Author: Syd Fablo

Ginger Jentzen – Minneapolis’ Housing Plan Rewards Developers, Punishes Working People

Link to an article by Ginger Jentzen:

“Minneapolis’ Housing Plan Rewards Developers, Punishes Working People”

 

Bonus links: “When Capitalists Build Too Much” and “Residents an Afterthought in Public Housing Privatization Coverage” and “‘Poor Door’ Tenants of Luxury Tower Reveal the Financial Apartheid Within” and “The Corporate Steamroller of Gentrification is a Deliberate Process” and “Turning Libraries Into Condos” and “Capitalism Can’t Give Us Affordable Housing” and “Euphemisms All the Way Down” and “Why Rent Control? An Interview with Kshama Sawant” (and “Amazon Is on the Attack Against Kshama Sawant”) and “MPHA Enlists Rep. Ilhan Omar for Its Privatization Campaign” and “What a Bernie Sanders Agenda on Affordable Housing Should Look Like” and “Universal Rent Control Now” and “We Can Have Beautiful Public Housing” and “A Communist Designed Your Kitchen” and “Marxism, Space and a Few Urban Questions: A Rough Guide to the English Language Literature” and “Why Rent Control Works” and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth and “The New Deal State and Segregation” and “When Capital Threatens to Strike in Your City”

Bonus quote:

“This is the real estate state: a government . . .  fine-tuned to ensure that government actions are calibrated toward rising profits for developers, landlords, speculators, and flippers. Like other state assemblages (the welfare state, the carceral state, the warfare state, etc.) the real estate state is never totalizing, but its influence is particularly strong at the local level, where most US land use decisions take place.

Whatever problems planners attack, the solutions they propose are likely to include luxury development as a key component — even when that problem is a lack of affordable housing. Planners in the real estate state are tasked with stoking property values: either because they are low and investors want them higher, or because they are already high and . . . their deflation could bring down an entire budgetary house of cards. Working to curb speculation and develop public and decommodified housing seem like absurd propositions to a planning regime whose first assumption is that future public gains come first through real estate growth.

In this system, gentrification is a feature not a bug.”

“Gentrification Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Capitalist Urban Planning” (for what it’s worth, this article makes a very confused reference to real estate developers et al. as “capitalists”) see also The Social Structures of the Economy

Daniel Zamora – Should We Care About Inequality?

Link to an article by Daniel Zamora:

“Should We Care About Inequality?”

 

This is really an article about historical battles for ideological hegemony.

Bonus links: Slavoj Žižek On Political Struggle and Trouble in Paradise and Making Money and The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives and The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation

Max Blumenthal & Jeb Sprague – Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider

Link to an article by Max Blumenthal & Jeb Sprague:

“Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media ‘Just the Beginning,’ Says Top Neocon Insider”

 

Bonus links: “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies” and “Russiagate and the Men with Glass Eyes” and “Untying PropOrNot: Who They Are” and “Clinging to Collusion” and “Three Variations on Trump Quote”

Brian Platt – Cops Are at War Out There

Link to an article by Brian Platt:

“Cops Are at War Out There”

 

Bonus links: Slavoj Žižek On Political Struggle and “Police and the Liberal Fantasy” and “Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People” and Alain Badiou Quote and “Is there really a ‘war on cops’? The data show that 2015 will likely be one of the safest years in history for police” and “What’s Wrong with Police in America” and “Terrorism and the Militarization of the NYPD” and “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Fire All the Cops” and “Why Are the Police Caught Flat-Footed by Right-Wing Extremism? Because They Are Right-Wing Extremists.” and “Kim Foxx Is Under Attack Because She’s Trying to Transform Chicago’s Criminal Justice System” and “Police Departments Spend Vast Sums of Money Creating ‘Copaganda'”

John Steppling – Before the Law

Link to an article by John Steppling:

“Before the Law”

 

While fairly detailed in its analysis and proffered support, the asserted parallels with fascist regimes of the past aren’t fully convincing.  Does the current moment not have neo-feudalist (or neo-Bonapartist) aspects?  Doesn’t the present moment have some unique features without complete historical precedent?

Bonus link: The Courts Are Political

Landon Frim & Harrison Fluss – Steven Pinker: False Friend of the Enlightenment

Link to a review by Landon Frim & Harrison Fluss of Steven Pinker‘s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018):

“Steven Pinker: False Friend of the Enlightenment”

 

This is a great tear-down of Pinker’s thinking, which is problematic because of how basically insipid it is as mere status quo boosterism.

Bonus links: Review of The Great Leveler and Review of Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History and Slavoj Žižek On Political Struggle and Review of Making Money

Bonus quote:

“in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already — whether we know it or not — made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.”

Rex Butler, “What Is a Master-Signifier”