Category: Audio
Fuck work: The case against full employment, and for guaranteed income. [from @thisishellradio podcast]
This is a must listen interview from a must listen podcast:
“Historian James Livingston examines the deep problem with employment in the 21st century – the broken relationship between work and income, and explains why we must look beyond capitalism’s intellectual decrepitude, and to the rising rate of transfer payments, if we are to reclaim our labor, our happiness and our time from the demands of capitalism.
“The end of work is in sight. The connection between work performed and character created, or work preformed and income received is absolutely unintelligible – so let’s get on with a society in which there doesn’t have to be a relationship between work and income. Let’s get on with what we used to call ‘Socialism.'”
James is the author of the new book, No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea from UNC Press and the Aeon essay Fuck Work.”
Looking for a stellar political podcast and news site? Check out Black Agenda Report
Click image above to go to site.
Click above to go to site
In the fall of 2006, Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberley and Leutisha Stills of CBC Monitor left Black Commentator, which Ford had co-founded and edited since 2002, and launched Black Agenda Report.
Check it out. Well worth your while…
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – April 4, 1967 – Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence (Repost from 2013)
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”
“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing — embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate — ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says:
Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word (unquote).
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” “
Do you want to learn a lot in a (relatively) short time? Listen to this:
Starts around the two minute mark:
Listen to more This is Hell radio/podcast at ThisisHell.com
Jelly Roll Morton on the Mardi Gras Indians (1938)
Glen Ford: “We face a state that treats black people as if we are about to rise up in an insurgency at any moment. So they preemptively police us as if we are an insurgency.”
Talking Heads – Crosseyed And Painless [Audio and Lyrics]
Crosseyed And Painless
Lost my shape-Trying to act casual
Can’t stop-I might end up in the hospital
I’m changing my shape-I feel like an accident
They’re back!-To explain their experience
Isn’t it weird/Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away/And that was their policy
I’m ready to leave-I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost-Facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!-No information left of any kind
Lifting my head-Looking for danger signs
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/looking around inside
The island of doubt-It’s like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight-Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list-Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right-Facts are useless in emergencies
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/Looking around inside.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don’t stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
I’m still waiting…I’m still waiting…
Against the Grain Radio show/Podcast
Police & Thieves [Video]
Military Madness [Music]
Masterful Radio Documentary on David Foster Wallace
Lou Reed – I Never Said I Was Nice (Live 1976)
Intro Jam – Sweet Jane – I Believe In Love – Lisa Says – Kicks – She’s My Best Friend – I’m Waiting For The Man – Sheltered Life – The Kids – Claim To Fame – Vicious Circle – Walk On The Wild Side – Coney Island Baby – Rock And Roll Heart – Charley’s Girl – Kill Your Sons – Satellite Of Love – How Do You Think It Feels? – You Were It So Well – Temporary Thing – Ladies Pay – Heroin – Sister Ray
Chris Hedges Q&A
All You Fascists Bound To Lose – Woody Guthrie – Billy Bragg and Wilco
Yves Smith on Harry Shearer’s Le Show – Must Listen
Click to hear
@yvessmith on @theharryshearer again
discussing evil, evil ongoing secret trade deals like the TPP and the evil, evil machinations of jamie dimon, jpmorgan, and the welfare queens of wall st.
NSA Files: Decoded. What the revelations mean for you. – a multimedia report
Click above to get important info on the NSA and you from this groundbreaking multimedia report from The Guardian. Not only is this a great report, I believe the format is groundbreaking and will be copied by everyone – everyone with the resources that is…
Doug Henwood – Behind the News Podcast/Radio show + bonus video
Click above for Doug Henwood’s Left Business Observer Radio show/Podcast called “Behind the News”. Many great interviews. Start with the October 17th show, where Doug interviews Jodi Dean and Kshama Sawant.
Doug Henwood also contributes to The Nation. I have many “issues” with The Nation, but Doug Henwood and a few others like Jeremey Scahill are solid. Max Blumenthal is doing great work as well.
Here is an example of Doug’s clear vision of “The New Economy” and its cheerleaders before 9/11 and before the manufactured crisis:
21st Century Theater 