Latest News: Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

“Flightless Bird: Healthcare II” — A CREATURE WANTING FORM author Luke O’Neil featured on Flightless Bird podcast with David Farrier

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

Listen to the full conversation here.

“The West’s overlooked rainforests can address climate change” — CANOPY OF TITANS by Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate featured in High Country News

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

“Drawing on research and interviews with more than a hundred scientists and other experts, Koberstein and Applegate, who run the environmental outlet Cascadia Times, make a persuasive case that the region deserves an elevated profile and that logging and pollution are threatening the rainforest’s ability to stabilize rising greenhouse gases. And the solution to prevent further degradation, they maintain, is not to plant more trees — or “carbon-capturing machines” — but rather to protect the oldest among them and prevent unsustainable logging.
To bolster their argument, the authors journey throughout the Pacific coastal region, building a detailed portrait of the forest and its constituent parts, its environmental value, and the various threats it faces. There are vivid accounts of California’s redwoods, Oregon’s wetlands, Washington’s colossal Douglas firs, British Columbia’s salmon runs, and Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, which abuts Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. We learn, for example, that the Pacific rainforest houses three of the world’s seven species of trees that grow over 300 feet tall and that the roots of one of these, the coast redwood, may only reach 10 feet deep while its first branches can be 250 feet above them.”

Read the full article here.

”The Rainforest in Our Backyard” — CANOPY OF TITANS by Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate reviewed in Undark

Friday, September 15th, 2023

“When most people think of rainforests, they conjure up images of the Amazon, the Congo, and Southeast Asia — vast verdant expanses of densely packed forests, dripping with moisture and rich with tropical life. But in fact, there’s a huge rainforest in North America, unheralded and underappreciated: the sprawling forested region that stretches some 2,500 miles along the Pacific Coast, from just north of San Francisco to Kodiak Island, Alaska.
Part of the problem, according to Oregon journalists Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate, is that the area has no popular name. As a result, we’re missing the forest for the trees, and U.S. and Canadian policymakers and scientists are neglecting a valuable opportunity to marshal resources in their backyard to hit wider climate change targets and improve conservation.”

Read the full article here.

“QAnon 2.0: “Sound of Freedom” and the rise of MAGA vigilantism” — OPERATION MINDFUCK author Robert Guffey featured in Salon

Saturday, September 2nd, 2023

“I once met a former Scientologist at a backyard barbecue who explained to me how L. Ron Hubbard, the mediocre science fiction author who founded the Church of Scientology in the 1950s, got his retro-pulp novel “Battlefield Earth” on the bestseller lists in 1982. According to this fellow, the church compelled all its members to rush out and buy multiple copies for friends, family members and even non-Scientologists (sometimes derogatorily known as “wogs”). How many copies of that 1,050-page doorstop actually got read? There’s no way to know, but “Battlefield Earth” spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. 

Something similar happened earlier this summer with Alejandro Gómez Monteverde’s film “Sound of Freedom,” which occupied the No. 1 spot at the box office until it was mercifully overtaken by Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” Whatever the original intentions of the filmmakers may have been, “Sound of Freedom” arrived in theaters as a thinly disguised QAnon recruitment film whose star, Jim Caviezel, is an evangelical Christian who has said he believes in the central myth of that conspiracy theory: that innocent children are being kidnapped by Satanists, dragged into underground dungeons and tortured to manufacture a chemical called “Adrenochrome,” whose consumption keeps the privileged elite forever youthful. This fantastical concept is ripped off from various sources, including Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as well as an array of grade-B horror movies.

Read the full article here.

“Gary Younge on Jacksonville Shooting & Why America’s Gun Problem Makes Its Racism More Lethal” — DISPATCHES FROM THE DIASPORA author Gary Younge featured on Democracy Now!

Monday, August 28th, 2023

“On Saturday, a white supremacist gunman killed three Black people at a store in Jacksonville, Florida, in a racially motivated attack. Authorities say the 21-year-old white gunman initially tried to enter the historically Black college Edward Waters University, but he was turned away by a security guard before driving to a nearby Dollar General and opening fire with a legally purchased attack-style rifle. America’s gun problem “makes its racism more lethal,” says Gary Younge, author of Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter. “There’s been a significant increase in the number of hate crimes, particularly in anti-Black hate crimes, and one has to be able to connect that to the political situation that surrounds us,” says Younge, who says the shooter’s actions are reflective of the current attacks on Black history and represent a backlash to increased racial consciousness following the murder of George Floyd.”

Watch the full video here.

“Children in ALL schools should have their creativity encouraged” — POETRY FOR THE MANY author Jeremy Corbyn featured in The Edinburgh Reporter

Monday, August 28th, 2023

“We fail far too many children by only offering them music in nursery and the early years of primary school. Less than 20% of state schools have a music system or an orchestra. In the private sector that figure is 98%. Children in ALL schools should have their creativity encouraged.”

Read the full article here.

I DARE SAY author Gerald Horne featured on Activist News Network

Sunday, August 20th, 2023

Watch the full video here.

“QAnon’s weirdest obsession: Why does the radical far right fear the Masons?” — OPERATION MINDFUCK author Robert Guffey featured in Salon

Sunday, August 13th, 2023

In my most recent nonfiction book, “Operation Mindf**k: QAnon & the Cult of Donald Trump,” I focused extensively on a “QTuber” named Rick Rene, because I viewed him then and now as the perfectly imperfect microcosm of the entire messed-up QAnon universe, which perceives the Democratic Party as an elaborate cover for Satanic/Masonic pedophiles seeking to transform the Earth into a “one-world government.”

Read the full article here.

“There will be something in this volume to touch everyone” — POETRY FOR THE MANY authors Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey’s appearance on Iain Dale’s ALL TALK reviewed by Broadway Baby

Wednesday, August 9th, 2023

“In a forthcoming anthology, Corbyn and former Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey have collated a range of works from the well-trodden to the less known: and an enticing list of contributors include Melissa Benn, Rob Delaney, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ken Loach, Francesca Martinez, Maxine Peake, Michael Rosen and Alexei Sayle.

Corbyn himself being something of an aficionado of the poetic form is perhaps not wholly unexpected. But that ‘Red Len’, that veteran of the dockyards and serial battle talks, also turns out to be something of a literary old softie is a quite delicious revelation. In a voice cracking with emotion, McCluskey read some of the poems which have touched him personally, illustrating precisely why poetry must not be locked away in a gilded cage but be set free to fly into the imaginations of anyone who cares to engage with it.

There will be something in this volume to touch everyone, regardless of their poetic pedigree: I was particularly interested in the story of the largely unknown Juana de la Cruz, whose seventeenth century poems have a strong resonance today.”

Read the full review here.

“How Your Car is Doubling as a Data Collection Device — And Who’s Profiting” — CARS AND JAILS featured in Streetsblog USA

Monday, August 7th, 2023

“Ross and Livingston trace the rise of roadway “surveillance capitalism” — a term they borrow from scholar Shoshana Zuboff — as far back as the invention of the modern driver’s license, which they say has gradually evolved into “a master key” to a vast trove of personal information well beyond what’s printed on our IDs themselves. And they say law enforcement officers don’t just draw on that trove when they pull over a driver suspected of a crime; federal agencies like the FBI and ICE also make “extensive use of their unmonitored access to DMV data,” using facial recognition software to cross-match driver’s license images with surveillance footage as they investigate crimes.

That software, though, is often prone to errors, particularly when trained on people with darker skin — as is the automated license plate reader software that many cities rely on to catch speeders and red light runners, which some studies show are wrong around 10 percent of the time. Because both kinds of technology, by their nature, are used to help search for perpetrators among of sea of innocent people, they end up cataloging vast reams of data on the movements of roadway users not suspected of any crime at all.”

Read the full article here.

“I want to see change in our society” — POETRY FOR THE MANY authors Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey featured in The Independent

Sunday, August 6th, 2023

Read the full article here.

“Newburyport, MA” — A CREATURE WANTING FORM author Luke O’Neil featured in Protean Magazine

Monday, July 31st, 2023

”They drove north and east to go look at the ocean and then along the road over the salt marshes passing by the dilapidated but still striking pink house.

People are drawn to this house in part because of the story about its spiteful construction in the early 1900s. The tale goes that a rich man’s wife insisted he build them an exact replica of the home they were currently living in but this time nearer the water and so he did without explaining that it would be in the middle of nowhere and set her up there before divorcing her and cleaning his hands of the whole mess.”

Read the full story here.

“How Some Traffic Fines and Fees Can Make Our Roads More Dangerous” — CARS AND JAILS featured in Streetsblog USA

Monday, July 31st, 2023

”In some ways, Livingston and Ross argue, extractive fines and extreme police harassment for even the most minor vehicle violations have been an integral part of motordom since its beginning, particularly for the people of color who shoulder an overwhelming majority of both burdens. The authors say that “revenue policing” really ballooned, though, following the tax revolts of the 1970s and ’80s, when many progressive taxes were rescinded and governments were forced to take on massive bonds to provide basic public amenities.

To service — and, eventually, collateralize — those debts, municipalities turned to criminalizing and fining the people on their roads instead, all while directing bond revenues towards autocentric infrastructure and away from public transit projects that give residents an alternative to driving and all the carceral costs that come with it.”

Read the full article here.

“Luke O’Neil’s Very Real Fiction” — A CREATURE WANTING FORM featured on Jason Diamond’s The Melt

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

”You get unflinching honesty when you read O’Neil’s stuff. The world is dark and full of terrifying people with horrible intentions, and O’Neil has made a place for himself by exploring all that in a way that’s engaging but also doesn’t make the reader feel like a dummy. Part of it is O’Neil is removed far from the media world of NYC or the Beltway drama of D.C. (well, he’s in Boston, so maybe not that far in terms of mileage) but I also think it’s because he’s got that punk/DIY training, so instead of feeling like you’re reading something handed down from a skyscraper in the middle of a big city, it’s more like being at a basement show and the band is telling you to crowd closer to them. There’s an intimacy about it, and the real emotion that comes through. O’Neil is a writer, journalist, commentator, editor, publisher, or whatever he wants to call himself. But he’s also a human, and the things he’s writing about, I have to believe, trouble him deeply.”

Read the full article here.

“How Auto Debt is Holding Millions of Americans In Custody — Sometimes Literally” — CARS AND JAILS featured in Streetsblog USA

Monday, July 24th, 2023

”For their groundbreaking and essential new book Cars and Jails, New York University professors Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross worked with a team of formerly incarcerated peer researchers to examine what they call “the continuum between auto ownership and incarceration” in the United States. The book, though, could just as easily be called “Cars, Jails, and Money” for how inextricable our criminal justice systems are with our systems of consumer debt, corporate profit, and mass surveillance — and how impossible it will be to unravel one without confronting the others.”

Read the full article here.

“How Jeremy Corbyn was toppled by the Israel lobby” — WEAPONISING ANTI-SEMITISM reviewed by Mondoweiss

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023

“Winstanley has written a political thriller and real page-turner titled Weaponizing Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. It is an important book.  

It has a lesson for those of us in the Palestinian solidarity movement working for social justice in the U.S. The Israel lobby lied, cynically manufacturing a fake crisis of antisemitism in the Labour Party where it didn’t exist, using fear to succeed. The lobby cannot be placated. They need to be called out and confronted. That is the main lesson of the book.”

Read the full article here.

“The Persecution of Jeremy Corbyn” — WEAPONISING ANTI-SEMITISM author Asa Winstanley featured on The Chris Hedges Report

Friday, July 7th, 2023

“The unholy alliance between Israel, the war industry, and the Corporatist raised the question of whether it is possible in Britain or the United States to reform the system from within… But the public truncheon that was used to bring [Jeremy] down was antisemitism. That’s what you do such a good job of chronicling in your book.”

Watch the full interview here.

“The United States of Conspiracy” — OPERATION MINDFUCK author Robert Guffey featured on WTF with Marc Maron

Monday, July 3rd, 2023

Conspiracy scholar Robert Guffey joins Marc to talk about the origins of modern conspiracy theories. What is the Illuminati? Why is Freemasonry central to so many conspiracies? How do cultural icons like Rudyard Kipling, John Huston and Steven Spielberg factor into the spread of conspiracy thinking? And how did Qanon grab hold of the fevered conspiratorial mind?

Listen to the podcast here.

“Twitter rips into Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘pretentious’ poetry – except it’s actually by Shelley” — POETRY FOR THE MANY featured in The Guardian

Wednesday, June 28th, 2023

“What is striking about the response to Corbyn’s Shelley tweet is that it is not so much the lions that are rising in unvanquishable number on Elon Musk’s platform, but the unapologetic age of stupid. Many years ago, the late Trotskyist journalist Paul Foot wrote a fine book about the Etonian atheist poet’s revolutionary credentials entitled Red Shelley. You can see why Corbyn is attached to the verse, which echoes his own campaign line: “For the many, not the few”. But why would anyone assume he had written it?”

Read the full article here.

DISPATCHES FROM THE DIASPORA author Gary Younge awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2023

Thursday, June 22nd, 2023

Read the full announcement here.

“Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey to publish ‘accessible’ poetry collection” — POETRY FOR THE MANY featured in The Guardian

Thursday, June 15th, 2023

“A poetry collection edited by Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey will be published in November, and will contain contributions from Russell Brand, Maxine Peake and Michael Rosen.

Poetry for the Many will feature the favourite poems of the former Labour leader and the trade unionist, along with their commentary. The pair’s picks range from Shakespeare, William Blake and Maya Angelou to the Mexican nun Juana Inés de la Cruz.”

Read the full article here.

“How cars fuel racial inequality” — CARS AND JAILS by Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross featured in Vox

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023

“A lot of people we were interviewing were driving pretty fancy cars. We were stroking our chins, going: How did you afford that? It turned out that some of them were walking into dealerships and being told they couldn’t get financing for the Hondas they wanted, but could for a top-of-the-line Mercedes,” Ross says. “Why would a lender and dealer do that? Because they know they’re going to be able to repossess the car quickly.”

It wasn’t the only way formerly incarcerated people were targeted. For those who were Black, the heightened risk of being pulled over meant they were vulnerable to being reincarcerated for a minor traffic violation if an officer found out they had a prior felony conviction and were on parole. “Coming out of prison, when you get behind the wheel of a car, it puts you in the spotlight,” Ross says. While working with their formerly incarcerated peer researchers on the project, Ross noted, three of them were pulled over for minor traffic violations and ended up being incarcerated again.

Read the full article here.

“When will the US and Britain join the global call to end the war in Ukraine?” — WAR IN UKRAINE authors Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies featured in Morning Star

Monday, June 12th, 2023

“Now that the war has dragged on for over a year with no end in sight, other leaders have stepped forward to try to push both sides to the negotiating table. In an intriguing new development, Denmark, a Nato country, has stepped forward to offer to host peace talks. On May 22, just days after the G7 meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen said that his country would be ready to host a peace summit in July if Russia and Ukraine agreed to talk.”

Read the full article here.

“One of the most consistent and compelling voices exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam” — WEAPONISING ANTI-SEMITISM by Asa Winstanley featured in Skwawkbox

Sunday, May 21st, 2023

 
“Journalist Asa Winstanley has been one of the most consistent and compelling voices exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam perpetrated against Jeremy Corbyn and the left to prevent a left-wing government – a weaponisation since confirmed even by the Starmer-commissioned Forde Report. In his new book, ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism’, Winstanley provides a convincing history of the development of the smear before Corbyn was ever in the frame to lead the party – and the way it was used to help bring Corbyn’s leadership down after the left terrified the Establishment by coming close to winning the 2017 general election.”

Read the full article here.

“Essential reading on Israel-Palestine’s toughest questions” — MOMENT OF TRUTH, ed. by Jamie Stern-Weiner, featured in Jewish Voice for Labour

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

“In this compilation available from OR Books, Jamie Stern-Weiner has drawn together an incomparable selection of contributors to debate key questions concerning Israel-Palestine from the perspective of those committed to justice and national liberation.”

Read the full article here.

“Labour anti-Semitism smears exposed” — WEAPONISING ANTI-SEMITISM author Asa Winstanley featured on Not the Andrew Marr Show

Tuesday, May 16th, 2023

Asa Winstanley on the Andrew Marr show

 
Asa Winstanley talks about his forthcoming book, publishing 30th May 2023.

Watch the full interview here.

“Direct action has a long and noble history” — THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE LITIGATED contributor Farhana Yamin featured in Financial Times

Saturday, April 22nd, 2023

“Of course, direct action is nothing new. Indeed it is a longstanding tool for bringing about social change. Apartheid, equal rights for women and basic health and safety laws were all won by decades of collective action taken by workers, women and people of colour. They combined protests and traditional political campaigning with an array of direct action techniques — including, in the last resort, recourse to hunger and general strikes.

Many of the steps taken by campaigners today draw on the past for inspiration. Emily Davison and dozens of suffragettes were forcibly fed in prison for going on hunger strikes before she tragically threw herself in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.”

Read the full article here.

“The Ciudad Juárez fire – and other circles of made-in-USA hell” — INSIDE SIGLO XXI author Belén Fernández featured in Al Jazeera

Sunday, April 16th, 2023

“On March 27, 40 men were killed in a fire at a migrant detention centre in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The victims hailed from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela.

Like so many thousands of refuge seekers from around the world, they had been jailed in Mexico for the crime of aspiring to a better life in the United States – which forces its southern neighbour to act as deputy gatekeeper and migrant antagonist.”

Read the full article here.

“CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin BLACKLISTED From MSNBC” — WAR IN UKRAINE author featured on The Jimmy Dore Show

Saturday, April 8th, 2023

For 50 years Medea Benjamin has been an activist, sticking her nose everywhere it’s not wanted — straight into the authoritarian, militaristic business of American empire. And where she was once welcome on that most “liberal” of cable news outlets, MSNBC, since becoming a thorn in the side of Democratic administrations as well as Republican, she’s no longer welcome to grace their airwaves.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss with Benjamin her initiation into the world of social justice and the many struggles she’s been a part of since.

Watch the full interview here.

“Israel’s violence is open terrorism — stop calling it ‘clashes’” — INSIDE SIGLO XXI author Belén Fernández featured in Al Jazeera

Friday, April 7th, 2023

“Worshippers in Al Aqsa attacked, Gaza bombed again. But the Western media still equates the neck and the guillotine.”

Read the full article here.

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