Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:
“A Note on Syriza: Indebted Yes, but Not Guilty!”
Bonus links: “The Greek Debt Interim Agreement: Necessary Step or Sell-Out?,” “Greece: Austerity for the Bankers,” “The Democratic Right to Cry ‘Enough’” and “Reading the Greek Deal Correctly” and “Greece: a Chronology From January 25, 2015 to 2019”
Link to an article by Alfred McCoy:
Bonus link: William Blum, “The Greek Tragedy: Some Things Not to Forget, Which the New Greek Leaders Have Not”
Link to a report by Matthew Duss, Yasmine Taeb, Ken Gude, and Ken Sofer of the Center for American Progress:
“Fear, Inc. 2.0: The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America”
Link to an article by W.T. Whitney, Jr.:
“Child Health Care and the Class Divide: The Case of Florida”
Bonus link: “Ukrainian Healthcare and the Inept Reforms of New Ukrainian Westernizers”
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek on the Charlie Hebdo incident:
Bonus links: “Laughter in the Dark” (“And here we confront Charlie Hebdo’s greatest failing, not that its cartoonists mocked the Prophet or skewered the Mullahs, but that the magazine became a tool of the ruling order, aiming its most savage work at the most vulnerable citizens of France: the weak, the marginalized and the dispossessed. In the end, Charlie Hebdo, like much of the French intelligentsia, became an agent of orthodoxy, a persecutor of the poor and the powerless, deaf to their desperation.”) and “The Red Flag and the Tricolore”
Link to an article by Rob Urie:
“Wall Street and the Crisis in Greece: When Only Bad Choices Remain”
Bonus link: “Putin: U.S. Hegemony at Root of Ukraine Crisis”
Link to an article by Johann Hari:
“The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think”
Link to an article by Eva Golinger:
“Venezuela: Coup in Real Time”
Bonus links: “John Pilger Interviewed by Michael Albert”
Isaac William Martin – Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (Oxford University Press 2013)
A sociological history of the co-option of progressive protest tactics (originally developed to advance the interests of the poor) in support of tax policies that favor the rich. The title references the classic by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (1977). The premise sounds almost ridiculous, but Isaac Martin makes an interesting case. His account seems fairly balanced, and for the most part seems reliably complete. If there is a weak spot, it falls on the more recent efforts. Martin doesn’t seem to provide enough context for why politicians suddenly capitulated to the same sorts of demands that had been made for decades, and he doesn’t necessarily treat all political parties equally. It is a small quibble in an otherwise interesting and well-researched book. This is a more thoroughly-researched and neutral academic treatment of a topic that has been addressed in other books like Thomas Frank‘s Pity the Billionaire (2012) and Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio‘s Crashing the Tea Party (2011).
Link to a translation of an article by Andrey Manchuk: