Link to an article by Wayne Au:
Links
Alan Nasser – Could Student Loans Lead to Debt Prison?
Link to an article by Alan Nasser:
“Could Student Loans Lead to Debt Prison? The Handwriting on the Wall”
Bonus link: “Student Loans, The Indentured Servitude of the 21st Century”
Michael Hudson – Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest
Link to an article by Michael Hudson:
“Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest”
This information is of tremendous importance.
Bonus link: Debt: The First 5000 Years
Eric London – What Determines Social Mobility in America?
Links to articles by Eric London:
“The New York Times on Race and Class: What Determines Social Mobility in America?” and Part 2
Bonus links: “Why Liberals Separate Race from Class” and “Beyond the Class Ceiling: Education and Upward Social Mobility” and “America’s Political Economy: Lost Generations — Cumulative Impact of Mass Incarceration” and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017” and Liberalism: A Counter-History and “How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth” and “Between Obama and Coates” and “How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence” and Review of Class, Race and Marxism and Walter Benn Michaels on Left Neoliberalism and The Condemnation of Little B and “The Controversy Surrounding the Roseanne Television Series” and “Social Class in the 21st Century“
Bonus quote:
“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”
Frances Stonor Saunders – Modern Art Was CIA “Weapon”
Link to an article by Frances Stonor Saunders:
Bonus Links: “How the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism During the Cold War” and Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War and The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters and Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America and Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War and Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War and Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy and Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy and Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era and Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War
Some of the books above applaud the anti-communist propaganda that the CIA, State Department, and other U.S. institutions were pushing/funding, while others are more critical.
What is sort of most bizarre about all this is that the Soviets took the bait! That is, many people in the Soviet Union did believe they were falling behind the U.S. and western nations and their abstract art (etc.), as described in Moshe Lewin‘s The Soviet Century.
Joel Lexchin – The Pharmaceutical Industry in Contemporary Capitalism
Link to an article by Joel Lexchin:
Mark Hertsgaard & Mark Dowie – How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe
Link to an article by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie:
“How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation”
Other examples of similar industry behavior include concussions in football, leaded gasoline, certain pharmaceuticals, etc.
Russell Mokhiber – Patricia Harned on Ethics Compliance and Corporate Conflicts
Link to an article by Russell Mokhiber:
“Patricia Harned on Ethics Compliance and Corporate Conflicts”
This is all about taming capitalism and putting a happier face on it, in order to try to stave off attempts to end capitalism.
Felipe Demier – The Senses of a Prison
Link to a machine translation of an article by Felipe Demier:
“The Senses of a Prison: Lula, Democracy and the People in the Dining Room”
Julian Vigo – The Spawn: Feminism’s Misandry Problem
Link to an article by Julian Vigo:
“The Spawn: Feminism’s Misandry Problem”
Bonus Quotes:
“one should . . . admit how problematic it is to anchor one’s political demands to status of victimhood. Is the basic characteristic of today’s subjectivity not the weird combination of the free subject who believes themselves ultimately responsible for their own fate and the subject who bases their argument on their status as a victim of circumstances beyond their own control? Every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat – if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he already hurts me; this logic of victimization is today universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of sexual or racist harassment.”
Slavoj Žižek, “Sex and ’68: Liberal Movement Revolutionized ‘Sexuality’ But at What Cost?”
“They play the Beautiful Soul, which feels superior to the corrupted world while secretly participating in it: they need this corrupted world as the only terrain where they can exert their moral superiority.”
Slavoj Žižek, Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors: Against the Double Blackmail (2016)
“PC anti-racism is sustained by the surplus-enjoyment which emerges when the PC-subject triumphantly reveals the hidden racist bias on an apparently neutral statement or gesture”
Slavoj Žižek, “The Need to Traverse the Fantasy”
“In short, the extreme horror of Auschwitz did not make it into a place which intrinsically purifies every single one of its surviving victims into ethically sensitive subjects who got rid of all petty egotistic interests.”
Slavoj Žižek, “We Need to Examine the Reasons Why We Equate Criticism of Israel with Antisemitism”
My only disagreement with Vigo’s article is her characterization of “motherhood privilege” (more broadly, “parenthood privilege”) as “delusional nonsense”. Laws and corporate policies do sometimes grant benefits to parents that are not given to the childless — isn’t that a parenthood privilege?