We look at the brutal, stupid, and embarrassing end of our brutal, stupid, and embarrassing twenty year occupation of Afghanistan.

Paul Kenyon discusses his book Children of the Night, which charts the story of modern Romania, and its colourful, chaotic and often corrupt leaders – from unstable playboy King Carol II, to communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

 

(Ad) Paul Kenyon is the author of Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania (Head of Zeus, 2021). Buy it now from Waterstones: https://go.skimresources.com?id=71026X1535947&xcust=historyextra-social-hexpod&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fchildren-of-the-night%2Fpaul-kenyon%2F9781789543162

 

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Democracy Now! 2021-08-18 Wednesday

• Headlines for August 18, 2021
• "People Are Thirsty for Peace": Afghans Wary of Taliban as Group Vows to Uphold Rights
• Ex-Official Matthew Hoh, Who Resigned over Afghan War, Says U.S. Mistakes Helped Taliban Gain Power
• Advocates Call on Biden Admin to Move Faster on Resettling Afghan Refugees
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott Tests Positive for Coronavirus After Banning Mask & Vaccine Mandates

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Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

In 1994, the most vilified member of the Reagan administration tried to stage a political comeback, and it almost worked. The documentary A PERFECT CANDIDATE (1996) follows Oliver North's attempt to unseat Democrat Chuck Robb as a Virginia senator, and captures the political currents in both Virginia and the United States as a whole. Pod Damn America and Redacted Tonight's Anders Lee fills in for Luke to discuss.

Follow Anders Lee on Twitter - https://twitter.com/andersleehere

Follow Pod Damn America - https://twitter.com/PodDamnAmerica

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/

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Guest: Jon Lancelot. Hosts: Joanne Leon, Kelley Lane. A wide ranging discussion on hybrid warfare, cybersecurity, cyberdiplomacy, democracy, technocracy and more. In a bonus segment we talk about creeping fascism and what went wrong with the progressive movement. 

Jonathan Lancelot is a cybersecurity analyst at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and principal policy analyst for the OSET Institute focused on election cybersecurity in the context of national security. He has a Master of Diplomacy with a focus on cyber-diplomacy and has been published in several journals. He also has an extensive technical background in computer science and has worked for Apple, the U.S. Senate and the US Department of Defense.  

FOLLOW Jon on Twitter at @lancelotpolitic

Around the Empire aroundtheempire.com is listener supported, independent media.

SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on Rokfin rokfin.com/aroundtheempire, Patreon patreon.com/aroundtheempire, Paypal paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod, YouTube youtube.com/aroundtheempire, Spotify, iTunes, iHeart, Google Podcasts

FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon.  

Recorded on July 21, 2021. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Human Crisis in Mozambique in the age of Cyber-Diplomacy, Jonathan Lancelot, Small Wars Journal
2. Russia Today, Cyberterrorists Tomorrow: U.S. Failure to Prepare Democracy for Cyberspace, Jonathan F. Lancelot, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law
3. Cyber-diplomacy: cyberwarfare and the rules of engagement, Jonathan F. Lancelot, Journal of Cyber Security Technology

 

This week, hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot dissect Yes’ 1977 masterpiece album Going For the One. They talk about the progressive rock band’s history, the rich music and interview lead singer Jon Anderson about the making of the record. They also review the latest album from rapper Tyler, the Creator.

 

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Featured Songs:

Yes, "Awaken," Going for the One, Atlantic, 1977

Yes, "Going For the One," Going for the One, Atlantic, 1977

The Beatles, "A Day In the Life," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967

Yes, "Close To The Edge," Close To The Edge, Atlantic, 1972

Yes, "Time and a Word," Time and a Word, Atlantic, 1970

Yes, "I've Seen All Good People  A. Your Move, B. All Good People," The Yes Album, Atlantic, 1971

Yes, "Roundabout," Fragile, Atlantic, 1971

Yes, "The Ancient," Tales from Topographic Oceans, Atlantic, 1973

Yes, "Turn of the Century," Going for the One, Atlantic, 1977

Yes, "Parallels," Going for the One, Atlantic, 1977

Yes, "Wonderous Stories," Going for the One, Atlantic, 1977

Tyler, the Creator, "WUSYANAME (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again & Ty Dolla $ign)," CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, Columbia, 2021

Tyler, the Creator, "SWEET / I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE (feat. Brent Faiyaz & Fana Hues)," CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, Columbia, 2021

Tyler, the Creator, "LUMBERJACK," CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, Columbia, 2021

Tyler, the Creator, "MANIFESTO (feat. Domo Genesis)," CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, Columbia, 2021

Richard Thompson, "Beeswing," Mirror Blue, Capitol, 1994

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

August 12, 2021 Mia Jankowicz, author of this article, on anti-vaxxers, notably Sherri Tenpenny • Sanford Jacoby, author of Labor in the Age of Finance, on unions’ weird alliance with Wall Street during the shareholder revolution

Doug speaks with Mia Jankowicz, reporter for Business Insider, about anti-vaxxers, notably Sherri Tenpenny. Plus: Sanford Jacoby, author of Labor in the Age of Finance, on unions’ weird alliance with Wall Street during the shareholder revolution.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html

 

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In state after state, GOP lawmakers are privatizing education and curbing democracy by changing the rules about how votes are cast and counted. Which raises an urgent question. Why are the same states that are rolling back democracy also intent on dismantling public education? We assembled an all-star cast to get some answers. Special guests: Derek Black, author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy; and Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. 

The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon or donate on PayPal.

Following her two critically-acclaimed stand up shows, Tessa brings her debut radio special to Radio 4 and combines her love of anthropology with her love of witchcraft. This year, all things occult are definitely on the rise. Tarot card sales are the highest they've been for 50 years, books on witchcraft have topped the best-seller list, and on TikTok the hashtag #WitchTok has 13.9 BILLION views. Through history, in times of political unrest we turn to the occult, and the last few years have been nothing but political unrest. Add into that a story about a ghost, a poltergeist, and an exploration of the human imagination. Plus a tarot card reading, finish on a coven initiation spell and you've got Resting Witch Face! The show was recorded in front of a live audience at the Pleasance in London. Written by Tessa Coates Starring Tessa Coates Additional Material: Amy Annette Executive Producer: Simon Nicholls Studio Engineer Jerry Peal Editor: Chris Maclean Production Manager: Georgina Brett Production Co-ordinator: Tamara Shilham Production Assistant: Emma Tremewan Production Runners: George Hehir & Tehillah Hinds Would not have been possible without Katie Churchill Recorded Live at Pleasance London A Tiger Aspect production for BBC Radio 4

Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, talks about the many ways in which the US economic system has become rigged to favor the richest.

In the latest episode in our series tackling history’s biggest topics, Dr Rory Naismith, author of Early Medieval Britain, c500–1000, responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries on Britain in the early Middle Ages. 

 

(Ad) Rory Naismith is the author of Early Medieval Britain c500-1000 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Britain-500-1000-Cambridge-History/dp/1108440258/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-hexpod

 

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76 years ago, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Historian Lesley M.M. Blume's book, 'Fallout,' tells the story of John Hersey, the young journalist whose on-the-ground reporting in Hiroshima exposed the world to the devastation of nuclear weapons. "Hersey had seen everything from that point, from combat to concentration camps," Blume says. "But he later said that nothing prepared him for what he saw in Hiroshima."

Also, we remember Ron Popeil, the inventor and TV pitchman whose products included the Veg-O-Matic, Mr. Microphone, and the smokeless ashtray.

The historian Antoni Kapcia joins Long Reads for a conversation about Cuban politics since the revolution of 1959. Antoni is the author of several books on Cuban history, including A Short History of Revolutionary Cuba and Leadership in the Cuban Revolution. Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn.

Read Antoni's article for Jacobin about the legacy of Raúl Castro here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/raul-castro-fidel-che-guevara-cuba-history

Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

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Lesley Blume is a journalist. She married a journalist. Her father wrote for Walter Cronkite. Her whole community is journalists.

So, in 2016, when Trump rose to power, her community was suddenly under attack.

“All of a sudden to see your entire community be under assault like that and be designated as enemies of the people was so shocking and demoralizing, and it felt like an all hands on deck moment.”

The best way to fight back, she decided, was to write a book that proved to America just how crucial reporters are in democracy, to “reinstate this idea that journalism at its best serves the common good.”

“And so,” she explains, “when I came across Hersey’s story, which had been shockingly untold, I knew that I had my story.”

John Hersey, a Pulitzer-prize-winning pioneer reporter who saw combat to cover World War II, wrote what some consider the most important work of journalism of the 20th century: Hiroshima.

In her book, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World, Blume uses painstaking research to document how the US government obfuscated its role in the deadliest attack in history and comes to the realization that dropping the bomb was not justified, despite what we’re taught in school.

Plus, future-ex-Governor Cuomo couldn’t take the heat from last week’s Useful Idiots review, how Trump’s big beautiful tax cut actually (surprise) helped the rich, and the world burns from climate change.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s (gloomy) episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

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“America finally had enough media awareness after being taught in high school to look for bias that they suddenly were able to see, with new eyes, just how slanted and silly and contradictory and boring [corporate media is.]”

Thus spoke Walter Kirn, writer for Time magazine and author of eight novels including Up in the Air (which was turned into a George Clooney movie), on this week’s Useful Idiots. And, like Matt and Katie, Kirn ditched the mainstream and made the move to Substack. where you can check him out.

Years ago, Walter tells us, he would complain that every Time article ended the same way: “Some experts believe this while others believe that, but one thing is for sure, the issue is not settled and only time will tell."

But now he yearns for the days of yore when the media would take the burden off of itself and leave readers with vague cliches. But at least the readers were left with a chance to think for themselves.

Today there is no two sides. There is no debate. They tell you what to think. And at that point, can it still really be called journalism?

The answer to that question is hard to say. Some experts believe it can, others believe it can’t, but one thing is for sure, it’s all a lot of bullshit.

Plus, after reading 165 pages of the attorney general’s report on Andrew Cuomo, Katie and Matt come to the (hot take) conclusion that the Governor is, indeed, a sexual harasser and dick. And we mourn the loss of Nina Turner’s congressional campaign. Oh yeah, and a bunch of penis stuff.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out now and stand by for the Substack-only portion where Kirn talks about the novel he’s working on, his parents’ divorce, and the fall of Stephen Colbert.

On Wednesday, a quiet but notable event occurred on Twitter. First, Robert Satloff, head of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, posted the below tweet approvingly referring to “Israel’s nuclear deterrent.” Then the tweet was liked by Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations.

It’s difficult to interpret this in any other way than Erdan confirming that Israel possesses nuclear weapons:

By blurring the distinction between #Israel’s nuclear deterrent and #Iran’s exterminationist nuclear project, I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether ?@PeterBeinart? prefers a nuclear-free #MiddleEast or an Israel-free MiddleEast. https://t.co/3iz05Px76V

— Robert Satloff (@robsatloff) August 11, 2021

The significance of Erdan’s show of approval is that while Israel first built nuclear weapons in the 1960s, the Israeli and U.S. governments both refuse to explicitly acknowledge this. There have long been secret, formal agreements between the two countries to maintain this pose, starting with one codified by President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969.

Then came the Gulf War in 1991. U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 famously required Iraq to surrender and eliminate all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. But it also mentioned “the objective of the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region of the Middle East” and the “importance” of achieving this objective “using all available means.” This made Israel nervous. President Bill Clinton would eventually send Israel a secret letter stating that any American attempts at arms control would not involve Israeli nuclear weapons. Similar letters were signed by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

The behavior of both countries would appear, on its face, silly and childish. After all, everyone on Earth who cares to know understands that Israel is a nuclear power. The denial of this leads to absurd behavior by U.S. officials, as documented by Sam Husseini of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy. A video compilation by Husseini features the 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards; the late Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.; George W. Bush’s Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and many, many others providing nonsensical answers to Husseini’s simple question “Does Israel have nuclear weapons?”

However, there are rational reasons for the behavior of both countries. Two 1970s amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act appear to bar U.S. aid to any country with nuclear weapons that is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — at least without a formal presidential waiver. Sen. Stuart Symington, D.-Mo., author of one of the amendments, said at the time that “if you wish to take the dangerous and costly steps necessary to achieve a nuclear weapons option, you cannot expect the United States to help underwrite that effort indirectly or directly.” Thus all U.S. military and economic assistance to Israel may be illegal.

It has also long been the belief of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that an open Israeli acknowledgement that it possesses nuclear weapons would incentivize other countries in the Middle East to develop such weapons themselves.

In any case, the New York Times op-ed by Peter Beinart, a columnist and journalism professor, makes the case that this continued denial of reality is untenable. In particular, he writes, “the American government’s deceptive silence prevents a more honest debate at home about the dangers an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose.” While U.S. officials are well aware of who in the region has nuclear weapons and who doesn’t, regular Americans are not. A recent poll found that just 52 percent of respondents correctly said that Israel has nukes, while 61 percent incorrectly said that Iran does.

It’s unclear whether Satloff’s criticism of Beinart is that no one should acknowledge reality or that Beinart does not believe that the U.S. should straightforwardly endorse different international rules for Israel and Iran. Satloff’s organization, the Washington Institute, was founded by a former employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and received funding from many of AIPAC’s top supporters.

Neither Erdan nor Satloff responded to a request for comment. Erban’s Twitter behavior was first cited by the writer Abe Silberstein.

The post Israeli Ambassador to U.S. Seemingly Acknowledges That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons appeared first on The Intercept.

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Scott Horton of Antiwar.com joins me to discuss Scott's new book "Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terror." We touch on many topics from the Carter administration forward, understanding that what transpired on September 11, 2001 was only the latest blowback from American foreign policy in the Middle East, how every president from Carter to Biden has shared in the irresponsibility of American "counter-terrorism" missions, and even how torture encouraged and in some cases helped create major al Qaeda leaders. Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He’s the author of the 2021 book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand:Time to End the War in Afghanistan and editor of the 2019 book The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019. He’s conducted more than 5,500 interviews since 2003. Main website: https://www.fortressonahill.com Let me guess.  You're enjoying the show so much, you'd like to leave us a review?!  https://lovethepodcast.com/fortressonahill Email us at fortressonahill@gmail.com Check out our t-shirt store on Spreadshirt.com: https://bit.ly/3qD63MW Not a contributor on Patreon? You're missing out on amazing bonus content! Sign up to be one of our patrons today! - https://www.patreon.com/fortressonahill A special thanks to our Patreon honorary producers - Will Ahrens, Fahim Shirazee, James O'Barr, Adam Bellows, Eric Phillips, Paul Appell, Julie Dupris, Thomas Benson,  Janet Hanson, Tristan Oliver, Daniel Fleming, Michael Caron, Zach H, Ren Jacob, Howard Reynolds, Why I am Antiwar Podcast, Korgoth, Alejandro, and the Statist Quo Podcast.  You all are the engine that helps us power the podcast.  Thank you so much!!! Not up for something recurring like Patreon, but want to give a couple bucks?!  Visit https://paypal.me/fortressonahill to contribute!! Fortress On A Hill is hosted, written, and produced by Chris 'Henri' Henrikson, Danny Sjursen, and Keagan Miller. https://bit.ly/3yeBaB9 Intro / outro music "Fortress on a hill" written and performed by Clifton Hicks.  Click here for Clifton's Patreon page: https://bit.ly/3h7Ni0Z Cover and website art designed by Brian K. Wyatt Jr. of B-EZ Graphix Multimedia Marketing Agency in Tallehassee, FL: https://bit.ly/2U8qMfn Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts alone, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

A quick scan of leading philosophy journals reveals that what passes for "philosophy" is selectively screened, with analytic philosophy clearly the dominant style. We look at the history of this phenomenon, some of the likely consequences, and how might it be addressed.

With an election looming in Canada, we decided to look back on a time when Justin Trudeau's father received his punishment at the hands of the Canadian media. The National Film Board of Canada documentary HISTORY ON THE RUN: THE MEDIA AND THE '79 ELECTION (1979) chronicles the unusual media landscape that led to a nine-month interruption in Pierre Trudeau's long tenure as Prime Minister. We discuss how media shapes and responds to election narratives, how things have changed since 1979, and the unusual Trudeau/Joe Clark/Ed Broadbent election. PLUS: rank punditry about Justin Trudeau's chances.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

• EmacsConf 2021 Call for Proposals (Reddit, HN)
• Upcoming events:
  • M-x Research (contact them for password): TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Aug 20 0700 Vancouver / 0900 Chicago / 1000 Toronto / 1400 GMT / 1600 Berlin / 1930 Kolkata / 2200 Singapore
• Emacs configuration:
  • List Unsaved Buffers Before Exiting Emacs (Reddit)
  • Emacs Redux: NonGNU ELPA Package Repository (Reddit)
• Emacs Lisp:
  • The Power of Convoluting (Lispy)
  • Emacs Horrors: How does Emacs determine if you are using a dark or a light background
• Emacs development:
  • Doc update wrt Tramp support of SSH security keys
  • Change how project-find-file's completion works
  • New option etags-xref-prefer-current-file
  • Add function minibuffer-restore-windows (bug#45072)
  • Add support for the oauth2.el library in nnimap and smtpmail
  • Add a new thing-at-point type: existing-filename
  • Add new user option 'read-minibuffer-restore-windows'
  • * lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-generic.el (cl-generic-generalizers): Don't emit warning
  • Evaluate eql specializers
  • Make `global-so-long-mode' use `buffer-line-statistics'
  • Support 'preserved' variables and minor modes in `so-long-mode'
  • Make `global-so-long-mode' handle unrecognised file types
  • Increase `so-long-threshold' and `so-long-max-lines' defaults
• Appearance:
  • prism.el: New feature: colorize parens distinctly (e.g. fade into background) (Reddit)
  • emacs-xhair: Highlight the current line and column
  • xemacs, desert and word-perfect themes for Emacs (11:21)
• Navigation:
  • Interacting with the Menu Bar (Reddit)
  • lusty-emacs: A fast file chooser and buffer switcher for Emacs. Files/buffers are filtered using the LiquidMetal fuzzy/flex matching algorithm (2020)
• Writing:
  • Screenwriting with Emacs Fountain Mode: Getting Started (17:26)
  • Marcin Borkowski: Reordering sentences in Emacs
• Org Mode:
  • This Month in Org: July 2021 Introducing citations (HN)
  • Org-mode - How to get started? (13:18)
  • Emacs Has a Built-in Pomodoro Timer?? #Shorts (00:59)
  • org-roam (Emacs Zettelkasten Package) Version 2 Released
  • System Crafters Live! - Can You Apply Zettelkasten in Emacs? (01:59:04)
  • icsorg Import an ICS file into org to include events in your org agenda
• Completion:
  • Manuel Uberti: Trust me, I complete
  • hotfuzz: Fuzzy matching for the Selectrum/Vertico/Icomplete/default completion ecosystem (Reddit)
• Coding:
  • zeal-at-point: Search the word at point with Zeal (Emacs)
  • Jonas Bernoulli: Magit available from NonGNU Elpa (Reddit)
  • Using Magit Built-in Functions for Workflow // Take on Rules (Reddit)
  • Emacs Script to Review Git Status of Repositories // Take on Rules (Reddit)
  • magit-async-section: Asynchronous session support for magit
• Mail and news:
  • Use BBDB to send a mail to a group
  • yuri tricys: How to Check for Internet and Load Hackernews With Emacs
• Calendar:
  • Navigating the Emacs calendar
  • Work out the number of days between two dates in Emacs (Reddit)
  • Show a Tamil Calender in Emacs
  • Blorg updates: tags & comments
• Fun:
  • Control music from Emacs (13:05)
  • Corwin Brust: Emacs Sandwiches (progress on dungeon-mode)
• Community:
  • Weekly Tips, Tricks, &c. Thread
  • What do you miss the most from your previous editor/IDE after you moved to Emacs?
  • 8 Reasons Why Emacs is the Best Text Editor for Programming (Irreal)
  • The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy (Reddit, HN)
  • Inspiring videos about Emacs
• Other:
  • Sunrise Commander, an orthodox file manager for Emacs
  • Why some key bindings do not work when using Emacs in a terminal (Reddit)
  • hangups.el: Use hangups_cli to chat on Google Hangouts
  • Introduction to keyboard macros in Emacs (Reddit)
  • Andrea: Moldable Emacs: evaluate arithmetic at point (Reddit)
  • Remote Emacs Setup
• New packages:
  • all-the-icons-completion: Add icons to completion candidates
  • epkg-marginalia: Show Epkg information in completion annotations
  • fanyi: English-Chinese translator
  • ftable: Fill a table to fit in n columns
  • hotfuzz: Fuzzy completion style
  • mu4e-column-faces: Faces for individual mu4e coluns
  • notink-theme: A custom theme inspired by e-ink displays
  • notmuch-addr: An alternative to notmuch-address.el
  • notmuch-transient: Command dispatchers for Notmuch
  • pkg-overview: Make org documentation from elisp source file
  • rutils: R utilities with transient
  • tubestatus: Get the London Tube service status
  • xhair: Highlight the current line and column

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, r/orgmode, r/spacemacs, r/planetemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacslife.com, YouTube, the Emacs NEWS file, Emacs Calendar and emacs-devel.

Leaked audio reveals how chemicals hazardous to human health and the environment are fast-tracked and approved at the Environmental Protection Agency. This week on Intercepted, investigative journalist Sharon Lerner reports on how the chemical industry pressures the EPA to approve chemicals and pesticides that are dangerous to public health. Lerner speaks with whistleblowers from the agency, scientists who say their research has been manipulated by EPA managers to downplay the dangers of chemicals, including extreme cases that fall under the category of "hair on fire." Lerner also discusses how the agency has approved chemicals and pesticides — at the behest of companies — without proper research into their toxicity, or worse, even though scientists point to the chemicals’ dangers. But this is not new; it follows the long, historical trajectory of the EPA, including the “revolving door” between the agency and the chemical industry.

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Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss how the US government laid the groundwork for unrest in Cuba, the Biden administration's escalation of the economic war, and how CIA cutouts like USAID and the NED have cultivated a counter-revolutionary cultural network of rappers, artists, and social media influencers to push propaganda.

We had planned on speaking with Havana-based journalist Cristina Escobar, but at the last minute when we started recording she unfortunately was unable to join us.

Read Max's report "Cuba's cultural counter-revolution: US gov't-backed rappers, artists gain fame as 'catalyst for current unrest'" here: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/07/25/cubas-cultural-counter-revolution-us-govt-rappers-artists-catalyst

VIDEO: youtube.com/watch?v=KLMuuGtaxes

Forty years ago, on August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers and barred them from ever working again for the federal government. By October of that year, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, the union that had called the strike, had been decertified and lay in ruins. The careers of most of the individual strikers were similarly dead: While Bill Clinton lifted Reagan’s ban on strikers in 1993, fewer than 10 percent were ever rehired by the Federal Aviation Administration.

PATCO was dominated by Vietnam War-era veterans who’d learned air traffic control in the military and were one of a vanishingly small number of unions to endorse Reagan in 1980, thereby scoring one of the greatest own goals in political history. It’s easy to imagine strikers expressing the same sentiments as a Trump voter who famously lamented, “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

The PATCO saga began in February 1981, when negotiations began between the union and the FAA on a new contract. PATCO proposed changes including a 32-hour workweek and a big increase in pay. The FAA came back with counterproposals the union deemed insufficient, and on August 3, with bargaining at an impasse, most of the air traffic controllers walked out.

It was unquestionably illegal for PATCO, as a union of government workers, to strike. However, which laws are enforced is always and everywhere a political decision: Wall Street firms broke countless laws in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, yet almost no executives suffered any consequences. Reagan & Co. wanted to send a message that mere workers could expect no such forbearance. Just two days after the strike began, the air traffic controllers were gone.

The significance of Reagan’s actions is rarely discussed today in the mainstream, and for understandable reasons: It was the first huge offensive in a war that corporate America has been waging on this country’s middle class ever since. As Warren Buffett — current estimated net worth $101 billion — has said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

The stunning victory of the wealthy over everyone else can been measured in several straightforward ways. During a speech last May at a community college in Cleveland, Joe Biden explained one of them:

From 1948 after the war to 1979, productivity in America grew by 100 percent. We made more things with productivity. You know what the workers’ pay grew? By 100 percent. Since 1979, all of that changed. Productivity has grown four times faster than pay has grown. The basic bargain in this country has been broken.

Productivity is a simple but extremely important economic concept. Over time, as technology advances and society learns how to use it, each worker can produce more. One person with a bulldozer can move a lot more dirt than one person with a shovel. One person with the latest version of Microsoft Excel can do a lot more math than one person with Napier’s bones.

The meaning of Biden’s statistics is that for decades after World War II, America got much richer overall, and average worker pay went up at the same rate. Then the link between productivity and pay was severed: The U.S. overall continued to get much richer, but most of the increased wealth went to the top, not to normal people. Corporate CEOs, partners at corporate law firms, orthopedic surgeons — they make three, five, 10 times what they did in 1981. Nurses, firefighters, janitors, almost anyone without a college degree — their pay has barely budged.

The situation is especially egregious at the bottom of the pay scale. Until 1968, Congress increased the federal minimum wage in line with productivity. That year, it reached its highest level: Adjusted for inflation, it was the equivalent of $12 per hour today. It has since fallen to $7.25. Yet the whole story is far worse. Even as low-wage workers have battled fruitlessly to get the federal minimum wage raised to $15, no one realizes that if it had continued increasing along with productivity since 1968, it would now be over $24 per hour. At that level, a couple working full-time minimum wage jobs would take home $96,000 a year. This seems incredible, yet there are no economic reasons it couldn’t happen; we have simply made a political decision that it should not.

Another way to understand this is to look at the other end of American society. In 1995, Bill Gates had a net worth of $10 billion, worth about $18 billion in today’s dollars. That was enough to make him the richest person in America. If that were all Gates had today, there would be 25 or so billionaires ahead of him in line. Jeff Bezos, currently in first place, possesses 10 times Gates’s 1995 net worth.

Then there’s the number of significant strikes in the U.S. each year. A confident, powerful labor movement will generate large numbers of strikes; one terrorized and cowed into submission will not. According to the Labor Department, there were generally 200-400 large-scale strikes each year from 1947 to 1979. There were 187 in 1980. Then after the PATCO firing, the numbers fell off a cliff. In 1988, the last full year of Reagan’s second term, there were just 40 strikes. By 2017, there were seven.

The direct causal relationship between the firing of the air traffic controllers and the crushing of labor is widely noted and celebrated on the right. In a 2003 speech at the Reagan Library in California, then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan spoke glowingly of the “flexibility” of U.S. labor markets, by which he meant “the freedom to fire.” Greenspan said that “perhaps the most important” contribution to these flexible markets “was the firing of the air traffic controllers in August 1981. … [Reagan’s] action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.”

Donald Devine, the head of Reagan’s Office of Personnel Management at the time, later wrote, “American business leaders were given a lesson in managerial leadership [by Reagan] that they could not and did not ignore. Many private sector executives have told me that they were able to cut the fat from their organizations and adopt more competitive work practices because of what the government did in those days.”

The question today is whether the U.S. will ever go back to being the middle-class society it once was. Many Americans have long believed and hoped that that was the norm, and we will naturally return to it without much effort on our part. But as the past 40 years have gone by, it appears more and more that Gilded Age brutality is the U.S. norm, and the years of an American middle class were a brief exception. That means recreating it will require the same titanic struggle needed to create it in the first place.

The post The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week appeared first on The Intercept.

Adolph Reed and Walter Benn Michaels join The Jacobin Show to discuss the limitations of focusing on racial disparities, why the notion that Black Lives Matter was co-opted is misleading, and how socialists today should approach history.

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Democracy Now! 2021-08-03 Tuesday

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