Polis Scanner
No elegy: On struggle and solidarity in Appalachia.
Historian Elizabeth Catte explains what outsiders get wrong about Appalachia, fixating on individual failings that ignore over a century of systematic corporate and political abuses, and why Appalachians don't need extractive industries or tax cuts or venture capital, but massive wealth redistribution and the political power to accomplish it.
Elizabeth is author of the new book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia from Belt Publishing.
Missile diplomacy, peace talks and other Olympic events.
Live from Seoul, correspondent Marc Flury reports on the political background of the Winter Olympics - from the encouraging / symbolic displays of unity between North and South Korea, to President Moon Jae-in's handling of both Trump's threats of aggression towards the DPRK and Chinese anger over an American missile program on the peninsula.
Marc's video game, THUMPER, is out now for iPhone. It's wild.
SpaceXpropriation: What Elon Musk and Silicon Valley owe the public.
Journalist Kate Aronoff looks through the manufactured iconoclasm of tech capitalists like Elon Musk to the pattern of vast private fortunes built on decades of publicly funded research, and explains why the public deserves not only a share of the wealth created, but influence in the direction of tech companies to serve the needs of all people in a future that's going to require big technological solutions for survival.
Kate wrote the article The Case for Nationalizing Elon Musk for In These Times.
On the rise and fall of the liberal order.
Political scientist Patrick J. Deneen examines the impending, inevitable collapse of liberalism - as the victim of its own revolutionary success in creating a society of hyper-individuated actors in a landscape without communal bonds - and calls for pursuing a 'unitary conception' of society and politics beyond the limits of ideology.
Patrick is author of the new book Why Liberalism Failed from Yale University Press.
War is a valid metaphor: US influence in Brazil's judicial revolt.
Live from São Paulo, correspondent Brian Mier explains how the Brazilian judiciary turned into a weapon against the country's democratic process, manufacturing corruption charges against Brazil's left (and ignoring massive, real corruption in Brazil's post-coup government) in a US-backed campaign to transform Latin America into a compliant, corporate-run client state.
Voices of the Brazilian Left: Dispatches from a Coup in Progress is available now from Brasilwire. Brian's colleague, Dan Hunt wrote the article Hidden History: The U.S. 'War on Corruption' in Brazil for Truthdig.
Jeff Dorchen does not review his own movie. What happens next will shock you.
In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen explains how he wrote his Hollywood / Bollywood / musical / comedy / romance movie Basmati Blues, via a slight digression involving a young Irish drunk in Israel and the young Irish drunk in Israel's roommate when he was in rehab back in Georgia. He then presents a drinking game to play (and/or die) along with said film.
