Episode 1156
The Cuban revolution endures.
Apr 6 2020
[Cop City] was built on this forest land, critical green space in the middle of a majority black working class neighborhood. It's referred to as the lungs of Atlanta. It's part of this broader stretch of forest land in Atlanta that the city itself committed to preserving…Over the course of the movement as the environmentalists who came to it initially from the angle of, “I don't really care where if you build this thing somewhere else, just don't build it on the forest.” A lot of them came to see that if you try to protect a forest, the police, the storm troopers show up to bulldoze you and to bulldoze the forest. I think a lot of people who actually originally really only saw the environmental side of things have come to also have a broader critique of policing because they've seen how the police have been deployed to crush this movement.
Micah Herskind returns to This Is Hell! to discuss his contribution to the new edited volume, No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement from Haymarket Books. After the interview, Jeff Dorchen delivers a live, in-studio "Moment of Truth."
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Mar 20 2020
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth, the thirst that is the drink.
Dateline: Los Angeles, Friday the Thirteenth, March 2020. Corona virus empties all the stores of their toilet paper. The beginning of the end. But let’s not dwell on that, shall we not? Shall we? Shan’t we? Let’s shan’t, shan’t we?
I’m taking the cutest little pills for high blood pressure. They’re called “Chlorthalidone.” They’re about as big as those little... I don’t know if you remember these, I know not a lot of you aren’t old enough ...little saccharine tablets. My Grandma had a tiny serving vessel, with a tiny spoon. I think it was silver, or at least silver-plated. It was the shape of a cake pedestal with a lid, hinged at the back. It was about the diameter of a Kennedy half-dollar, and at most two-inches high with the lid closed. Oh, it had a tiny tongs, too.
And they work, these little chlorthalidones! Well, in tandem with Losartan. No one knows why. My BP ranges from normal to mildly high after only a week of taking these. I have my own personal blood pressure cuff and electronic sphygmomanometer! I get to take my blood pressure twice every day! So much fun!
So, what is the value of a human life, as a society that has shrugged off the burden of Enlightenment humanism collapses around us? Whoa! That’s an abrupt transition!
Okay, here’s another one: no one knows where blood pressure comes from. Some say it was created by space aliens to prop up the pharmaceutical industry, which provides said aliens with safe and effective baby formula, with which they turn their unfertilized polyhedrons into babies. Some say it’s the curse of King Tutankhamun for the violation of his tomb and theft of artifacts therefrom. He especially misses his coffee table. He’s got to spend eternity holding a “World’s Greatest Pharaoh” mug full of Trader Joe’s Breakfast Blend because some Englishman wanted a fancy piece on which to show off his magazines. Still others call blood pressure “the silent killer” because it’s not a particularly noisy form of hypertension, except when it causes fits of yelling, and then it’s called “Mr. Furious’s Revenge,” after a character Ben Stiller played.
My blood pressure was very high last summer. No one knows why. It’s been high, probably, for the past 16 years.... read more