored episode has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube, where it remains available to viewers in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, Minhaj tweeted, “Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube. Let’s not forget that the world’s largest humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen right now. Please donate: help.rescue.org/donate/yemen.” We speak with Courtney Radsch, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division."]
Raymond, Laura and David Vivar. "The Drug War: Policing and U.S. Militarism at Home and Abroad." Law and Disorder (February 27, 2014)
Read, Max. "How The Matrix Fed Our Conspiracy-Laden World." On the Media (April 12, 2019) ["When it comes to nourishing paranoiac beliefs through pop culture, one of the most iconic works is the 1999 sci-fi political parable The Matrix. A computer hacker, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, journeys into a reality he didn’t know existed and must battle the system of machines controlling all of humanity. The plot of the movie hinges around a choice Neo makes to take a red pill and to wake up from his blissful ignorance. Bob talks with Max Read, a writer and editor at New York Magazine, about what red-pilling has come to signify on the internet and in American politics, and how different groups use the potent metaphor."]
"Reclaim the Streets." This is America #72 (May 9, 2019) ["In this episode, first we talk with people involved in the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance about the connections between policing and counter-insurgency, as well as new surveillance technologies, in both occupied Palestinian territories and along the so-called US and Mexico border. We then open up into a broad discussion on current affairs."]
Reich, Robert, et al. "Fighting for a Green New Deal." Best of the Left #1242 (January 18, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the groundwork for a Green New Deal as it's being laid and the fight that is heating up around the policies, not just between political parties but between the separate wings (and generations) of the Democratic Party."]
Requiem for the American Dream (USA: Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott, 2015: 72 mins) ["In Requiem for the American Dream, renowned intellectual figure Noam Chomsky deliberates on the defining characteristics of our time—the colossal concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and fewer, with the rise of a rapacious individualism and complete collapse of class consciousness. Chomsky does this by discussing some of the key principles that have brought this culture to the pinnacle of historically unprecedented inequality by tracing a half century of policies designed to favour the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. The film serves to provide insights into how we got here, and culminates as a reminder that these problems are not inevitable. Once we remember those who came before and those who will come after, we see that we can, and should, fight back."]
Rhodes, Ben. "Confronting the Consequences of Obama's Foreign Policy." Deconstructed (June 22, 2018)
Ribakoff, Sam. "Whose Utopia Gets to Be Built?: An Interview with Eric Nusbaum." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 6, 2020) ["The Story of Chavez Ravine, the hilltop neighborhood that was destroyed first with a promise of public housing projects, and then sold to build Dodger Stadium, is a well-known local civic shame. In his first book, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, Eric Nusbaum fills in the details of the story by closely tracing the stories of the characters involved; from the Aréchiga family, the last family to be evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, who only wanted to live in peace in their slice of utopia, to Frank Wilkinson, a Westside L.A. rich kid turned fervent public housing activist and politician who fought to build a public housing utopia in place of the communities of Chavez Ravine, to Walter O’Malley, the visionary New York owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who dreamed of building the perfect stadium of the future for his beloved game of baseball. Throughout the book, Nusbaum contextualizes the characters’ stories by illuminating the historical forces that put the tragedy into motion; from rising racist backlash against immigrants, to the Red Scare’s fight against leftists, to Los Angeles’s civic hysteria for the prestige of big sports games, and, of course, the history of baseball and how the Brooklyn Dodgers came to be the Los Angeles Dodgers. This chain of events still reverberates through the families involved."]
Riccio, Alexander. "Labor's Identity Against the Enclosure of History." Laborwave (2019)
Rich, Nathaniel. "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change." The New York Times Magazine (August 1, 2018) ["This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it."]
Deveraux, Ryan and Nicole Ramos. "Journalists, Lawyers & Activists Targeted in Sweeping U.S. Intelligence Gathering Effort on Border." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019) ["Newly revealed documents show the U.S. government created a secret database of activists and journalists who were documenting the Trump administration’s efforts to thwart a caravan of migrants hoping to win asylum in the U.S. An investigation from San Diego’s NBC 7 revealed the list was shared among Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the FBI. It included the names of 10 journalists—seven of whom are U.S. citizens—along with nearly four dozen others listed as “organizers” or “instigators.” House Democrats are now calling for the full disclosure of the government’s secret list. We speak with one of the activists targeted by the government, Nicole Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project. The project works with asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico. We also speak with Ryan Devereaux, staff reporter at The Intercept. In early February, he wrote an article titled “Journalists, Lawyers, and Activists Working on the Border Face Coordinated Harassment from U.S. and Mexican Authorities.”"]
Dion, Dennis. "Priming the Pump of War: Toward a Post-Ethnic, Post-Racial Fascism." C-Theory (November 6, 2002)
Documenting Hate: New American NAZIs Frontline (November 20, 2018) ["In the wake of the deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, FRONTLINE and ProPublica present a new investigation into white supremacist groups in America – in particular, a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military. Continuing FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s reporting on violent white supremacists in the U.S. (which has helped lead to multiple arrests), this joint investigation shows the group’s terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally."]
Dreifus, Claudia. ""I’m not the Resistance, I’m a reporter’: An Interview with April Ryan." NYR Daily (November 12, 2018) ["At the top of Donald Trump’s journalistic enemies list is April Ryan, the fifty-one-year-old American Urban Radio Networks correspondent. Ryan—who has covered the presidency for more than two decades—is also an on-air political analyst for CNN and the author of three books, including the recently released Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House. Around Washington, D.C., Ryan holds the title Dean of the White House Press Corps. “I watched her get up,” the president fumed last week before departing for Paris. “I mean, you talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing… She’s very nasty, and she shouldn’t be… You’ve got to treat the White House and the Office of the Presidency with respect.” What Trump may find disrespectful is that Ryan has a penchant for asking tough questions on topics he’d doesn’t want to hear about: voter suppression, civil rights, Russia. Ryan is also black, female, middle-aged, and resolute. In January 2018, she asked, “Mr. President, are you a racist?” This boldness has made Ryan the target of Trump’s more ardent followers. She receives frequent death threats. On a reporter’s salary, she’s had to hire a full-time bodyguard. There are reports that Cesar Sayoc Jr., who is accused of sending pipe bombs to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Barack Obama, and others, also had Ryan on his mailing list."]
Dube, Oeindrila. "The Art and Science of Apologies and Forgiveness." The Best of the Left #1258 (March 22, 2019) ["Today we take a look at apologies and forgiveness, some of the building blocks for a healthy human society, at a moment in time when society is reorganizing itself in several ways at once, making it all the more necessary that we refresh ourselves on the fundamentals of how best to relate to each other."]
Dueñas, Jessica and Kelly Holstine. "We Can’t Back People Who Hate Our Kids: Kentucky & Minnesota Teachers of Year Boycott Trump Meeting." Democracy Now (May 3, 2019) ["We speak with two award-winning teachers who are trying to teach Trump a lesson. On Monday, Jessica Dueñas, the 2019 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, and Kelly Holstine, the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, boycotted a White House ceremony honoring them and other state winners of the award in protest of the Trump administration’s education policies. But Dueñas and Holstine skipped the event to register their opposition to Trump’s policies on immigration, education and LGBTQ rights, saying many of the White House policies directly impact their immigrant and refugee students."]
Duhigg, Charles. "A Tale of Two Cities." On the Media (May 15, 2020) ["Opacity, we know, is antithetical to public health in a pandemic. But there are more ways to undermine public trust and cooperation than suppressing bad news. Because when news is bad — or simply uncertain — human behavior can go in all the wrong directions. Fortunately, public health authorities have been through this before. From polio in the 1950s through H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola from 2014 to 2016, their experience has coalesced into a compendium of best practices for informing the public: a literal playbook published by the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. It’s dedicated to the dos — and the please, please, please don’ts — of pandemic communications. In a recent New Yorker article, Charles Duhigg, host of the podcast How To! With Charles Duhigg, wrote the tale of two cities, Seattle and New York, struck back to back with coronavirus outbreaks. One city’s leaders followed the CDC guidelines to the letter. The other’s... did not. Duhigg and Bob discuss the cities' experiences, and the lessons they offer as the virus continues to spread."]
Duncombe, Stephen. "Cultural Hegemony." Beautiful Trouble (ND) ["Politics is not only fought out in state houses, workplaces or on battlefields, but also in the language we use, the stories we tell, and the images we conjure — in short, in the ways we make sense of the world."]
Dunham, Robert and Kyle Pope. "The death penalty—myth, propaganda, and truth." The Kicker (November 15, 2019) ["On this week’s Kicker, Robert Dunham, executive director at the Death Penalty Information Center, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, discuss the mistakes national and local reporters make in their coverage of the death penalty. Dunham explains the culture of fear that sustained American execution at its peak, and the importance of reporting policy over politics."]
"Dying in a Leadership Vacuum." New England Journal of Medicine (October 8, 2020)
Eban, Katherine. "Bottle of Lies: How Poor FDA Oversight & Fraud in Generic Drug Industry Threaten Patients’ Health." Democracy Now (May 20, 2019) ["Generic drugs amount to 90% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S., most of them made in plants in India and China. Generic drugs can be more affordable, but in her new explosive book “Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom,” investigative journalist Katherine Eban works with two industry whistleblowers to expose how some manufacturers are cutting corners at the cost of quality and safety. This comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just issued its own update on the state of pharmaceutical quality that found the drug quality of factories in India and China scored below the world average. FDA officials say that’s because more robust inspections have uncovered problems and that “the quality of the drug supply has never been higher.”"]Eisen, Jessica. "Animals under the law: What options are there for animals to 'lawyer up'?" Ideas (March 22, 2019) ["Under the eyes of the law, animals that live in our homes or on a farm are 'property.' But there's a growing movement to grant some animals like chimpanzees, elephants and dolphins 'non-human persons' status. Harvard Law School doctoral candidate Jessica Eisen thinks the law could do even better than that."]
Eisenbrandt, Matt. "'Assassination of a Saint': Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero Is Canonized as Murder Remains Unsolved." Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["As Pope Francis names Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint, we continue our interview with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
---. "Vatican Canonizes Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, Who Was Killed by a U.S.-Backed Death Squad." Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["Pope Francis has named Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint. Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Wearing the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was assassinated, Pope Francis praised Romero for disregarding his own life “to be close to the poor and to his people.” We speak with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
Elias, Robert. "National Pastimes: Mindless Militarism in American Sports." No Citations Needed #59 (December 5, 2018) ["F-22 flyovers, 160-foot flags draped across the playing field, full color guards, camouflage uniforms, The Star-Spangled Banner, God Bless America, Support The Troops Nights, special perks for vets. What is the origin of the runaway military worship so ingrained in our sports? How did our professional baseball and football leagues become so infused to our military state and what can fans of these sports do to deconstruct and pushback against the forces of jingoism and military fetishizing?"]
Elk, Mike and Jay O'Neal. "From Coal Miners to Teachers: West Virginia Continues to Lead Radical Labor Struggle in the U.S." Democracy Now (March 5, 2018) ["For decades, West Virginia has been at the forefront of labor activism in the United States. As the state’s teachers continue their historic strike, which has shut down every single West Virginia school, we look at the history of the labor activism in the Mountain State. We speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled 'West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.'"]
Elk, Mike, et al. "Teachers in Revolt: Meet the Educators in Kentucky & Oklahoma Walking Out over School Funding." Democracy Now (April 4, 2018) ["Oklahoma’s public education budget has been slashed more than any other state since the start of the recession in 2008, and its teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation. Scores of teachers are planning to begin a 123-mile protest march today from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, thousands of teachers continue to protest in Kentucky, demanding a reversal to a provision in a recently passed bill about sewage treatment that gutted their pension benefits. On Monday, every school in the state was closed either due to spring break or in anticipation of a massive rally in the capital of Frankfort, where teachers filled the rotunda of the Kentucky state Capitol, chanting “Fund our schools!” This year’s wave of teacher rebellions began in West Virginia, where teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after a historic strike. We speak to four guests: Oklahoma teacher Andrea Thomas, Kentucky state lawmaker Attica Scott, retired Kentucky teacher Mickey McCoy and labor journalist Mike Elk."]
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."]
Estefan, Kareem, et al. "Understanding Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS)." Best of the Left #1249 (February 12, 2019) ["Today we take a look at both the BDS movement and the backlash response to it resulting in firings and legislation in many states (and pending federally) to restrict employment and business opportunities from those who fail to pledge in writing to not support of the boycott of Israel."]
Estes, Nick. "Indigenous Historian Nick Estes on Toppling Statues, Racist Team Names & COVID-19 in Indian Country." Democracy Now (July 6, 2020) ["President Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore comes after months of escalating coronavirus infections in Native communities, but Indigenous scholar and activist Nick Estes says South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, like many of her Republican counterparts across the U.S., has taken a “hallucination-based approach to the COVID-19 pandemic,” and notes she refused to enforce social distancing at this weekend’s event that attracted thousands of people. He also reacts to growing pressure on the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians to change their racist names." Part 1: "'He Wasn’t Invited': How Trump’s Racist Mt. Rushmore Celebration Violated Indigenous Sovereignty.".]
---. "Our History of the Future." Dig (June 29, 2019) ["Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance." Michael Benton -- This is one of the best discussions I have heard about indigenous cultures, settler colonialism, racism/apartheid in America and intergenerational indigenous resistance movements. I cannot laud this enough - totally revolutionized and extended my thinking/understanding of contemporary movements like Standing Rock and their place in the long history of intergenerational indigenous struggles against genocidal policies.]
---. "Standing Rock and the History of Indigenous Resistance in America." BackStory (September 6, 2019) ["In 2016, protests broke out at Standing Rock – a reservation in North and South Dakota – to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Indigenous peoples and other activists opposed the pipeline because they believed it violated sacred sites and threatened to contaminate the Missouri River, a major source of drinking water in the region. Taking social media by storm, the #noDAPL movement quickly became an international headline. On this episode, Nathan sits down with historian and activist Nick Estes to talk about his experience at Standing Rock, the history of Indigenous resistance, and the current state of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Estes’ new book is called Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance."]
Fang, Lee. "Koch Data Mining Company Helped Inundate Voters with Anti-Immigrant Messages." The Intercept (September 9, 2019)
Fang, Lee and Levi Tilleman. "Senior Democrat Caught on Tape Pressuring Progressive Congressional Candidate to Drop Out of Race." Democracy Now (April 26, 2018) ["A new exposé by The Intercept confirms how powerful Democratic officials have worked to crush competitive progressive candidates in primaries around the country, choosing instead to back moderate, business-friendly candidates. This comes after President Obama used his farewell address to encourage Americans upset about the outcome of the 2016 election to take action by running for office themselves. We speak with Levi Tillemann, a Colorado man who heeded Obama’s call and found himself disappointed by the process, after he was repeatedly pressured by powerful Democrats not to run. In fact, he recorded a conversation in which he was directly told to drop out of the Democratic primary for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District by none other than the second-ranking House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland. We go to Denver to speak with Levi Tillemann, a candidate in Colorado’s Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional District, which includes Denver. He is featured in the new exposé by Lee Fang, investigative journalist at The Intercept, “Secretly Taped Audio Reveals Democratic Official Pressuring Progressive to Bow Out of Election.”"]
Farooqi, Salik, et al. "The Pandemics Social and Psychic Context." Trotsky and the Wild Orchids #36 (June 2, 2020) ["Salik Farooqi comes on the show to discuss the pandemic from the perspective of political sociology. For this episode we read: An Organic Crisis is upon Us; On the Concept of History; Gooseberries; Pandemic’s Lesson: Global Capitalism is Uneven and Dangerously Particularistic; The Myth of Sisyphus; and the Wiki on total football."]
Featherstone, Liza. "Consumer Society and the Curation of Culture." Citations Needed (November 21, 2018) ["Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism. But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world? We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to discuss the problems and potential of the much-maligned, but often scapegoated, focus group."]
Feidt, Dan. "The Secret Chats of the Alt-Right." On the Media (March 22, 2019) ["What happens behind the scenes as the foot soldiers of far-right groups debate and plan their next moves? One place to find out is on a chatroom platform called Discord. Popular among gamers and other internet-savvy communities, it's also become a home for those looking to meet like-minded white nationalists. A large trove of their back-and-forth was uncovered by the left-wing media collective Unicorn Riot, which then revealed the conversations of neo-Nazi groups such as Patriot Front and the now-defunct Traditionalist Workers Party. Unicorn Riot scored its first load of Discord chats in August 2017 — the weekend of the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. It reported stories, shared the leaked chats and built a database of hundreds of thousands of messages completely open to the public. Bob speaks with Dan Feidt, co-founder of Unicorn Riot, about what his team has learned since the project began."]
Feitlowitz, Marguerite. "A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture." The New York Times (Reproduction of Ch. 1 from the book of the same name)
Fekete, Andrea. "The Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: # 16 $21 Trillion in Unaccounted-for Government Spending from 1998 to 2015." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Felber, Garrett. "The Missing Malcolm X." Boston Review (November 28, 2018) ["Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy. "]
Feldman, Matthew, et al. "Should We Fear the Rise of the Far Right?" LSE IQ #22 (February 6, 2019)
Ferguson, Charles. "From Trump to Nixon: 'Watergate Film Explains 'How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President.'" Democracy Now (October 4, 2019) ["President Donald Trump called openly Thursday for the leaders of Ukraine and China to investigate Trump’s campaign rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter for corruption. Trump’s explicit remarks during a press conference came as leaders of the Democratic-led House pushed ahead rapidly with their impeachment investigation. President Trump is just the fourth U.S. president to face a formal impeachment inquiry, joining Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. We spend the hour looking at back at the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and is the focus of a documentary titled “Watergate — Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President.” Drawing on 3,400 hours of audiotapes, archival footage and declassified documents, the film chronicles the dramatic events surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in 1972, which precipitated Nixon’s eventual resignation two years later under threat of impeachment. We play clips from the film and speak with its director, Charles Ferguson, who won an Academy Award for his documentary “Inside Job.”"]
Ferrell, Jeff. "Drift." This Is Not a Pipe (May 9, 2019) ["Jeff Ferrell discusses his book Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge with Chris Richardson. Ferrell is Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University, USA, and Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, UK. He is author of the books Crimes of Style, Tearing Down the Streets, Empire of Scrounge, and, with Keith Hayward and Jock Young, the first and second editions of Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, winner of the 2009 Distinguished Book Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology."]
Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America. Verso, 2012. ["Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."]
Fithian, Lisa. " Shut It Down: Veteran Organizer Lisa Fithian Offers a Guide to Resistance in Era of Climate Crisis." Democracy Now (September 6, 2019) ["Lisa Fithian is a longtime organizer and nonviolent direct action trainer since the 1970s. She has shut down the CIA. She has occupied Wall Street, disrupted the World Trade Organization and stood her ground in Tahrir Square. She has walked in solidarity with the tribal leaders at Standing Rock and defended communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She joined us at the Democracy Now! studio to talk about her new book, which was published this week, titled “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance.” Fithian is currently on a book tour and doing a new workshop called “Escalating Resistance: Mass Rebellion Training.”" Part Two: “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance”: Lisa Fithian Reflects on Decades of Protest."]
Foster, John Bellamy, interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou. "Climate change is the product of how capitalism 'values' nature." Monthly Review (November 18, 2018) ["Climate change is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalist industrialization has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization as we know it may require the development of a view in direct opposition to the way in which capitalism “values” nature, according to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review."]
Frank, Casey. "How Investigative Reporting & Survivor Testimony Toppled Billionaire Serial Abuser Jeffrey Epstein." Democracy Now (July 9, 2019) [ Michael Benton -- I complain a lot about the failures of corporate media. I would like to step back and give a nod of appreciation to the Miami Herald for their impressive and difficult investigative reporting - good episode looking into their work on this issue when powerful people just wanted it to go away. This is what we want to see from the fourth estate, watchdog journalism that isn't afraid to defend the powerless. -- "Billionaire hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein was charged in a Manhattan federal court Monday with sex trafficking and conspiracy. He is accused of sexually assaulting and trafficking dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005 at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein, who has counted Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton among his friends, pleaded not guilty and is being held in jail until his bond hearing next week. Several accusers were present in federal court in Manhattan on Monday. In November 2018, the Miami Herald published a series of articles by investigative reporter Julie Brown exposing Epstein’s crimes and the high-powered people, such as President Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who protected him. Epstein’s arrest after more than a decade of accusations is in part being hailed as a feat of local investigative journalism. We speak with Casey Frank, the senior editor for investigations at the Miami Herald."]
Freeberg, Ernst. "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement (Basic Books, 2020)." New Books in Biography (October 13, 2020) ["In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial city brought suffering, but it also inspired a compassion for animals that fueled a controversial anti-cruelty movement. From the center of these debates, Henry Bergh launched a shocking campaign to grant rights to animals. Ernest Freeberg's book A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement (Basic Books, 2020) is revelatory social history, awash with colorful characters. Cheered on by thousands of men and women who joined his cause, Bergh fought with robber barons, Five Points gangs, and legendary impresario P.T. Barnum, as they pushed for new laws to protect trolley horses, livestock, stray dogs, and other animals. Raucous and entertaining, A Traitor to His Species tells the story of a remarkable man who gave voice to the voiceless and shaped our modern relationship with animals. Ernest Freeberg is a distinguished professor of humanities and head of the history department at the University of Tennessee. He has authored three award-winning books, including The Age of Edison. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee."]
Freeman, Chas and Jeffrey Sachs. "COVID's Cold War." Open Source (May 7, 2020) ["The coronavirus may have arrived just in time to punctuate a 50 year turn in the grand tide of events. It could mark, that is, a fresh fixation in American minds on an external enemy. It could become the opening round even of a new Cold War, with China this time. But at what price? The hybrid giant “Chi-Merica” was the name of a partnership as well as a rivalry that grew out of Richard Nixon’s first visit to China in 1972. It was the combination that made China the workshop of the world, for better and worse. In the last decade Chi-Merica has driven a huge portion of global growth. But it’s at risk suddenly in the poisoned fallout of a pandemic. Between the pandemic still spreading, and the presidential campaign taking shape, this is tryout time in the blame game. President Trump’s contentious diplomat, Mike Pompeo, has walked back his accusation that the killer virus came out of a Chinese lab at Wuhan. Probably because US intelligence wouldn’t back him up, the Secretary of State now says there’s evidence on the point, but no certainty. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is still the point man among “Blame China” Republicans. This week, he said the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for every death, every job lost, every retirement nest egg cracked by COVID-19, and he said that Xi Jinping and his comrades must be made to pay the price. Between Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, meantime, the campaign videos for both sides argue the same point: that the Other Guy was chummier with China and said sweeter things about the Chinese leadership in happier times."]
Frey, John Carlos. "Deported Parents Say Trump Administration Is Still Separating Families at Border." Democracy Now (August 15, 2018) ["Nearly three weeks after the court-imposed deadline for reuniting families forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration has admitted that 559 children remain in government custody. More than 360 of these children are separated from parents who have been deported by the U.S. government. Most of the families separated at the border were seeking asylum from violence in their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Instead, the parents were charged in federal court with a crime for illegally crossing the border, then held in jail and detention. The children, some still breastfeeding, were sent to shelters around the country. Judge Dana Sabraw, who ruled the Trump administration must reunite all separated families, said, “For every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.” For more, we speak with John Carlos Frey, award-winning investigative reporter with The Marshall Project and special correspondent with ”PBS NewsHour.” He is recently back from reporting trips in Guatemala and Nogales, Mexico, where he spoke with asylum seekers waiting for days and even weeks to enter the United States." Part two: "Military Cover-Up? 100s of Migrants Feared Dead in Mass Grave at AZ’s Barry Goldwater Bombing Range."]
---. "Why the Real Migration Crisis Is in Central America, Not at the Southern U.S. Border." Democracy Now (April 1, 2019) ["President Trump has announced the United States will cut off funding to the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that are the primary source of a wave of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, including caravans of families with children. He is also threatening to close the border with Mexico. This comes after Trump declared a national emergency to justify redirecting money earmarked for the military to pay for building a wall at the border. We speak with John Carlos Frey, award-winning investigative reporter and PBS News Hour special correspondent who has reported extensively on immigration and recently traveled with the first migrant caravan from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border."]
Fuentes, Agustin. "The Evolution of Belief." Against the Grain (October 23, 2019) ["Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity. But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of what makes us human."]
"Full Video: FOX News Town Hall With Bernie Sanders." Real Clear Politics (April 15, 2019)
Gallagher, Katherine, John Kiriakou and Sejal Zota. "Gina Haspel, Rule of Law and Torture; The National Immigration Project And Protecting Haitian Refugees." Law and Disorder Radio (March 26, 2018) ["Gina Haspel, Rule of Law And Torture: Nazi generals and Nazi leaders were prosecuted at the end of World War II for war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide. These crimes were incorporated into international law. The chief prosecutor was Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court judge. The Nazis defended themselves by arguing that they were just following orders. This defense was deemed unavailing. In many cases, they were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms or hung. He said that the war crimes tribunal at Nirenberg was not merely victors’ justice. But that the principles it followed would be universal and applied in the future, to all countries including the USA. And indeed, the United States signed on to the Geneva Conventions and Convention Against Torture and incorporate both the crimes and the concept of universal jurisdiction into its law. Gina Haspel has been nominated by President Donald Trump to head the CIA. She is a war criminal. She violated both international and national law by running a black site secret detention center in Thailand where men were tortured. Although there were several court orders that the evidence be preserved, Gina Haspel had the videotapes of torture destroyed. John Brennan, Obama’s ex head of the CIA, who was involved in the torture program, recently came to her defense, stating that she was just following orders: The Nazi defense. Trump supports torture. He believes that torture works. This is both immoral and untrue. He says he is for waterboarding and worse. He now has a subordinate with whom he is in agreement. Obama refused to prosecute the lawbreakers. Instead he threw CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou in prison for two years for disclosing American torture. He said we must look forward, not backward. This greenlighted what is going on now with Haspel. Michael Ratner warned us about this eventuality. The European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights may seek Haspel’s arrest if she goes to Germany. Such is the irony of history that the German fascist government that perpetrated the greatest crimes against humanity has been superseded by an American government which condones and is perpetuating them as well. The National Immigration Project And Protecting Haitian Refugees: The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn on March 15 to block President Trump’s cancellation of temporary protected status which had been granted to more than 50,000 Haitian refugees because of the terrible conditions in that country since the hurricane in 2010. The National Immigration Project declared President Trump’s actions to be unlawful, racially motivated, and evidence of a complete lack of knowledge of immigration law. The TPS program exempts from deportation people from countries in turmoil due to war, natural disasters, and other extraordinary conditions. The suit alleges that the federal government was arbitrary and capricious in his decision to end the program and was motivated by Donald Trump’s “racial and national origin animus towards patients.” The suit cites Trump’s demeaning remarks towards Haitians and Haiti. He has said that Haitians have AIDS and Haiti is a “s&*t hole” country. The Trump administration‘s position is that protecting Haitians is no longer necessary because conditions in Haiti have improved."]
Galvani, Alison. "Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year." Democracy Now (February 19, 2020) ["As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. The study in The Lancet — one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals — found that Medicare for All, supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will save money and is more cost-effective than “Medicare for All Who Want It, “a model supported by Pete Buttigieg. Sanders referenced the study at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. For more, we go to New Haven, Connecticut, where we’re joined by Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale’s School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the new Lancet study, “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA.”"]
German, Mike. "Ex-FBI Agent Speaks Out: Federal Authorities Have Downplayed White Supremacist Violence for Too Long." Democracy Now (August 5, 2019) ["According to The New York Times, white extremist shooters have now killed at least 63 people in the United States over the past 18 months. Late last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that crime driven by racism and white supremacy was on the rise compared to the past nine months. But former FBI agents say there is reluctance within the agency to tackle white nationalist violence in part due to President Trump’s rhetoric. We speak with Mike German, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law. From 1988 to 2004, German served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism."]
Gallagher, Ryan. "Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal." The Intercept (August 1, 2018)
Galvani, Alison. "Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year." Democracy Now (February 19, 2020) ["As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. The study in The Lancet — one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals — found that Medicare for All, supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will save money and is more cost-effective than “Medicare for All Who Want It, “a model supported by Pete Buttigieg. Sanders referenced the study at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. For more, we go to New Haven, Connecticut, where we’re joined by Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale’s School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the new Lancet study, “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA.”"]
Genc, Elif. "Mutual Aid & the Anarchist Radical Imagination." Darts and Letters (October 6, 2023) ["There’s a story you can tell about the post-Occupy left gravitating towards a more state-oriented kind of politics, exemplified by the enthusiasm around Bernie Sanders, The Squad, and others. However, this misses autonomous and anarchist-inflected (and sometimes, explicitly anarchist) social movements that have brought enormous energy, and enormous change–from the movement for black lives, to organizing for Indigenous sovereignty, and so much more. In this episode, we examine the theory and practice of anti-statist organizing. First, we look at the work of the late libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin. Bookchin broke with Marxism, and later anarchism, and eventually developed an idiosyncratic ecological and revolutionary theory that said radical democracy could be achieved at the municipal level. This Vermont-based theorist has been enormously influential, including in an area formerly known as Rojava. There, the Kurdish people are making these ideas their own, and developing a radical feminist democracy–while fighting to survive. We speak with Elif Genc about these ideas, and about how the Kurdish diaspora implements them within Canada. Next, what is mutual aid? Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factory of Evolution (1902) examines how cooperation and reciprocity are core to nature. To anarchists, this should be generalized to radical political program, and a radically new way of living. Darts and Letters producer Marc Apollonio speaks to Payton McDonald about how the theory and practice of mutual aid drives many social movements across North America. Payton is co-directing a four-part documentary series called the Elements of Mutual Aid: Experiments Towards Liberation. ... Finally, how do social movement scholars understand (or misunderstand) autonomous social movements? There’s a tendency to dismiss movements that do not make clear tangible demands, and deliver pragmatic policy victories (see: Occupy). However, Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish say that this misses something key to radical social movements: their radical imagination. These movements do not want to just improve this system, they want to imagine, and create (or prefigure), a different system. We discuss their book The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, the blind spots of social movement theory, and whether there might be a new style of organizing emerging that is somewhere between the the statist and the anti-statist."]
Genovese, Michael. "The Modern Presidency: Six Debates That Define the Institution (Columbia University Press. 2022)." New Books in Political Science (November 22, 2022) ["The Modern Presidency: Six Debates That Define the Institution (Columbia University Press, 2022) is a concisely written book that helps makes sense of the most powerful office in America. Michael frames each chapter through a key conundrum about the nature of the presidency. He presents the strongest cases for the sides of every major debate, along with his own view. In addition to providing insight into the modern American presidency, Michael demonstrates how to think about tough issues with remarkable clarity. Michael A. Genovese is professor of political science and president of the global policy institute at Loyola Marymount University."]
Gergen, Mary and Kenneth J. Gergen. "Social Construction of the Real and the Good: Introduction." Social Constructionism: A Reader. ed. Mary Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen. Sage, 2003: 2-3.
Gergen, Mary and Kenneth J. Gergen. "Social Construction of the Real and the Good: Introduction." Social Constructionism: A Reader. ed. Mary Gergen and Kenneth J. Gergen. Sage, 2003: 2-3.
Gerlent, Lee. "Trump Admin Hints It May Resume Family Separation at Border; ACLU Says 'Public Outcry Is Critical.'" Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["The Trump administration is reportedly considering plans to resume its policy of forcibly separating migrant children from their families along the U.S.-Mexico border, even as the full number of people torn apart the last time it carried out the widely condemned practice remains unclear. A new report by Amnesty International suggests immigration officials separated some 6,000 families between April and August, a far higher number of children and parents torn apart than previously thought. Trump administration officials are now considering plans to detain asylum-seeking families together for up to 20 days and then force parents to choose either to stay detained together for months or years while their immigration case proceeds or to allow their children to be taken to a government shelter where their relatives or others can seek custody. We speak with Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. He is the lead lawyer on the ACLU’s national challenge to the Trump administration’s family separation practice."]
German, Mike. "Ex-FBI Agent Speaks Out: Federal Authorities Have Downplayed White Supremacist Violence for Too Long." Democracy Now (August 5, 2019) ["According to The New York Times, white extremist shooters have now killed at least 63 people in the United States over the past 18 months. Late last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that crime driven by racism and white supremacy was on the rise compared to the past nine months. But former FBI agents say there is reluctance within the agency to tackle white nationalist violence in part due to President Trump’s rhetoric. We speak with Mike German, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law. From 1988 to 2004, German served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism."]
---. "Russiagate Has Become a Conspiracy Trap Obscuring How Trump Is Damaging Nation." Democracy Now (February 23, 2018) ["Russia-American journalist Masha Gessen talks about how President Trump has benefited from what she calls the “conspiracy trap” around Russia’s role in the 2016 election. She wrote last year, “Russiagate is helping him—both by distracting from real, documentable, and documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.”"]
Gessen, Masha, Gary Hart and Martha Minnow. "American Autocracy." Open Source (August 6, 2020) ["What we know about our presidential race 90 days from the finish, perhaps all anyone knows, is that a wounded Donald Trump will not go quietly, if he goes at all, if he does not invoke emergency powers to cancel the election. The thought this hour was—and still is—to draw out the astute Russian-and-American diagnostician Masha Gessen, a resistance figure in two countries and author of a new book titled Surviving Autocracy. But then the plot thickened, particularly around the mayhem in Oregon after federal shock-troops had landed, over the objections of state governor, city mayor, and a militant wall of moms. A grave but lonely warning turned up in a New York Times guest-opinion piece. It was written by the sometime Colorado senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, who joined this week’s conversation from his cabin a few mountains away from Denver."]
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. "Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Rachel Kushner." Lannan Podcasts (April 17, 2019) ["Ruth Wilson Gilmore is director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and a professor of geography at the City University of New York. She is most famous for arguing that the movement for abolition, with its proud history of challenging slavery, should be applied today to the abolition of prisons. In an era when 2.3 million people are behind bars in the United States, she challenges us to think about whether it is ever necessary or productive to lock people in cages. She warns of the “nightmare made palatable by the terrifying numbers of prisoners and prisons produced by the last generation, while we were all, presumably, awake.” But her hope lies in the fact that “just as real was the growing grassroots activism against the expanded use of criminalization and cages as a catchall solution to social problems. In order to realize their dreams of justice in individual cases, the [freedom] riders decided, through struggle, debate, failure, and renewal, that they must seek general freedom for all from a system in which punishment has become as industrialized as making cars, clothes, or missiles, or growing cotton.” Gilmore wrote Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California(2007) and contributed to The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007). The American Sociological Society honored Gilmore with its Angela Davis Award for Public Scholarship in 2012. A tireless activist, she has co-founded many social justice organizations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network."]
---. "Purple Episode 3: Let's Not Discount Reality." On the Media (November 25, 2019) ["One of the reasons so many Americans have lost trust and faith is democratic institutions is simple misunderstanding about how the system is designed to work. Another, however, is familiarity with how the system does work— which isn’t exactly of, by and for the People. Anand Giridharadas is author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He says the founders also didn’t plan on politicians constantly trash-talking government itself and that a decline in trust in government is the result of a concerted, private sector propaganda war waged over the last four decades."]
Glenza, Jessica. "The One-Woman Lobby Machine Behind the 'Heartbeat' Bills." On the Media (May 17, 2019) ["For decades, the anti-abortion movement has tried to chip away at Roe v. Wade by putting up obstacles to abortion access through restrictions on clinics. Now the tactics seem to be shifting, as evidenced by this week's new abortion ban in Alabama and a series of so-called "heartbeat" bills passed in several states in recent months. For nearly a decade, Janet Porter has been a one-woman lobbying machine with her group Faith2Action. She's railed against gay marriage, advocated for "conversion therapy," and championed the racist birther conspiracy theory. She has also been pushing for a so-called "heartbeat" bill which would ban abortions after six weeks, a move that used to divide abortion groups. Jessica Glenza is a health reporter from The Guardian who recently profiled Porter. This week, she spoke to Bob about why the term "heartbeat" bill is misleading and what Porter's tactics and politics tell us about how anti-abortion groups are operating."]
Goldman, Lawrence, et al. "The American Populists." In Our Time (June 15, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the C19th MidWest and Southern farmers' struggle for a better deal, claiming they suffered while industry and railroads thrived at their expense."]
Gooding-Williams, Robert. "Membership, Citizenship and Democracy." Public Books (September 24, 2019)
Goodman, Amy, et al. "Rise for Climate: Tens of Thousands March in San Francisco Calling for Fossil-Free World." Democracy Now (September 10, 2018) ["Hundreds of thousands of protesters in more than 90 countries joined a worldwide day of protest demanding urgent action to address climate change Saturday. In San Francisco, up to 30,000 people took part in the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march. It is believed to be the largest climate march ever on the West Coast. The protest came just days before the start of the Global Climate Action Summit being organized by California Governor Jerry Brown. Democracy Now! was in the streets of San Francisco for the march."]
Goodwin, Jeff. "W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction Is Essential Reading." Jacobin (September 21, 2022) ["Black Reconstruction is not only a towering work of history but also a work firmly embedded in the Marxist tradition. Du Bois reinterprets the Civil War as a social and political revolution “from below” — a workers’ revolution — that brought about the overthrow of both slavery and the Confederate state, thereby opening a door to interracial democracy in the South. The book then reinterprets the subsequent overthrow of this democracy as a class-based counterrevolution that destroyed the possibility of freedom for half the Southern working class and imposed a “dictatorship of capital” that brought about “an exploitation of labor unparalleled in modern times.”"]
Gornick, Vivian. "Book Talk 58: Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman." Think About It (March 17, 2023) ["What Is to Be Done? In her luminous biography Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (Yale UP, 2011), Vivian Gornick brings us back to this question, originally made by Lenin after a novel which suggests that in order to achieve egalitarianism and sexual liberation, revolutionaries have to live “as though hunted:” no romance, no sex, no friends, no conversation. This was the revolutionary tradition from - and against - which legendary anarchist feminist Emma Goldman sprung. Goldman refused the austere image of the revolutionary. For her, sex, passion, and love were inextricable from the human experience, and thus also inextricable from political life. She maintained, as Gornick says, a “timeless hunger for living life on a grand scale.” In her own—now famous—words: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” Goldman had immigrated from Lithuania to Rochester, New York in 1885 and became America's "most dangerous woman" by the powers that be of her time. Gornick, the radical feminist critic celebrated for Fierce Attachments (1987) and The Romance of American Communism (1977), recounts Goldman’s progression as an anarchist and feminist. Goldman’s feminism was often ambiguous. But Gornick suggests that precisely these conflicts explain her continued influence over generations of feminists after her. On the podcast, we spoke about Goldman’s radical political program and their resonance in our time. Gornick also wrote an original preface for a new Goldman reader from Warbler Press, The Essential Emma Goldman—Anarchism, Feminism, Liberation (2022)."]
Gostin, Lawrence. "WHO Adviser on Meat Plants: If We’re at War, the Weapons We Need Are Tests and PPE, Not Pork." Democracy Now (April 30, 2020) ["As President Trump invokes the Defense Production Act to bar local governments from closing meatpacking plants around the United States, we get response from a longtime adviser to the World Health Organization. “When Congress passed that act, it certainly did not have in mind that the president has the power or the right to put workers’ lives and health at risk,” says Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law. Gostin also discusses why he joined 40 leading center directors in a declaration this week that urges Trump and Congress to restore and increase WHO funding."]
Grady, Danielle. "Moving the Needle: Small Groups Push Outsize Changes." LEO Weekly (July 24, 2019)
Graeber, David. "On Inequality and Human History." Against the Grain (November 21, 2018) ["Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. Graeber interrogates this chronicle of paradise lost — and much more."]
Graeber, David and Astra Taylor. "Democracy May Not Exist, But We Will Miss It When It's Gone." At the Bookshop (December 16, 2019) ["In her latest book, Astra Taylor – ‘a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions’ (Naomi Klein) – argues that democracy is not just in crisis, but that real democracy, inclusive and egalitarian, has never existed. Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (Verso) aims to re-examine what we mean by democracy, what we want from it, and understand why it is so hard to realize."]
Grandin, Greg. "On American Expansion, Part One: The Myth of the Frontier." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["What are the stories that America has told about itself? In the first of a three-part series on the notion of American Exceptionalism, Brooke speaks with historian Greg Grandin about America's founding narrative: the country's expansion westward. In his new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Grandin traces how the idea of endless, unstoppable growth has influenced US policy and psychology — and how President Trump’s call for a barrier at the southern border upends the idea of America as a country of boundless possibility."]
The Great African Scandal (BBC: Robert Beckford, 2007: 48 mins) ["Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in ‘natural resources’ is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse."]
Greenhouse, Linda. "The Impeachment Question." The New York Review of Books (June 27, 2019)
---. "Glenn Greenwald." Lannan Lectures (September 27, 2017) ["Glenn Greenwald is an investigative journalist and author. A former constitutional lawyer, he founded the online global media outlet The Intercept with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill in 2014. He is the author of several best sellers, among them, How Would a Patriot Act?; With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful and the recent No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State. Greenwald has received numerous awards for his investigative journalism. In 2009 he was awarded the Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media for his “path breaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception, and controversial issues.” In 2010 he received an Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the arrest and detention of Chelsea Manning. In 2013 he led The Guardian’s reporting team that covered Edward Snowden and the NSA, which earned the newspaper the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013."]
---. "In a Major Free Speech Victory, a Federal Court Strikes Down a Law that Punishes Supporters of Israel Boycott." The Intercept (January 31, 2018)
---. "Roger Waters, Marielle Franco, and the Power of Inspiration in the Face of Darkness and Danger." The Intercept (October 25, 2018)
---. "White House Spread False Story About Venezuela Burning Aid Trucks to Win Support for War." Democracy Now (March 11, 2019) ["An investigation by The New York Times has found that several trucks carrying so-called humanitarian aid that were set ablaze during a showdown at the Colombia-Venezuela border last month were not caused by President Nicolás Maduro’s forces, as was widely reported at the time by the media and Trump administration officials. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. His latest piece is “NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda.”"]
Greenwald, Glenn and David Cay Johnston. "As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate?" Democracy Now (March 25, 2019) ["As congressional Democrats call on the Justice Department to release the full Mueller report, we speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who have closely followed the probes into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election: Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept and a leading critic of the media coverage of alleged Russian collusion, and David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times, now founder and editor of DCReport.org, who has written critically about Donald Trump for decades. His most recent book is “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.”"]
---. "The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More." Democracy Now (April 19, 2019) ["The Justice Department has released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report detailing Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia and President Trump’s attempts to impede the special counsel’s investigation. The report states the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,” but Mueller concluded, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller also outlined at least 10 instances where Trump attempted to impede the special counsel’s investigation, but Mueller came to no definitive conclusion on whether Trump broke the law by obstructing justice. In the report, Mueller suggests that this is a decision for Congress to make."]
Gribben, Crawford. "Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021)." New Books in Christian Studies (March 29, 2021) ["In America's Pacific Northwest a group of conservative Protestants have been conducting a new experiment in cultural transformation. Dissatisfied with what they see as the clumsy political engagement and vapid literary and artistic culture of mainstream Evangelicals, these Christian Reconstructionists have deployed an altogether different set of strategies for the long game, fueled by their Calvinist theology and much-more-hopeful apocalypse. In Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford UP, 2021), Crawford Gribben presents a hybrid study of historical, theological, literary, and anthropological analysis of this variant of Evangelical counter-culture. Gribben paints a rich and detailed portrait of this loosely banded, sometimes coordinated migration to the "American redoubt." This migration has led, in part, to the establishment of a network of communities and institutions that include churches, a liberal arts college, a publishing house, and an ambitious media strategy that has already had an outsize impact. From their outpost in Idaho and prompted by their revised postmillennial eschatology, these Christian conservatives are preparing to survive the collapse American society and to reconstruct a godly society that will usher in the Kingdom of Christ. For this group of born-again Protestants, their apocalyptic strategy is precisely to be left behind."]
Grim, Ryan. "Denver's City Council, Led by Democratic Socialist, Stuns For-Profit Prison Operators by Nuking Contracts." The Intercept (August 8, 2019)---. "Real Resistance." The Intercept (September 15, 2018) ["A Grassroots Uprising in Amish Country Begins to Find Meaning in Politics"]
Gross, Allie. "Charterize, Privatize, Christianize: The DeVos-Backed Policies That 'Gutted' Michigan Public Schools." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is facing new criticism after she struggled in a recent “60 Minutes” interview to explain why schools in her home state of Michigan are faring poorly under the policies she has championed. DeVos is a billionaire Republican activist and the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. She once served as chair of the American Federation for Children in Michigan, where she promoted school choice and worked to expand the state’s use of private charter schools. Many educators say the results of DeVos’s policies in Michigan have been disastrous. For more, we speak with Allie Gross, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. She covered education in Michigan as a freelance reporter and was a Teach for America teacher in a Detroit charter school."]
Guisado, Angelo. "Necessary to the Security of a Free State." Current Affairs (May 8, 2019) ["On the history of the second amendment, white militias, and border vigilantism…"]
Gusterson, Hugh and Elaine Scarry. "Are We Numb to Nukes?" Radio Open Source (April 10, 2014) ["We’re thinking our way through a plausible nuclear emergency with Elaine Scarry who reminds you – we’ve got a weapons monarchy in this democracy. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall and a nuclear football still accompanies the president at all times, nuclear missile silos still dot the great plains, and hundreds of nukes remain constantly on alert. How can we call it a democracy, the rule of the people, when there’s one man’s finger on the trigger that could destroy us all?"]
Haider, Asad. "Way more is possible: On depoliticization, resurgent radicalism and seeing the revolutionary horizon." This is Hell! #1137 (March 2, 2020) ["Writer Asad Haider examines the problems of depoliticization in modern politics - as the dominant ideological frame blinds us to the limits of our present politics and the possibilities of future alignments, the left must confront the failures of past revolutions and realize that another world is not just possible, it's necessary."]
Hall, Anna. "In the Shadow of 'Citizens United.'" Sojourners (January 27, 2014)
Hall, Suzanne, et al. "Is the Gentrification of Our Global Cities Inevitable?" LSE IQ #19 (October 2018) ["In 1964 the sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’ to describe the process of London’s working class neighbourhoods being taken over by the middle classes. Modest two-up two down terrace houses were bought cheap, done up and made into expensive residences. Once grand Victorian houses that had fallen on hard times and become lodging houses or homes to multiple families, were restored once again and sub-divided into luxury flats. Soon the working class residents had been squeezed out of the neighbourhood and its character changed completely. Fifty years on and this process continues apace in London and many other cities."]
Harris, David A. "The Attack on Elected District Attorneys." Criminal Injustice (September 7, 2019) ["As reform-minded elected prosecutors gain power across the U.S., they’re increasingly coming under fire from their federal counterparts — most recently, an anti-democratic tirade by U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, who attacked progressive district attorneys for doing what voters elected them to do."]
---. "Progressive Prosecutors Slapped Again." Criminal Injustice (September 24, 2019) ["A crime summit held recently in St. Louis was a virtual who's-who of high ranking city and state government officials. Conspicuously absent from the gathering were the progressive, African American district attorneys of St. Louis and Kansas City, who were excluded despite having been elected to the top law enforcement post in Missouri's two largest cities. We look at the latest in a trend of anti-democratic attacks on reformist elected prosecutors."]
Harvey, David. Reading Marx's Capital Volume 1 with David Harvey (Anthropologist, geographer and urban studies scholar David Harvey is a great guide to journey through Karl Marx's essential economic/historical book. Broken up into 13 episodes.)
Hasan, Mehdi. "The Noam Chomsky Interview." Deconstructed (October 31, 2019) ["Legendary linguist, activist, and political theorist Noam Chomsky has been speaking out against U.S. interventionism from Vietnam to Latin America to the Middle East since the 1960s. He’s the most cited author alive, but you won’t see him on the nightly news or in the pages of most major newspapers. On this week’s Deconstructed, Chomsky sits down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, the 2020 Democratic field, and why he opposed Trump’s Syria troop withdrawal."]
Hauser, Jeff. "The Do-Nothing Discipline: How political science fell into the thrall of fundamentalist forecasting." The Baffler #38 (March 2018)
Hayden, Michael Edison. "Prolific Alt-Right Propagandist's Identity Confirmed." Hatewatch (May 1, 2019)
Hazony, Yoram. "Where Did Conservatism Go?" Politics and Polemics (February 3, 2023) ["Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony discusses the Enlightenment, the American Founding, his latest book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Regnery Publishing, 2022), and Conservatism's past and future."]
Hedemann, Ed and Jeremy Scahill. "In Memoriam: David McReynolds, the Gay Socialist Pacifist Who Twice Ran for President, Dies at 88." Democracy Now (August 20, 2018) ["Longtime pacifist and socialist David McReynolds died Friday at the age of 88. Known to historian Howard Zinn and many others as a “hero of the antiwar movement,” McReynolds was a staff member with the War Resisters League from 1960 to 1999. There, he focused on counter-recruitment and helped organize one of the first draft card burnings. He went on to play a key role in some of major demonstrations against the Vietnam War and campaign for nuclear disarmament. McReynolds ran for president in 1980 and 2000 as an openly gay man. For more, we speak with two of his close friends. Ed Hedemann worked with McReynolds for decades at the War Resisters League. Jeremy Scahill is an investigative journalist and co-founder of The Intercept." Part two: "Friends Remember War Resisters League Activist & Socialist David McReynolds, Long Targeted by FBI."]
Hedges, Chris. "American Decline: A Case for Optimism." The Laura Flanders Show (January 16, 2019) ["Soul Fire Farm’s Leah Penniman talks with Chris Hedges, author of America: The Farewell Tour, about environmental threats, societal breakdown, and how we might come back together as humans. Then, a glimpse of CAGED, a play written and conceived by Hedges’ writing students in a high-security prison in New Jersey."]
Hedges, Chris. "American Decline: A Case for Optimism." The Laura Flanders Show (January 16, 2019) ["Soul Fire Farm’s Leah Penniman talks with Chris Hedges, author of America: The Farewell Tour, about environmental threats, societal breakdown, and how we might come back together as humans. Then, a glimpse of CAGED, a play written and conceived by Hedges’ writing students in a high-security prison in New Jersey."]
---. "Let Them Eat Dirt." The Chris Hedges Report (February 8, 2024) ["There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed."]
---. "The Permanent Lie, Our Biggest Threat." Truthdig (December 17, 2017) ["The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice."]
Heller, Nathan. "The Philosopher Redefining Equality." The New Yorker (January 7, 2019) ["Elizabeth Anderson thinks we’ve misunderstood the basis of a free and fair society."]
---. "The Permanent Lie, Our Biggest Threat." Truthdig (December 17, 2017) ["The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice."]
Henry, Marsha. "Reimagining Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and Militarisation in the Global Order." The London School of Economics and Political Science (September 20, 2017) ["Marsha Henry argues for reimagining peacekeeping, which starts with a return to critical theories and concepts in order to acknowledge the production of gendered, racial and classed inequalities in peacekeeping spaces and relations. In particular, turning to critical concepts such as standpoint, power geometries and space-time continuum, the colour line, militarised femininities, and intersectionality, the lecture traces the practical and policy dead-ends that arise when peacekeeping studies relies on policy and practice driven objectives, alone. Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security."]
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Caroline Tervo and Theda Skocpol. "How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of." The Guardian (September 26, 2018) ["In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy. But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out. Organized political mega-donors can get much more leverage through persistent organizations than from scattered, one-time contributions to particular politicians."]
Hickel, Jason. "The Neoliberal Optimism Industry." Citations Needed #58 (November 28, 2018) ["We're told the world is getting better all the time. In January, The New York Times' Nick Kristof explained "Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History." The same month, Harvard professor and Bill Gates' favorite optimist Steven Pinker lamented (in a special edition of Time magazine guest edited by - who else? - Bill Gates) the “bad habits of media... bring out the worst in human cognition”. By focusing so much on negative things, the theory goes, we are tricked into thinking things are getting worse when, in reality, it's actually the opposite. For the TEDtalk set, that the world is awesome and still improving is self-evidently true - just look at the data. But how true is this popular axiom? How accurate is the portrayal that the world is improving we so often seen in sexy, hockey stick graphs of upward growth and rapidly declining poverty? And how, exactly, are the powers that be "measuring" improvements in society? On this episode, we take a look at the ideological project of telling us everything's going swimmingly, how those in power cook the books and spin data to make their case for maintaining the status quo, and how The Neoliberal Optimism Industry is, at its core, an anti-intellectual enterprise designed to lull us into complacency and political impotence."]
Hicks, Stephen and James Orr. "Conservatism vs Liberalism." (Posted on Youtube: November 10, 2023)
Hirthler, Jason. "Colonizing the Western Mind." Counterpunch (March 2, 2018)
Hochschild, Arlie. "Anger and Mourning on the American Right." Conversations with History (October 5, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Arlie Hochschild for a discussion of her book "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right." Hochschild discusses formative influences shaping her intellectual journey, describes her pioneering work on the sociology of emotions, and traces the evolution of her methodology. She then explains the decision to pursue her study of the American right in Louisiana beginning in 2011; how she undertook an empathetic engagement with citizens devastated by pollution but committed to the oil and gas industry; and how she developed a deep story to explain the emotions motivating her subjects to support right wing perspectives despite the devastation of the environment which they appreciated and loved. She also discusses their attraction to the Trump phenomena. She concludes with the lessons learned and their implications for mending the divide that is tearing the country apart."]
Holt-Giménez, Eric. "A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism." The Distillery (Season 1 - ND) ["People are not going hungry because of food scarcity but because of inequality. Introducing global food systems and how they impact farmers and consumers, Eric Holt-Giménez unpacks the intersections of class, gender, and race from the unique vantage point of the food economy."]
Honey, Michael, et al. "The Real Martin Luther King." The Back Story (January 17, 2020) ["Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have celebrated his 91st birthday this week. King is celebrated as an American hero and championed in children’s books and inspirational posters, but have Americans lost sight of the real MLK?"]
Hook, Jennifer van. "It's Good to Be Counted." Democracy Works #9 (May 8, 2018) ["The next census is still a few years away in 2020, but the U.S. Census Bureau is already hard at work on preparing to count the more than 325 million people in the United States. The census is one of the few democratic norms that’s required by the Constitution, and the data collected has wide-ranging uses. The normally routine process has been disrupted this year by Trump administration, which is pushing for the reintroduction of a question about citizenship. As you may have heard, there’s a debate going on about whether this question is appropriate, and whether the resource-strapped Census Bureau will have time to implement it before 2020."]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Ibish, Hussein and David Shulman. "War and Dread." Open Source (October 19, 2023) ["We are listening in the dark, after a catastrophe yet to be contained: more than 1,000 Israeli civilians killed in a terrorist invasion from Gaza two weeks ago, thousands more Palestinians dead in a first round of punishment from Israel. “Only the beginning” says Prime Minister Netanyahu, while President Biden, in support, warns him against “all-consuming rage.” In all-consuming anxiety, more than a million Palestinians, under Israeli orders, have fled their homes in Gaza, without a clue where safety will be found.What we went to find in conversation was the sound of deep experience in the war zone of the Middle East, and also, in a time of dread, some measure of confidence in restraint."]
Immerwahr, Daniel. "Empire State of Mind." On the Media (April 5, 2019) ["Recently, a member of the Trump administration called Puerto Rico “that country,” obscuring once more the relationship between the island colony and the American mainland. In a special hour this week, On the Media examines the history of US imperialism — and why the familiar US map hides the true story of our country. Brooke spends the hour with Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States."]
---. "'How to Hide an Empire': Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States." Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["“How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” That’s the title of a new book examining a part of the U.S. that is often overlooked: the nation’s overseas territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, former territories like the Philippines, and its hundreds of military bases scattered across the globe. We speak with the book’s author, Daniel Immerwahr, who writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University."]
Jacobson, Jodi. "Senate Aides Knew of Second Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Claim & Tried to Rush His Confirmation." Democracy Now (September 24, 2018) ["Senator Dianne Feinstein is calling for the immediate postponement of the nomination proceedings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a second woman has come forward alleging sexual misconduct by the judge. Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, has accused him of exposing himself and thrusting his penis into her face during a college party in a dorm room. Ramirez spoke on the record to The New Yorker and is now calling on the FBI to investigate her allegations. The New Yorker revealed Republican Senate aides learned of Ramirez’s allegations last week and responded by trying to quickly move Kavanaugh’s nomination ahead before the allegations became public. This comes as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about her allegations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was 15 years old and he was 17 years old. Kavanaugh has denied both accusations." Parts two: "“Survivors Must Be Heard”: 1,100 Alumnae of Dr. Blasey Ford’s H.S. Demand FBI Investigate Kavanaugh."]
---. "'They Did Not Care': How the GOP Dismissed Assault Accusations & Confirmed Kavanaugh." Democracy Now (October 8, 2018) ["Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, just hours after the Senate voted to confirm him amid massive protests outside the Capitol. He will begin hearing cases Tuesday and could vote as early as Tuesday or Wednesday on a case that tests how much power courts would wield over the executive branch. His nomination came under intense public scrutiny after accusations of attempted rape and sexual assault surfaced. We begin our coverage with Jodi Jacobson, president and editor-in-chief of Rewire, who wrote a piece this weekend headlined “A 'Titanic Fraud': Susan Collins, the 'Moderate' Who Never Was.” Senator Collins “went on the floor of the Senate to literally gaslight the entire nation about both the process and the nominee himself,” Jacobson says, responding to Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh."]
Jaffe, Sarah. "L.A. Teachers Strike." The Dig (January 18, 2019) ["The teacher strike wave continues as more than 30,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles walk picket lines not only for the higher wages that they deserve but also for the well-funded and great schools that the city's working-class students of color have long been systematically denied—a situation that has been exacerbated by a corporate reform-led school board and superintendent dead-set on privatizing the district. UTLA has in recent years been led by a militant, rank-and-file caucus that has shunted aside the old guard's narrow vision of service unionism in favor of a big-picture movement unionism that makes the struggles of teachers, parents and students one on and the same. Sarah Jaffe is Dan's guest for a discussion of the strike, social reproduction and lessons from Rosa Luxemburg."]
Jauch, Herbert. "How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) Destroyed Africa." News Rescue (May 26, 2009)
Jayapal, Pramila. "Medicare for All Will Lower Costs & Expand Healthcare Coverage to Everyone." Democracy Now (March 6, 2019) ["More than 100 Democratic lawmakers are co-sponsoring a new House bill to dramatically revamp healthcare in the United States by creating a Medicare-for-all system funded by the federal government. This comes at a time when as many as 30 million Americans have no health insurance and tens of millions more are either underinsured or struggling to pay their health insurance premiums."]
Johnson, Adam and Nima Shirazi. "The Root of All Evil." Citations Needed #4 (July 26, 2017) ["... we talk about a recent New York Times article — and the broader media habit of painting the US as benevolent democracy-seeker and Iran and other Official Enemies as cynical imperialists. In this episode we dissect the true history of what caused chaos in Iraq, who’s to blame and what the real motives were behind the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations designs for the country. All this in the context of a battle for control over remaining ISIS territory in Syria and Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv’s desire to stop the dreaded “Shia crescent”."]
Johnson, Jake. "Anand Giridharadas on Sanders' Victory in Nevada: 'A Wake Up Moment for the American Power Establishment.'" Common Dreams (February 23, 2020)
Jones, Josh. "Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism." Open Culture (February 24, 2022) ["Why the constant, often blatant lying? For one thing, it functioned as a means of fully dominating subordinates, who would have to cast aside all their integrity to repeat outrageous falsehoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and complicity. “The great analysts of truth and language in politics”—writes McGill University political philosophy professor Jacob T. Levy—including “George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is.… Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.”]
Jones, Martha. "How African Americans Fought For & Won Birthright Citizenship 150 Years Before Trump Tried to End It." Democracy Now (October 31, 2018) ["As President Trump claims that he can end birthright citizenship in the United States, we speak with professor Martha Jones about the history of the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Martha Jones is the author of “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America.” She is the Society of Black Alumni presidential professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University."]
Joseph, Harry, Anne Rolfes and Pamela Spees. "Critics of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana Decry State & Company Surveillance of Protesters." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["In Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners. This comes just one week after a U.S. district judge in Baton Rouge ordered a temporary injunction against construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in order to “prevent further irreparable harm” to the region’s delicate ecosystems, while court challenges proceed. For more, we speak with Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church. We also speak with Pamela Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade."]
Jones, Martha. "How African Americans Fought For & Won Birthright Citizenship 150 Years Before Trump Tried to End It." Democracy Now (October 31, 2018) ["As President Trump claims that he can end birthright citizenship in the United States, we speak with professor Martha Jones about the history of the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Martha Jones is the author of “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America.” She is the Society of Black Alumni presidential professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University."]
Kalven, Jamie. "Chicago Faces a Defining Moment in Police Reform and Civil Order." The Intercept (August 15, 2018) ["Chicago has a unique opportunity to confront fundamental issues of racial justice as it debates a consent decree on police reform."]
Kaba, Mariame. "There Are Thousands of Cyntoia Browns: Mariame Kaba on Criminalization of Sexual Violence Survivors." Democracy Now (January 10, 2019) ["Cyntoia Brown was granted full clemency by Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam on Monday after serving 15 years in prison. The decision follows months of intense public pressure and outrage over her case. Brown was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder for shooting her rapist as a teenager. She had been sexually trafficked and repeatedly abused and drugged. The shooting happened when Brown was just 16 years old, but she was tried as an adult. We speak with Mariame Kaba, organizer and educator who has worked on anti-domestic violence programs, anti-incarceration and racial justice programs since the late 1980s. Kaba is the co-founder of Survived and Punished, an organization that supports survivors of violence who have been criminalized for defending themselves. She’s also a board member of Critical Resistance."]
Kafer, Gary. "There is No A.I." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) [Review of Kate Crawford, The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021: "The first chapter, “Earth,” examines the mineral mining practices that underpin the construction of computational systems. In chapter two, “Labor,” Crawford examines the forms of workplace surveillance that enervate data systems—including digital pieceworkers, Amazon warehouses, and assembly lines—all of which subject the body to temporal management.
"Data” is the subject of the third chapter, which tracks how datasets are built from harvesting personal information and transformed into pattern recognition models. Chapter four, “Classification,” focuses on how that data is used to construct taxonomies of social differences like race and gender within machine learning systems. Next, Crawford turns to “Affect,” recounting the history of scientific attempts to create universal mappings of facial expressions that now subtend the development of emotion detection systems by tech industries. The final chapter turns to the “State” to explore how the private AI industry is taking an active role in reshaping government activities, including policing and warfare.
Crawford’s atlas concludes with a discussion of “Power” and the possibility for justice, which is followed by a brief coda exploring the role of “Space” as the ultimate frontier of AI’s imperial project."]
"Data” is the subject of the third chapter, which tracks how datasets are built from harvesting personal information and transformed into pattern recognition models. Chapter four, “Classification,” focuses on how that data is used to construct taxonomies of social differences like race and gender within machine learning systems. Next, Crawford turns to “Affect,” recounting the history of scientific attempts to create universal mappings of facial expressions that now subtend the development of emotion detection systems by tech industries. The final chapter turns to the “State” to explore how the private AI industry is taking an active role in reshaping government activities, including policing and warfare.
Crawford’s atlas concludes with a discussion of “Power” and the possibility for justice, which is followed by a brief coda exploring the role of “Space” as the ultimate frontier of AI’s imperial project."]
---. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017)
Kershner, Isabel. "Journalist reflects on the ideological, religious and ethnic conflicts within Israel." Fresh Air (November 9, 2023) ["New York Times journalist Isabel Kershner says before war broke out between Israel and Hamas, it sometimes looked as if Israel was headed toward a civil war. Her new book is The Land of Hope and Fear."]
Khan, Mansoor. "The Face Behind the Case: Janus v. AFSCME, Dark Money, and the Future of Labor." Los Angeles Review of Books (June 3, 2018) ["In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Janus v. American Federation of State, Municipal, and County Employees, a case which will have far-reaching consequences for the labor movement. The case centers on the question of whether unions can compel non-members to pay a fee, usually referred to as an agency fee, which covers the expenses of representing the non-members. Under current law, states get to decide whether or not unions can compel non-members to pay these agency fees. Agency fees have been banned in 28 states, colloquially called “right-to-work” states — a branding coup for the right-wing in this country that any Madison Avenue agency would be proud of. If the court rules in favor of the petitioner, Mark Janus, as most people expect, then the public sector in every state will be “right-to-work” and public sector unions will not be able to charge agency fees."]
Kiel, Paul. "Private Planes and Luxury Yachts Aren’t Just Toys for the Ultrawealthy. They’re Also Huge Tax Breaks." Pro Publica (April 5, 2023) ["What’s the only thing better than having your own Gulfstream jet? Why, getting to claim millions in tax deductions for it. All you have to do is make a case you’re using it for business, which turns out to be surprisingly easy."]
Kim, Ron. "Amazon’s Defeat in NYC Galvanizes Movement to End Billion-Dollar Corporate Welfare." Democracy Now (February 19, 2019) ["New York City is still reeling since Amazon announced last week that it was scrapping plans to build a major office facility in Queens. The decision came under mounting pressure from grassroots activists and local politicians who opposed the deal. Amazon had announced the project in November after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offered Amazon nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies to come to the city. But local politicians and community organizers rallied against the tech giant and won. The lawmakers who took down Amazon say their victory is just the beginning of a major fight against tax subsidies for huge companies—which they call “corporate welfare.” We speak with New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim, who helped fight Amazon and introduced the End of Corporate Welfare Act to the state Legislature earlier this month."]
King, Charles. "How A Few 'Renegade' Thinkers Helped Usher In A New Era Of Anthropology." Fresh Air (August 20, 2019) ["In his new book, Gods of the Upper Air, Charles King tells the story of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead and the other 20th century anthropologists who challenged outdated notions of race, class and gender."]
Klay, Phil. "The Lesson of Eric Greitens, and the Navy SEALs Who Tried to Warn Us." The New Yorker (May 17, 2018) ["The charges facing the embattled governor of Missouri have stunned voters, but in the tight-knit Naval Special Warfare community, Greitens has been a divisive figure for years."]
---. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018) ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]
Klein, Naomi, et al. "Hurricane Maria laid bare the colonialism and capitalism in Puerto Rico ." Best of the Left #1190 (June 15, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the high toll Puerto Rico is paying, in both money and lives, for the triple disasters of colonialism, Hurricane Maria and disaster capitalism."]
Karma, Roge. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Myth of American Innovation." The Prospect (March 6, 2019) ["The intrepid New Yorker pulls back the curtain on how private companies profit from taxpayer-funded research."]
Kaye, Harvey, et al. "The Fight for the Four Freedoms (FDR vs Libertarianism)." Best of the Left #1247 (February 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history of FDR's "Four Freedoms" and "Economic Bill of Rights" that laid the groundwork for the fight for economic freedom for all that continues to this day."]
Kelley, Lauren, et al. "Waiting for the Roe to drop (Reproductive Justice)." Best of the Left #1262 (April 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the current state of abortion rights - Hint: They're already in tatters - and speculate about what's to come as Roe vs Wade faces relentless chipping away and the possibility of full repeal."]
Kendi, Ibram X. "The challenge of antiracist thought to a racist society." This is Hell #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses racism and antiracism in American society - from the production and maintenance of racist thought to disguise inequity and manipulate the working class, to the promise of an antiracist challenge to the power structures that divide people from each other and a future lived in communion with all people. Ibram is author of How To Be An Antiracist from One World Literature."]
Klein, Ezra. "Book excerpt: A better theory of identity politics." The Ezra Klein Show (January 23, 2020) ["A core argument of the book is that identity is the central driver of political polarization. But to see how it works, we need a better theory of how identities form, what happens when they activate, and where they fit into our conflicts. We’ve been taught to only see identity politics in others. We need to see it in ourselves."]
---. "How We Walked Into This and How We Can Walk Out." On Being (February 6, 2020) ["Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We’re Polarized. In this conversation, he’s frank and reflective about what’s at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it."]
Kloppenberg, James. "Things Fall Apart: The Origins and Future of American Democracy." Ideas (May 10, 2019) ["Does America’s early experiment with self-rule offer lessons for the U.S. today?"]
Koopman, Colin. "The Power Thinker." Aeon (March 15, 2017) ["One need not be locked away in a prison cell to be subject to its designs of disciplinary dressage. The most chilling line in Discipline and Punish is the final sentence of the section entitled ‘Panopticism’, where Foucault wryly asks: ‘Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?’ If Foucault is right, we are subject to the power of correct training whenever we are tied to our school desks, our positions on the assembly line or, perhaps most of all in our time, our meticulously curated cubicles and open-plan offices so popular as working spaces today. To be sure, disciplinary training is not sovereign violence. But it is power. Classically, power took the form of force or coercion and was considered to be at its purest in acts of physical violence. Discipline acts otherwise. It gets a hold of us differently. It does not seize our bodies to destroy them, as Leviathan always threatened to do. Discipline rather trains them, drills them and (to use Foucault’s favoured word) ‘normalises’ them. All of this amounts to, Foucault saw, a distinctly subtle and relentless form of power. To refuse to recognise such disciplining as a form of power is a denial of how human life has come to be shaped and lived. If the only form of power we are willing to recognise is sovereign violence, we are in a poor position to understand the stakes of power today. If we are unable to see power in its other forms, we become impotent to resist all the other ways in which power brings itself to bear in forming us."]
Krajeski, Jenna. "What the Kurds are Fighting For: The Idea of Rojava is at Stake." What Next (October 16, 2019) ["When the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies, it not only left the Kurds vulnerable to devastating attacks from Turkey, but it also abandoned Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region that lies in the northeast of Syria. Right now, the Kurds are fighting to preserve what they can of this unique political arrangement, but it might already be too late. And, maybe, it was always destined to fall."]
Krajeski, Jenna and Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn. "The Rojava Revolution in Peril." On the Media (October 18, 2019) ["Rojava: it’s the three cantons at the top of Syria that comprise what’s more commonly referred to as “Kurdish Syria.” Each canton is governed independently but according to a shared social contract based on principles of local democracy, feminism and ecology. It’s a land that, until recently at least, had about two million people, mostly Kurdish but with ethnic and religious diversity. And its political experiment was mainly functioning — until the abrupt retreat of the United States from northern Syria. Now Rojava is being pummeled by the invading Turks — martyred to the impulses of an unmoored American president. And so it has been reported: a ruinous betrayal of an ally that has made unimaginable sacrifices in the Ameican wars against Sadaam Hussein and ISIS. But lost in that narrative is another story: the equally unimaginable sacrifice of an equitable model of governance in a region where other models have stifled freedom for centuries. First, Bob speaks with Jenna Krajeski, a journalist with the Fuller Project for International Reporting who has reported on the Kurds. Then, he speaks with Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn, a 27-year-old activist and co-president of her local health authority in Rojava, about what it's been like on the ground."]
Krugman, Paul and Richard D. Wolff. "Sanders & Socialism: Debate Between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman & Socialist Economist Richard Wolff." Democracy Now (February 24, 2020) ["As Bernie Sanders’s runaway win in Nevada cements his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the Democratic Party establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern about a self-described democratic socialist leading the presidential ticket. His opponents have also attacked his ambitious agenda. Last week during the primary debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about socialism. Invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sanders decried what he called “socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” For more, we host a debate on Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism, featuring two well-known economists. Paul Krugman is a New York Times op-ed columnist and author of many books, including his latest, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” One of his recent columns is headlined “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” Richard Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and hosts the weekly national television and radio program “Economic Update.” He’s the author of several books, including “Understanding Socialism.”"]
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democrat Politics. 2nd ed. Verso, 2001.
Lagalisse, Erica. "Occult Features of Anarchism: With attention to the conspiracy of kings and the conspiracy of the peoples." The London School of Economics and Political Science (March 20, 2019) ["Erica Lagalisse explores the relationship of 19th century anarchism with the clandestine fraternity, challenges leftist attachments to atheism, and intervenes in current debates concerning 'conspiracy theory.'"]
Landrieu, Mitch, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Lawler, Ophelia Garcia. "Trump Considers Terrifying New Policy to Eliminate Transgender Rights." The Cut (October 21, 2018)
Leary, John Patrick. "'Meritocracy' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["This week, fifty people were charged by federal prosecutors in a college admissions scandal. As the public dug into the details of how wealthy parents made payments to help their students get into elite (and not so elite) universities around the country, some of the discussion centered around "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. The trouble is, the myth of "meritocracy" goes much deeper than this story. The word was actually coined as satire in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young, who was criticizing the role that the UK's elite education system had in shaping the hierarchy of British society. This week, Bob speaks with John Patrick Leary about the satirical origins of the word and what it has come to mean in the US. He says there are actually two myths: "the myth that there is such a thing, and the myth that the United States is committed to that imaginary thing." Leary is a professor of English at Wayne State University and author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism."]
"The Lectures of Joseph Campbell." Spotify (Playlist) ["Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience."]
Lee, Jason. Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ["This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makes this book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth."]
---. "Law Claiming to Fight Sex Trafficking is Doing the Opposite — By Cracking Down on Sex Work Organizing and Advocacy." The Intercept (June 13, 2018)
---. "On Non-Fascist Life." Politics Theory Other (August 14, 2019) ["Natasha Lennard joins me to discuss her book, 'Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life'. We spoke about whether or not Donald Trump and the movement that has coalesced around him ought to be characterised as fascist, we also talked about the contributions of Wilhelm Reich, Michel Foucault, and other figures in the anti-psychiatry movement to theorising fascism. We discussed the legitimacy and history of anti-fascist violence and its treatment by the media, and finally we spoke about Natasha's writing on suicide and how the act of suicide brings into question capitalism's positing of the idea of the sovereign individual."]
---. "What Does it Mean to Live a Non-Fascist Life." Broadly (April 9, 2019)
Leonard, Christopher. "'Kochland': : How David Koch Helped Build an Empire to Shape U.S. Politics & Thwart Climate Action." Democracy Now (August 27, 2019) ["Billionaire conservative donor David Koch died Friday at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. David Koch — who was worth some $42 billion — and his brother Charles poured massive amounts of money into funding climate change denial through conservative think tanks and politicians. The Koch brothers founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which is credited with turning the “tea party” into a full-fledged political movement. They also backed “right-to-work” efforts, which aim to weaken labor rights and quash union membership. The brothers made their fortune running Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. We speak with the business journalist Christopher Leonard, who just last week published a major new book examining the business dealings of the Koch brothers. It’s titled “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”"]
Lepore, Jill. "On the Construction of American Citizenship." At Liberty #25 (December 6, 2018) ["Almost 250 years after the adoption of the Declaration of the Independence, debates about founding principles like equality, rights, and representation are as fraught as ever. Jill Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer, discusses her latest book, “These Truths,” an ambitious exploration of the evolution of our nation from its earliest days."]
Levin, Yuval. "The Conservative Mind of Yuval Levin." The Ezra Klein Show (January 9, 2020) ["Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just society. The second is something less discussed but equally important: temperament. It describes how we approach social problems, how fast we think society can change, and how we understand the constraints upon us. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the editor-in-chief of the public policy journal National Affairs, and the author of the upcoming book A Time to Build. Levin is one of the most thoughtful articulators of both conservative temperament and ideology. And, perhaps for that reason, his is one of the most important criticisms of what the conservative movement has become today.There’s a lot in this conversation, in part because Levin’s book speaks to mine in interesting ways, but among the topics we discuss are: The conservative view of human nature Why the conservative temperament is increasingly diverging from the conservative movement What theories of American politics get wrong about the reality of American life The case Levin makes to socialists How economic debates are often moral debates in disguise Levin’s rebuttal to my book The crucial difference between “formative” and “performative” social institutions Why the most fundamental problems in American life are cultural, not economic Why Levin thinks the New York Times should not allow its journalists to be on Twitter Whether we can restore trust in our institutions without changing the incentives and systems that surround them There’s a lot Levin and I disagree on, but there are few people I learn as much from in disagreement as I learn from him."]
Lifton, Robert Jay. "The Assault on Reality." Dissent (April 10, 2018) ["Essential to understanding Trump is his attempt to subject the public to his own solipsistic reality—and thereby destroy our shared basis for democracy."]
---. "Malignant Normality." Dissent (Spring 2017) ["Extreme ideologues do much to create a malignant normality, which comes to pervade most institutions, including medical ones. Then ordinary people who work in those institutions adhere to that normality, often aided by bits and pieces of the extreme ideology. The prevailing normality can be decisive because it excludes alternatives and provides strong pressures for destructive behavior."]
Lind, Dara. "The Trump administration’s separation of families at the border, explained." Vox (June 15, 2018)
Liu, Eric. "Purple Episode 1: Is Democracy Up for Grabs?" On the Media (November 23, 2019) ["Democracy is in trouble. Not necessarily because of our current political mayhem, or even because of the accumulated sins and failures of American society, but because vast swaths of the public are giving up on the system that has governed us for 243 years. Here are some alarming data points: One, in 2018 only 33% of the general population expressed trust for government. Two, among 1400 adults asked about the importance of democracy, only 39% of younger participants said “absolutely important.” Three, in a 2018 Democracy Fund survey of 5000 Americans, 24% of respondents expressed support for “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections,” and either a “strong leader” and 18% for “army rule. The more complicated question is what as a society we are to do about it? In this mini-series we’ll be talking that over, but we’ll begin with the actual state of public sentiment and public participation. Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University and Co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. He and Bob discuss potential solutions for taking on widespread disaffection."]
Lock, Margaret. "How To Think About Science (Part 3)." Ideas (February 11, 2015) ["In 1993 medical anthropologist Margaret Lock published Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. The book explores dramatic differences in the way women experience menopause in each place. Such variation is usually taken as purely cultural, but, in her book, Margaret Lock makes a surprising suggestion. She proposes that there are biological differences between Japanese and North American women. Culture doesn't just interpret biology, she says, it also shapes it. Margaret Lock is a professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill. In this episode you'll hear her current reflections on what she calls "local biologies" later in the hour. David Cayley begins his conversation with a discussion of another pathbreaking book of hers called Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death."]
Loewen, James. "Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History (Teachers College Press, 2018)." New Books in History (January 3, 2019) ["In an atmosphere filled with social media and fake news, history is more important than ever. But, what do you really know about history? In the second edition of his book, Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History (Teachers College Press, 2018). Dr. James W. Loewen interrogates what we think we know about our past. Loewen, a sociologist and professor at the University of Vermont, shows readers that history must be reconsidered in order to avoid previously accepted misconceptions. As Loewen demonstrates throughout this valuable text, teachers must look beyond the textbook to discover what really happened and to teach their students how to "do" history. Teaching What Really Happened is an eye-opening book that reinvigorates history and empowers its readers."]
Lombardi, Amy J. "On the Origins of the term 'Doublespeak.'" The Daily Doublespeak (September 4, 2008)
Lopez, Christy E. "Defund the Police? Here's What That Really Means." The Washington Post (June 7, 2020)
Lutz, Catherine. "Troop Veneration and American Empire." The Dig (January 3, 2018) ["The protest movement against the onset of the Iraq War was countered by a call to “support our troops” from militarists on the Right. But venerating American soldiers is not about supporting actual American soldiers; it's a rhetorical device to preclude questioning or criticism of the wars they are sent to fight. In a face-to-face interview at Brown University’s Watson Institute, anthropologist Catherine Lutz discusses John Kelly’s recent diatribe, Khizr Khan, Trump’s attack on protesting NFL players, and the roots of it all in the Nixon administration’s response to GI rebellion against the Vietnam War. "]
Luxenberg, Steve. "Separate and Unequal." On the Media (March 8, 2019) ["Throughout the 1800s, the question at the heart of nearly every political, cultural and academic conversation dealt in some capacity with whether Black Americans were eligible for full citizenship. Our collective understanding of 19th-century racial politics depends on the landmark civil rights legislation that came out of the era. One notorious decision was Plessy v. Ferguson, the case in which the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of racial separation, helping to pave the way for nearly 60 years of Jim Crow laws. Though the decision was overturned by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the de facto segregation Plessy codified continues into the present. But at the time, Plessy wasn’t deemed newsworthy — at least not by the white-dominated, partisan press. To contextualize the road to Plessy, Bob spoke with Steve Luxenberg, author of the new book, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation."]
Mace, Ryan. "'A Matter of Life and Death': : Trump Admin Slashes Refugee Cap to Historic Low, Imperiling Thousands." Democracy Now (September 19, 2018) ["The Trump administration has once again slashed the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the new cap on refugees would be a historic low of just 30,000 next year, down from the current level of 45,000. The actual number of refugees allowed in to the country is expected to be even lower than the 30,000 cap. Monday’s announcement represents the lowest ceiling any president has imposed on the U.S. refugee program since its creation in 1980. Under President Obama, the refugee cap reached 110,000. For more on the Trump administration’s refugee policy, we speak with Ryan Mace, refugee specialist for Amnesty International USA."]
Macleod, Alan. "USAID’s disinformation primer: Global censorship in the name of democracy." Monthly Review (April 9, 2024) ["A report from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) outlines how the government agency has been encouraging governments, tech platforms, establishment media outlets and advertisers to work together to censor huge swaths of the Internet. The 97-page “disinformation primer,” obtained by conservative firm America First Legal under the Freedom of Information Act, purports to be fighting fake news. However, much of the organization’s focus appears to be on preventing individuals from finding information online that challenges official narratives and leads to increased questioning of the system more generally. The document calls for regulating video games and online message boards, steering individuals away from alternative media and back towards more elite-friendly sites, and for governments to work with advertisers to cripple organizations that refuse to toe official lines financially. Furthermore, it highlights government-backed fact-checking groups like Bellingcat, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council as leaders in the fight against disinformation, despite the fact that those groups have close connections to the national security state, which is an overwhelming conflict of interest. The news that a government agency is promoting such a program is worrying enough. However, we shall also see how USAID itself has promoted fake news to push for regime change abroad."]
Maguire, Mairead. "Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era." Counterpunch (September 17, 2018) ["As we watch the media today, we are spoon fed more and more propaganda and fear of the unknown, that we should be afraid of the unknown and have full faith that our government is keeping us safe from the unknown. But by looking at media today, those of us who are old enough will be reminded of the era of Cold War news articles, hysteria of how the Russians would invade and how we should duck and cover under tables in our kitchens for the ensuing nuclear war. Under this mass hysteria all Western governments were convinced that we should join Western allies to fight the unknown evil that lies to the east. Later through my travels in Russia during the height of the Cold War with a peace delegation, we were shocked by the poverty of the country, and questioned how we ever were led to believe that Russia was a force to be afraid of. We talked to the Russian students who were dismayed by their absolute poverty and showed anger against NATO for leading their country into an arms race that they could not win. Many years later, when speaking to young Americans in the US, I was in disbelief about the fear the students had of Russia and their talk of invasion. This is a good example of how the unknown can cause a deep rooted paranoia when manipulated by the right powers."]
Mann, Bonnie. "Trump’s New Taunt, Kavanaugh’s Defense and How Misogyny Rules." The New York Times (October 3, 2018)
Mann, Bonnie. "Trump’s New Taunt, Kavanaugh’s Defense and How Misogyny Rules." The New York Times (October 3, 2018)
Manning, Zander, Jessica Picard, and Jared Yellin. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #17 “Model” Mississippi Curriculum Omits Civil Rights Movement from School Textbooks." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Marino, Patricia. "Philosophy of Sex and Love (Routledge, 2019)." New Books in Philosophy (September 2, 2019) ["For those who think that philosophy must speak to everyday experience and ordinary life, it would seem that philosophical questions occasioned by love and sex should take center stage. Moral, epistemic, metaphysical, and political issues surrounding sex and love pervade our culture. Where would pop music, television, and fine art be without the dilemmas at the intersection of love and sex? And yet there are some less familiar philosophical issues lurking as well. In Philosophy of Sex and Love (Routledge, 2019), Patricia Marino not only introduces a wide range of philosophical issues pertaining to love and sex; she also develops original and compelling positions on the questions she explores."]
Martin, Abby, et al. "There you go again. Venezuela and America's addiction to imperialism." Best of the Left #1248 (February 8, 2019) ["Today we take a look, briefly, at the last 100 years of Venezuelan history to understand how they went from oil riches and inequality to revolution and social progress only to run afoul of American imperialism."]
Mason, Liliana. "The Age of 'Mega-Identity' Politics." The Ezra Klein Show (April 30, 2018) ["Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the construction of our partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. These mega-identities didn’t exist 50 or even 30 years ago, but now that they’re here, they change the way we see each other, the way we engage in politics, and the way politics absorbs other — previously non-political —spheres of our culture. In making her case, Mason offers one of the best primers I’ve read on how little it takes to activate a sense of group identity in human beings, and how far-reaching the cognitive and social implications are once that group identity takes hold. I don’t want to spoil our discussion here, but suffice to say that her recounting of the “minimal group paradigm” experiments is not to be missed. This is the kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world, but how you think about yourself. Mason’s book is, I think, one of the most important published this year, and this conversation gave me a lens on our political discord that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. If you want to understand the kind of identity politics that’s driving America in [2020], you should listen in."]
---. "Anger and Identity in an Age of Polarization." On the Media (October 30, 2020) ["Anger and tribalism appear to be at an all time high, creating political and societal rifts that can seem unbridgeable. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that only 70 years ago, the country was deemed by political scientists not to be polarized enough, leading to confusion and disengagement on the part of the electorate. Since then, party lines have been crystallized, and the parties, polarized. Most people know exactly which party they belong to — leaving us with two camps that seek to destroy one another. Lilliana Mason is professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. She and Bob discuss how anger and tribal identity have gotten us to the current political moment, and how we might move past it."]
Massey, Douglas S. "The Mexico-U.S. Border in the American Imagination." Proceeding of the American Philosophical Society 160.2 (June 2016): 160-177.
Massey, Douglas S. "The Mexico-U.S. Border in the American Imagination." Proceeding of the American Philosophical Society 160.2 (June 2016): 160-177.
Maurizi, Stefania. Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies. Translated by Lesli Cavanaugh-Bardelli. Pluto Press, 2022. ["'I want to live in a society where secret power is accountable to the law and to public opinion for its atrocities, where it is the war criminals who go to jail, not those who have the conscience and courage to expose them.' It is 2008, and Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist with a growing interest in cryptography, starts looking into the little-known organisation WikiLeaks. Through hushed meetings, encrypted files and explosive documents, what she discovers sets her on a life-long journey that takes her deep into the realm of secret power. Working closely with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and his organisation for her newspaper, Maurizi has spent over a decade investigating state criminality protected by thick layers of secrecy, while also embarking on a solitary trench warfare to unearth the facts underpinning the cruel persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks. With complex and disturbing insights, Maurizi's tireless journalism exposes atrocities, the shameful treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, on up to the present persecution of WikiLeaks: a terrifying web of impunity and cover-ups. At the heart of the book is the brutality of secret power and the unbearable price paid by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and truthtellers."]
Mayer, Jane. "Dark Money and the Rise of Conservative Orthodoxy." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["William Happer, the man tapped to head Trump’s new climate review panel, is not a climate scientist. And yet, in recent years, William Happer has made a mission of attacking climate science, including at events hosted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Heritage has long worked to redirect public sentiment and policy-making away from addressing climate change and towards deregulation — which is itself part of an even bigger decades-long goal: the propagation of a conservative ideology that preserves capital for rich people. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, walks Bob through the history of the modern conservative intellectual framework."]
---. "FOX News White House." The New Yorker (March 11, 2019) ["As Murdoch’s relations with the White House have warmed, so has Fox’s coverage of Trump. During the Obama years, Fox’s attacks on the President could be seen as reflecting the adversarial role traditionally played by the press. With Trump’s election, the network’s hosts went from questioning power to defending it. Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says, “Fox’s most important role since the election has been to keep Trump supporters in line.” The network has provided a non-stop counternarrative in which the only collusion is between Hillary Clinton and Russia; Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is perpetrating a “coup” by the “deep state”; Trump and his associates aren’t corrupt, but America’s law-enforcement officials and courts are; illegal immigration isn’t at a fifteen-year low, it’s “an invasion”; and news organizations that offer different perspectives are “enemies of the American people.” Benkler’s assessment is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics.” Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find “symmetric polarization” in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America’s media ecosystem function very differently. “It’s not the right versus the left,” Benkler says. “It’s the right versus the rest.”"]
McAlevey, Jane. "It's Time to Retire the Term 'Middle-Class.'" Citations Needed #91 (October 23, 2019) ["The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.
But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty. This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center."]
McCann, Bryan. "Brazil's New Right." Dissent (Spring 2018) ["Since Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, Brazil has been in political turmoil. With ex-president Lula’s recent surrender, a new right threatens to become the decisive force in the 2018 elections."]
McCausland, Phil. "Mixed Messages in the Heartland." On the Media (May 15, 2020) ["During Monday's White House press briefing, President Trump asserted that, "All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly." However, the White House's own data, collected by the Coronavirus Task Force's Data and Analytics Unit, paints a drastically different picture. According to an unreleased May 7 report obtained by NBC News, infections and deaths are skyrocketing around the United States, particularly in areas of the American heartland. But the keyword here is "unreleased" — the task force has been keeping its data close to the vest, releasing it in dribs and drabs. Consequently, it's up to often under-resourced state and municipal leaders to draw their own conclusions. Phil McCausland, an NBC News reporter covering rural issues, was one of the journalists who broke the hidden-data story. He tells Bob that, absent federal data and directives, civilians in rural communities are left largely in the dark about the severity of their circumstances."]
McGhee, Heather. "'The Sum of Us': Heather McGhee on How Racism Undercuts the American Dream for Everyone." Democracy Now (March 19, 2021) ["Amid a national reckoning with structural racism and the dangers of white supremacy, author Heather McGhee’s new book details how racism in the United States hurts not just people of color but also white people. In “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” McGhee details how zero-sum thinking has worsened inequality and robbed people of all stripes of the public goods and support they need to thrive. We speak with McGhee about the cost of racism, Republican voter suppression efforts and what people can accomplish when they come together in solidarity across racial lines. “Fundamentally, racism has been the most powerful tool wielded against the best of America — against American democracy, against cross-racial solidarity, against the American dream itself,” says McGhee."]
McKibben, Bill. "Falter: In New Book, Bill McKibben Asks If the Human Game Has Begun to Play Itself Out." Democracy Now (April 15, 2019) ["Thousands are taking to the streets in London today to demand radical action to combat the climate crisis. Protesters with the group Extinction Rebellion have set up encampments and roadblocks across Central London and say they’ll stay in the streets for at least a week. It’s just the beginning of a series of global actions that will unfold in the coming days, as activists around the world raise the alarm about government inaction in the face of the growing climate catastrophe. The London protests come just days after schoolchildren around the globe left school again on Friday for the weekly “strike for climate” and as the push for the Green New Deal continues to build momentum in the United States. The deal—backed by Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey—seeks to transform the U.S. economy through funding renewable energy while ending U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. We speak with climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben, who has been on the front lines of the fight to save the planet for decades. Thirty years ago, he wrote “The End of Nature,” the first book about climate change for a general audience. He’s just published a new book titled Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?" Part two: "Bill McKibben: Green New Deal Is a Chance to 'Remake Not Just a Broken Planet, But a Broken Society.'" and Part three: "Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence & Genetic Engineering Threaten to Destroy Humanity."]
Meagher, Kevin. "The Future of Ireland: Why a United Ireland is Inevitable." The Future of ... (January 17, 2024) ["In A United Ireland: Why Unification in Inevitable and How It Will Come About (Biteback Publishing, 2017), Kevin Meagher argues that a reasoned, pragmatic discussion about the most basic questions regarding Britain's relationship with its nearest neighbour is now long overdue, and questions that have remained unasked, and perhaps unthought, must now be answered. Indeed, in the light of Brexit and a highly probable second independence referendum in Scotland, the reunification of Ireland is not a question of if, but when and how. Listen to Meagher explain to Owen Bennett Jones why he thinks a united Ireland is inevitable and how he thinks it will happen. Kevin Meagher was a Special Adviser to former Labour Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward. He is the associate editor of the Labour Uncut blog and frequently writes about Irish politics for the New Statesman."]
Merat, Arron. "Terrorists, cultists – or champions of Iranian democracy? The wild wild story of the MEK." The Guardian's Audio Long Reads (Read by Lucy Scott: November 30, 2018) ["They fought for the Iranian revolution – and then for Saddam Hussein. The US and UK once condemned them. But now their opposition to Tehran has made them favourites of Trump White House hardliners."]
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."]
Merkley, Jeff. "Sen. Merkley Condemns Trump’s War Against Migrant Families as U.S. Moves to Indefinitely Jail Kids." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The Trump administration is moving to indefinitely detain migrant children and their families, reversing decades of U.S. policy. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to issue a new rule today to withdraw from a 1997 federal court settlement known as the Flores agreement, which put a 20-day limit on migrant family detentions. We speak with Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who made headlines last year when he was barred from entering an old Walmart where the government was detaining about 1,500 immigrant children in Brownsville, Texas."]
Michael, Maggie and Shireen Al-Adeimi. "AP Investigation: Behind the Scenes in Yemen, U.S.-Backed Saudi Coalition Is Working with al-Qaeda." Democracy Now (August 14, 2018) ["The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has repeatedly cut secret deals with al-Qaeda, even paying its fighters to retreat from towns or join the coalition, a bombshell Associated Press investigation has revealed. The AP probe accuses the United States of being aligned with al-Qaeda in the fight against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, despite claiming to be fighting the extremist group in the region. One senior tribal leader told the AP, “Al-Qaeda wasn’t defeated. It didn’t fight in the first place.” We speak with Maggie Michael, one of the three reporters for the Associated Press who broke the story, headlined “U.S. Allies Spin Deals with al-Qaida in War on Rebels.”"]
Miéville, China. "A Strategy for Ruination." Boston Review (January 8, 2018) ["Writing about China Miéville in the Guardian, fantasy luminary Ursula K. Le Guin opined, “You can’t talk about Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’” Miéville is a rare sort of polyglot, an acclaimed novelist—he has won nearly every award for fantasy and science fiction that there is, often multiple times—who is equally comfortable in the worlds of politics and academia. Combining his skills as a storyteller and Marxist theorist, his most recent book, October, regales readers with the key events of the Russian Revolution. In this interview, Miéville discusses the intersections between his creative oeuvre and the political projects of utopia and dystopia."]
Miller, Andrew. "'Our House Is On Fire': Brazil Faces Global Outrage as Massive Fires Spread in Amazon Rainforest." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The United Nations is calling for the protection of the Amazon amid fears that thousands of fires raging across Brazil and some parts of Bolivia are rapidly destroying the world’s largest rainforest and paving the way for a climate catastrophe. The fires have spread a vast plume of smoke across South America and the Atlantic Ocean that’s visible from space. They’re unprecedented in recorded history, and environmentalists say most of the fires were deliberately set by illegal miners and cattle ranchers. Indigenous people in Brazil have accused far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the destruction. Bolsonaro has worked to deregulate and open up the Amazon for agribusiness, logging and mining since he came into office in January. We speak with Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch."]
Miller, James. "A Brief History of 'People Power.'" Democracy Works (February 11, 2019) ["In his book Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World, James Miller encapsulates 2500 years of democracy history into about 250 pages — making the case that "people power" will always need to be at the heart of any successful democracy. James is a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. in New York City. He is the author of Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977, and Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. He was recommended to us by Astra Taylor, and you'll hear some similarities between how James and Astra view democracy and our role within it."]
Miron, Jeffrey and Annie Rouse. "Harry Anslinger - America's First Drug Czar." Anslinger: The Untold Cannabis Conspiracy 1.1 (February 5, 2018) ["On the first episode 1 of Anslinger: The untold cannabis conspiracy, we discuss narcotic policies and the life of Harry Anslinger, America’s first Drug Czar, prior to his appointment as Chief and First Commissioner to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. We also interview Harvard economist, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, about the global outlook on drugs, diseases and the economy during the early 1900s."]
Mishan, Ligaya. "Frogs are Disappearing. What Does That Mean?"The New York Times (October 18, 2018) ["For ages, they have been symbols in human culture — of fertility, gastronomy and now the alt-right movement. But these noble amphibians are declining in numbers."]
"Mitch Part 1: 'Win This Thing.'" Embedded 7.1 (May 30, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell has been described as "opaque," "drab," and even "dull." He is one of the least popular - and most polarizing - politicians in the country. So how did he win eight consecutive elections? And what does it tell us about how he operates?"]
"Mitch Part 2: 'Money Money Money.'" Embedded 7.2 (June 6, 2019) ["A lot of us don't pay much attention to money in politics. But Mitch McConnell does. And unlike most politicians, he speaks bluntly in favor of more political spending, not less. That stance led to a long battle with one Senator, who fought McConnell harder than just about anyone else."]
"Mitch Part 3: Darth Vader Has Arrived." Embedded 7.3 (June 13, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell continues his rivalry with John McCain, and dramatically changes the role of money in American politics."]
"Mitch Part 4: Not a Happy Choice." Embedded 7.4 (June 20, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell says he never expected Donald Trump to become president. During the campaign, he was openly critical of Trump's rhetoric. So how are these two very different men working together now? And how are they changing the country?"]
"Mitch Part 5: 9 and 0." Embedded 7.5 (June 27, 2019) ["Mitch McConnell knows that he is not popular. But, he says, the only judgment that really matters is on election day. And of the people who have challenged him, he says, "so far, there have been nine losers.""]
Moody-Adams, Michele. "On John Rawls' A Theory of Justice." Writ Large (December 1, 2022) ["How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally within society? These are the kinds of questions political philosophers furrow their brows and scratch their chins trying to answer. In 1971, an American philosopher named John Rawls introduced a new answer: justice as fairness. Michele Moody-Adams is the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University. She is the author of Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy."]
Morris, Errol. "Anatomy of a Photograph: Authoritarianism in America." The Atlantic (August 22, 2020)
Moser, Bob. "Interference 2020: The Disinformation is Coming from Inside the Country." Columbia Review of Journalism (Fall 2019)
Moskowitz, P.E. "The Problem of Free Speech in an Unfree World." This is Hell! #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Writer P.E. Moskowitz examines the limits of the First Amendment in American society - as a concept rooted in an equality that will never exist in a capitalist society, and as a cultural battleground almost exclusively fought on the right's terms - for the right's gains. P.E. is author of The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent from Bold Type Books."]
Moskowitz, P.E. and Carolyn Rouse. "The Mythical Bygone Glory Days of 'Free Speech.'" Citations Needed #88 (September 25, 2019) ["We are often warned by conservatives, liberals and even some on the Left that we live in a time where “free speech” is under threat from far-left forces. “Political correctness” and “snowflakes” have shut down free inquiry, specifically on college campuses, and led to a crisis threatening the very foundation of our democracy. But the origins of the label “free speech” — as it’s currently practiced — paint a much messier picture. Rather than appealing to the Vietnam-era Berkeley protest glory days, what one sees when examining the history of the concept is a temporary tactic used by the Left in the mid-to-late 1960s that has, since that late 1980s, become a far-right wedge designed to open up space for racism, eugenics, genocide denial, trans and homophobia and anti-feminist backlash. Defense of the right to keep open this space as an appeal to a universal value hides a well-funded, coordinated far-right attempt to maintain a conservative, largely male and cishet version of political correctness. On this episode, we discuss where the contemporary concept of “free speech” comes from, what its uses and misuses have been and how a rose-tinted time of pristine, perfectly free" speech never really existed. We are joined by journalist and author P.E. Moskowitz and Chair of Princeton University's Department of Anthropology Carolyn Rouse."]
Moss, Candida. "Trump and the Christian Persecution Complex." On the Media (June 3, 2020) ["On Monday, President Trump stood outside St. John's Episcopal Church, which had caught fire the day prior in protests for racial justice. When he brandished a Bible before photographers, Trump knew exactly what message he was sending: Christianity is under siege and the president is the defender of the faith. Never mind the fact that peaceful protesters, clergy among them, were driven from the area minutes before with tear gas to make way for the photoshoot. The narrative of Christianity under attack is a familiar one. Just a few weeks ago, Trump declared that houses of worship should open amid the pandemic on the grounds of religious liberty — despite the public health risk. But it turns out, the myth of Christian persecution can be traced far further back than the Culture Wars. In fact, according to Candida Moss, Christian historians coined the idea that to be persecuted was to be righteous in the 4th Century and they exaggerated claims that Christians were persecuted in the first place. Moss is a professor of theology and religion at Birmingham University in the U.K., and author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Moss spoke to Bob just after Trump has announced his call for churches to open. In this week's Pod Extra she explains how Christian history has been revised for political means, from the early church to present day."]
"The Moth." Throughline (March 14, 2019) ["Vladimir Putin has been running Russia since 2000 when he was first elected as President. How did a former KGB officer make his way up to the top seat — was it political prowess or was he just the recipient of a lot of good fortune? In this episode, we dive into the life of Vladimir Putin and try to understand how he became Russia's new "tsar.""]
Mounk, Yascha. "The People vs. Democracy." Ideas (December 13, 2018)
["Authoritarian populists have won elections across a large swath of western liberal democracies. Populist leaders have formed government through free and (mostly) fair elections by riding a wave of popular disaffection with the status quo. But once in power, these governments have gone on to dismantle the very institutions and conventions that help keep liberal democratic principles in place. So how are we to confront this paradox wherein liberal democracy serves a growing and undemocratic illiberalism? How do we strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the popular will? And if we can't figure this out, are the best days of the liberal democratic tradition long gone?"]
Msimang, Sisonke. "Eyes on the back of our head: Recovering a multicultural South Africa." Ideas (July 27, 2018) ["Journalist and activist Sisonke Msimang speaks at a former prison complex in Johannesburg which once held Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. The setting is apt: Sisonke believes that post-apartheid South Africa has become imprisoned by its own past — a past which whites cannot recall and which blacks cannot forget. With both a mischievous sense of humour and sharp historical analyses, she pulls down the old binarism of black versus white to make way for a truly multicultural South Africa, one that welcomes other African migrants as it embraces its own racially diverse past. As she says:"We are learning to scan the wreckage of our history and mine it for gold. To look for the connections between us, even as we walk with our eyes firmly fixed on the horizon. We are moving ever more sure-footed, towards making a South Africa in which we all belong.""]
Murch, Donna, et al. "The Real Black Panthers." Throughline (April 15, 2021) ["The Black Panther Party's battles for social justice and economic equality are the centerpiece of the Oscar-nominated film 'Judas and The Black Messiah.' In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party "without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country." And with that declaration he used United States federal law enforcement to wage war on the group. But why did Hoover's FBI target the Black Panther Party more severely than any other Black power organization? Historian Donna Murch says the answer lies in the Panthers' political agenda and a strategy that challenged the very foundations of American society."]
Nakagawa, Dawn and Marjan Ehsassi. "Putting The Public Back In Public Policy." NOEMA (August 15, 2023) ["But an underappreciated consequence of such processes is the transformative impact they have on participants. Citizens’ assemblies bring together diverse groups of people who are broadly representative of the breadth of backgrounds and perspectives of a community: teachers and firefighters, stay-at-home parents, engineers and many more. Some are politically disengaged and would never have sought involvement in a such a process. Yet the experience of learning, seeking to understand the perspectives of others and building community together is transformative. Learning, deliberating, developing a sense of voice and working for common causes across differences can inspire apathetic and cynical people to engage, to become informed and socially connected, to enthusiastically participate in politics, and to have a sense of meaningful input in the governance of issues that are consequential to them."]
Nazar, Nazia. "Israel’s Role in Hamas’ Creation and its Retaliatory Genocide in Gaza." Counterpunch (October 23, 2023) ["Hamas’s recent attacks on Israel, in the presence of one of the best intelligence outfits in the world, has once again brought to mind the statements made by certain Israeli officials regarding Israel’s covert role in the formation of Hamas, which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who served as an Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, had disclosed in an interview to the New York Times that he had contributed to financing the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party. He further confessed that the Israeli government had provided him with a budget. A retired Israeli official Avner Cohen had also given a similar statement during his interview to the Wall Street Journal on Jan 24, 2009. “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” he confessed and further explained that “Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas.” Furthermore, Cohen disclosed that he had warned his officers against pursuing a divide-and-rule policy in the Occupied Territories and vehemently opposed Israel’s support for Palestinian Islamists over Palestinian secularists. Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul also stated that “Hamas was actually encouraged and initiated by Israel to counteract Yasser Arafat.” Furthermore, Col. David Hacham, an expert in Arab Affairs in the Israeli military, has described Israel’s support as the ‘original sin.’"]
Nestle, Marion. "Food and Politics." Conversations with History (March 20, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Marion Nestle Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition at New York University. Professor Nestle reflects on the evolution of her thinking on the interplay between nutrition studies and the politics of food. She discusses the environment of the food industry emphasizing its dilemma of producing too much food in an environment in which profits are paramount and the competition with other food producers is intense. She analyzes the arsenal of tools at its service—advertising and lobbying and talks about the role of food activism in creating a structure of choice in which health, the environment and social justice are determining factors in what is produced and what we eat. Finally, she identifies the role of government in entrenching the status quo and the possibilities of it assuming a different kind of role. Finally, she offers advice to students preparing for the future."]
Neuman, Johanna. "The Campaign to Win the Vote for Women: Why Social Change Takes Time." From the Square (March 1, 2018)
Neuwirth, Jessica and Leana Wen. "'A Shameful Week for the U.S.: : Trump Admin Guts U.N. Resolution to End Rape as Weapon of War." Democracy Now (April 26, 2019) ["The Trump administration is under fire after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to end rape as a weapon of war on Tuesday that excluded any mention of sexual and reproductive health. The resolution was gutted after the U.S. threatened to veto the measure altogether unless language referencing reproductive health was taken out due to the Trump administration’s belief that the language was code for abortion. The watered-down measure also weakened references to the International Criminal Court, making it harder for women and girls to seek justice. We speak with Jessica Neuwirth, director of the Human Rights Program at Roosevelt House at Hunter College and the director of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute. She sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo protesting the U.S. stance on the Security Council resolution. We also speak with Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana." ]
Nicholson-Smith, Donald. "May 1968 and the Situationist International." Against the Grain (November 28, 2018) ["Half a century ago, revolt broke out around the world, making the year 1968 synonymous with left-wing rebellion. In France, students and workers paralyzed the country during a heady month of massive wildcat strikes and factory occupations, during which the government feared it would be toppled. Donald Nicholson-Smith discusses May ’68 and the Situationist ideas that helped fuel the upheaval."]
Nisa, Eva. "'They Are Us': : New Zealand Mourns After Mosque Attacks Killed 50 Including Refugees & Immigrants." Democracy Now (March 19, 2019) ["Burials are beginning in New Zealand as the country mourns the loss of 50 Muslim worshipers gunned down in two mosques in Christchurch by a white supremacist Friday. It was the deadliest attack in New Zealand’s history. The worshipers killed in the Christchurch massacre came from around the world. Most of them were immigrants, or refugees who had come to New Zealand seeking safety. Six Pakistanis, four Jordanians, four Egyptians and at least three Bangladeshis are among the dead. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said that six of the victims were of Palestinian origin. We speak with Eva Nisa, a lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her recent article for Middle East Eye is titled “New Zealand has been a home to Muslims for centuries, and will remain so.”"]
Norton, Blake and Sophie Novack. "Texas Woman: I Was Forced to Consent to Bury Fetal Remains After Miscarriage in 'Horrific' Ordeal." Democracy Now (April 25, 2018) ["Last week, a U.S. appeals court declared unconstitutional an Indiana law signed by then-Governor, now Vice President, Mike Pence, that requires fetuses to be buried or cremated. This comes as Texas passed a law last year saying all fetal remains had to be buried or cremated, and also banned donation of that tissue for research purposes. In January, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra temporarily halted the fetal remains law, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has vowed to continue fighting for it. For more, we speak with Blake Norton, who had a miscarriage in 2015 at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, and was forced to choose whether she would let the hospital bury the remains in a shared grave, or arrange for a “private burial” at her own expense. We’re also joined by Texas Observer reporter Sophie Novack, whose cover story about Blake Norton is headlined 'Indoctrinated: A Catholic hospital in Austin forces patients who miscarry to consent to fetal burials. For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse—and she worries it could soon become routine across Texas.'"]
Nyhan, Brendan. "Purple Episode 2: Low Information, High Misinformation Voters." On the Media (November 24, 2019) ["The Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy, crisis actors at Sandy Hook, the flat Earthers...and on and on. Absolute nonsense peddled by the cynical and the naive, and eagerly lapped up by the gullible. Misinformation is a problem that Brendan Nyhan, professor of government at Dartmouth College, has studied for years. In this interview, Brendan and Bob discuss new research on how Americans form their political beliefs and how civic institutions may begin to win back their trust."]
Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, et al. "'Our Very Existence is the Resistance': : An Hour w/ AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib & Ilhan Omar." Democracy Now (February 10, 2020) ["On Friday, Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh sat down for a rare joint interview with the Squad, the group of four freshmen Democratic congresswomen who have taken Capitol Hill by storm: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar and Tlaib are the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Omar is a former refugee from Somalia, and Tlaib is the first female Palestinian-American member of Congress. Ayanna Pressley is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Ocasio-Cortez was just 29 years old when she took office last year, making her the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress. Born to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father from the South Bronx, Ocasio-Cortez — or AOC — has emerged as one of the most popular lawmakers in the country. Last week, Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley boycotted President Trump’s State of the Union address, Tlaib walked out during the speech, and Omar stayed for the speech, saying, “My presence tonight is resistance.” Nermeen Shaikh spoke with the four politicians at an event organized by The Rising Majority at Howard University."]
Omar, Ilhan. "Ilhan Omar in Her Own Words: I Know What Hate Feels Like." Democracy Now (March 8, 2019) ["The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Thursday condemning anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim discrimination, white supremacy and other forms of hate. The vote was 407 to 23, with nearly two dozen Republicans voting against it. The vote capped a week of intense debate among congressional Democrats that began after some lawmakers accused Democratic Congress member Ilhan Omar of invoking anti-Semitic tropes while questioning U.S. foreign policy on Israel at an event last week. Omar said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” While the media has largely focused on this single sentence in her remarks, few have heard her broader comments. We hear from Ilhan Omar in her own words, speaking last week at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C." Part 2: "It’s Time to Tell the Truth: Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy Supports Ilhan Omar’s Critique of Israel." and Part 3: "Debate over Ilhan Omar Highlights New Willingness in U.S. to Question Power of Pro-Israeli Lobby."]
Packer, George. "We Are Living in a Failed State." The Atlantic (June 2020) ["The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken."]
Pareene, Alex. "Consolation Prizes." The Baffler #43 (January/February, 2019)
["The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gizmos."]
"Parkland High School Shooting Survivor Emma Gonzalez’s Powerful Speech Demanding Gun Control." Democracy Now (February 19, 2018) ["In Florida, as funerals continue for the 17 people killed in at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, survivors of the school shooting have launched an unprecedented youth-led movement to demand gun control. At a rally on Saturday, survivors of the school shooting demanded politicians stop accepting money from the National Rifle Association. For more, we broadcast the full speech of Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School."]
Partanen, Anu and Jay Tomlinson. "The Nordic Theory of Love." The Best of the Left #142 (March 1, 2019) ["The Nordic theory of love and independence with the author of The Nordic Theory of Everything."]
Nestle, Marion. "Food and Politics." Conversations with History (March 20, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Marion Nestle Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition at New York University. Professor Nestle reflects on the evolution of her thinking on the interplay between nutrition studies and the politics of food. She discusses the environment of the food industry emphasizing its dilemma of producing too much food in an environment in which profits are paramount and the competition with other food producers is intense. She analyzes the arsenal of tools at its service—advertising and lobbying and talks about the role of food activism in creating a structure of choice in which health, the environment and social justice are determining factors in what is produced and what we eat. Finally, she identifies the role of government in entrenching the status quo and the possibilities of it assuming a different kind of role. Finally, she offers advice to students preparing for the future."]
Nestle, Marion, et al. "Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health (University of California Press, 2020)." New Books in Food (January 13, 2021) ["Marion Nestle describes her new book as “a small, quick and dirty reader for the general audience” summarizing some of her biggest and most influential works. Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know About the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health published September 2020 by University of California Press, was written in conversation with Kerry Trueman, a blogger and friend. Trueman’s questions served as prompts to organize Nestle’s 800-1000 word summaries in approachable and engaging prose. Readers familiar with Nestle’s groundbreaking Food Politics will recognize many of the ideas and information, but this new pocket-sized and affordable volume serves as an introduction for undergraduate students or readers new to Food Studies. However, Nestle does cover some new material in her explanation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, especially the campaign for Zero Hunger. Nestle also summarizes how nutrition advice has changed in the last few years by thinking about food in categories ranging from unprocessed (corn on the cob) to ultraprocessed (Nacho Cheese tortilla chips). This reevaluation makes it easier to identify foods that are acceptable to eat without excessive focus on micronutrients. In the conversation, Nestle addresses the ethics of marketing food to children, food as a human right and access in the Covid era, the possibility of a National Food Policy Agency, the politics of food banks, and the promise of regenerative agricultural practices. Nestle concludes by talking about the pleasures of food and eating and how to establish a “loving relationship” with food that doesn’t include fear, guilt, or anxiety about nutrition. Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, and the author of books about food politics, most recently Unsavory Truth."]
Neuwirth, Jessica and Leana Wen. "'A Shameful Week for the U.S.: : Trump Admin Guts U.N. Resolution to End Rape as Weapon of War." Democracy Now (April 26, 2019) ["The Trump administration is under fire after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to end rape as a weapon of war on Tuesday that excluded any mention of sexual and reproductive health. The resolution was gutted after the U.S. threatened to veto the measure altogether unless language referencing reproductive health was taken out due to the Trump administration’s belief that the language was code for abortion. The watered-down measure also weakened references to the International Criminal Court, making it harder for women and girls to seek justice. We speak with Jessica Neuwirth, director of the Human Rights Program at Roosevelt House at Hunter College and the director of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute. She sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo protesting the U.S. stance on the Security Council resolution. We also speak with Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana." ]
Nisa, Eva. "'They Are Us': : New Zealand Mourns After Mosque Attacks Killed 50 Including Refugees & Immigrants." Democracy Now (March 19, 2019) ["Burials are beginning in New Zealand as the country mourns the loss of 50 Muslim worshipers gunned down in two mosques in Christchurch by a white supremacist Friday. It was the deadliest attack in New Zealand’s history. The worshipers killed in the Christchurch massacre came from around the world. Most of them were immigrants, or refugees who had come to New Zealand seeking safety. Six Pakistanis, four Jordanians, four Egyptians and at least three Bangladeshis are among the dead. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said that six of the victims were of Palestinian origin. We speak with Eva Nisa, a lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her recent article for Middle East Eye is titled “New Zealand has been a home to Muslims for centuries, and will remain so.”"]
Nyhan, Brendan. "Purple Episode 2: Low Information, High Misinformation Voters." On the Media (November 24, 2019) ["The Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy, crisis actors at Sandy Hook, the flat Earthers...and on and on. Absolute nonsense peddled by the cynical and the naive, and eagerly lapped up by the gullible. Misinformation is a problem that Brendan Nyhan, professor of government at Dartmouth College, has studied for years. In this interview, Brendan and Bob discuss new research on how Americans form their political beliefs and how civic institutions may begin to win back their trust."]
Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, et al. "'Our Very Existence is the Resistance': : An Hour w/ AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib & Ilhan Omar." Democracy Now (February 10, 2020) ["On Friday, Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh sat down for a rare joint interview with the Squad, the group of four freshmen Democratic congresswomen who have taken Capitol Hill by storm: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar and Tlaib are the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Omar is a former refugee from Somalia, and Tlaib is the first female Palestinian-American member of Congress. Ayanna Pressley is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Ocasio-Cortez was just 29 years old when she took office last year, making her the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress. Born to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father from the South Bronx, Ocasio-Cortez — or AOC — has emerged as one of the most popular lawmakers in the country. Last week, Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley boycotted President Trump’s State of the Union address, Tlaib walked out during the speech, and Omar stayed for the speech, saying, “My presence tonight is resistance.” Nermeen Shaikh spoke with the four politicians at an event organized by The Rising Majority at Howard University."]
Omar, Ilhan. "Ilhan Omar in Her Own Words: I Know What Hate Feels Like." Democracy Now (March 8, 2019) ["The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Thursday condemning anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim discrimination, white supremacy and other forms of hate. The vote was 407 to 23, with nearly two dozen Republicans voting against it. The vote capped a week of intense debate among congressional Democrats that began after some lawmakers accused Democratic Congress member Ilhan Omar of invoking anti-Semitic tropes while questioning U.S. foreign policy on Israel at an event last week. Omar said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” While the media has largely focused on this single sentence in her remarks, few have heard her broader comments. We hear from Ilhan Omar in her own words, speaking last week at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C." Part 2: "It’s Time to Tell the Truth: Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy Supports Ilhan Omar’s Critique of Israel." and Part 3: "Debate over Ilhan Omar Highlights New Willingness in U.S. to Question Power of Pro-Israeli Lobby."]
Packer, George. "We Are Living in a Failed State." The Atlantic (June 2020) ["The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken."]
Pareene, Alex. "Consolation Prizes." The Baffler #43 (January/February, 2019)
["The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gizmos."]
Partanen, Anu and Jay Tomlinson. "The Nordic Theory of Love." The Best of the Left #142 (March 1, 2019) ["The Nordic theory of love and independence with the author of The Nordic Theory of Everything."]
Patel, Raj. "As Hunger Soars Across Nation, U.S. Trade & Foreign Policy Is Also Causing Hunger Across the Globe." Democracy Now (November 24, 2020) ["As the U.S. enters the holiday season, millions of people across the country are struggling to find enough to eat, with the hunger relief group Feeding America warning that some 54 million U.S. residents currently face food insecurity amid a massive public health and economic crisis. Food insecurity in the U.S. has intensified after the expiration of federal assistance programs in the CARES Act, and the United Nations World Food Programme predicts acute hunger could affect 270 million people worldwide by the end of 2020 — an 82% increase since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. We speak with author and filmmaker Raj Patel, host of the food politics podcast “The Secret Ingredient,” who says hunger was already at alarming levels in the U.S. before the pandemic, and it’s only gotten worse. “The long story here is the continuing war on the American working class,” Patel says."]
The Perkins Project on Workers' Rights and Wages Economic Policy Institute (Ongoing Archive) ["EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people."]
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020. ["Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it." This is the Harvard University Press book page, it has links to app. 50 interviews and features on the author & the book.]
Pomerantsev, Peter. "The Info War of All Against All." The New York Review of Books (August 23, 2019)
Potter, Will. "The Secret U.S. Prisons You've Never Heard of Before." TED Talks (August 2015) ["Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children. Potter, a TED Fellow, shows us who is imprisoned here, and how the government is trying to keep them hidden. "The message was clear," he says. "Don't talk about this place.""]
Prakash, Varsini, Sean Sweeney and Elizabeth Yeampierre. "Green New Deal, Yellow Vests." The Laura Flanders Show (January 30, 2019) ["Is the climate movement heating up? This week on the show, activists at all levels of the climate justice movement discuss how inter-generational, cross-coalition, and global organizing is taking control of the future without waiting for anyone. Can the U.S born Green New Deal learn from yellow-vested workers’ agitation in France? And who’s new Deal is it anyway? In this episode: Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance; Sean Sweeney,Director of Cornell Global Labor Institute’s International Program for Labor, Climate & Environment; and Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement."]
Prentice, Deborah and Robb Willer. "Pluralistic Ignorance: The psychology behind why people defend the norms they secretly despise." You Are Not So Smart #181 (July 30, 2020)
Press, Alex N. "A Tale of Two Prisoners." Jacobin (July 27, 2019) ["Comparing the treatment of Jeffrey Epstein to Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed Eric Garner's murder, reveals the grotesque inequality at the heart of American society. There’s one set of rules for the rich, and an entirely different set for the poor."]
Radsch, Courtney and Sarah Leah Whitson. "Netflix Censors Hasan Minhaj in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Backlash over Khashoggi Killing, War in Yemen." Democracy Now (January 3, 2019) ["Netflix is under fire for pulling an episode of U.S. comedian Hasan Minhaj’s show “Patriot Act” from Saudi Arabia, after officials from the kingdom complained to the streaming company that it violated Saudi cybercrime laws. The episode was posted in late October, a few weeks after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Hasan Minhaj sharply criticized the Saudi royal family and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The censored episode has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube, where it remains available to viewers in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, Minhaj tweeted, “Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube. Let’s not forget that the world’s largest humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen right now. Please donate: help.rescue.org/donate/yemen.” We speak with Courtney Radsch, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division."]
Rana, Aziz. "Two Faces of American Freedom." The Dig (July 26, 2019) ["The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life."]
Ransby, Barbara. "Chicago Makes Herstory: First African-American Woman and Gay Chicago Mayor Wins in Landslide." Democracy Now (April 3, 2019) ["Chicago voters made history Tuesday when Lori Lightfoot won a landslide victory as both the city’s first African-American woman mayor and openly gay mayor. This comes after a February runoff election that pitted her against Toni Preckwinkle, a former alderperson who is president of the Cook County Board. While Preckwinkle had been viewed as a highly formidable candidate, Lightfoot is a political outsider who has never held elected office. We are joined by Barbara Ransby, professor of African American studies, gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her article for The Nation is headlined “The Rising Black Left Movement Behind Chicago’s Historic Elections.”"]Read, Max. "How The Matrix Fed Our Conspiracy-Laden World." On the Media (April 12, 2019) ["When it comes to nourishing paranoiac beliefs through pop culture, one of the most iconic works is the 1999 sci-fi political parable The Matrix. A computer hacker, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, journeys into a reality he didn’t know existed and must battle the system of machines controlling all of humanity. The plot of the movie hinges around a choice Neo makes to take a red pill and to wake up from his blissful ignorance. Bob talks with Max Read, a writer and editor at New York Magazine, about what red-pilling has come to signify on the internet and in American politics, and how different groups use the potent metaphor."]
"Reclaim the Streets." This is America #72 (May 9, 2019) ["In this episode, first we talk with people involved in the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance about the connections between policing and counter-insurgency, as well as new surveillance technologies, in both occupied Palestinian territories and along the so-called US and Mexico border. We then open up into a broad discussion on current affairs."]
Reich, Robert, et al. "Fighting for a Green New Deal." Best of the Left #1242 (January 18, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the groundwork for a Green New Deal as it's being laid and the fight that is heating up around the policies, not just between political parties but between the separate wings (and generations) of the Democratic Party."]
Rhodes, Ben. "Confronting the Consequences of Obama's Foreign Policy." Deconstructed (June 22, 2018)
Ribakoff, Sam. "Whose Utopia Gets to Be Built?: An Interview with Eric Nusbaum." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 6, 2020) ["The Story of Chavez Ravine, the hilltop neighborhood that was destroyed first with a promise of public housing projects, and then sold to build Dodger Stadium, is a well-known local civic shame. In his first book, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, Eric Nusbaum fills in the details of the story by closely tracing the stories of the characters involved; from the Aréchiga family, the last family to be evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, who only wanted to live in peace in their slice of utopia, to Frank Wilkinson, a Westside L.A. rich kid turned fervent public housing activist and politician who fought to build a public housing utopia in place of the communities of Chavez Ravine, to Walter O’Malley, the visionary New York owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who dreamed of building the perfect stadium of the future for his beloved game of baseball. Throughout the book, Nusbaum contextualizes the characters’ stories by illuminating the historical forces that put the tragedy into motion; from rising racist backlash against immigrants, to the Red Scare’s fight against leftists, to Los Angeles’s civic hysteria for the prestige of big sports games, and, of course, the history of baseball and how the Brooklyn Dodgers came to be the Los Angeles Dodgers. This chain of events still reverberates through the families involved."]
Riccio, Alexander. "Labor's Identity Against the Enclosure of History." Laborwave (2019)
Rich, Nathaniel. "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change." The New York Times Magazine (August 1, 2018) ["This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it."]
Richardson, Chris. "Reimagining Livelihoods." This is Not a Pipe (December 26, 2019) ["Ethan Miller discusses his book Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment with Chris Richardson. Miller is an activist-scholar committed to co-creating resilient and liberatory forms of collective livelihood. He is an interdisciplinary lecturer teaching in politics, anthropology, and environmental studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, a board member of the Community Economies Institute, and has worked for the past twenty years with an array of grassroots organizing and popular education projects. Ethan lives at the Wild Mountain Cooperative (formerly JED Collective), a collective subsistence homestead, and works as an organizer for Land in Common community land trust, focused on land justice and cooperative forms of land tenure. His research and teaching focuses on solidarity economics and postcapitalist livelihood, intersections of economy and ecology and, most recently, land justice. His first book, Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment was released in March 2019 by the University of Minnesota Press."]
Riley, Boots. "Boots Riley on His Anti-Capitalist Film Sorry to Bother You, the Power of Strikes & Class Struggle." Democracy Now (September 3, 2018) ["In a Labor Day special, we air an extended conversation with Boots Riley, writer and director of “Sorry to Bother You,” his new film about an evil telemarketing company, a corporation making millions off of slave labor, and one Oakland man at the center of it all who discovers a secret that threatens all of humankind. His dystopian social satire is being hailed as one of the best movies of the summer. Riley is a poet, rapper, songwriter, producer, screenwriter, humorist, political organizer, community activist, lecturer and public speaker—best known as the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club."]
---. "On Sorry to Bother You and Communism." The Dig (August 9, 2018) ["Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead serious shitiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor—all at the mercy of the thinly-veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip hop group The Coup."]
Risen, James. "The Biggest Secret: James Risen on Life as a NY Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror." Democracy Now (January 5, 2018) ["We spend the hour with former New York Times reporter James Risen, who left the paper in August to join The Intercept as senior national security correspondent. This week, he published a 15,000-word story headlined “The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror.” The explosive piece describes his struggles to publish major national security stories in the post-9/11 period and how both the government and his own editors at The New York Times suppressed his reporting, including reports on the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, for which he would later win the Pulitzer Prize. Risen describes meetings between key Times editors and top officials at the CIAand the White House. His refusal to name a source would take him to the Supreme Court, and he almost wound up in jail, until the Obama administration blinked."]
Rivlin, Gary. "A Giant Pile of Money: How Wall Street Drove Public Pensions Into Crisis and Pocketed Billions in Fees." The Intercept (October 20, 2018)
---. "The Private Equity Governor: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Sworn Foe of Pensions, Made a Fortune Charging High Fees to Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 22, 2018) ["Gov. Bruce Rauner made a fortune charging high fees to public pensions. Once elected, he tried to slash pension benefits."]
---. "The Whistleblower: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 21, 2018) ["Kentucky’s willingness to gamble massively on high-risk alternative investments for its pensions has made the state an easy mark for Wall Street hucksters."]
Roberto, Michael Joseph. "In The Coming Of The American Behemoth Fascism Hits Close To Home." The State of Things (January 29, 2019) ["Many Americans know fascism as an authoritarian ideology which blossomed in early 20th century Europe — first with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and later with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany. But historian Michael Joseph Roberto argues that while Mussolini and Hitler were capturing the world’s attention, a type of fascist ideology was also taking hold in the United States, although the system looked different. Roberto says monopoly-finance capitalism and the dominance of big business over personal liberties is America’s own mutation of fascism. He articulates this argument in the book “The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920–1940” (NYU Press/2018)."]
Roberts, David. "In Which CNN Devotes 7 Hours to Climate Change." On the Media (September 6, 2019) [MB -- I'm hoping this will be a tipping point in the way in which we conduct the investigation of candidate positions and, hopefully, a move away from the soundbite candidate forums of the two major parties. Fascinating example of the power of informed citizens asking pertinent questions of candidates who are then allowed the time to unpack their positions ... as opposed to the regular routine of media bobbleheads prompting pithy comments in the hope of a viral moment. Could you imagine the Twitter-in-Chief trying to survive a few of these 40 minute intense question-and-answer sessions? "... CNN hosted a town hall forum with ten Democratic primary candidates discussing their policy proposals for addressing the climate crisis. The DNC declined requests from climate activists to host a themed debate for the issue, so CNN had the candidates on back-to-back for 7 hours as moderators took turns asking questions with an audience of activists, PhD students, and professors. According to David Roberts, who covers energy and climate change for Vox, it was actually a meaningful event. The questions from audience members were personal, informed, and incisive and the candidates were surprisingly specific in their answers. Roberts tells Brooke what he learned from the town hall about different frames for discussing climate change, and how journalists are still catching up on the conversation."]
Roberts, Neil. "Race, Injustice, and Philosophy: An Interview with Tommie Shelby." Black Perspectives (January 2, 2018)
Roberts, Tim. "What Was also Wrong About the Claim that Andrew Gillum’s Election as Florida’s Governor 'Would Monkey This Up.'" History News Network (September 9, 2018)
Robin, Corey. "The Supreme Court Justice with the Most to Say." On the Media (July 31, 2020) ["Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is hardly the quietest member of the bench. In hundreds of opinions authored during his tenure — longer than any of his present colleagues' — Thomas has elaborated upon a vision first instilled in him by a stern, business-minded grandfather and later cemented during a turbulent undergraduate education, spent protesting racial injustice, debating Black nationalist principles, and memorizing passages of Malcolm X. And despite a deliberate post-college turn toward capitalism and political futilitarianism, his original comprehensive view of America persists: our national government is incapable of bettering the lives of Black Americans, just as white Americans are forever incapable of dismantling their own racism. Still, Thomas remains baffling to some — an enigma, as some senators put it during his confirmation hearings more than twenty years ago. An analysis of Thomas's biography and jurisprudence by author and political scientist Corey Robin, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, leaves no room for confusion. In this segment, originally aired last November, Brooke speaks with Robin about Thomas's views on criminal justice, affirmative action, capitalism, racial equality, and ultimately the fate of the nation."]
---. "The United States of Amnesia." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["The end to the Mueller investigation has been wholly unsatisfying for those who see Trump’s presidency as an aberrant detour on conservatism’s march. This presidency, this in-your-face self-dealing, this breakdown in civility: it seems altogether new. Of course, it's not. Political science professor Corey Robin argues that the Trump era is merely an extension of the same movement that gave us the Iraq War — and much that preceded it. He and Brooke discuss our collective failure to draw connections between Trump and what came before, and how it forms part of a longer pattern of forgetting in American culture."]
Robinson, Andrew. "Anarchism, War and the State." CeaseFire (August 6, 2010) ["This article summarises how a number of anarchist and anarchistic authors view the relationship between the state and war."]
---. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]
Rose City Antifa. "Statement on the Far-Right’s Attempt to Criminalize Protest of Concentration Camp Deaths and Hate Groups." It's Going Down (July 25, 2019)
Rosenthal, Shana. "Former Parkland Student: I Interned for Senator Rubio. Now I’m Begging Him to Act on Guns." Democracy Now (February 22, 2018) ["As students protests grow in Florida, we speak to a former intern for Senator Rubio who is also a graduate from Stoneman Douglas High School. Shana Rosenthal just wrote a piece for The New York Times titled “I Interned for Senator Rubio. Now I’m Begging Him to Act on Guns.” In the piece, the 21-year-old reveals she has already been near four mass shootings: at Florida State University, Fort Lauderdale airport and the massacres at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and at Stoneman Douglas High School last week. She attended the CNN town hall last night."]
Rosenwald, Michael. "Top Secret." Columbia Review of Journalism (Fall 2019) [British and American origins of the contemporary information war "As the US press has covered Russia’s meddling in American politics, a counternarrative, about information warfare waged by our own government, has gone largely ignored. In fact, American reporters, if they wanted, could build a credible case that Putin’s disinformation efforts, which often use the media as an unknowing accomplice, simply carry on a tradition honed in this country, going back decades."]
Schaeffer, Jan. "Purple Episode 4: Media to the Rescue?" On the Media (November 26, 2019) ["A 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, showed only 23 percent of eighth graders in the United States attained “proficient” status in civics. A 2011 Newsweek survey found that 70 percent of Americans didn’t even know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And only 26% of those surveyed in 2017 by the University of Pennsylvania could name all three branches of government. And no wonder: with STEM curriculum and standardized testing squeezing the school day, civics has become the snow leopard of the social studies curriculum. So if the knowledge vacuum is otherwise filled by misinformation and disinformation, and the result is a loss of faith and trust in democracy itself, who is left to intervene? Jan Schaffer — ombudsman for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, Pulitzer Prize–winning former journalist and founder of The Institute for Interactive Journalism — talks to Bob about what responsibility the media have to become educators, and maybe even re-assurers, of last resort."]
Schwalbe, Michael. "A Primer on Class Struggle." Common Dreams (March 31, 2011)
Schwarz, Jon. "New Dark Money Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich." The Intercept (October 1, 2018)
Scott, James C. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." New Books in Political Science (June 3, 2020) ["We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), James C. Scott asks us to question this belief. The evidence, he says, is simply not on the side of states. Stratified, taxing, walled towns did not inevitably appear in the wake of crop domestication and sedentary settlement. Only around 3100 BCE, some four millennia after the earliest farming and settling down, did they begin making their presence felt. What happened in these four millennia is the subject of this book: a deep history by “a card-carrying political scientist and an anthropologist and environmentalist by courtesy”, which aims to put the earliest states in their place. James Scott joins us ... to talk about state fragility and state persistence from Mesopotamia to Southeast Asia, the politics of cereal crops, domestication and reproduction, why it was once good to be a barbarian, the art of provocation, the views of critics, and, human and animal species relations and zoonoses in our epidemiological past and pandemic present."]
---. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." Slavery and Its Legacies (April 13, 2017) ["James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is Director of the Agrarian Studies Program. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. He is currently teaching Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression. Recent publications include Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, 1997; “Geographies of Trust: Geographies of Hierarchy,” in Democracy and Trust, 1998; “State Simplifications and Practical Knowledge,” in People’s Economy, People’s Ecology, 1998; and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Press, 2009)."]
---. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press, 2012. ["James Scott taught us what’s wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing—one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions. Through a wide-ranging series of memorable anecdotes and examples, the book describes an anarchist sensibility that celebrates the local knowledge, common sense, and creativity of ordinary people. The result is a kind of handbook on constructive anarchism that challenges us to radically reconsider the value of hierarchy in public and private life, from schools and workplaces to retirement homes and government itself. Beginning with what Scott calls “the law of anarchist calisthenics,” an argument for law-breaking inspired by an East German pedestrian crossing, each chapter opens with a story that captures an essential anarchist truth. In the course of telling these stories, Scott touches on a wide variety of subjects: public disorder and riots, desertion, poaching, vernacular knowledge, assembly-line production, globalization, the petty bourgeoisie, school testing, playgrounds, and the practice of historical explanation. Far from a dogmatic manifesto, Two Cheers for Anarchism celebrates the anarchist confidence in the inventiveness and judgment of people who are free to exercise their creative and moral capacities."]
---. "On Sorry to Bother You and Communism." The Dig (August 9, 2018) ["Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead serious shitiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor—all at the mercy of the thinly-veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip hop group The Coup."]
Rivlin, Gary. "A Giant Pile of Money: How Wall Street Drove Public Pensions Into Crisis and Pocketed Billions in Fees." The Intercept (October 20, 2018)
---. "The Private Equity Governor: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Sworn Foe of Pensions, Made a Fortune Charging High Fees to Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 22, 2018) ["Gov. Bruce Rauner made a fortune charging high fees to public pensions. Once elected, he tried to slash pension benefits."]
Roberto, Michael Joseph. "In The Coming Of The American Behemoth Fascism Hits Close To Home." The State of Things (January 29, 2019) ["Many Americans know fascism as an authoritarian ideology which blossomed in early 20th century Europe — first with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and later with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany. But historian Michael Joseph Roberto argues that while Mussolini and Hitler were capturing the world’s attention, a type of fascist ideology was also taking hold in the United States, although the system looked different. Roberto says monopoly-finance capitalism and the dominance of big business over personal liberties is America’s own mutation of fascism. He articulates this argument in the book “The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920–1940” (NYU Press/2018)."]
Roberts, David. "In Which CNN Devotes 7 Hours to Climate Change." On the Media (September 6, 2019) [MB -- I'm hoping this will be a tipping point in the way in which we conduct the investigation of candidate positions and, hopefully, a move away from the soundbite candidate forums of the two major parties. Fascinating example of the power of informed citizens asking pertinent questions of candidates who are then allowed the time to unpack their positions ... as opposed to the regular routine of media bobbleheads prompting pithy comments in the hope of a viral moment. Could you imagine the Twitter-in-Chief trying to survive a few of these 40 minute intense question-and-answer sessions? "... CNN hosted a town hall forum with ten Democratic primary candidates discussing their policy proposals for addressing the climate crisis. The DNC declined requests from climate activists to host a themed debate for the issue, so CNN had the candidates on back-to-back for 7 hours as moderators took turns asking questions with an audience of activists, PhD students, and professors. According to David Roberts, who covers energy and climate change for Vox, it was actually a meaningful event. The questions from audience members were personal, informed, and incisive and the candidates were surprisingly specific in their answers. Roberts tells Brooke what he learned from the town hall about different frames for discussing climate change, and how journalists are still catching up on the conversation."]
Roberts, Tim. "What Was also Wrong About the Claim that Andrew Gillum’s Election as Florida’s Governor 'Would Monkey This Up.'" History News Network (September 9, 2018)
Roberts-Miller, Patricia. "Teacher Neutrality and Fairness in a Culture of Demagoguery." (Personal/teaching website: February 23, 2018)
Rogers, Steven. "Accountability in State Legislatures (University of Chicago Press, 2023)." New Books in Political Science (January 8, 2024) ["Political Scientist Steven Rogers’ new book focuses on the deceptively complex question of how it is that voters do or don’t/can and can’t hold their elected state representatives accountable. Rogers takes his jumping off point from the basic understanding of the relationship between the voter and their elected representatives: namely that the election process will, in some way, act as a means of making the elected official in state government accountable to the voters, who cast their ballots for or in opposition to that elected representative. State house elected officials across the United States are, indeed, closer in proximity to the people they are elected to represent and govern; and the legislation and regulations passed by state legislators generally impact us more directly and more frequently than do national-level laws, regulations, or decisions. And while there is a of literature focusing on state and local politics, the unique approach of Rogers’ research focuses specifically on the state legislatures, how the elites and voters act in elections, and if we can actually see accountability demonstrated in these interactions and connections."]
Robin, Corey. "The Supreme Court Justice with the Most to Say." On the Media (July 31, 2020) ["Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is hardly the quietest member of the bench. In hundreds of opinions authored during his tenure — longer than any of his present colleagues' — Thomas has elaborated upon a vision first instilled in him by a stern, business-minded grandfather and later cemented during a turbulent undergraduate education, spent protesting racial injustice, debating Black nationalist principles, and memorizing passages of Malcolm X. And despite a deliberate post-college turn toward capitalism and political futilitarianism, his original comprehensive view of America persists: our national government is incapable of bettering the lives of Black Americans, just as white Americans are forever incapable of dismantling their own racism. Still, Thomas remains baffling to some — an enigma, as some senators put it during his confirmation hearings more than twenty years ago. An analysis of Thomas's biography and jurisprudence by author and political scientist Corey Robin, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, leaves no room for confusion. In this segment, originally aired last November, Brooke speaks with Robin about Thomas's views on criminal justice, affirmative action, capitalism, racial equality, and ultimately the fate of the nation."]
---. "The United States of Amnesia." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["The end to the Mueller investigation has been wholly unsatisfying for those who see Trump’s presidency as an aberrant detour on conservatism’s march. This presidency, this in-your-face self-dealing, this breakdown in civility: it seems altogether new. Of course, it's not. Political science professor Corey Robin argues that the Trump era is merely an extension of the same movement that gave us the Iraq War — and much that preceded it. He and Brooke discuss our collective failure to draw connections between Trump and what came before, and how it forms part of a longer pattern of forgetting in American culture."]
Robinson, Andrew. "Anarchism, War and the State." CeaseFire (August 6, 2010) ["This article summarises how a number of anarchist and anarchistic authors view the relationship between the state and war."]
---. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]
Rose City Antifa. "Statement on the Far-Right’s Attempt to Criminalize Protest of Concentration Camp Deaths and Hate Groups." It's Going Down (July 25, 2019)
Rosenthal, Shana. "Former Parkland Student: I Interned for Senator Rubio. Now I’m Begging Him to Act on Guns." Democracy Now (February 22, 2018) ["As students protests grow in Florida, we speak to a former intern for Senator Rubio who is also a graduate from Stoneman Douglas High School. Shana Rosenthal just wrote a piece for The New York Times titled “I Interned for Senator Rubio. Now I’m Begging Him to Act on Guns.” In the piece, the 21-year-old reveals she has already been near four mass shootings: at Florida State University, Fort Lauderdale airport and the massacres at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and at Stoneman Douglas High School last week. She attended the CNN town hall last night."]
Rosenwald, Michael. "Top Secret." Columbia Review of Journalism (Fall 2019) [British and American origins of the contemporary information war "As the US press has covered Russia’s meddling in American politics, a counternarrative, about information warfare waged by our own government, has gone largely ignored. In fact, American reporters, if they wanted, could build a credible case that Putin’s disinformation efforts, which often use the media as an unknowing accomplice, simply carry on a tradition honed in this country, going back decades."]
Rowley, Rick. "16 Shots: Chicago Police Killing of Laquan McDonald Exposed a System Built on Lies." Democracy Now (June 17, 2019) ["The documentary “16 Shots” examines the 2014 murder of African-American teenager Laquan McDonald in Chicago and the attempt by the city’s police department to cover up the events. McDonald, who was 17, was shot 16 times by former police officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke was found guilty in 2018 of second-degree murder and sentenced to six years and nine months in prison for McDonald’s murder. He was also found guilty on 16 counts of aggravated battery—one count for each of the 16 bullets he fired at McDonald."]
Sainato, Michael. "'Coal is over': The miners rooting for the Green New Deal." The Guardian (August 12, 2019) ["Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty."]
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."]
Rushton, Michael. "The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan 2023)." New Books in Critical Theory (November 25, 2023) ["Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Affairs and a Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, explores a variety of frameworks for thinking about this question, from liberal and egalitarian justifications, through to communitarian, conservative, and multiculturalist ideas. The book outlines the economic method for thinking about the arts, and uses this as a starting point to understand what various political philosophies might tell policymakers and the public today. A rich and deep intervention on a pressing social and governmental question, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in arts and cultural policy. Prof Rushton blogs at both Substack and Artsjournal and you can read open access papers covering some of the key ideas in the book here and here."]
Sainato, Michael. "'Coal is over': The miners rooting for the Green New Deal." The Guardian (August 12, 2019) ["Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty."]
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."]
Salvador, Ricardo. "As Food Insecurity Surges, Leading Scientist Says Hunger Is a Deliberate Choice by Those in Power." Democracy Now (December 10, 2020) ["As the World Food Programme accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, we look at the growing global hunger crisis amid the pandemic, the climate crisis and war. In the United States, as many as 50 million people could experience food insecurity before the end of the year — including one in four children. “It’s important to remember that hunger does not always happen because of natural disasters,” says Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It is often the result of things that we do to each other deliberately.”" 2nd Part: "Why Biden’s Pick of Tom Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary Is a Missed Opportunity for the USDA."]
Sanders, Seth. "Despite Conflation of Israel with Judaism, Anti-Zionism is More Kosher Than You Think." Religion Dispatches (January 14, 2024) ["Like the Israeli government, Levy implies any charges against Israel as a nation-state are attacks on the Jewish people as a whole: that any anti-Zionism is antisemitic. So is the state of Israel actually the sole political representative of the Jews? Or, per the world’s largest Hasidic court, does Israel have no legitimate Jewish status at all? For Satmar authority Rabbi Shimon Israel Posen argued that Israel’s claim to legally represent Judaism is nothing less than “forging the signature of God.” And is the identification of the state of Israel with Judaism a political exaggeration? Is it, as Shaul Magid writes, “just another chapter in the narrative to make sure Jews in America don’t feel too safe, or too wanted, as Jews [because that] is not very good for Israel”? In Magid’s argument, automatic identification with Israel “gives American Jews, who have largely abandoned religion, a solid foundation of Jewish identity that requires very little effort.” Indeed, when the House of Representatives passed a GOP bill asserting all anti-Zionism was antisemitism they found a surprising opponent in Jerry Nadler (NY-12), the representative with the largest Jewish constituency in the country. Painfully alive to the problem of antisemitism, Nadler nonetheless described the bill as trying “to weaponize Jewish lives for political gains.” He ripped into the House claim as “either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong,” and argued that “the authors, if they were at all familiar with Jewish history and culture, should know about Jewish anti-Zionism that was, and is, expressly NOT antisemitic [because] even today, certain orthodox Hasidic Jewish communities…as well as adherents of the pre-state Jewish labor movement have held views that are at odds with the modern Zionist conception.”]
Scahill, Jeremy. "Trump Has Incited White Supremacists & Emboldened Police to Act Outside the Law." Democracy Now (October 19, 2020) ["As the 2020 presidential campaign enters its final two weeks, we look at the past four years of the Trump presidency with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. His podcast “Intercepted” has just released the fourth chapter in a seven-part audio documentary titled “American Mythology,” which critically examines the Trump presidency and places it within a larger historical context. Scahill says Trump has empowered white supremacist vigilantes and given permission to law enforcement to act extrajudicially to enforce a racist status quo, but he cautions that “Donald Trump is not an aberration of U.S. history or some anomaly, but he’s a very overt representation of many of the absolute most violent, destructive, racist, xenophobic trends in U.S. history.”"]
---. "'Trump Is Not the Root of the Problem, He Is a Product of American Imperial History.'" Democracy Now (October 19, 2020) ["Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 with a mixed message of attacking the legacy of the Iraq War and U.S. military adventurism, while simultaneously pledging to commit war crimes and promote imperialism. As we look back at Trump’s record, Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, says his flouting of international norms and bullying of other countries is in keeping with how U.S. presidents have long behaved. “Donald Trump is not the root of the problem. Donald Trump is a product of American imperial history,” Scahill notes."]
---. "Trump’s Xenophobia Is Horrific, But U.S. Immigration Policy Has Always Been Racist." Democracy Now (October 19, 2020) ["In Part 2 of our discussion of the Trump era with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill about his new seven-part audio documentary “American Mythology,” he examines how Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies have been a “methodical, surgical operation” to make life miserable for both current and prospective immigrants, including asylum seekers fleeing violence. He also notes that while Trump’s policies have been particularly vicious, “this country has had a racist immigration policy for a very long time, and it’s bipartisan.”"]
---. "Video: A Brief History of U.S. Intervention in Iraq Over the Past Half Century." The Intercept (April 9, 2018)
Schaeffer, Jan. "Purple Episode 4: Media to the Rescue?" On the Media (November 26, 2019) ["A 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, showed only 23 percent of eighth graders in the United States attained “proficient” status in civics. A 2011 Newsweek survey found that 70 percent of Americans didn’t even know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And only 26% of those surveyed in 2017 by the University of Pennsylvania could name all three branches of government. And no wonder: with STEM curriculum and standardized testing squeezing the school day, civics has become the snow leopard of the social studies curriculum. So if the knowledge vacuum is otherwise filled by misinformation and disinformation, and the result is a loss of faith and trust in democracy itself, who is left to intervene? Jan Schaffer — ombudsman for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, Pulitzer Prize–winning former journalist and founder of The Institute for Interactive Journalism — talks to Bob about what responsibility the media have to become educators, and maybe even re-assurers, of last resort."]
Shatz, Adam. "The Rebel's Clinic." Open Source (February 15, 2024) ["Frantz Fanon is our interest in this podcast. The man had charisma across the board in a short life and a long afterlife. A black man from the Caribbean, he went to France, first as a soldier to help free the French from Germany, then to become a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, and then to North Africa to serve a revolution against France in Algeria. Along the way, he wrote about politics with the touch of a poet. To this day, when the world talks about healing itself, Frantz Fanon hovers and gets quoted among the giants of modern thought about race and justice, about post-colonial wisdom, if there is such a thing. So how to draw on Fanonism anew and test it in the real emergencies of a divided world in the 2020s? Adam Shatz is our idea of a public intellectual of the widest range, and all the while, it turns out he’s been hooked on Frantz Fanon and gathering string for his big new book: The Rebel’s Clinic. Readers will feel an uncanny resonance between Frantz Fanon’s time in the 1950s and the cruel news of the 2020s: at the U.S. border with Mexico, to take one of many examples, and of course the killing field of Gaza, between Israelis and Palestinians."]
Schure, Natalia, et al. "Gearing Up for the Fight for Medicare for All." Best of the Left #1260 (March 29, 2019)
Scheindlin, Dahlia. "A Solution for Israelis & Palestinians." How Do We Fix It? #153 (2018) ["President Trump's rejection of the Iran nuclear agreement and Israeli military attacks on Iranian sites in Syria are among the latest signs of rising tensions in the Middle East. The threat of war is ever-present.
Twenty five years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, relations between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority are at a low point. There has been no significant peace process in many years. We speak with Israeli public opinion analyst, strategic consultant and peace researcher, Dahlia Scheindlin, who is hopeful that a new peace agreement will emerge. In addition to her work with Israelis and Palestinian, she has expertise in conflict resolution in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Dahlia is co-host of the podcast, The Tel Aviv Review. In this episode, we discuss the proposal for a confederation between Israel and Palestine. Unlike the hard borders in a traditional two-state solution, a two-state confederation would allow for greater movement of both peoples. While the idea has received little coverage in the international media, the confederation debate is gathering strength in Israel. The concept calls for a softer separation with more Palestinians living as non-citizens in Israel, while Jewish settlements with Israeli citizens may remain in Palestine. "]
Schönecker, Dieter. "Protecting Academic Freedom: Five Arguments for Freedom of Expression." Philosophy Now #135 (January 2020)
Twenty five years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, relations between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority are at a low point. There has been no significant peace process in many years. We speak with Israeli public opinion analyst, strategic consultant and peace researcher, Dahlia Scheindlin, who is hopeful that a new peace agreement will emerge. In addition to her work with Israelis and Palestinian, she has expertise in conflict resolution in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Dahlia is co-host of the podcast, The Tel Aviv Review. In this episode, we discuss the proposal for a confederation between Israel and Palestine. Unlike the hard borders in a traditional two-state solution, a two-state confederation would allow for greater movement of both peoples. While the idea has received little coverage in the international media, the confederation debate is gathering strength in Israel. The concept calls for a softer separation with more Palestinians living as non-citizens in Israel, while Jewish settlements with Israeli citizens may remain in Palestine. "]
Schönecker, Dieter. "Protecting Academic Freedom: Five Arguments for Freedom of Expression." Philosophy Now #135 (January 2020)
Schure, Natalia, et al. "Gearing Up for the Fight for Medicare for All." Best of the Left #1260 (March 29, 2019)
Schwarz, Jon. "New Dark Money Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich." The Intercept (October 1, 2018)
Scott, James C. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." New Books in Political Science (June 3, 2020) ["We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), James C. Scott asks us to question this belief. The evidence, he says, is simply not on the side of states. Stratified, taxing, walled towns did not inevitably appear in the wake of crop domestication and sedentary settlement. Only around 3100 BCE, some four millennia after the earliest farming and settling down, did they begin making their presence felt. What happened in these four millennia is the subject of this book: a deep history by “a card-carrying political scientist and an anthropologist and environmentalist by courtesy”, which aims to put the earliest states in their place. James Scott joins us ... to talk about state fragility and state persistence from Mesopotamia to Southeast Asia, the politics of cereal crops, domestication and reproduction, why it was once good to be a barbarian, the art of provocation, the views of critics, and, human and animal species relations and zoonoses in our epidemiological past and pandemic present."]
---. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." Slavery and Its Legacies (April 13, 2017) ["James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is Director of the Agrarian Studies Program. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. He is currently teaching Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression. Recent publications include Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, 1997; “Geographies of Trust: Geographies of Hierarchy,” in Democracy and Trust, 1998; “State Simplifications and Practical Knowledge,” in People’s Economy, People’s Ecology, 1998; and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Press, 2009)."]
---. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press, 2012. ["James Scott taught us what’s wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing—one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions. Through a wide-ranging series of memorable anecdotes and examples, the book describes an anarchist sensibility that celebrates the local knowledge, common sense, and creativity of ordinary people. The result is a kind of handbook on constructive anarchism that challenges us to radically reconsider the value of hierarchy in public and private life, from schools and workplaces to retirement homes and government itself. Beginning with what Scott calls “the law of anarchist calisthenics,” an argument for law-breaking inspired by an East German pedestrian crossing, each chapter opens with a story that captures an essential anarchist truth. In the course of telling these stories, Scott touches on a wide variety of subjects: public disorder and riots, desertion, poaching, vernacular knowledge, assembly-line production, globalization, the petty bourgeoisie, school testing, playgrounds, and the practice of historical explanation. Far from a dogmatic manifesto, Two Cheers for Anarchism celebrates the anarchist confidence in the inventiveness and judgment of people who are free to exercise their creative and moral capacities."]
Segal, Raz. "Israeli Historian Raz Segal On Genocide And Gaza." Breaking Points (December 28, 2023) ["Ryan and Emily sit down with Israeli historian and Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal to ask him about Genocide and Gaza."]
Serwer, Adam. "Democracy for Me -- But Not for Thee." On the Media (August 9, 2019) ["As revealed last week by presidential historian Tim Naftali, that snippet had for years been withheld by the National Archives — apparently to protect Reagan’s privacy, who presumably was unaware the conversation was being recorded. To Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, [Ronald] Reagan’s remark was not only racist and condescending, but emblematic of a certain just-between-you-and-me white supremacism that persists to this day at the highest levels of government and continues to contaminate American democracy. In this segment, Bob and Adam discuss the history of excluding black and brown Americans from our system of self-governance, from the founding to the Reconstruction to the present."]
Shafizadeh, Nafis. "Reagan at the Movies: Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, by J. Hoberman." Senses of Cinema #95 (July 2020)
Shamsi, Hina, Flint Taylor and Eli Valley. "The American Machine: Police Torture to Drone Assassinations." The Intercepted (March 13, 2019) ["In 1969 Black Panther Leader leader Fred Hampton was gunned down by Chicago Police in his bedroom. This week on Intercepted: Famed civil rights lawyer Flint Taylor discusses his 13 year struggle for justice for Hampton, his work in exposing the torture program in Chicago that was unleashed on black men, and his career fighting against violent corrupt cops, the city of Chicago, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Taylor’s new memoir is called “The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago.” As Donald Trump ramps up drone strikes, he has officially wiped out the already minimal accountability guidelines implemented by Barack Obama. Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union talks about the expansion of drone strikes under Trump, how Obama paved the way for his successor, and what we might expect from Attorney General William Barr. Meghan McCain is not Jewish, but she is accusing a Jewish comic artist of creating “one of the most anti-Semitic things” she has ever seen: a cartoon about her hypocrisy in attacking Ilhan Omar and appropriating Jewish suffering. Artist Eli Valley talks about why he drew it and why he believes McCain’s attacks on his cartoon prove the very point he was making."]
Shattuck, John. "Viktor Orbán’s 'velvet repression' in Hungary." Democracy Works (February 18, 2019) ["This episode begins a four-part series examining the state of democracy around the world. First up is Hungary, a country that’s often referred to in a group of countries in central and Eastern Europe that are seeing authoritarian leaders rise to power. You might have heard of Viktor Orbán or know that the country is in some way associated with George Soros, but beyond that, it’s not a place many of us spend a lot of time thinking about. We could not have found a better guest to help us make sense of what’s happening there. John Shattuck is the former President and Rector of Central European University, which Hungary’s Prime Minister recently forced out of the country. He is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this episode, John discusses Viktor Orbán’s rise to power, how he is waging war on democratic institutions, and what people in Hungary are doing to fight back."]
Sheehan, Helena and Sheamus Sweeney. "The Wire and the World." Jacobin (March 10, 2018) ["No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature. . . . The drama repeatedly cuts from the top of Baltimore’s social structure to its bottom, from political fund-raisers in the white suburbs to the subterranean squat of a homeless junkie. . . . The Wire’s political science is as brilliant as its sociology. It leaves The West Wing, and everything else television has tried to do on this subject, in the dust."]
Shelby, Tommie and Brandon M. Terry. "MLK, Political Philosopher." The Dig (March 21, 2018) ["Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry talk about their new book To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his taken-out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King had struggled to defeat. Dan asks Shelby and Terry about King’s theory of nonviolence (more complicated than you might think), his debate with the Black Power movement, and his thinking on gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community and more."]
Shorrock, Tim. "North Korea Nuclear Deal: Will the U.S. Drop Sanctions & Economic Embargo?" Democracy Now (April 30, 2018) ["North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States agrees to formally end the Korean War and promises not to invade his country. The announcement came after a historic meeting Friday between Kim and South Korean leader Moon Jae-in in the truce village of Panmunjom. Then, on Sunday, North Korea’s state media said Kim had vowed to immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, and would dismantle its Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site."]
Silverman, Jacob. "We Don't Have Elections: How Tech Companies Merge with the Nation-State." The Baffler (April 18, 2018)
Simon, David. "The Deuce Charts the Rise of Pornography." The New Yorker Radio Hour (September 29, 2017) ["David Simon believes in the dignity of labor, “even when it’s undignified.” What “The Wire” (which he created) did for the drug trade in Baltimore, “The Deuce,” also on HBO, does for sex work and the beginnings of the pornography industry in New York, in the seventies. Critics have compared Simon not so much to other television showrunners as to novelists like Dickens; Simon’s work is similarly wide in scope, with large casts, and aims to create a picture of a whole world. At bottom, he wants to follow the money from the street to the bosses to the politicians. But though Simon is sympathetic to the sex workers he depicts in “The Deuce,” and even to some of the pimps and mobsters who exploit them, he is unambiguously critical of porn’s effect on America. He tells David Remnick that porn—universally available on the Internet in its most extreme forms—has warped a whole culture toward misogyny."]
Singh, Nikhil Pal, with Jeremy Scahill. "Talk and Conversation." Lannan Foundation (September 26, 2018) ["Nikhil Pal Singh is an associate professor of social and cultural analysis and history at New York University and the founding faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program. He is the author of Race and America’s Long War (2017), in which, historian Robin Kelley argues, “Singh obliterates any myth of American peace, revealing instead that the thread tying America’s past and present is long and continuous war—”hot, vicious, global, and racial.” Singh’s work helps us understand the historical sweep of racist ideology that brought us to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and shows the connection between the election and US military defeats abroad. He writes, 'Marred by military atrocities, torture scandals, fiscal waste, toxic exposure, popular opposition, and public disgust, the US invasion of Iraq induced a regional death spiral and inspired new terrorist networks of the kind that the war was ostensibly fought to vanquish.'"]
Smith, Ashley. "Lessons from Charlottesville: How to Fight and Defeat Fascism." We Are Many (August 15, 2017) ["When right wing thugs in Charlottesville feel free to harass and murder, the need for solidarity and and activism against the far right could not be more urgent. The far right is bigger and more lethal than at any time in decades. Fascists are attempting to turn the rightward swing in U.S. politics to market themselves as mainstream. From worker defense guards in the 1930's to the Deacons for Defense and other self defense organizations in the civil rights movement of the 1960's, the U.S. left has a long history of resisting right wing violence. The key to a successful strategy is the broadest possible protests and mass actions to confront the far right wherever it raises its head."]
Smith, Jordan. "How the Supreme Court Could Gut Reproductive Rights Without Ruling on a Single Abortion Restriction." The Intercept (February 10, 2020)
Snow, Izzy. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #19 People Bussed across US to Cut Cities’ Homeless Populations." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Snowden, Edward. "Permanent Record: Why NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Risked His Life to Expose Surveillance State." Democracy Now (September 26, 2019) ["Six years ago, Edward Snowden leaked a trove of secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance apparatus to spy on Americans and people across the globe. Snowden was then charged in the U.S. for violating the Espionage Act and other laws. As he attempted to flee to Latin America, Snowden became stranded in Russia after the U.S. revoked his passport. He has lived in Moscow ever since. Snowden just published his memoir, “Permanent Record,” in which he writes about what led him to risk his life to expose the U.S. government’s system of mass surveillance. From Moscow, he speaks to Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Juan González about his life before and after becoming an NSA whistleblower." Part 1: "'Financial Censorship Is Still Censorship': Edward Snowden Slams Justice Dept. Lawsuit Against Him." Part 2: "Edward Snowden Condemns Trump’s Mistreatment of Whistleblower Who Exposed Ukraine Scandal." ]
--. "Private Contractors Play Key Role in U.S. Intelligence’s 'Creeping Authoritarianism.'" Democracy Now (September 30, 2019) ["As a whistleblower complaint against President Trump rocks Washington, Democrats begin an impeachment inquiry and Trump threatens “big consequences” for the person who came forward, we continue our conversation with one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers: Edward Snowden, now in exile in Russia. Six years ago, he shocked the world when he leaked a trove of secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance apparatus to collect every single phone call, text message and email, and pry into the private lives of every person on Earth. He has just published a memoir titled “Permanent Record.” In Part 2 of our interview, he talks about how the government initially attempted to say that he was just an outside contractor and not a key figure, but he describes the central role contractors play in the intelligence community." Part 2: "Snowden Reveals How He Secretly Exposed NSA Criminal Wrongdoing Without Getting Arrested." Part 3: "Whistleblower Edward Snowden on Trump, Obama & How He Ended Up in Russia to Avoid U.S. Extradition."]
Snyder, Timothy. "'American Abyss': Fascism Historian Tim Snyder on Trump’s Coup Attempt, Impeachment & What’s Next." Democracy Now (January 13, 2021) ["As the House votes to impeach President Trump, the FBI warns there could be a repeat of the violent insurrection he encouraged on January 6, with Trump loyalists planning to hold armed protests nationwide ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. We speak with Timothy Snyder, a historian of fascism, who says the riot at the U.S. Capitol was “completely and utterly predictable” given President Trump’s record of stoking extremism and undermining democratic institutions. “The American republic is hanging by a thread because the president of the United States has sought to use violence to stay in power and essentially to overthrow our constitutional system,” says Snyder."]
Soboroff, Jacob. "'Release Is Only Way to Save Lives': Migrant Families Face Separation as COVID Spreads in ICE Jails." Democracy Now (July 14, 2020)
Sperber, Amanda. "Inside the Secretive U.S. Air War in Somalia: How Many Civilians Have Died as Strikes Escalate?" Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["The Trump administration is rapidly escalating a secretive air war in Somalia. According to the think tank New America, at least 252 people have been killed in around two dozen U.S. airstrikes in Somalia so far this year. The U.S. has already carried out more strikes in Somalia in 2019 than in any single year under President Obama. In addition to the air war, the Pentagon reportedly has about 500 U.S. troops on the ground in Somalia, including many special operations forces. For years, the U.S. has attempted to aid the Somali government by targeting members of al-Shabab, but the effort has increased dramatically under Trump, and it has come with little congressional oversight or media attention. We speak with Amanda Sperber, a freelance journalist who reports from Nairobi, Kenya, and Mogadishu, Somalia. Her new article for The Nation is titled “Inside the Secretive US Air Campaign in Somalia.”"]
Springer, Claudia. "Shadow Films: Picturing the Environmental Crisis." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["For the powerful forces invested in preserving the status quo, even limited environmental protections that threaten traditional modes of corporate profit-making provoke fierce opposition. Corporate stakeholders wield political power through lobbying and donations, and, increasingly, they hold government positions. A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that 34% of American Congress members denied climate change and had been paid over $73 million in contributions by oil, gas, and coal companies. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously claimed that climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," has reportedly accepted more than $2 million from the fossil fuel industry (Herzog). The fallout from political inaction means that people have lost their lives in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Peru, among other countries, because of the oil, gas, and mining industries' toxic practices and attacks on opponents. The propaganda battles fought with images inflame a war with catastrophic consequences."]
Staal, Jonas. Propaganda Art: From the 20th to the 21st Century. (Dissertation: University of Amsterdam, 2018)
Stangler, Cole. "Yellow Vests and the 'Grand Debate' in France." Democracy Works (February 25, 2019) ["The yellow vest movement, named for the safety vests that all drivers are required to carry in their cars, began in late 2018 over rising gas prices. The movement succeeded in having the gas tax repealed, but the protestors still took to the streets around the country every weekend. Why? Like a lot of social movements, it’s complicated. Cole has been on the ground covering the movement and joins to discuss its origins, the reaction from President Emmanuel Macron, and where things might go from here."]
---. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]
Stark, Kio. "Talk to Strangers." Team Human #6 (September 20, 2016) ["Kio’s new book When Strangers Meet explores the transformative power to be found in person-to-person interactions with strangers. Kio describes how even a brief interaction can foster empathy and open up the possibility for meaningful human connection. Kio and Douglas challenge the unwritten rules of social interaction and talk about how basic human connection can spark positive social change."]
Strach, Patricia and Kathleen S. Sullivan. "The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929." New Books in Political Science (January 18, 2024) ["Political Scientists Patricia Strach (The University at Albany, State University of New York) and Kathleen S. Sullivan (Ohio University) have written a fascinating and important exploration of trash. More precisely, this is a complex examination and analysis of the development of our municipal sanitation processes and structures, highlighting intersecting policy areas, urban and local politics, and racial, gender, and class politics. The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929 (Cornell UP, 2023) has it all: corruption, gender and racial hierarchies, blame defection, rejection of expertise, case studies across a host of different cities around the country, and the collection of, the disposal of, and the innovations of garbage. Strach and Sullivan examine this multidimensional policy issue from an American political development perspective when the issue really took root in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century. At this point, urban areas saw demographic growth from migration from rural areas as well as the waves of immigrants who came to the U.S. Most U.S. cities found themselves facing the same problem: unsanitary living situations. The initial research found that there were three different forms of trash collection, and they highlighted the processes in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh. San Francisco had no formal municipal collection process; instead, the citizens of San Francisco contracted directly with scavengers themselves to remove the garbage. Pittsburgh, as a municipality, contracted out the responsibility—but the process there was one that fed fees back to the municipal leadership. New Orleans, awash in local government corruption, ultimately had a municipal collection program, which was generally far from effective. While these three cities were the basis for the initial research, St. Louis and Charleston were also added to the case studies, with Birmingham and Louisville as secondary examples within the study. The Politics of Trash also explores the way in which citizens need to engage with and comply with the sanitation programs. In order to urge compliance, cities often called on women’s civic organizations to model and advocate for participation in the garbage process. Obviously, these were white women’s civic organizations and while they had been advocates for sanitation processes, they were generally cut out of the development process since women were not to be too close to politics itself. Strach and Sullivan spent time with the Good Housekeeping magazine archives in order to flesh out this dimension of the analysis. The research also highlights how blame was put on immigrants and people of color when the sanitation programs failed—often because of corruption and lack of sufficient resources. The authors note throughout the text that the form that we remove and dispose of waste/garbage/trash now is the same as it was 100 years ago. And while we often separate compostables from recyclables from trash, this is not all that different than the ways that people disposed of their garbage in Pittsburgh, and Charleston, and San Francisco a century ago. And many of the same forms of removal remain in place. The Politics of Trash is a lively and fascinating analysis of a part of our lives that we often don’t consider to be political, but it is political, and has been for quite some time."]
Steal This Film (UK/Germany/Sweden: The League of Noble Peers, 2006: 32 minutes) ["Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO…"]
Stevenson, Bryan. "On Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative." Slavery and Its Legacies (February 6, 2017) ["Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law."]
Stillman, Sarah. "When Deportation is a Death Sentence: The Fatal Consequences of U.S. Immigration Policy." Democracy Now (February 6, 2018) ["As the battle over the DREAMers and DACA heats up in Washington, we look at a stunning new piece in The New Yorker titled “When Deportation is a Death Sentence.” It looks at how an unknown number of men and women have been killed in their home countries after being deported or turned away by the United States. The article focuses in part on a Mexican-born woman named Laura. Despite living her whole adult life in Texas, she was deported to Mexico after a traffic stop. She warned a U.S. Border Patrol agent, “When I am found dead, it will be on your conscience.” Within a week of her deportation, she was murdered by her ex-husband. We are joined by the award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman. She is also director of the Global Migration Project at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism."]
Stoller, Matt. "Monopoly vs. Democracy." Open Source (October 24, 2019) ["It’s new for most Americans that we’re embarrassed by our democracy. We don’t know where it went wrong, or whether it’ll survive. Matt Stoller explains it this way: we’ve come to do politics the way we do commerce, online and at the mall. Sellers are remote; critical choices are made for us. Our stuff comes from Walmart; our books, groceries, and now everything else from Amazon. Our lines on politics, news, opinion, and gossip come through Facebook. Our lives are designed and run to concentrate power and profit in the hands of a few faraway monopolists. No wonder we’re in a panic! Matt Stoller is here to tell you the fault, dear people, is not in our stars or even our selves but in these overnight monopolies that might just as well own us."]
Stone, Oliver. "Movies, Politics and History." Conversations with History (April 21, 2016) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes filmmaker Oliver Stone for a discussion of the trajectory of his career as director, screenwriter, and producer. Stone traces formative experiences, talks about different aspects of the filmmaking process including working with actors, writing screenplays, directing and post production. He focuses on the themes that have drawn him, the distinction of being a dramatist who works with historical materials, and his recent works including Alexander and the 10 part documentary on The Untold History of the United States."]
Strangio, Chase. "Opt-In Sex Ed Bills Hurt Young People." Teen Vogue (February 21, 2018)
---. "Trump Admin Attempts to Erase Existence of Trans People After Years of GOP-Led Attacks on Freedoms." Democracy Now (October 22, 2018) ["The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is attempting to eliminate the rights of transgender people by creating a narrow legal definition of gender. Citing a government memo, the Times reveals that the Department of Health and Human Services has undertaken an effort across several government agencies to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex. That definition would be either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with. The Times reports that the memo says, “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex.” If enacted, the proposal would reverse the expansion of transgender rights that took place under President Barack Obama. We speak with Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the ACLU."]
Sutton, Matthew, et al. "Apocalypse Now." Throughline (June 13, 2019) ["Evangelicals have played an important role in modern day American politics - from supporting President Trump to helping elect Jimmy Carter back in 1976. How and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today's political issues? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how it has changed over time."]
Taft, Jessica. "Growing Up and Rising Up: An Introduction." Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas New York University Press, 2010: 1-19.
Taibbi, Matt. "If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too: America's Rage-Sickness Trickles Down from the Top." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2018)
Taub. Ben. "Guantanamo's Darkest Secret." The New Yorker (April 15, 2019) ["The U.S. military prison’s leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. But his guard suspected otherwise."]
Taylor, Astra. "It Would Feel Like Having a Future: On What Democracy Might Be." This is Hell (February 16, 2019) ["Filmmaker Astra Taylor explores the big questions around democracy in the 21st century - as the framework of the 20th century liberal order collapses, a public raised on the precarious edges of capitalism is looking for new answers to the old dilemma of which people get what power."]
Taylor, Laurie. "The other side of the street: Laurie Taylor interviews Stan Cohen." New Humanist 119.4 (July 2004)
"Teaching the Hard History of Slavery." Southern Poverty Law Center (2018)
Teachout, Zephyr. "America's Lost Anti-Corruption History." On the Media (April 26, 2019) ["This week, the Treasury Department missed a second deadline to hand over the president’s tax returns to House Democrats. The White House directed its former head of personnel security to not adhere to a congressional subpoena to answer questions about the administration’s handling of security clearances. And on Monday the commander-in-chief sued his own accounting firm and Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, to block the committee from accessing his past financial records. As the Washington Post reported earlier this week, the lawsuit “amounts to Trump — the leader of the executive branch of government — asking the judicial branch to stop the legislative branch from investigating his past.” But so much lies in Trump’s past, and the nation’s. According to Zephyr Teachout, author of Corruption in America, this was never what America's founders envisioned when they set out to fight corruption. In 2017, a few weeks after the inauguration, Brooke spoke with Teachout about the overwhelming passion for anti-corruption present at the founding of the nation, the "bright line" rules it inspired, and how we have drifted so far from our original understanding of the concept."]
Terry, Brandon M. "MLK Now." Boston Review (January 8, 2018)
"'The Time to Act Is Now': Florida School Shooting Survivors Confront Trump, Rubio on Gun Control." Democracy Now (February 22, 2018) ["“The time to act is now.” That’s the message of survivors of last week’s school shooting in Florida. On Wednesday, the nation witnessed grieving students, parents and teachers powerfully confront the president and lawmakers over gun control in pointed—and often tense—televised exchanges. The day began with students across the United States—from Minnesota to Colorado to Arizona—walking out of class to demand stricter gun laws. Meanwhile, survivors of the shooting descended on the Florida state Capitol in Tallahassee to demand lawmakers pass legislation addressing gun violence before the legislative session ends. In the afternoon, President Trump—along with Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—hosted a listening session with survivors of recent shootings, including students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Wednesday evening, survivors of the massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School sparred with politicians during a town hall hosted by CNN."]
---. "On Impeaching Trump, Occupied Palestine & Becoming One of First Muslim Congresswomen." Democracy Now (November 9, 2018) ["On Tuesday evening, Palestinian American Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Somali American Ilhan Omar in Minnesota became the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib is a Democratic Socialist who supports the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution. She also supports Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing ICE. The child of immigrants, Tlaib has spoken out against the Trump administration’s travel bans."]
"To Amend or Not to Amend and If So, How?" Best of the Left #1246 (February 1, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the warring factions of progressive and conservatives who are all trying to amend the constitution in various ways. Some progressives want to call for a Convention of States to propose an amendment, as do some conservatives, while others are calling for an amendment but would rather it go through the Congress for reasons that will be explained."]
"The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #23 New Restrictions on Prisoners’ First Amendment Rights." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Thunberg, Greta. "'We Are Striking to Disrupt the System': An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg." Democracy Now (September 11, 2019) ["In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike began in 2018, Greta has become a leading figure in the climate justice movement. She has joined protests across Europe. She has addressed world leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Poland and the European Union Parliament. She has even met the pope. And now she is in New York to join a global climate strike on September 20 and address the U.N. Climate Action Summit on September 23. Greta has refused to fly for years because of emissions, so she arrived here after a two-week transatlantic voyage aboard a zero-emissions racing yacht. She is also planning to attend the U.N. climate summit in Santiago, Chile, in December."]
Tuma, Mary. "Texas Anti-Choice Legislation Continues to Damage Health Care and Undermine Local Control." The Austin Chronicle (May 17, 2019) ["As GOP postures with SB 22, women’s health care pays the price."]
"Understanding the Yellow Vests Protests." Best of the Left #1237 (December 21, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the Yellow Vests protest in France to understand what they are, how they started and what implications they have for the struggle between neoliberal, fascist and progressive politics worldwide."]
Umansky, Eric. "Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Mueller Edition." On the Media (March 1, 2019) ["Amid Michael Cohen's explosive testimony before Congress this week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller pursued his two-pronged investigation quietly in the background: into whether President Trump, his family, or his aides colluded with Russia to help him win in 2016, and whether they’ve interfered with any investigations into election-related activity. Overwhelming and extremely difficult to parse, filled with misfires, false alarms and intoxicating intrigue, the media have turned the saga of Mueller’s secret investigation into the best-worst crime drama never written. To date, the press have reported on nearly 150 characters in the Mueller probe, including politicians, investigators, businessmen, petty criminals, offspring and erstwhile Trump aides. All potential clues with potential roles in the Special Counsel’s forthcoming final report. And so, to help you make sense of the rumors and revelations to come, we bring you the latest of our Breaking News Consumer's Handbooks: Mueller Edition."]
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy." Shorenstein Center Media and Politics Podcast (August 2018)
---. "A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism." Democracy Now (August 1, 2018) [I was meditating today on a river bank thinking about the impact of technology (especially SM) on my psyche. I was wondering what it is doing to us as humans and what are the questions we should be asking about that influence/time/impact. Then, later, while I was cleaning my house I listened to this interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan and my thoughts were pushed further and more questions arose. I was first concerned about my own psyche even as I thought about it on a larger social level. Then, because I am preparing for classes, I began to think of a pedagogical exercise. Introduce my classes to Vaidhyanathan's ideas in this interview and initiate a conversation about the impact of social media on how we operate in and understand our world. I'm thinking that I would ask my students to attempt to have a social media fast for an entire week (I would, of course, participate). To keep a record of our successes and failures, to think about how being disconnected in this way affects us, to keep a record of questions and conclusions. With all of that in mind, I would like to hear any responses to this interview and/or this conception of a pedagogical exercise. Also, would others be interested in doing this exercise at the same time - individually or collectively? I know this can come off as hypocritical as I am on SM. I have to honestly admit that when I was engaged in my higher education as the Internet (and later SM when I was a professor) appeared, and later dominated, I was excited (and bought into the rhetoric about its revolutionary possibilities) by the radical possibilities of being able to communicate with people from all corners of the earth (how many of you remember long distance charges on landlines) and to freely access information (including that which is purposely being censored or disappeared). Even as this fantasy dissipated in the wake of corporate colonization of the Internet, I still clung to a belief that if we just used it intelligently, modeled higher thinking, used it to connect to our loved ones, that it could be changed for a better purpose. More and more I am becoming cynical about that possibility..... I think we have to ask some hard questions. I will accept all positions with no judgement and in open discussion (as long as when you make conclusive/factual claims you back them up). Peace.]
Vaidya, Anjali. "Mining the Hurricane." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 3, 2018) ["Klein's new book, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists, acts as a timely reminder that in a tumultuous world, the future remains an open question. By disrupting what always was, disasters like Hurricane Maria can teach us how we want the future to be. Hurricanes are common in Puerto Rico, but Maria in September 2017 was in a league of its own. Almost a year later the archipelago remains crippled, with the aftereffects of the worst storm in 85 years worsened by state ineptitude and neglect. Klein spotlights two groups trying to find paths through Puerto Rico's wreckage, guided by very different visions of the future."]
---. "U.S. Rare in the Spending of More Money on the Education of Rich Children." Sociological Images (December 8, 2013)
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."]
Wamsley, Laurel. "Kansas Scrambles To Change Rules After 6 Teens Enter Governor's Race." The Two-Way (February 9, 2018)
Weatherford, Jack. "Genghis Khan's Surprising Legacy." Radio West (March 2, 2018) ["What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Genghis Khan? Conquest, right? The terrifying Mongol hordes. But Genghis Khan’s legacy wasn’t built entirely on the battlefield. Motivated by fear and love, he was remarkably fair to the people he subjugated, going so far as to grant them religious freedom. Anthropologist Jack Weatherford has chronicled Genghis’s life and ideas, and he joins us to discuss their place in American political life and what they can teach us today."]
Webber, David. "The Real Reason the Investor Class Hates Pensions." The New York Times (March 5, 2018)
Weinstein, Adam. "Who's Behind Trump's Push to Pardon War Criminals?" On the Media (May 24, 2019) ["The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had made expedited requests for paperwork needed to pardon troops “accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse." Another such case includes a Blackwater contractor twice convicted in the 2007 killings of dozens of unarmed Iraqi civilians. The White House's request for case histories from the Department of Justice follows Trump's pardon earlier this month of former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who had been convicted of killing an Iraqi prisoner. Adam Weinstein is an editor for The New Republic. He’s served in the Navy and worked as a contractor in Iraq in 2008. Weinstein writes there is no natural constituency — from the upper echelons of the Department of Defense to the leadership of major veteran's groups — that would support the decision. So where is the push for pardoning war criminals coming from? Bob talks to Weinstein about the influence of Fox News and the efforts of FOX and friends co-host Pete Hegseth."]
Weisbord, Noah. "Introduction." The Crime of Aggression: The Quest for Justice in an Age of Drones, Cyberattacks, Insurgents, and Autocrats. Princeton University Press, 2019: 1-7.
West, Cornel. "'America’s Moment of Reckoning': Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of 'Empire Imploding.'" Democracy Now (June 1, 2020) ["As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, professor Cornel West calls the U.S. a “predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money.” He also makes the connections between U.S. violence abroad and at home. “There is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally.”"]
West, Stephen. "Capitalism vs Communism." Philosophize This #81 (May 10, 2016) ["On this episode, we talk about Karl Marx and his famous critiques of capitalism. "]
West, Stephen. "Are You Left or Right?" Philosophize This! #50 (February 6, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the contrasting political philosophies of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. First, we find out the origin of the terms “left” and “right” in relation to politics, and find out that the meanings of these terms are not as simple as they may first seem. Next, we discuss the opposing viewpoints of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine on how society should progress and implement change. Finally, we think about how their ideas relate to modern issues and consider whether or not their positions are mutually exclusive."]
Westneat, Danny. "This City Hall Brought To You By Amazon." Seattle Times (November 24, 2017)
Wheeler, Marcy. "Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty & Implicates Trump as Paul Manafort Is Convicted. Is Impeachment Next?" Democracy Now (August 22, 2018) ["Talk of the possible impeachment of President Trump is growing in Washington after Tuesday’s stunning legal developments. In New York, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Two hundred miles away, in Virginia, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight charges related to tax fraud and bank fraud. The Cohen case is likely to put the president in the most legal jeopardy. Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until this year, admitted in court that he arranged to illegally pay out money to two women—an adult film star and a Playboy model—to keep them from speaking during the 2016 campaign about their affairs with Donald Trump. Cohen said the payments were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and that they were made “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.” Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis wrote on Twitter, “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?” We speak with Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties."]
---. "Trump Slams FBI & AG Jeff Sessions After Agents Raid Home & Office of His Attorney, Michael Cohen." Democracy Now (April 10, 2018) ["FBI agents have raided the home, office and Park Avenue hotel room of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen. During the Monday morning raid, the FBI seized a slew of business records, emails and documents. The Washington Post reports Cohen is under investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations. Agents also reportedly seized documents related to a $130,000 payment Cohen made to adult film star Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. Cohen has admitted to personally paying Clifford to keep her quiet about an alleged 2007 affair she had with Donald Trump. The payment, only days before the 2016 election, may violate federal election law. The raid was carried out by the U.S. attorney of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who was handpicked by President Trump after Trump fired Preet Bharara. Berman is a former law partner of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Monday’s raid came after a referral by special counsel Robert Mueller. President Trump reacted angrily to news of the raid Monday."]
"White Nationalism." Throughline (May 9, 2019) ["The white nationalist ideas of Madison Grant influenced Congress in the 1920s, leaders in Nazi Germany, and members of the Trump administration. This week, we share an episode we loved from It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders that explores a throughline of white nationalism in American politics from the early 20th century to today."]
Whitlock, Craig. "'Afghanistan Papers' Reveal How Presidents & Generals Misled the American Public on War’s Progress." Democracy Now (March 9, 2020) ["Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock has just won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting for his in-depth investigation called “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.” He joins us to describe how, after getting a tip, he fought for three years to get the federal government to release a trove of confidential interviews it conducted with people directly involved in the nearly two-decade-long war. He ultimately obtained more than 2,000 documents that revealed how presidents, generals and diplomats across three administrations had intentionally misled the American public about the longest war in U.S. history."]
---. "The 'Pentagon Papers' Of Our Time." On the Media (December 11, 2019) ["On Monday, the Washington Post released the fruits of a three-year investigative effort: the "Afghanistan Papers," a once-secret internal government history of a deadly, costly, and ultimately futile entanglement. The hundreds of frank, explosive interviews — along with a new tranche of memos written by the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — revealed the extent to which American leaders misled the public on their efforts to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, rout the Taliban, expel Al Qaeda, install democracy, and undo corruption. In this podcast extra, investigative reporter Craig Whitlock tells Bob about the monumental story that the Post uncovered — and the extraordinary effort it took to report it out. "]
"Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy." Southern Poverty Law Center (April 21, 2016)
Wilkerson, Isabel. “We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be.” On Being (March 9, 2023) ["In this rich, expansive, and warm conversation between friends, Krista draws out the heart for humanity behind Isabel Wilkerson’s eye on histories we are only now communally learning to tell — her devotion to understanding not merely who we have been, but who we can be. Her most recent offering of fresh insight to our life together brings “caste” into the light — a recurrent, instinctive pattern of human societies across the centuries, though far more malignant in some times and places. Caste is a ranking of human value that works more like a pathogen than a belief system — more like the reflexive grammar of our sentences than our choices of words. In the American context, Isabel Wilkerson says race is the skin, but “caste is the bones.” And this shift away from centering race as a focus of analysis actually helps us understand why race and racism continue to shape-shift and regenerate, every best intention and effort and law notwithstanding. But beginning to see caste also gives us fresh eyes and hearts for imagining where to begin, and how to persist, in order finally to shift that."Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize while reporting for the New York Times. Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, brought the underreported story of the Great Migration of the 20th century into the light, and she published her best-selling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents in August 2020. Among many honors, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.]
Wineapple, Brenda. "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." Throughline (February 28, 2019) ["When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the midst of one of its most volatile chapters. The country was divided after fighting a bloody civil war and had just experienced the first presidential assassination. We look at how these factors led to the first ever presidential impeachment in American history."]
Winter, Jana. "'Quiet Skies'? Boston Globe Exposé Reveals TSA Is Secretly Surveilling Thousands of U.S. Travelers." Democracy Now (July 31, 2018) ["A Boston Globe investigation has revealed the existence of a domestic surveillance program run by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, which has been shadowing U.S. citizens on planes and in airports since 2012. Under the program, called “Quiet Skies,” federal air marshals collect information about U.S. travelers, including common behavior like using the bathroom repeatedly, sleeping on flights or sweating heavily. In the wake of the Globe investigation, TSAofficials have bowed to pressure from Congress and plan to meet with the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees. We speak with Jana Winter, the Boston Globe Spotlight Fellow who broke the story. Her investigation is headlined, “Welcome to the Quiet Skies.”"]
Wong, Felicia. "California Today, America Tomorrow." Boston Review (May 30, 2018) ["Political lessons from the state of resistance."]
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Wright, Ann. "'Our Dreams are Coming True': Peace Activists Celebrate as Korean Leaders Vow to Officially End War." Democracy Now (April 27, 2018) ["History has been made on the Korean peninsula today, as South Korean President Moon Jae-In and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un shook hands at the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries and pledged to work to denuclearize the peninsula and to declare the official end to the Korean War. Today’s historic summit marks the first time a North Korean leader has ever set foot inside South Korea. During the meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said “I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation.” The North and South Korean leaders pledged to pursue talks with the United States aimed at negotiating a formal peace treaty to replace the uneasy 1953 armistice. For more we speak with Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former State Department diplomat. She is a member of Women Cross DMZ, a group of international peacemakers who have been calling for an end to the Korean War."]
Wu, Timothy. "The Oppression of the Supermajority." The New York Times (March 5, 2019)
Yates, Michael D. "It's Still Slavery by Another Name." Monthly Review (May 1, 2020) ["All of these things would lead us to reject the hypothesis that white and black racism offset one another. What is more, we would get the same results even if we conducted more sophisticated tests of this hypothesis. For example, black wages are lower than those for whites if we factor out schooling, age, occupation, industry, experience, region, and whatever else we think influences wages. That is, if we look at two groups of workers equal in all respects (same schooling, experience, and so on), the black group will have a lower average wage than the white group. The same result would hold for whatever variable we considered—prison sentences, unemployment, life expectancies, and all the others mentioned above. We are left with an inescapable conclusion. Being black, in and of itself, is a grave economic and social disadvantage, while being white confers considerable advantage. That this is true today, 155 years after the end of the Civil War, after three constitutional amendments, the great civil rights movement, a large number of civil rights laws, and lord knows how many college courses and sensitivity training sessions is testament to the power and tenacity of racist social structures."]
Ziblatt, Daniel. "How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt on the ‘grinding work’ of democracy." Democracy Works (April 10, 2018) ["Daniel Ziblatt has done a lot of interviews since the release of How Democracies Die, the bestselling book he co-wrote with Steven Levitsky. But we asked him a question he’d never gotten before — about a line toward the end of the book when he refers to democracy as “grinding work.” The idea that democracy isn’t easy is a central theme of this podcast. As How Democracies Die illustrates, it’s much easier to succumb to the power of an autocratic leader than it is to stand up and protect the institutions that serve as the guardrails of democracy. Ziblatt, a professor of government at Harvard, talks about how the book came about and the impact it’s had since it was released earlier this year."]
Zimbardo, Philip. "The Psychology of Evil Inside of Trump's Concentration Camps." The Chauncey DeVega Show #255 (October 10, 2019) ["Philip Zimbardo is one of the world's leading authorities on the psychology of cruelty, groupthink, and evil. Most famous for the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Zimbardo has written dozens of books and articles including the powerful and disturbing book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Dr. Zimbardo explains how America under Donald Trump is fully devolving into a state of violence, authoritarianism, and cruelty and the many ways that the Trump regime encourages thuggery against nonwhite immigrants, migrants, and refugees by law enforcement and others. Dr. Zimbardo also highlights the connections between his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment and the evil taking place inside of Donald Trump’s concentration camps. Chauncey tells some harsh truth about how the American corporate news media, many members of the Democratic Party, and too many average Americans were in denial for too long about the fascist white supremacist threat embodied by the Trump regime – and which is now fully obvious and naked in the president’s and his handlers’ recent declaration that he is a king who is above the law and cannot be impeached for any reason. Chauncey also shares his thoughts about politics of the great new film Joker and its damning indictment of neoliberalism, the culture of cruelty, and gangster capitalism."]
Zimmerman, Amy. "Sex Workers Fear for Their Future: How SESTA Is Putting Many Prostitutes in Peril." The Daily Beast (April 4, 2018) ["With Congress passing the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, many sex workers are worried they’ll be forced to go back on the streets. So they’re deciding to fight back."]
Zinn, Howard (Historian/Playwright/Political Science) ["Howard Zinn was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist. His life’s work focused on a wide range of issues including race, class, war, and history, and touched the lives of countless people." source)
Zollman, Florian. "Fake News by Design." Monthly Review (March 7, 2018) ["Mainstream news media reporting and the manufacture of bloodbaths in Libya and Syria"]
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30 minute documentary: Quick intro to history of Antifa - what is anti-fascism - how they organize and act against anti-fascist groups - why Trump hates the group - the global rise of white supremacist/fascist groups
As Dorian Devastates, Activists Gear Up For Climate Strike from Rising Up With Sonali on Vimeo.
"Access to healthcare is a spiritual issue, deeply rooted in a compassionate world view. Currently, in America, more than 40 million people are uninsured and millions more have insurance with such a high deductible that they cannot afford to use it. It is estimated that 22,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of a lack of access to healthcare. Why can't we cover everyone? Why do we spend twice as much as every other western democracy while getting less than France, Belgium, England, etc.? Why are politicians on both sides of the political spectrum seemingly in the pocket of healthcare insurance and pharmaceutical companies . . . and why are most churches silent about this travesty?"
Selod, Saher. "Forever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press, 2018)." New Books in Sociology (March 29, 2021) ["How does a specific American religious identity acquire racial meaning? What happens when we move beyond phenotypes and include clothing, names, and behaviors to the characteristics that inform ethnoracial categorization? Forever Suspect, Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press, 2018) provides a nuanced portrayal of the experiences of South Asian and Arab Muslims in post 9/11 America and the role of racialized state and private citizen surveillance in shaping Muslim lived experiences. Saher Selod, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Simmons University, shares with us her story of growing up in Kansas and Texas and how writing this book helped her reclaim her own racialized experiences as the children of Pakistani immigrants to the US. Saher first began this project as a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. As she returned to the dissertation to craft it into a book, she realized that beyond just race, racism and racialization, surveillance was a key recurring theme for the interview respondents. In today’s conversation, we explore the nuances of gender, race and surveillance, what it means to “Fly while Muslim”, and the harmful consequences of institutional surveillance laws like “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) that came about during the Obama Administration. We also touch on limitations of the book, including the exclusion of Black Muslims from this specific project. Saher’s openness with which she shares how her thinking has evolved over the years since this project first began leads us to discuss the ways in which non-Black Muslim immigrants and American born Muslims enact and maintain white supremacist structures. Forever Suspect provides an important and eye opening lens for us to consider how racialized surveillance, in all dimensions and forms, the War on Terror and U.S. Empire building continues to impact Muslim communities in the U.S."]
Serpe, Nick. "Bisbee's Ghosts." Dissent (Winter 2019) ["A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?"]Serwer, Adam. "Democracy for Me -- But Not for Thee." On the Media (August 9, 2019) ["As revealed last week by presidential historian Tim Naftali, that snippet had for years been withheld by the National Archives — apparently to protect Reagan’s privacy, who presumably was unaware the conversation was being recorded. To Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, [Ronald] Reagan’s remark was not only racist and condescending, but emblematic of a certain just-between-you-and-me white supremacism that persists to this day at the highest levels of government and continues to contaminate American democracy. In this segment, Bob and Adam discuss the history of excluding black and brown Americans from our system of self-governance, from the founding to the Reconstruction to the present."]
Shafizadeh, Nafis. "Reagan at the Movies: Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, by J. Hoberman." Senses of Cinema #95 (July 2020)
Shamsi, Hina, Flint Taylor and Eli Valley. "The American Machine: Police Torture to Drone Assassinations." The Intercepted (March 13, 2019) ["In 1969 Black Panther Leader leader Fred Hampton was gunned down by Chicago Police in his bedroom. This week on Intercepted: Famed civil rights lawyer Flint Taylor discusses his 13 year struggle for justice for Hampton, his work in exposing the torture program in Chicago that was unleashed on black men, and his career fighting against violent corrupt cops, the city of Chicago, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Taylor’s new memoir is called “The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago.” As Donald Trump ramps up drone strikes, he has officially wiped out the already minimal accountability guidelines implemented by Barack Obama. Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union talks about the expansion of drone strikes under Trump, how Obama paved the way for his successor, and what we might expect from Attorney General William Barr. Meghan McCain is not Jewish, but she is accusing a Jewish comic artist of creating “one of the most anti-Semitic things” she has ever seen: a cartoon about her hypocrisy in attacking Ilhan Omar and appropriating Jewish suffering. Artist Eli Valley talks about why he drew it and why he believes McCain’s attacks on his cartoon prove the very point he was making."]
Shattuck, John. "Viktor Orbán’s 'velvet repression' in Hungary." Democracy Works (February 18, 2019) ["This episode begins a four-part series examining the state of democracy around the world. First up is Hungary, a country that’s often referred to in a group of countries in central and Eastern Europe that are seeing authoritarian leaders rise to power. You might have heard of Viktor Orbán or know that the country is in some way associated with George Soros, but beyond that, it’s not a place many of us spend a lot of time thinking about. We could not have found a better guest to help us make sense of what’s happening there. John Shattuck is the former President and Rector of Central European University, which Hungary’s Prime Minister recently forced out of the country. He is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this episode, John discusses Viktor Orbán’s rise to power, how he is waging war on democratic institutions, and what people in Hungary are doing to fight back."]
Shelby, Tommie and Brandon M. Terry. "MLK, Political Philosopher." The Dig (March 21, 2018) ["Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry talk about their new book To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his taken-out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King had struggled to defeat. Dan asks Shelby and Terry about King’s theory of nonviolence (more complicated than you might think), his debate with the Black Power movement, and his thinking on gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community and more."]
Shorrock, Tim. "North Korea Nuclear Deal: Will the U.S. Drop Sanctions & Economic Embargo?" Democracy Now (April 30, 2018) ["North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States agrees to formally end the Korean War and promises not to invade his country. The announcement came after a historic meeting Friday between Kim and South Korean leader Moon Jae-in in the truce village of Panmunjom. Then, on Sunday, North Korea’s state media said Kim had vowed to immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, and would dismantle its Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site."]
Silverman, Jacob. "We Don't Have Elections: How Tech Companies Merge with the Nation-State." The Baffler (April 18, 2018)
Singh, Nikhil Pal, with Jeremy Scahill. "Talk and Conversation." Lannan Foundation (September 26, 2018) ["Nikhil Pal Singh is an associate professor of social and cultural analysis and history at New York University and the founding faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program. He is the author of Race and America’s Long War (2017), in which, historian Robin Kelley argues, “Singh obliterates any myth of American peace, revealing instead that the thread tying America’s past and present is long and continuous war—”hot, vicious, global, and racial.” Singh’s work helps us understand the historical sweep of racist ideology that brought us to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and shows the connection between the election and US military defeats abroad. He writes, 'Marred by military atrocities, torture scandals, fiscal waste, toxic exposure, popular opposition, and public disgust, the US invasion of Iraq induced a regional death spiral and inspired new terrorist networks of the kind that the war was ostensibly fought to vanquish.'"]
Smith, Jordan. "How the Supreme Court Could Gut Reproductive Rights Without Ruling on a Single Abortion Restriction." The Intercept (February 10, 2020)
Snow, Izzy. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #19 People Bussed across US to Cut Cities’ Homeless Populations." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Snowden, Edward. "Permanent Record: Why NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Risked His Life to Expose Surveillance State." Democracy Now (September 26, 2019) ["Six years ago, Edward Snowden leaked a trove of secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance apparatus to spy on Americans and people across the globe. Snowden was then charged in the U.S. for violating the Espionage Act and other laws. As he attempted to flee to Latin America, Snowden became stranded in Russia after the U.S. revoked his passport. He has lived in Moscow ever since. Snowden just published his memoir, “Permanent Record,” in which he writes about what led him to risk his life to expose the U.S. government’s system of mass surveillance. From Moscow, he speaks to Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Juan González about his life before and after becoming an NSA whistleblower." Part 1: "'Financial Censorship Is Still Censorship': Edward Snowden Slams Justice Dept. Lawsuit Against Him." Part 2: "Edward Snowden Condemns Trump’s Mistreatment of Whistleblower Who Exposed Ukraine Scandal." ]
--. "Private Contractors Play Key Role in U.S. Intelligence’s 'Creeping Authoritarianism.'" Democracy Now (September 30, 2019) ["As a whistleblower complaint against President Trump rocks Washington, Democrats begin an impeachment inquiry and Trump threatens “big consequences” for the person who came forward, we continue our conversation with one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers: Edward Snowden, now in exile in Russia. Six years ago, he shocked the world when he leaked a trove of secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance apparatus to collect every single phone call, text message and email, and pry into the private lives of every person on Earth. He has just published a memoir titled “Permanent Record.” In Part 2 of our interview, he talks about how the government initially attempted to say that he was just an outside contractor and not a key figure, but he describes the central role contractors play in the intelligence community." Part 2: "Snowden Reveals How He Secretly Exposed NSA Criminal Wrongdoing Without Getting Arrested." Part 3: "Whistleblower Edward Snowden on Trump, Obama & How He Ended Up in Russia to Avoid U.S. Extradition."]
Snyder, Timothy. "'American Abyss': Fascism Historian Tim Snyder on Trump’s Coup Attempt, Impeachment & What’s Next." Democracy Now (January 13, 2021) ["As the House votes to impeach President Trump, the FBI warns there could be a repeat of the violent insurrection he encouraged on January 6, with Trump loyalists planning to hold armed protests nationwide ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. We speak with Timothy Snyder, a historian of fascism, who says the riot at the U.S. Capitol was “completely and utterly predictable” given President Trump’s record of stoking extremism and undermining democratic institutions. “The American republic is hanging by a thread because the president of the United States has sought to use violence to stay in power and essentially to overthrow our constitutional system,” says Snyder."]
Soboroff, Jacob. "'Release Is Only Way to Save Lives': Migrant Families Face Separation as COVID Spreads in ICE Jails." Democracy Now (July 14, 2020)
Sperber, Amanda. "Inside the Secretive U.S. Air War in Somalia: How Many Civilians Have Died as Strikes Escalate?" Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["The Trump administration is rapidly escalating a secretive air war in Somalia. According to the think tank New America, at least 252 people have been killed in around two dozen U.S. airstrikes in Somalia so far this year. The U.S. has already carried out more strikes in Somalia in 2019 than in any single year under President Obama. In addition to the air war, the Pentagon reportedly has about 500 U.S. troops on the ground in Somalia, including many special operations forces. For years, the U.S. has attempted to aid the Somali government by targeting members of al-Shabab, but the effort has increased dramatically under Trump, and it has come with little congressional oversight or media attention. We speak with Amanda Sperber, a freelance journalist who reports from Nairobi, Kenya, and Mogadishu, Somalia. Her new article for The Nation is titled “Inside the Secretive US Air Campaign in Somalia.”"]
Springer, Claudia. "Shadow Films: Picturing the Environmental Crisis." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["For the powerful forces invested in preserving the status quo, even limited environmental protections that threaten traditional modes of corporate profit-making provoke fierce opposition. Corporate stakeholders wield political power through lobbying and donations, and, increasingly, they hold government positions. A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that 34% of American Congress members denied climate change and had been paid over $73 million in contributions by oil, gas, and coal companies. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously claimed that climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," has reportedly accepted more than $2 million from the fossil fuel industry (Herzog). The fallout from political inaction means that people have lost their lives in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Peru, among other countries, because of the oil, gas, and mining industries' toxic practices and attacks on opponents. The propaganda battles fought with images inflame a war with catastrophic consequences."]
Staal, Jonas. Propaganda Art: From the 20th to the 21st Century. (Dissertation: University of Amsterdam, 2018)
Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. ["As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."]
---. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]
Stark, Kio. "Talk to Strangers." Team Human #6 (September 20, 2016) ["Kio’s new book When Strangers Meet explores the transformative power to be found in person-to-person interactions with strangers. Kio describes how even a brief interaction can foster empathy and open up the possibility for meaningful human connection. Kio and Douglas challenge the unwritten rules of social interaction and talk about how basic human connection can spark positive social change."]
Strach, Patricia and Kathleen S. Sullivan. "The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929." New Books in Political Science (January 18, 2024) ["Political Scientists Patricia Strach (The University at Albany, State University of New York) and Kathleen S. Sullivan (Ohio University) have written a fascinating and important exploration of trash. More precisely, this is a complex examination and analysis of the development of our municipal sanitation processes and structures, highlighting intersecting policy areas, urban and local politics, and racial, gender, and class politics. The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929 (Cornell UP, 2023) has it all: corruption, gender and racial hierarchies, blame defection, rejection of expertise, case studies across a host of different cities around the country, and the collection of, the disposal of, and the innovations of garbage. Strach and Sullivan examine this multidimensional policy issue from an American political development perspective when the issue really took root in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century. At this point, urban areas saw demographic growth from migration from rural areas as well as the waves of immigrants who came to the U.S. Most U.S. cities found themselves facing the same problem: unsanitary living situations. The initial research found that there were three different forms of trash collection, and they highlighted the processes in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh. San Francisco had no formal municipal collection process; instead, the citizens of San Francisco contracted directly with scavengers themselves to remove the garbage. Pittsburgh, as a municipality, contracted out the responsibility—but the process there was one that fed fees back to the municipal leadership. New Orleans, awash in local government corruption, ultimately had a municipal collection program, which was generally far from effective. While these three cities were the basis for the initial research, St. Louis and Charleston were also added to the case studies, with Birmingham and Louisville as secondary examples within the study. The Politics of Trash also explores the way in which citizens need to engage with and comply with the sanitation programs. In order to urge compliance, cities often called on women’s civic organizations to model and advocate for participation in the garbage process. Obviously, these were white women’s civic organizations and while they had been advocates for sanitation processes, they were generally cut out of the development process since women were not to be too close to politics itself. Strach and Sullivan spent time with the Good Housekeeping magazine archives in order to flesh out this dimension of the analysis. The research also highlights how blame was put on immigrants and people of color when the sanitation programs failed—often because of corruption and lack of sufficient resources. The authors note throughout the text that the form that we remove and dispose of waste/garbage/trash now is the same as it was 100 years ago. And while we often separate compostables from recyclables from trash, this is not all that different than the ways that people disposed of their garbage in Pittsburgh, and Charleston, and San Francisco a century ago. And many of the same forms of removal remain in place. The Politics of Trash is a lively and fascinating analysis of a part of our lives that we often don’t consider to be political, but it is political, and has been for quite some time."]
Steal This Film (UK/Germany/Sweden: The League of Noble Peers, 2006: 32 minutes) ["Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO…"]
Stevenson, Bryan. "On Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative." Slavery and Its Legacies (February 6, 2017) ["Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law."]
Stoller, Matt. "Monopoly vs. Democracy." Open Source (October 24, 2019) ["It’s new for most Americans that we’re embarrassed by our democracy. We don’t know where it went wrong, or whether it’ll survive. Matt Stoller explains it this way: we’ve come to do politics the way we do commerce, online and at the mall. Sellers are remote; critical choices are made for us. Our stuff comes from Walmart; our books, groceries, and now everything else from Amazon. Our lines on politics, news, opinion, and gossip come through Facebook. Our lives are designed and run to concentrate power and profit in the hands of a few faraway monopolists. No wonder we’re in a panic! Matt Stoller is here to tell you the fault, dear people, is not in our stars or even our selves but in these overnight monopolies that might just as well own us."]
Stone, Oliver. "Movies, Politics and History." Conversations with History (April 21, 2016) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes filmmaker Oliver Stone for a discussion of the trajectory of his career as director, screenwriter, and producer. Stone traces formative experiences, talks about different aspects of the filmmaking process including working with actors, writing screenplays, directing and post production. He focuses on the themes that have drawn him, the distinction of being a dramatist who works with historical materials, and his recent works including Alexander and the 10 part documentary on The Untold History of the United States."]
---. "Trump Admin Attempts to Erase Existence of Trans People After Years of GOP-Led Attacks on Freedoms." Democracy Now (October 22, 2018) ["The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is attempting to eliminate the rights of transgender people by creating a narrow legal definition of gender. Citing a government memo, the Times reveals that the Department of Health and Human Services has undertaken an effort across several government agencies to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex. That definition would be either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with. The Times reports that the memo says, “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex.” If enacted, the proposal would reverse the expansion of transgender rights that took place under President Barack Obama. We speak with Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the ACLU."]
Streckert, Joe. "Echoes of the Klan: The History of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon—and the Striking Similarities You May Recognize." The Portland Mercury (November 15, 2017)
Strangio, Chase. "A Shifting Landscape for Transgender Rights." At Liberty #24 (November 29, 2018) ["The state of transgender equality is in rapid flux in state legislatures, in federal law, in the courts and at the ballot box. Progress is consistently met with backlash. In the past midterm election, Massachusetts voters staved off an effort to dismantle legal protection for trans individuals in public spaces. Yet the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider legal victories won by trans plaintiffs in the federal courts, and Trump's White House seeks to exclude trans people from the military and from federal anti-discrimination law. Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project, discusses the current legal landscape."]
Susstein, Cass R. "It Can Happen Here." The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2018) [Published responses to the essay.]
Strangio, Chase. "A Shifting Landscape for Transgender Rights." At Liberty #24 (November 29, 2018) ["The state of transgender equality is in rapid flux in state legislatures, in federal law, in the courts and at the ballot box. Progress is consistently met with backlash. In the past midterm election, Massachusetts voters staved off an effort to dismantle legal protection for trans individuals in public spaces. Yet the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider legal victories won by trans plaintiffs in the federal courts, and Trump's White House seeks to exclude trans people from the military and from federal anti-discrimination law. Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project, discusses the current legal landscape."]
Suri, Jeremi. "American Civil War." Lex Fridman Podcast (January 25, 2023) [Jeremi Suri discussing his latest book Civil War By Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy "The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did. In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before. In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history. "]
---. "Civil War By Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy." Public Affairs, 2022. ["The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did
In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before. In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history. "]
In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before. In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history. "]
Sutton, Matthew, et al. "Apocalypse Now." Throughline (June 13, 2019) ["Evangelicals have played an important role in modern day American politics - from supporting President Trump to helping elect Jimmy Carter back in 1976. How and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today's political issues? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how it has changed over time."]
Taibbi, Matt. "If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too: America's Rage-Sickness Trickles Down from the Top." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2018)
Taub. Ben. "Guantanamo's Darkest Secret." The New Yorker (April 15, 2019) ["The U.S. military prison’s leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. But his guard suspected otherwise."]
Taylor, Astra. "It Would Feel Like Having a Future: On What Democracy Might Be." This is Hell (February 16, 2019) ["Filmmaker Astra Taylor explores the big questions around democracy in the 21st century - as the framework of the 20th century liberal order collapses, a public raised on the precarious edges of capitalism is looking for new answers to the old dilemma of which people get what power."]
Taylor, Astra, et al. "David Graeber, 1961–2020." The New York Review of Books (September 5, 2020) ["David Graeber, the anthropologist and activist, died aged fifty-nine on September 2, 2020. The New York Review, to which he began contributing last year, is collecting tributes from his friends and colleagues."]
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "A Class Rebellion: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on How Racism & Racial Terrorism Fueled Nationwide Anger." Democracy Now (June 1, 2020) ["In the largest nationwide uprising since the 1960s, protesters shut down cities across the United States over the weekend following the police killing of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis. “These are not just repeats of past events,” says scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “These are the consequences of the failures of this government and the political establishment … to resolve these crises.”"]
---. "Martin Luther King's Radical Anticapitalism." The Paris Review (January 15, 2018)
---. "Martin Luther King's Radical Anticapitalism." The Paris Review (January 15, 2018)
Taylor, Laurie. "The other side of the street: Laurie Taylor interviews Stan Cohen." New Humanist 119.4 (July 2004)
"Teaching the Hard History of Slavery." Southern Poverty Law Center (2018)
Teachout, Zephyr. "America's Lost Anti-Corruption History." On the Media (April 26, 2019) ["This week, the Treasury Department missed a second deadline to hand over the president’s tax returns to House Democrats. The White House directed its former head of personnel security to not adhere to a congressional subpoena to answer questions about the administration’s handling of security clearances. And on Monday the commander-in-chief sued his own accounting firm and Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, to block the committee from accessing his past financial records. As the Washington Post reported earlier this week, the lawsuit “amounts to Trump — the leader of the executive branch of government — asking the judicial branch to stop the legislative branch from investigating his past.” But so much lies in Trump’s past, and the nation’s. According to Zephyr Teachout, author of Corruption in America, this was never what America's founders envisioned when they set out to fight corruption. In 2017, a few weeks after the inauguration, Brooke spoke with Teachout about the overwhelming passion for anti-corruption present at the founding of the nation, the "bright line" rules it inspired, and how we have drifted so far from our original understanding of the concept."]
Thompson, A.C. "From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump Fueled Right-Wing Violence. It May Soon Get Even Worse." Democracy Now (January 15, 2021) ["As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection. “This was something that had been coming for a long time,” ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who covers right-wing extremism, says of the January 6 riot. “If you looked at the rhetoric online … it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war.”"]
---. "New American Nazis: Inside the White Supremacist Movement That Fueled Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting." Democracy Now (November 20, 2018) ["Neo-Nazis are on the rise in America. Nearly a month after a gunman killed eleven Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we look at the violent hate groups that helped fuel the massacre. On the same day that shooter Robert Bowers opened fire in the synagogue, a neo-Nazi named Edward Clark that Bowers had been communicating with online took his own life in Washington, D.C. The man’s brother, Jeffrey Clark, has since been arrested on weapons charges. The brothers were both linked to the violent white supremacist group Atomwaffen. We speak with A.C. Thompson, correspondent for FRONTLINE PBS and reporter for ProPublica. His investigation “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” premieres tonight on PBSstations and online."]
Thompson, Ginger. "A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children." Pro Publica (July 16, 2019) ["With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. 'Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.'"]
Thompson, Ginger. "A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children." Pro Publica (July 16, 2019) ["With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. 'Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.'"]
Thornton, Katie. "The Divided Dial: Episode 1 - The True Believers." On the Media (November 15, 2022) ["In 2016, Christian talk radio host Eric Metaxas begrudgingly encouraged his listeners to vote for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. By 2020, he pledged his life to fighting the “stolen election” while talking with Trump on the air. Ahead of the midterm elections, Metaxas and many of his fellow talk radio hosts made sure the falsehood of massive 2020 election fraud was top of mind — on the airwaves and beyond. And while election-denying candidates didn't do as well as many on the right had hoped, at least 170 such candidates have been elected to state and national offices, some of whom will be in charge of future elections. We meet the company whose hosts never backed down from the lies of the stolen 2020 election: Salem Media Group, the largest Christian, conservative multimedia company in the country – and perhaps the most influential media company you’ve never heard of."]
---. "The Divided Dial: Episode 2 - From Pulpit to Politics." On the Media (November 22, 2022) ["How did the little-known Salem Media Group come to have an outsized political influence? In this episode we trace the company’s rise to power from its scrappy start in the 1970s to the present day — a growth that paralleled and eventually became inextricable from the growth of the Religious Right. We learn that Salem is tightly networked with right wing political strategists, pollsters, big donors, far right leaders and Republican party mainstays thanks to their involvement with the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of Evangelical and conservative leaders. For decades, the CNP has been working behind the scenes to get a specific, highly influential subset of voters to act. And Salem has been a megaphone for their cause."]
---. "The Divided Dial: Episode 4 - From The Extreme to The Mainstream." On the Media (December 6, 2022) ["In the 1970s, talk radio was hitting its stride, with hosts and listeners from all political persuasions. But the radio dial was about to change forever. Community needs assessments, requirements to offer public service programs and multiple perspectives, and limits on how many stations a single company could own were all eradicated. Technological and legal changes would consolidate the radio industry exponentially, allowing conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh to take over the airwaves. In this episode, we look at radio’s last four decades to understand how we got to where we are today, and how conservative talk radio came to dominate a medium that once thrived on varied viewpoints."]
Tlaib, Rashida. "'I Will Not Be Silenced': Rep. Rashida Tlaib Calls for Gaza Ceasefire as House Votes to Censure Her." Democracy Now (November 8, 2023) ["As the death toll from Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza tops 10,000 and millions around the world march in the streets for a ceasefire, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to censure the only Palestinian American in Congress. By a vote of 234 to 188, lawmakers officially rebuked Congressmember Rashida Tlaib for her criticism of Israel, including her defense of the slogan “from the river to the sea” as a Palestinian call for freedom and equality; 22 Democrats joined Republicans in the vote. “The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me,” Tlaib said in an emotional speech before the vote. “What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all.”"]
---. "On Impeaching Trump, Occupied Palestine & Becoming One of First Muslim Congresswomen." Democracy Now (November 9, 2018) ["On Tuesday evening, Palestinian American Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Somali American Ilhan Omar in Minnesota became the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib is a Democratic Socialist who supports the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution. She also supports Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing ICE. The child of immigrants, Tlaib has spoken out against the Trump administration’s travel bans."]
"To Amend or Not to Amend and If So, How?" Best of the Left #1246 (February 1, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the warring factions of progressive and conservatives who are all trying to amend the constitution in various ways. Some progressives want to call for a Convention of States to propose an amendment, as do some conservatives, while others are calling for an amendment but would rather it go through the Congress for reasons that will be explained."]
"The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #23 New Restrictions on Prisoners’ First Amendment Rights." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Thunberg, Greta. "'We Are Striking to Disrupt the System': An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg." Democracy Now (September 11, 2019) ["In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike began in 2018, Greta has become a leading figure in the climate justice movement. She has joined protests across Europe. She has addressed world leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Poland and the European Union Parliament. She has even met the pope. And now she is in New York to join a global climate strike on September 20 and address the U.N. Climate Action Summit on September 23. Greta has refused to fly for years because of emissions, so she arrived here after a two-week transatlantic voyage aboard a zero-emissions racing yacht. She is also planning to attend the U.N. climate summit in Santiago, Chile, in December."]
Tuma, Mary. "Texas Anti-Choice Legislation Continues to Damage Health Care and Undermine Local Control." The Austin Chronicle (May 17, 2019) ["As GOP postures with SB 22, women’s health care pays the price."]
Umansky, Eric. "Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Mueller Edition." On the Media (March 1, 2019) ["Amid Michael Cohen's explosive testimony before Congress this week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller pursued his two-pronged investigation quietly in the background: into whether President Trump, his family, or his aides colluded with Russia to help him win in 2016, and whether they’ve interfered with any investigations into election-related activity. Overwhelming and extremely difficult to parse, filled with misfires, false alarms and intoxicating intrigue, the media have turned the saga of Mueller’s secret investigation into the best-worst crime drama never written. To date, the press have reported on nearly 150 characters in the Mueller probe, including politicians, investigators, businessmen, petty criminals, offspring and erstwhile Trump aides. All potential clues with potential roles in the Special Counsel’s forthcoming final report. And so, to help you make sense of the rumors and revelations to come, we bring you the latest of our Breaking News Consumer's Handbooks: Mueller Edition."]
---. "A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism." Democracy Now (August 1, 2018) [I was meditating today on a river bank thinking about the impact of technology (especially SM) on my psyche. I was wondering what it is doing to us as humans and what are the questions we should be asking about that influence/time/impact. Then, later, while I was cleaning my house I listened to this interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan and my thoughts were pushed further and more questions arose. I was first concerned about my own psyche even as I thought about it on a larger social level. Then, because I am preparing for classes, I began to think of a pedagogical exercise. Introduce my classes to Vaidhyanathan's ideas in this interview and initiate a conversation about the impact of social media on how we operate in and understand our world. I'm thinking that I would ask my students to attempt to have a social media fast for an entire week (I would, of course, participate). To keep a record of our successes and failures, to think about how being disconnected in this way affects us, to keep a record of questions and conclusions. With all of that in mind, I would like to hear any responses to this interview and/or this conception of a pedagogical exercise. Also, would others be interested in doing this exercise at the same time - individually or collectively? I know this can come off as hypocritical as I am on SM. I have to honestly admit that when I was engaged in my higher education as the Internet (and later SM when I was a professor) appeared, and later dominated, I was excited (and bought into the rhetoric about its revolutionary possibilities) by the radical possibilities of being able to communicate with people from all corners of the earth (how many of you remember long distance charges on landlines) and to freely access information (including that which is purposely being censored or disappeared). Even as this fantasy dissipated in the wake of corporate colonization of the Internet, I still clung to a belief that if we just used it intelligently, modeled higher thinking, used it to connect to our loved ones, that it could be changed for a better purpose. More and more I am becoming cynical about that possibility..... I think we have to ask some hard questions. I will accept all positions with no judgement and in open discussion (as long as when you make conclusive/factual claims you back them up). Peace.]
Vaidya, Anjali. "Mining the Hurricane." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 3, 2018) ["Klein's new book, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists, acts as a timely reminder that in a tumultuous world, the future remains an open question. By disrupting what always was, disasters like Hurricane Maria can teach us how we want the future to be. Hurricanes are common in Puerto Rico, but Maria in September 2017 was in a league of its own. Almost a year later the archipelago remains crippled, with the aftereffects of the worst storm in 85 years worsened by state ineptitude and neglect. Klein spotlights two groups trying to find paths through Puerto Rico's wreckage, guided by very different visions of the future."]
Verdeja, Ernesto. "Why is the Definition of 'Genocide' So Controversial?" On the Media (December 1, 2023) ["As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas officially ended this week, fighting has resumed in Gaza. Meanwhile, some of the public discourse around the war has narrowed in to a debate over a word: genocide. Beyond its cultural and political implications, genocide is a criminal charge—with strict criteria observed by international courts. So strict that since the creation of the law in the 1950s, only three genocides have been formally recognized by the UN Convention and gone to trial. This week, Micah speaks with Ernesto Verdeja, the Executive Director of the Institute For The Study of Genocide and a professor of Peace Studies and Global Politics at the University of Notre Dame, about how the term means different things to different groups of people. And why the legal limitations of the word could derail discussions from focusing on ending the violence in Gaza."]
"Veterans Reach Their Tipping Point Against Our Post-9/11 Wars." The American Conservative (September 10, 2019) ["Solid majorities of veterans believe Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting. It's time to heed their counsel."]
Vimercati, Giovanni. "State of Denial: Japanese Relocation." Reverse Shot (May 16, 2017)
Volokh, Eugene. "Free Speech #52: What We Mean by 'The First Amendment.'" Think About It (May 19, 2019) ["What do we mean when we say "The First Amendment"? It's obvious: we mean the most robust protection of speech rights, religious liberty, freedom of the press, and freedom of association in the world today. Correct, says Eugene Volokh, absolutely correct. But it could change! Listen to this illuminating conversation with a leading expert on freedom of speech and constitutional law at UCLA. Volokh clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and runs the Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog."]
Wade, Lisa. "History Repeating Itself: Discriminatory Voting Laws." Sociological Images (July 1, 2013)"Veterans Reach Their Tipping Point Against Our Post-9/11 Wars." The American Conservative (September 10, 2019) ["Solid majorities of veterans believe Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting. It's time to heed their counsel."]
Vimercati, Giovanni. "State of Denial: Japanese Relocation." Reverse Shot (May 16, 2017)
Volokh, Eugene. "Free Speech #52: What We Mean by 'The First Amendment.'" Think About It (May 19, 2019) ["What do we mean when we say "The First Amendment"? It's obvious: we mean the most robust protection of speech rights, religious liberty, freedom of the press, and freedom of association in the world today. Correct, says Eugene Volokh, absolutely correct. But it could change! Listen to this illuminating conversation with a leading expert on freedom of speech and constitutional law at UCLA. Volokh clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and runs the Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog."]
---. "U.S. Rare in the Spending of More Money on the Education of Rich Children." Sociological Images (December 8, 2013)
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."]
Waldrun, Jeremy. "Brave Spaces." The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2018) ["“How can we—those of us who profess to educate—accept the student demand not only as a rebuke, which it certainly is, but also as a gift?” -- Tav Nyong’o"]
Walzer, Michael. "A Foreign Policy for the Left (Yale University Press, 2018)." New Books in Intellectual History (October 20, 2020) ["In my old age, I try to argue more quietly, though I still believe that sharp disagreement is a sign of political seriousness. What engaged citizens think and say matters; we should aim to get it right and to defeat those who get it wrong. I understand the very limited impact of what I write, but I continue to believe that the stakes are high. – Michael Walzer (2018) These thoughts, from the preface of A Foreign Policy for the Left (Yale University Press, 2018), reflect the understated wisdom of a highly regarded 85-year old political theorist, Michael Walzer. His many books include the influential Just and Unjust Wars, and others mentioned in this interview including: Thick and Thin – Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Spheres of Justice – A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, and Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship – the last one being published in 1970 at the height of the divisive Vietnam War era when Walzer was teaching at Harvard. Much of the material for Michael’s books derives from his long affiliation with Dissent magazine – he apprenticed as a young leftist partisan under the prolific Irving Howe whose writing, social role and politics helped shape the young Walzer. Evidence of Michael’s current and ongoing political engagement, as well as the clarity of his thought and seriousness of his message can be seen here: ‘A Note on Racial Capitalism’ from Dissent in July 2020. In his note Michael references K. Sabeel Rahman’s Dissent article ‘Dismantle Racial Capitalism’ in his first paragraph; a month later two scholars write ‘A Reply to Michael Walzer’ from which comes: ‘A Reply to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Liam Kofi Bright’. Professor Walzer published his first Dissent article in 1956 which provides some timeline context for one of the first questions in this interview about whether the Hiss-Chambers testimonies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1948) might represent the opening confrontation of our polarizing culture wars. As you will hear, Michael thinks it could date back further; and shares a few thoughts on teaching at Harvard in the sixties, and pivotal moments in his career as a young leftist partisan. He comments about scholars like Rawls, Nozick and Geertz; and offers opinions related to our current polarization including a recent Rolling Stone article, the origins of resentment, engaged citizenship and voting, 9/11 and its aftermath, justice, ‘complex equality’, ‘formative’ books and a poet. An overview of Michael’s life and work, Justice is Steady Work – A Conversation on Political Theory (Polity Press 2020) with Astrid von Busekist at SciencesPo (originally published in French) out soon. Michael Walzer is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and editor emeritus at Dissent magazine. Professor Walzer studied on a Fulbright Fellowship at Cambridge and completed his PhD in government at Harvard University."]
Weatherford, Jack. "Genghis Khan's Surprising Legacy." Radio West (March 2, 2018) ["What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Genghis Khan? Conquest, right? The terrifying Mongol hordes. But Genghis Khan’s legacy wasn’t built entirely on the battlefield. Motivated by fear and love, he was remarkably fair to the people he subjugated, going so far as to grant them religious freedom. Anthropologist Jack Weatherford has chronicled Genghis’s life and ideas, and he joins us to discuss their place in American political life and what they can teach us today."]
Weinstein, Adam. "Who's Behind Trump's Push to Pardon War Criminals?" On the Media (May 24, 2019) ["The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had made expedited requests for paperwork needed to pardon troops “accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse." Another such case includes a Blackwater contractor twice convicted in the 2007 killings of dozens of unarmed Iraqi civilians. The White House's request for case histories from the Department of Justice follows Trump's pardon earlier this month of former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who had been convicted of killing an Iraqi prisoner. Adam Weinstein is an editor for The New Republic. He’s served in the Navy and worked as a contractor in Iraq in 2008. Weinstein writes there is no natural constituency — from the upper echelons of the Department of Defense to the leadership of major veteran's groups — that would support the decision. So where is the push for pardoning war criminals coming from? Bob talks to Weinstein about the influence of Fox News and the efforts of FOX and friends co-host Pete Hegseth."]
Weisbord, Noah. "Introduction." The Crime of Aggression: The Quest for Justice in an Age of Drones, Cyberattacks, Insurgents, and Autocrats. Princeton University Press, 2019: 1-7.
West, Cornel. "'America’s Moment of Reckoning': Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of 'Empire Imploding.'" Democracy Now (June 1, 2020) ["As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, professor Cornel West calls the U.S. a “predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money.” He also makes the connections between U.S. violence abroad and at home. “There is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally.”"]
West, Stephen. "Are You Left or Right?" Philosophize This! #50 (February 6, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the contrasting political philosophies of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. First, we find out the origin of the terms “left” and “right” in relation to politics, and find out that the meanings of these terms are not as simple as they may first seem. Next, we discuss the opposing viewpoints of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine on how society should progress and implement change. Finally, we think about how their ideas relate to modern issues and consider whether or not their positions are mutually exclusive."]
---. "Carl Schmitt on Liberalism, Part 1." Philosophize This! (July 1, 2019) ["When John Dewey and Antonio Gramsci show up with their lunchbox the first day at the new job…this is the first order of business that people like them are going to have to deal with. Now, it’s right here that we can understand why the two of them went in the respective directions they did…because like we talked about the beginning of the 20th century can be broadly understood in terms of three major branches of political discussion, three primary conversations…that are going on…we’ve already talked about two of them and understanding all three of them is absolutely crucial because the contents OF these conversations is going to go on to dictate the direction of almost all subsequent political philosophy all the way up to the present day…when a philosopher sets out to contribute something to the political discussion of the 20th century they are almost without exception doing so in consideration to one of these three major critiques of the way we’ve done things in the past. Once again, what we’ve done in the past is Liberal Capitalist Democracy…the three major critiques are going to be John Dewey and his critique of traditional Democracy…Antonio Gramsci and his critique of Capitalism…and the guy we’re going to be talking about today…the philosopher Carl Schmitt and his critique of Liberalism."]
---. "Carl Schmitt on Liberalism, Part 2." Philosophize This! (July 1, 2019) ["So maybe the best place to begin our discussion today is just to say that the fact that the sovereign still exists at some level in our Liberal societies shouldn’t come as an enormous surprise to people. I mean, after all what exactly are systems of norms like the constitution trying to normalize? Carl Schmitt would ask if the constitution is a regulatory document…what exactly is it regulating? He would say that what it is regulating is the more fundamental, underlying political process that has been going on since the dawn of civilization. Liberalism’s been tacked on after the fact…makes us feel good…helps us feel like the world is a lot more peaceful and tolerant than its ever been…but once again, the reality of the world to Carl Schmitt, the reason we haven’t seen a respite from dictatorships, bloodshed and political instability is because we are still engaged in the exact same political process we’ve always been engaged in…one rooted in intolerance…to Carl Schmitt the foundation of the political lies in a distinction between friend and enemy."]
---. "Carl Schmitt on Liberalism, Part 2." Philosophize This! (July 1, 2019) ["So maybe the best place to begin our discussion today is just to say that the fact that the sovereign still exists at some level in our Liberal societies shouldn’t come as an enormous surprise to people. I mean, after all what exactly are systems of norms like the constitution trying to normalize? Carl Schmitt would ask if the constitution is a regulatory document…what exactly is it regulating? He would say that what it is regulating is the more fundamental, underlying political process that has been going on since the dawn of civilization. Liberalism’s been tacked on after the fact…makes us feel good…helps us feel like the world is a lot more peaceful and tolerant than its ever been…but once again, the reality of the world to Carl Schmitt, the reason we haven’t seen a respite from dictatorships, bloodshed and political instability is because we are still engaged in the exact same political process we’ve always been engaged in…one rooted in intolerance…to Carl Schmitt the foundation of the political lies in a distinction between friend and enemy."]
---. "How much freedom would you trade for security? (Foucault, Hobbes, Mill, Agamben)." Philosophize This! #187 (August 31, 2023) ["On today's episode we talk about the upsides of a surveillance state. The ongoing social dilemma of freedom vs security. The value of privacy. States of exception. And Deleuze's Postscript on Societies of Control."]
---. "John Rawls - A Theory of Justice." Philosophize This! (January 2, 2020) ["But another way to think about the answer to this question is to say that every, great philosopher in their own way... questioned the fundamental assumptions that were present in the thinking of their time. That is a hallmark of a great philosopher...because when seeking solutions to philosophical problems...casting aside the cultural or linguistic assumptions of a particular snapshot in time...very often leads philosophers of the next generation to understand how those assumptions have been limiting our ways of thinking about things. The philosopher we're going to talk about today falls into this category...and he's going to question an assumption that seemed to others as radical as it was dangerous. His name was John Rawls...and this was the assumption that he questioned: Can human beings actually live and flourish for any extended period of time in liberal democratic societies? The political paradigm of the Enlightenment...liberal democratic societies. A government BY the many. Democracy. Liberal in the sense that there is a strong focus on rational discourse, the acceptance of outside ideas... the legitimacy of political ideas being decided by having conversations between competing ideas, let the best ideas rise to the top and direct the future of society for the time being, and if those prevailing ideas don't happen to be the ones you believe in, you're supposed to accept those ideas as part of the greater political process and work to defend your positions better the next time we're having a conversation."]
---. "Jürgen Habermas – The Public Sphere." Philosophize This! #143 (May 1, 2020) ["When transnational corporations with very specific ends they’re trying to achieve OWN major media outlets. When there is so much power in controlling people’s values…Habermas thinks the economic/governmental system COLONIZES the lifeworld. Where we used to sit around the dinner table and have discussions to determine our thoughts about the world…we now turn on a screen and are SOLD ways to think about things. The further we got from the origins of the public sphere in those coffee houses back in France …the further we got away from communicative rationality. We got so far away from it we could barely SEE it anymore…to the point where brilliant thinkers like Adorno and Horkheimer wrote an entire book about rationality and didn’t even consider its existence! But for any chains we were supposedly wrapped in by the Enlightenment, Habermas thought the key to get us out of them was built into the Enlightenment all along. We just lost sight of it. The emancipatory potential of reason…reason’s ability to direct us AWAY from treating people as a means to an end…the type of reason GROUNDED in communication…GROUNDED in the pursuit of genuinely trying to understand the other person’s perspective and then working towards agreement…the type of reason that can allow us to make our decisions about things not by buying into an endless sales pitch, but by talking to our fellow citizens in the lifeworld comparing our individual perspecitives… True democracy, to Habermas, is when the lifeworld controls the system. Not the system controlling the lifeworld."]
---. "Michel Foucault (Part 1)." Philosophize This (August 15, 2018) ["Foucault himself would never describe [Discipline and Punish] as a 'history' of anything. Foucault hated the word history and almost never used it in his writing. He used words to describe this book more like, a geneology of the way we’ve treated criminals, or an archaeology of how criminals have been punished over the years. He hates the word history…because so often the word history brings with it a connotation… that we exist in our modern world at the end of this long historical timeline of events that have led to near constant progress. This idea that, hey, we used to be these barbaric savages that followed the playbook of Machievelli, the ends justify the means, we used to believe that it was morally acceptable for the king or the people in power to brutally torture and kill someone that was guilty of a heinous crime…but then HISTORY happened. Time went on…progress was made. Great political theorists came along…great leaders, great ethical philosophers did their work and we all realized the error of our ways and brought into existence a more modern world where everyone is much more free…the people in power inhibiting the lives of the average citizen far less than they used to . Foucault is going to call this assumption about history into question and really dig deeper into the idea of: how much has really changed when it comes to the fundamental relationship between those in power and the citizens?"]
---. "Michel Foucault Pt. 3 - Power." Philosophize This (September 24, 2018)
---. "Michel Foucault (Part 1)." Philosophize This (August 15, 2018) ["Foucault himself would never describe [Discipline and Punish] as a 'history' of anything. Foucault hated the word history and almost never used it in his writing. He used words to describe this book more like, a geneology of the way we’ve treated criminals, or an archaeology of how criminals have been punished over the years. He hates the word history…because so often the word history brings with it a connotation… that we exist in our modern world at the end of this long historical timeline of events that have led to near constant progress. This idea that, hey, we used to be these barbaric savages that followed the playbook of Machievelli, the ends justify the means, we used to believe that it was morally acceptable for the king or the people in power to brutally torture and kill someone that was guilty of a heinous crime…but then HISTORY happened. Time went on…progress was made. Great political theorists came along…great leaders, great ethical philosophers did their work and we all realized the error of our ways and brought into existence a more modern world where everyone is much more free…the people in power inhibiting the lives of the average citizen far less than they used to . Foucault is going to call this assumption about history into question and really dig deeper into the idea of: how much has really changed when it comes to the fundamental relationship between those in power and the citizens?"]
---. "Michel Foucault Pt. 3 - Power." Philosophize This (September 24, 2018)
---. "On Media: Manufacturing Consent, Pt. 1." Philosophize This (December 17, 2020) [On Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's landmark book Media Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.]
---. "The modern day concentration camp and the failure of human rights: Giorgio Agamben." Philosophize This! #191 (December 4, 2023) ["Today we talk about the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Human rights, a political tactic to dehumanize groups that has been growing in popularity, governments declaring states of emergency and how the concept of potential may in fact be a unifying force."]
---. "Robert Nozick - The Minimal State." Philosophize This! #138 (January 21, 2020) ["Robert Nozick and the book of his we're going to be talking about today is titled Anarchy, State and Utopia. Now, just to give the following conversation a little preliminary structure...that title, Anarchy, State and Utopia is referencing the three major sections that the book is divided into. The first section would be Anarchy...where Nozick spends a considerable portion of time being understanding of the Anarchist's aversion to government, but ultimately making a case that they go too far. The middle portion of the book, State, has Nozick laying out the TYPE of state that HE thinks is best...and in the Utopia section is where he describes WHY his version of a state is the best...Utopia is a sort of tongue in cheek musing by Nozick..he by NO MEANS thinks his system is an actual Utopia...but he thinks it's FAR BETTER than other systems that have been tried and he argues for why he thinks that is.See, Nozick is not a fan of there being a BIG state, with a lot of responsibilities...he's not a fan of there being no state...so what is he a fan of? How big should the government be and what exactly should it do? Nozick is a fan of what he would call "the minimal state". The best way to start understanding what he means by this is probably to contrast him with both the work of Rawls and the Anarchists of his time..."]
---. "Rousseau pt. 2 - Democracy, Aristocracy or Monarchy?" Philosophize This! (January 1, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we continue last week's thought experiment about creating a society from scratch on a deserted island. First, we find out how building a society is similar to making cupcakes, in the sense that every ingredient contributes something important and interacts with the other ingredients in a unique way. Next, we discuss “human nature” and consider how our perception of it may be unfairly influenced by a small handful of people. Finally, we compare the three categories into which Rousseau believs all governments can be classified (democracy, monarchy, and aristocracy), and analyze the pros and cons of each structure."]
---. "Rousseau pt. 3 - The General Will." Philosophize This! #47 (January 9, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we continue our desert island thought experiment, this time focusing on the general will of the people. First, we examine several interpretations of what "the general will of the people" actually means. Next, we take an in-depth look at Rousseau's interpretation, and discuss the difference between democratic and transcendental will. Finally, we explore the multitude of complications that arise when a government tries to enact the general will after it's (somewhat) agreed upon."]
---. "Should we overthrow the government tomorrow? - Anarchism pt. 1 (Chomsky, Malatesta)." Philosophize This #192 (December 27, 2023) ["Today we talk about some common misconceptions about Anarchism, the weaknesses of traditional government structures, a possible alternative way of cooperating and whether or not the government is the hierarchy we should be focusing on."]
---. "Simone Weil - Attention." Philosophize This! (November 21, 2022) ["If you’re Simone Weil around this time in her life we’ve been talking about…and you’re LOOKING at the world around you and trying to diagnose what the problems are that maybe we can improve upon…this psychological and spiritual CRISIS that she calls Affliction… this is going to be at the top of her list. This dehumanized state of learned helplessness, has infected millions and millions of people around the globe…which is ALSO to say…that you don’t just FIND Affliction in FACTORY workers that are being treated like a means to some ECONOMIC end. Or in soldiers on the front line being treated as a means to a POLITICAL end. You will find affliction, Simone Weil says, where ever you find people being transformed from human beings into things…and then those THINGS being grouped into COLLECTIVES that are easier to control…and then through VARIOUS different strategies those people are rendered INCAPABLE of THINKING their way out of the stuck place that they EXIST in. And ALL of this… mediated… by a sort of organizing principle of human POLITICAL movement, that Simone Weil is going to refer to throughout her writing as Force."]
---. "The truth is in the process. Zizek Pt. 3 (Ideology, Dialectics)." Philosophize This! #198 (March 25, 2024) ["Key Takeaways:
Ideology's Function and Risks: Ideology simplifies complex realities, aiding decision-making and action, but its uncritical acceptance can perpetuate systemic flaws.
Žižek's Critique of Ideological Frameworks: Žižek examines how ideologies, especially within global capitalism, shape societal norms and individual actions, often obscuring deeper systemic issues. Dialectical Understanding of Reality: The dialectical method reveals the continuous and dynamic process of change and contradiction in societal and ideological structures.
Necessity of Ideology in Human Experience: Ideology is essential for making sense of the complex world, serving as both a simplifying tool and a psychological coping mechanism.
Recommended Reading: The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek: In this foundational work, Žižek explores the mechanisms of ideology, offering a complex analysis of how individuals interact with and are influenced by their ideological constructs. Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek: Žižek examines the global capitalist system and its crises, arguing that we are living in the end times of capitalism and facing an urgent need for radical change."]
Wheeler, Marcy. "Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty & Implicates Trump as Paul Manafort Is Convicted. Is Impeachment Next?" Democracy Now (August 22, 2018) ["Talk of the possible impeachment of President Trump is growing in Washington after Tuesday’s stunning legal developments. In New York, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Two hundred miles away, in Virginia, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight charges related to tax fraud and bank fraud. The Cohen case is likely to put the president in the most legal jeopardy. Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until this year, admitted in court that he arranged to illegally pay out money to two women—an adult film star and a Playboy model—to keep them from speaking during the 2016 campaign about their affairs with Donald Trump. Cohen said the payments were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and that they were made “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.” Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis wrote on Twitter, “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?” We speak with Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties."]
"White Nationalism." Throughline (May 9, 2019) ["The white nationalist ideas of Madison Grant influenced Congress in the 1920s, leaders in Nazi Germany, and members of the Trump administration. This week, we share an episode we loved from It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders that explores a throughline of white nationalism in American politics from the early 20th century to today."]
Whitlock, Craig. "'Afghanistan Papers' Reveal How Presidents & Generals Misled the American Public on War’s Progress." Democracy Now (March 9, 2020) ["Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock has just won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting for his in-depth investigation called “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.” He joins us to describe how, after getting a tip, he fought for three years to get the federal government to release a trove of confidential interviews it conducted with people directly involved in the nearly two-decade-long war. He ultimately obtained more than 2,000 documents that revealed how presidents, generals and diplomats across three administrations had intentionally misled the American public about the longest war in U.S. history."]
---. "The 'Pentagon Papers' Of Our Time." On the Media (December 11, 2019) ["On Monday, the Washington Post released the fruits of a three-year investigative effort: the "Afghanistan Papers," a once-secret internal government history of a deadly, costly, and ultimately futile entanglement. The hundreds of frank, explosive interviews — along with a new tranche of memos written by the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — revealed the extent to which American leaders misled the public on their efforts to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, rout the Taliban, expel Al Qaeda, install democracy, and undo corruption. In this podcast extra, investigative reporter Craig Whitlock tells Bob about the monumental story that the Post uncovered — and the extraordinary effort it took to report it out. "]
Wilkerson, Isabel. “We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be.” On Being (March 9, 2023) ["In this rich, expansive, and warm conversation between friends, Krista draws out the heart for humanity behind Isabel Wilkerson’s eye on histories we are only now communally learning to tell — her devotion to understanding not merely who we have been, but who we can be. Her most recent offering of fresh insight to our life together brings “caste” into the light — a recurrent, instinctive pattern of human societies across the centuries, though far more malignant in some times and places. Caste is a ranking of human value that works more like a pathogen than a belief system — more like the reflexive grammar of our sentences than our choices of words. In the American context, Isabel Wilkerson says race is the skin, but “caste is the bones.” And this shift away from centering race as a focus of analysis actually helps us understand why race and racism continue to shape-shift and regenerate, every best intention and effort and law notwithstanding. But beginning to see caste also gives us fresh eyes and hearts for imagining where to begin, and how to persist, in order finally to shift that."Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize while reporting for the New York Times. Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, brought the underreported story of the Great Migration of the 20th century into the light, and she published her best-selling book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents in August 2020. Among many honors, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.]
Wineapple, Brenda. "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." Throughline (February 28, 2019) ["When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the midst of one of its most volatile chapters. The country was divided after fighting a bloody civil war and had just experienced the first presidential assassination. We look at how these factors led to the first ever presidential impeachment in American history."]
Winter, Jana. "'Quiet Skies'? Boston Globe Exposé Reveals TSA Is Secretly Surveilling Thousands of U.S. Travelers." Democracy Now (July 31, 2018) ["A Boston Globe investigation has revealed the existence of a domestic surveillance program run by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, which has been shadowing U.S. citizens on planes and in airports since 2012. Under the program, called “Quiet Skies,” federal air marshals collect information about U.S. travelers, including common behavior like using the bathroom repeatedly, sleeping on flights or sweating heavily. In the wake of the Globe investigation, TSAofficials have bowed to pressure from Congress and plan to meet with the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees. We speak with Jana Winter, the Boston Globe Spotlight Fellow who broke the story. Her investigation is headlined, “Welcome to the Quiet Skies.”"]
Wolin, Sheldon S. "Myth in the Making." Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press, 2008: 4-14. ["Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level."]
Wong, Felicia. "California Today, America Tomorrow." Boston Review (May 30, 2018) ["Political lessons from the state of resistance."]
Wright, Ann. "'Our Dreams are Coming True': Peace Activists Celebrate as Korean Leaders Vow to Officially End War." Democracy Now (April 27, 2018) ["History has been made on the Korean peninsula today, as South Korean President Moon Jae-In and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un shook hands at the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries and pledged to work to denuclearize the peninsula and to declare the official end to the Korean War. Today’s historic summit marks the first time a North Korean leader has ever set foot inside South Korea. During the meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said “I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation.” The North and South Korean leaders pledged to pursue talks with the United States aimed at negotiating a formal peace treaty to replace the uneasy 1953 armistice. For more we speak with Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former State Department diplomat. She is a member of Women Cross DMZ, a group of international peacemakers who have been calling for an end to the Korean War."]
Wu, Timothy. "The Oppression of the Supermajority." The New York Times (March 5, 2019)
Yates, Michael D. "It's Still Slavery by Another Name." Monthly Review (May 1, 2020) ["All of these things would lead us to reject the hypothesis that white and black racism offset one another. What is more, we would get the same results even if we conducted more sophisticated tests of this hypothesis. For example, black wages are lower than those for whites if we factor out schooling, age, occupation, industry, experience, region, and whatever else we think influences wages. That is, if we look at two groups of workers equal in all respects (same schooling, experience, and so on), the black group will have a lower average wage than the white group. The same result would hold for whatever variable we considered—prison sentences, unemployment, life expectancies, and all the others mentioned above. We are left with an inescapable conclusion. Being black, in and of itself, is a grave economic and social disadvantage, while being white confers considerable advantage. That this is true today, 155 years after the end of the Civil War, after three constitutional amendments, the great civil rights movement, a large number of civil rights laws, and lord knows how many college courses and sensitivity training sessions is testament to the power and tenacity of racist social structures."]
Yazdiha, Hajar. "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton University Press, 2023)." Princeton UP Ideas Podcast (January 12, 2024) ["In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next."]
Zha, Carl, et al. "Hong Kong Protests (Where Colonialism meets Neoliberalism)." Best of the Left #1314 (October 25, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the complicated range of forces driving the protests in Hong Kong that span the ideological spectrum."]
Zimbardo, Philip. "The Psychology of Evil Inside of Trump's Concentration Camps." The Chauncey DeVega Show #255 (October 10, 2019) ["Philip Zimbardo is one of the world's leading authorities on the psychology of cruelty, groupthink, and evil. Most famous for the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Zimbardo has written dozens of books and articles including the powerful and disturbing book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Dr. Zimbardo explains how America under Donald Trump is fully devolving into a state of violence, authoritarianism, and cruelty and the many ways that the Trump regime encourages thuggery against nonwhite immigrants, migrants, and refugees by law enforcement and others. Dr. Zimbardo also highlights the connections between his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment and the evil taking place inside of Donald Trump’s concentration camps. Chauncey tells some harsh truth about how the American corporate news media, many members of the Democratic Party, and too many average Americans were in denial for too long about the fascist white supremacist threat embodied by the Trump regime – and which is now fully obvious and naked in the president’s and his handlers’ recent declaration that he is a king who is above the law and cannot be impeached for any reason. Chauncey also shares his thoughts about politics of the great new film Joker and its damning indictment of neoliberalism, the culture of cruelty, and gangster capitalism."]
Zollman, Florian. "Fake News by Design." Monthly Review (March 7, 2018) ["Mainstream news media reporting and the manufacture of bloodbaths in Libya and Syria"]
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30 minute documentary: Quick intro to history of Antifa - what is anti-fascism - how they organize and act against anti-fascist groups - why Trump hates the group - the global rise of white supremacist/fascist groups
For Kant in particular, the human limits on abstract reason should be on of the chief subjects of philosophers, ethicists, and students of the natural world. We may live in a law-governed universe, Kant believed. All of creation may fit a divine plan of order and perfection. It's deepest secrets, however, are always obscured by the frailty of our own minds. Our ideas of reality come to us through our senses, which should be treated as unreliable informants. Yet rather than being skeptical about everything we claim to perceive, the surest rout to true knowledge was to turn our attention toward our perceptions themselves.
After all, while there are plenty of ways we might have wrong ideas about something we claim to see--a mirage, for example, or someone on the street who we mistake for an old friend--we can't be wrong about our own sense of reality. We are all, by definition, experts in our own experience. The job of philosophers should be to study the space between the sense-perceptions that bombard us and the mental pictures we fashion of things as we believe them to be. The way to understand something about the world was to steer a course between the belief in the universal power of reason and an unbending skepticism about our ability to know anything at all. One of Kant's students, Johann Gotffried von Herder, even suggested that entire peoples could have their own unique frameworks for sense-making--a "genius" that was peculiar to the specific Kultur that gave rise to it. Human civilization was a jigsaw puzzle of these distinct ways of being, each adding its own piece, some more rough-edged than others, to the grand picture of human achievement (18-19).
As Dorian Devastates, Activists Gear Up For Climate Strike from Rising Up With Sonali on Vimeo.
"Access to healthcare is a spiritual issue, deeply rooted in a compassionate world view. Currently, in America, more than 40 million people are uninsured and millions more have insurance with such a high deductible that they cannot afford to use it. It is estimated that 22,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of a lack of access to healthcare. Why can't we cover everyone? Why do we spend twice as much as every other western democracy while getting less than France, Belgium, England, etc.? Why are politicians on both sides of the political spectrum seemingly in the pocket of healthcare insurance and pharmaceutical companies . . . and why are most churches silent about this travesty?"
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