Episode 1258
Toward degrowth / Giorgos Kallis + Susan Paulson
Nov 10 2020
We are trying to draw a connection here about the colonial logics of racial hierarchy, where you have Palestinians building their own prisons, but you also have a racial hierarchy between Palestinians and Israelis, which have been referred by Amnesty International and others as an apartheid state. Then you also have the Indian government, which is a post-colonial, independent, “democratic” government that is using this kind of logic. This colonial racial division of labor to reproduce its own version of colonial racial division of labor in which you have this segregation of the terms of work and a racialization of the ways that certain kinds of workers are allowed access to remunerative work in the global labor marketplace.
We wrap up the week with geographer Michelle Buckley and media scholar Paula Chakravartty co-wrote the Boston Review article, "Labor and the Bibi-Modi 'Bromance': The Israel-India worker deal resembles British indenture." "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview.
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Alec Karakatsanis
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Accenture Is Taking Over Police Reform in LA County / Alec Karakatsanis & Hamid Khan
Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
Apr 4
The Cloud is Material and Impacts the Environment / Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
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Oct 29 2020
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
I avoid advertisements as much as possible. I’ve avoided them like the plague, which has been good practice for the plague. I’ve missed all the commercials my friends are in because of that avoidance. When I listen to podcasts I scrub past pitches for absolutely anything. But Hulu makes you sit through the ads. I mute them, but sometimes I’m not quick enough. Thus, many’s the time I’ve heard, “At so-and-so, we believe—” Every company pulls this crap at some point, no matter how non-sensical it is. “At White Claw, we believe –” there is no “at.” You’re a beverage. And you don’t believe in anything but making money. “At Clear Blue, we believe –” What do mean, “at Clear Blue?” You’re a stick women pee on to see if they’re pregnant! You’re not a place. There’s no brick-and-mortar house of pee sticks. And what can you possibly believe? “At pee stick we believe in the pH level of urine.” You believe in selling pee sticks. You don’t have any other beliefs, because you aren’t human, regardless of what the Supreme Court has said in the past. You are an agreement to peddle pee-activated color-changing material housed in plastic for the profit of your owners and part-owners. You are a legal construction designed to be a financial instrument. That’s all you’ll ever be. Give up your stupid dreams of being a real boy, Pinocchio, it’s not going to happen.
I’ve gone off before about advertising. Commercial advertising. How it’s a waste of education dollars. Because that’s what it is, bad, poisonous education. A commercial is a 15 to 60 second lesson on acquisitiveness and shallow values. It’s school for consumers, and most of it is either outright lies, id-tapping fantasies, or dramas meant to communicate insecurity. Sometimes I’ll catch a radio ad out of the corner of my ear, and something they say, some made-up statistic, reassures me about the future, then suddenly I’ll realize what’s happened, what I’ve bought into, and out of shame at being such a gullible sucker I want to stab myself in the brain.
The amount of money spent on advertising is hard to get a grip on. There are figures that represent ad purchases, but the limits of an... read more