White Like Me

In White Like Me, one of my favorite public intellectuals, Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. Quite an eye-opener that should be seen by everyone.

Let's stare the Devil in the face - the Devil being White Supremacy - & dismantle it!!

The Revolution Isn’t Being Televised by Alan MacLeod

Source: Nation of Change

It’s all kicking off everywhere in 2019. Haitians are revolting against a corrupt political system and their President Jovenel Moïse, who many see as a kleptocratic US puppet. In Ecuador, huge public manifestations managed to force President Lenín Moreno to backtrack on his IMF-backed neoliberal package that would have sharply cut government spending and increased transport prices (FAIR.org, 10/23/19).

Meanwhile, popular Chilean frustration at the conservative Piñera administration boiled over into massive protests that were immediately met with force. “We are at war,” announced President Sebastián Piñera, echoing the infamous catchphrase of former fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. Piñera claimed that those responsible for violently resisting him were “going to pay for their deeds” as he ordered tanks through Santiago. (See FAIR.org, 10/23/19.)

Huge, ongoing anti-government demonstrations are also engulfing Lebanon, Catalonia and the United Kingdom.

Banks and the Real Estate Business Have Undermined Black Homeowners

Recent U.S. census data reveals the home ownership rate for African Americans has fallen to its lowest level since before the civil rights movement. In the second quarter of this year, the rate fell to just 40% — the lowest level since 1950. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s new book, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Home Ownership,” examines the roots of this crisis. The book has just come out and has been longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award.

Joe Rogan Talks to Edward Snowden

Musings

Tine To Point Fingers

Starting Your Day on the Internet Is Damaging Your Brain by Srinivas Rao

I’ve said before the first 3 hours of your day can dictate how your life turns out. And this often begins with the very first thing that you decide to put in your brain. You can either start you day with junk food for the brain (the internet, distracting apps, etc) or you can start the day with healthy food for the brain (reading, meditation, journaling, exercising, etc). When you start the day with junk food for the brain, you put yourself at a self imposed handicap that inhibits your ability to get into flow and prevents you from doing deep work. When you start the day with health food for your brain, the exact opposite happens.

The Unraveling Quickens by Charles Hugh Smith

"The central thesis of my new book "Will You Be Richer or Poorer?" is the financial "wealth" we've supposedly gained (or at least a few of us have gained) in the past 20 years has masked the unraveling of our intangible capital: the resilience of our economy, our social capital, i.e. our ability to find common ground and solve real-world problems, our sense that the playing field, while not entirely level, is not two-tiered, and our sense of economic security--have all been shredded.

The unraveling of everything that actually matters is quickening. While every "news" outlet cheerleads the stock market ("The Dow soared today as investor optimism rose... blah blah blah"), our "leadership" and our media don't even attempt to measure what's unraveling, much less address the underlying causes. The hope is that if we ignore what's unraveling, it will magically go away. But that's not how reality works.

Poet's Nook: "My Soul Has a Hat" by Mário de Andrade

/
 



" I counted my years and discovered that I have
less time to live going forward than I have lived until now.

The Age of Radical Evil by Chris Hedges

 Source: Truthdig

Immanuel Kant coined the term “radical evil.” It was the privileging of one’s own interest over that of others, effectively reducing those around you to objects to be manipulated and used for your own ends. But Hannah Arendt, who also used the term “radical evil,” saw that it was worse than merely treating others as objects. Radical evil, she wrote, rendered vast numbers of people superfluous. They possessed no value at all. They were, once they could not be utilized by the powerful, discarded as human refuse.

The Unforeseen: Neoliberal Ideology & Paving The Road Towards Fascism

How has neoliberalism paved the way for the rise of far right ideologies and populists around the world? As demonstrated in the elections of, and policies enacted by, such leaders as Donald Trump in the United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, a “neoliberal fascism” is emerging globally. As Henry Giroux elaborates in his book ‘The Terror of the Unforeseen,’ “neoliberalism creates an all-encompassing market guided by the principles of privatization, deregulation, commodification, and the free flow of capital. Advancing these agendas, it weakens unions, radically downsizes the welfare state, and wages an assault on public services such as education, libraries, parks, energy, water, prisons, and public transportation.

As the state is hollowed out, big corporations take on the functions of government, imposing severe austerity measures, redistributing wealth upward to the rich and powerful, and reinforcing a notion of society as one of winners and losers.” (bit.ly/2LSXjzn) To further this point more succinctly, Henry states “neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality.” (bit.ly/2Om8oL8) As societies become subsumed politically, economically, and culturally by the logic of a neoliberal ideology, the outcome is widespread social fragmentation and disintegration. This in turn has manifested into a groundswell of authoritarian and fascist politics in nations that have been traditionally defined as “open and free democratic societies.”

 As Henry challenges us in this interview, unless we critically address neoliberal capitalism and the impact this ideology has played in lives of countless human beings across the world, we cannot even begin to adequately understand and effectively resist this trend of rising of far right populist movements globally.

Americans Need to Decolonize Their Holidays Yesterday by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

>



Indigenous Peoples Day is increasingly being celebrated across the U.S. in place of Christopher Columbus Day, as the myth of Columbus as beneficent discoverer is debunked and as the critical role of indigenous people in protecting the planet becomes more recognized. Indigenous defenders of Mother Earth are often at the front lines of environmental destruction, confronting militarized state and corporate power against enormous odds, with courage and determination. Columbus arrived in the Bahamas 527 years ago, unleashing a brutal genocide that killed tens of millions of native people across the hemisphere. Now, as the sixth great extinction accelerates and the planet catastrophically heats up, it may well be indigenous peoples who save us all.

The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior by Maria Popova

SOURCE: Brain Pickings

Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) endures as one of humanity’s most lucid and luminous minds — an oracle of timeless wisdom on everything from what “the good life” really means to why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness to love, sex, and our moral superstitions. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” On December 11 of that year, 78-year-old Russell took the podium in Stockholm to receive the grand accolade.

Later included in Nobel Writers on Writing (public library) — which also gave us Pearl S. Buck, the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, on art, writing, and the nature of creativity — his acceptance speech is one of the finest packets of human thought ever delivered from a stage.

21st-Century Propaganda: A Guide to Interpreting and Confronting the Dark Arts of Persuasion by Gideon Lichfield

SOURCE: QUARTZ

“There are two kinds of propaganda,” wrote Aldous Huxley in 1958 in Brave New World Revisited, a retrospective on his famous novel:

rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed…

(in other words, arguments couched in facts and logic)

…and non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody’s enlightened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion.

Is This the End of the Republican Party?

                                     
                                             LISTEN: The End of the Republican Party

Renowned pollster and political consultant Stanley Greenberg, the man who helped get Bill Clinton elected in 1992, predicts the end of the Republican Party as we know it. Further, he argues that the US is about to enter a progressive era where the pent-up demand for government action will be reflected in deep civic engagement that will continue well after the 2020 election.

Working with focus groups and demographic and polling data, Greenberg sees a fundamental shift in public consciousness. 

He argues that, while the Democrats can still screw it up, 2020 could be a once-in-a-lifetime realignment in which the Republican battle against demographic change, inevitable multiracialism, and social modernity is finally lost for good. 

Greenberg’s most recent book is R.I.P. G.O.P: How the New America is Dooming the Republicans. 

Musings

 (Why? If it makes a difference to even one life... only one, it was all worth it...)