Archive | N-Z RSS feed for this section

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

17. August 2010

Comments Off

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Investigative journalist Naomi Klein speaking on “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” is a PM Press DVD produced by Bonobo Films. It consists of a brilliant 65-minute talk Naomi gave on May 19, 2008 at the Friends Meeting House in London introducing the paperback edition of her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York, 2007), plus a remarkably insightful 10-minute interview with Naomi done in London the next day. Some sections of the talk are on youtube (1), but the whole is not, and is worth having in its entirety.

Continue reading...

Muzzling a Movement

4. August 2010

Comments Off

Muzzling a Movement

It seems that the petty antagonisms that for so long characterized relations between competing animal activist and advocacy movements are dissipating. More and more frequently, the struggle for legitimacy between welfare, rights-based, and grassroots movements is being subsumed into a superstructural antagonism

Continue reading...

Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth, Culture and Social Crisis

29. July 2010

Comments Off

Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth, Culture and Social Crisis

Punk, hardcore and alternative rock music scenes have been for years the almost exclusive realm of teenagers and youth in their 20s. Not only have they been areas of creative expression, but such subcultures have given young people a place to challenge beauty standards, political boundaries and cultural norms.

Continue reading...

Resistance Against Empire

21. July 2010

Comments Off

Resistance Against Empire

Derrick Jensen just won't quit, that's for sure. The word “prolific” doesn't really do Jensen's output justice; this guy is like an anarcho-primitivist version of Stephen King. And much like Stephen King, he's constantly finding new ways to evoke a feeling of terror in his readers.

Continue reading...

The Politics of Protest: Task Force on Violent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence

21. July 2010

Comments Off

The Politics of Protest: Task Force on Violent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence

So the story goes, the original edition of The Politics of Protest was in fact a report commissioned by the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration in 1968. That year, Johnson created the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.

Continue reading...

Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media

18. July 2010

Comments Off

Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media

I have occasional conversations with associates about the unusual political and cultural space occupied by Latinos, and the challenges young Latinas in particular face. Often sexualized and objectified by mainstream white culture as exotic succubi, Latinas further occupy a racialized place of privilege that Black women are not permitted.

Continue reading...

Who You Claim

18. July 2010

Comments Off

Who You Claim

An old friend and comrade, Hitaji Aziz, once told me men of color have some of the biggest struggles to confront. Stereotyped and feared, men of color at once must wrestle with their own insecurities, self-perceptions and the necessity to feel human in a world that often denies men of color the right to feel much of anything beyond objectification and playing that part.

Continue reading...

George Orwell’s 1984 Electronic Music Remix

9. June 2010

Comments Off

George Orwell’s 1984 Electronic Music Remix

George Orwell meets twenty-first century electronic agit-prop. That’s the best way to explain Margaret Noble’s latest nonprofit sound project. She begins with a 1950s vinyl recording of George Orwell’s novel 1984, famous for its depiction of a totalitarian society held captive by the three-pronged propaganda of: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Continue reading...

Disgrace

8. June 2010

Comments Off

Disgrace

The plot of Disgrace is driven by the personal metamorphosis of David Lurie, an arrogant, libidinous professor, brilliantly played by John Malkovich. A poetry lecturer at Cape Town University, David's descent into disgrace is provoked by an affair he is having with a mixed-race student thirty years his junior.

Continue reading...

Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence

3. June 2010

Comments Off

Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence

From Regeneration Through Violence to Settlers, many sobering works have given attention to the unusual relationship religion has served in undergirding oppression and the passive as well as active support among keepers of the faith for brutal policies.

Continue reading...

Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

3. June 2010

Comments Off

Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, a searing indictment of global racism, colonialism and imperialism, is among the foundational writings of postcolonial theory. Originally written in 1961, Wretched stands out among Fanon's writings

Continue reading...