Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by investigative historian Gareth Porter:
“Robert S. McNamara and the Real Tonkin Gulf Deception: Pushing LBJ Into War”
It is interesting to consider Porter’s perspectives on this in light of the late sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the “bureaucratic field”. That is, Porter does not view the “state” as a monolithic entity, but a field established by and through its agents (and groups of agents) struggling amongst each other for authority.
Link to an essay by Frances Fox Piven excerpted from the book Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (2014):
“Extreme Poverty Has Been Used to Divide and Terrify Working People for Centuries”
Link to an article by Jack Rasmus. It’s hard to tell what this is in “reply” to, as neither Hartmann nor Wolff are mentioned following the title. Regardless, it’s an interesting, if brief, statement of his theory:
Link to an article on the substitution of prisons for social welfare programs in the USA by Loïc Wacquant, author of Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (2009), which came out around the same time as Michelle Alexander’s similar (but more well-known) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010).
“Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity”
Link to an article by William Blum that puts the recently reported influx of Latin American immigrants to the USA in context:
Interesting article from Don Fitz critiquing various aspects of so-called “green new deal” proposals:
Link to an article by Alfred McCoy:
“Surveillance and Scandal: Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power”
Link to an article from Alan Nasser on privatization from a decade ago that still seems to hold today:
“I Am the Real Nick Cave” by John Wray in NYT
Interview with Prof. William I. Robinson: