Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
John Bellamy Foster:
It is possible to disagree with his formulation of “neoliberalism” (drawn from the unreliable Michel Foucault) and still gain insights for this analysis, including the historical overview. Though a bit more Gramsci would boost this analysis, plus maybe a dose of Bourdieu.
Link to an article by Iishana Artra:
Bonus links: “Controlling 5G: A Course in Obstacles” and “Group Calls on Citizens to Blow the Whistle on Motorola Cell Phone Safety Studies” and “How Big Wireless Lobbied Governments to Build 5G For Citizen Data Collection and Surveillance”
Link to an article by Kent Allen Halliburton:
Link to an article by Geoffrey Dutton:
“Talking Trash: Recycling Inches Up, But Problems Remain”
Curiously absent from this otherwise excellent discussion of the present-day facts about recycling practices in the USA is why municipalities are expected to submit to a “market” rather than intervening directly in it or circumventing/modifying it (as governments often do). Why shouldn’t municipalities create their own recycling entities and manufacturing facilities to bypass markets, or engage in more far-reaching bans (like banning all materials that are not provably and practically recyclable)? The article simply tacitly accepts that municipal governments should look to private businesses and markets in significant ways, or simply treat private profitability as the uncrossable horizon of municipal politics, as if this is self-evident, which is precisely the goal of all political propaganda—“to annihilate an unnoticed possibility of the situation“.
Bonus links: “Recycling Crisis is Capitalist Business as Usual” and “It’s Time to Break Up Capitalism’s Love Affair With Plastic” and “Humanity Is Drowning in Plastic”
Link to an article by Kristina Betinis:
“Chicago Symphony Musicians Strike Defies Aristocratic Principle”
Selected Quote:
“A right-wing pressure campaign has been launched to press the musicians into accepting what is declared by the ruling elite to be an incontrovertible social fact: that no worker should receive a decent pension. This idea is advanced as though it were self-evident.”
Bonus links: “How the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Won Higher Wages By Playing For Free” and “Ballet Against Austerity”
Link to a review of High Flying Bird by Derek Nystrom:
Link to an article by Victor Pickard:
Link to an interview with Robert Pfaller:
“The Ideology of Postmodernism is to Present All Existing Injustice as an Effect of Discrimination”
In this brief interview Pfaller does understate the problem of discrimination, in that even in a situation of complete economic equality, there can be inequalities in terms of access, prestige, or other forms of capital — Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed even has a plot point to this effect where a stupid physicist tries to distort and suppress the work of another in order to maintain and enhance his own prestige and power (even though the two are economically equal). Still, Pfaller’s analysis is remarkably astute for being so direct and easy to understand!
Bonus links: The Trouble with Diversity and “The Politics of Identity” and “Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not”
Link to an article by Jonathan Latham:
“Unsafe at any Dose? Diagnosing Chemical Safety Failures, from DDT to BPA”
Bonus link: “They Aren’t All Safe”
Link to an article by Lance Olsen:
“Why All the Uproar Over the Green New Deal?”
Bonus links: “Will A Green New Deal Save the Climate, or Save Capitalism?” and “A Class Struggle Strategy for A Green New Deal” and “The Green New Deal, Capitalism and the State” and “A Green New Deal for Agriculture” and “This Historical Moment Demands Transformation of Our Institutions. The Green New Deal Won’t Do That.” (the Stan Cox quote is willfully obtuse — R. Buckminster Fuller? — but otherwise the article is good) and “How Green is the ‘Green New Deal’?” and “Modern Money Green Economics for a New Era” and “Communism, Fascism and Green Shaming” and “Politics, Democracy and Environmental Rebellion” (“Calls for a stripped down Green New Deal, one that forgoes a robust Job Guarantee, is a ploy to engineer a capital strike where millions of workers will be tossed out of their jobs to ‘prove’ that the economy requires environmental destruction and militarism.”) and “Planning the Green Tech Revolution” and “The Realism and Unrealism of the Green New Deals” and “Bernie’s Green New Deal Is for the Working Class” and The State and Revolution