Videos-Movies-Podcasts

Just when I thought I could put this topic away for a while, I came across this video by John Oliver. As I have noted earlier, it continues to amaze me that some of the best commentaries come from comedians. The little note, nearly at the end, of EU efforts --->> read more -->>

The recent release of a pile of emails, text messages, and memos from within Fox News has raised the Dominion Voting System‘s defamation lawsuit to large public view. Here is a 52-minute discussion between Stewart and Anderson Jones that explores the facts revealed in the data dump, the boundaries and --->> read more -->>

If you are struggling to get your head around how racism works you will probably find it helpful to have a general framework as a guide. This one hour lecture from 2017 features an overview by Brown University Professor Tricia Rose of the structure of racism and how it works --->> read more -->>

Back in the early and mid ‘70s both Karen and I worked in various machine shops and other industrial locations. Trichloroethylene (TCE) was used on a daily basis to clean metals parts and other materials. I remember a large tank of slowly roiling hot TCE at Stevens Arnold, Inc. in --->> read more -->>

The New York Times published this video 12/8/2019. Over 90% of “recycleable” plastic materials in the consumer marketplace end up in landfill dumps. A fraud fomented by the plastics and retail marketing industry. Note: There is a ten second ad before the story begins.

We’ve written quite a bit about the US Empire. A key component of this US foreign policy is regime change. Here is a list of the posts here on this topic. Recently Democracy Now! ran a 22 minute discussion of the history of US regime change actions over the last --->> read more -->>

Once again we return to our comedians for information about what is going on in the world. This time more on the fraud that is our judicial system. Turns out that one of our regular sources, John Oliver, has really made a demi-career out of just this topic.  

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We read Evicted – poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond last year in our local library book group. Recently on a visit to Washington DC to the National Building Museum (401 F St. NW – Judiciary Square Metro stop) we came on an exhibit based on --->> read more -->>

In our continuing effort to find varied sources to illustrate the power of marketing and the costs of unregulated capitalism we return to John Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight for his segment on sugar in food. The food industry continues to put sugar in nearly every processed food and fights --->> read more -->>

We have written earlier (for example our article The Monopolization of America) about the increasing concentration of market power    In the hands of just a few corporations. This is a phenomenon occurring  throughout the US economy (really more broadly across the globe). Here is an 11 minute review of --->> read more -->>

There has been focus on wealth and income inequality for years. It is a pressing problem for more than 80% of the US population. But there is an other inequality, political inequality, that is at the heart of the more talked about inequality. In 2013 Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig provided --->> read more -->>

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and White Supremacy Spike Lee’s latest movie focuses on the story of a black detective who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan in 1978 and ’79. As a movie that is being widely seen and reviewed by white, probably mostly liberal, Americans it is frustrating that most viewers --->> read more -->>

We have written earlier about the fact that effective legal representation and trial by jury is a rarity making one of our cultural icons a complete sham. As Jed Rakoff has noted: In actuality, our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors --->> read more -->>

Intervention in Iran – 65th Anniversary On August 19, 1953 President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to support British efforts to launch a coup against the popularly elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in favor of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. At immediate issue were plans by Mossadegh to nationalize --->> read more -->>

Corporate concentration of income and wealth are core features of capitalism. From its earliest chroniclers and cheerleaders like Adam Smith, the drive for corporations to get ever larger and in the doing drive their competitors out of the market was noted and warned against. In the US, the late 19th --->> read more -->>

Recently Noted – Robert Reich: how we got into this mess and how we get out of it This is a good description of how we got into our current mess; the way out is weaker. Nevertheless, well worth the six minute view. A few thoughts To be clear the --->> read more -->>

The shape of jobs in the US and around the world it’s changing rapidly. On 11/5/2017 NBC News reported: Self-driving trucks One year ago this week a truck rolled into history as it traveled from a Colorado brewing plant to a warehouse 120 miles away carrying 45,000 cans of Budweiser beer. --->> read more -->>

This 2015 movie by Chinese director Liang Zhao is filled with great cinematography and sounds. It trades back and forth between scenes of enormous horizon gulping coal mines, under ground mines, iron making, and ends with scenes of a ghost city filled with enormous apartment blocks in a newly developed --->> read more -->>

“There” is our current situation in which our government has been bought by the rich and corporations, over 80% of the population has not had a pay raise in 40 years and the public sphere, schools, parks, our infrastructure, really anything not behind the gated walls of private wealth, is --->> read more -->>

The other day I stumbled on this Tom Lehrer song, “Send in the Marines”. This is as good a summary of American foreign policy as there is, though to update the lyrics for the Obama version just substitute “drones” for “Marines”. Here is a YouTube video performance, perhaps from the --->> read more -->>

We all have had, some now enduring, experiences in the educational system. Excepting the academic super stars for whom the educational system was designed, most have at best mixed feelings about it. Here is a TED Talk given in 2006 by Ken Robinson: “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity” It --->> read more -->>