Episode 958
Via la Commune
Jun 24
Jun 24
The first step is to become more independent for our means of reproduction - food, houses, health, education, care, ecology - these should be our primary struggles. Because it is by holding a monopoly on the means of reproduction by capital, that they can blackmail us. Our struggle, as many feminists and eco-feminists have been telling us for years, should be to fight for autonomy and independence of our way to reproduce.
Political economist Massimo de Angelis looks beyond the escalating human and environmental disasters of capitalism, and towards a social transformation in which we pry the means of production from capital's grasp, and reclaim our labor in service of the needs of all humanity and the earth itself - while we still have time.
Massimo is author of Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism from Zed Books.
Jun 23
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Political economist Massimo de Angelis maps out the common course for a post-capitalist society.
Massimo is author of Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism from Zed Books.
10:00 - McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner explores the nightmare architecture of the upwardly mobile.
Kate is the mastermind behind the indispensable website McMansion Hell.
10:35 - Black Lives Matter Chicago's Aislinn Pulley and Kofi Ademola discuss fighting the CPD in court.
Black Lives Matter Chicago is part of a class action lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the CPD over police violence.
11:05 - Law professor James Forman examines Black involvement throughout the mass incarceration machine.
James is author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
12:05 - Live from Paris, Jacob Hamburger surveys the French political landscape, post-Macron victory.
Jacob writes about American politics for Charlie Hebdo.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen laments the end of an ancient Chinese tradition.
Jun 23
Posted by Alexander Jerri
If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say, Don't Expect Me To Say It For You
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
A lot people I know have been looking at me the last couple days as if to say, "You lucky so-and-so. We've got all these hot takes and jokes in our heads about shooting Republicans, but you actually have a public forum where you can speak yours out loud. We have to keep ours bottled up like an explosive turd pounding insistently at our sphincter. Oh what sweet relief you must feel to let it all out. You must be the only healthy person in the USA right now."
But, look, I do have a sense of the boundaries of good taste. I don't respect them, but I know where they are. I don't respect them because, deep down, I don't understand their purpose. But I know where they are.
And I would never advocate violence. When I say, "Looks like it might be time to roll out the tumbrels and guillotine," I always make sure to put in that conditional "might." Because I'm never sure about the use of violence, unless you're protecting yourself or your family. And yes, one could say violence against the GOP-majority congress is justifiable as a defense of one's family, particularly if one's family likes to drink water or breathe air or eat food or receive medical care, or if perhaps one's family member is a refugee, maybe a Christian refugee at risk of getting sent back to, say, Iraq. One could say violence in that case was defense of one's family, but not me. I could only say that it might be.
I could say, thank goodness the only one killed in the attack on the GOP baseball practice was the shooter. Everyone else escaped with injuries. I understand that, right now, Scalise is in critical condition with internal bleeding and injuries to several organs, but otherwise, no harm, no foul. The shooter made his point and suffered the fatal consequences. And, come on, they're just bullets. Fifty-cent's taken nine of them, and he went on to become a very successful businessman, so lift yourselves up by your bootstraps, whiners!
I could say that, but I won't, because it's insensitive. Like I won't say, "It's too bad Scalise wasn't swinging an automatic rifle in the on-deck circle instead of a bat, because then maybe this wouldn't have happened." You know, the way NRA-supporting Republicans always suggest teachers carry firearms after a psychopath massacres a roomful of schoolchildren. I mean,... read more
Episode 957
Urbicide
Jun 18
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
In 1843 – (174 years ago) — a land dispute led to a violent clash between British settlers and indigenous Maori people on the South Island of New Zealand. Officials of the British New Zealand Company, claiming to have made a land purchase deal with the Maori, had sent surveyors into the Wairau Valley to mark out parcels. But the Maori, angry at not having been paid for the land, had chased the surveyors away and destroyed their equipment. When a party of armed British men returned to the valley, they were met by some ninety Maori warriors accompanied by women and children. Twenty-two British were killed, along with four Maori, including the wives of two chiefs. White settlers elsewhere in New Zealand were outraged. But an inquiry led by governor Robert FitzRoy later ruled that the settlers had been at fault for trying to settle on land they had no legal right to possess.
In 1953 – (64 years ago) — Soviet tanks rolled into East Berlin to crush a day-old uprising and general strike against the Soviet-backed East German goverment, which had raised work quotas and threatened wage cuts. Sensing the government’s insecurity in the wake of Joseph Stalin’s recent death, workers had taken to the streets, calling for democracy and German reunification, and bringing the country to a standstill. The Soviet Union responded by sending in sixteen army divisions to assist eight thousand East German military police in quashing the revolt. Hundreds of East Germans either died in the ensuing violence or were executed afterward. Several thousand more were injured or arrested, and a dozen or more Soviet soldiers were executed for refusing to shoot protesters. The violence across East Germany continued for more than a week — a dark precursor to the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968.
In 1987 – (30 years ago) — an elderly sparrow was found dead in his food dish, inside a protected enclosure at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. He was the last dusky seaside sparrow, and the last survivor of a failed attempt at breeding enough of the sparrows to repopulate their original habitat along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, in the swamps around Merritt Island just south of Cape Canaveral, and along the upper St. John’s River. In the early 1960s, when Merritt Island was chosen as... read more
Jun 16
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Historian Nancy MacLean profiles the libertarian architect of the right's revolutionary plan for America.
Nancy is author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America from Viking Press.
10:00 - Live from Athens, anarchist Tasos Sagris discusses working within the gaps of austerity-era Greece.
Tasos is a member of the anarchist collective Void Network.
10:35 - Anthropologist Nazia Kazi examines class and complicity in an age of anti-Muslim surveillance.
Nazia wrote the article Against a Muslim Misleadership Class for Jacobin.
11:05 - Writer Peter Moskowitz explores the legal and corporate mechanisms of gentrification in America.
Peter is author of the new book How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood from PublicAffairs.
12:05 - Sociologist Joshua Murray explains how capital manufactured Detroit's long decline.
Josh is co-author of the paper "Collateral Damage: How Capital’s War on Labor Killed Detroit" for the journal Catalyst.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen goes in half-cocked on American gun culture.
You can't go full-cocked on the radio in our timeslot. Sorry.
Episode 956
Misanthropology
Jun 12
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Our Story, So Far
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
The reason I can't have nice things is that I will waste all my time watching TV on one of those nice things. This was proven to me once again while I was house/cat-sitting for some friends. Through exertion of will-power, expected neither by me nor anyone else, I actually did accomplish a great many things besides consuming motion picture entertainment. I did it by mostly watching particular movies one at a time, movies that I had a reason to watch, more specific than merely to have colors and sounds dancing for me in the room. I was selective, for the most part. And I avoided binging any series. I almost binged one, but an accident of fate spared me.
Trying to find something worth watching, I remembered someone mentioning they enjoyed an aspect of "Big Little Lies," the HBO limited series about a half-dozen women living in luxury but having all kinds of problems. And there was a murder, but the police couldn't seem to get to the bottom of it. It was a seven-episode series. I watched what I thought were the first three episodes and found it well-acted and somewhat intriguing. These women, though they were living in Malibu or Santa Monica or Santa Barbara or the Palisades, had problems just like the rest of us, serious and sad problems, problems that drove wedges between them or created bonds of confidence. Friendships, even.
The third episode was a relief because we found out which little boy had been assaulting Laura Dern's little girl, and it thankfully it wasn't the little boy we liked, whose mother was really too poor to live in the school district but wanted her kid to have the same chance as these over-privileged but really beautiful and winning Stepford children. Also, the sick wife-beating thread came to a head. The wife left her spouse, a separation it seemed was going to be a difficult thing to accomplish, and I was looking forward to all the tactics she would have to employ to keep her needy, violent husband at bay.
At least, until very near the ending. Then I realized I had watched the seventh episode instead of the third. But to be honest, it hardly mattered, except that it saved me four hours. Of what? Character and plot development? Those actresses were so good, I didn't really need anymore character work, and whatever fleshing-out the plot could've received was clearly unnecessary. The writers could... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Live from London, Richard Seymour examines Corbyn's rise and a new path for the British left.
Richard wrote the op-ed Corbyn: shifting the possible for the Times Literary Supplement and the essay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Centre for Salvage.
10:05 - Writer Andrea Flynn explains why a class-only politics fails to deliver justice for women of color.
Andrea wrote the report Justice Doesn’t Trickle Down: How Racialized and Gender Rules are Holding Women Back for the Roosevelt Institute.
10:35 - Jacobin's Nicole Aschoff charts the downward prospects of Whole Foods-style conscious capitalism.
Nicole wrote the Guardian op-ed Whole Foods represents the failures of 'conscious capitalism.'
11:10 - Writer Angela Nagle surveys the dark politics of mass hatred, from Malthus to Pepe.
Angela wrote the Baffler article Enemies of the People and is the author of the soon to be released Kill All Normies, which we'll talk about with her in a few weeks.
12:05 - Journalists Maureen Mitra and Candice Bernd explore the toxic (literally) state of mass incarceration.
Maureen and Candice are co-authors of the Truthout / Earth Island Journal report America's Toxic Prisons: The Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen ponders our destiny, such as it is. Or might be.
Jeff wasn't super clear about this one.
