[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Fell in Love with Fire : A Documentary about the 2019 Uprising in Chile [crimethinc] – “Five years in the making, this hour-long film documents the uprising that swept Chile from October 2019 to March 2020, showing how everyday people sustained six months of rebellion by creating extensive networks of self-determination and mutual aid.” For your monthly dose of riot porn.
Ed Yong, Journalist/Author – XOXO Festival (2024)
Erin Kissane, Writer/Researcher – XOXO Festival (2024)
[Music]
[Podcasts]
The Sunshine Place: S2|E1: Intake – Series two focuses on Straight Inc., which emerged in the 1980s, a drug therapy that employed abuse, torture and brainwashing. This makes my time spent in Le Patriarche, which was quite problematic, sound like a walk in the park.
Podcast: Kann ich die innere Uhr trainieren, um gesünder zu leben [riffreporter] – “Wie beeinflussen äußere Faktoren – etwa die Zeitumstellung – unser Wohlbefinden, und wie können wir das messen? Im Podcast spricht Karl Urban mit Wissenschaftsautor Peter Spork über Schlaf, Chronobiologie und die Zukunft der personalisierten Medizin.” I so hope people will listen to science in the discussion whether sommer time or normal time will be kept once daylight saving time will get ended. Hopefully soon and hopefully normal time.
Data Vampires: Going Hyperscale (Episode 1 of 4) [techwontsaveus] – “Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are the dominant players in the cloud market. Around the world, they’re building massive hyperscale data centers that they claim are necessary to power the future of our digital existence.” Great series investigating the ecological and political implications of the data centres that tech giants are building everywhere.
Episode 35: Talia Lavin on the Christian Right’s View of Marriage/Parenting [in bed with the right] – “Author Talia Lavin (whose Wild Faith is out on 10/15/24) talks Moira and Adrian through the Christian Right’s takeover of American life, through objects that are unlikely to appear on your bookshelf, but that nevertheless shape the way many Americans live and what policies they have to live with. From the parenting manuals like James Dobson’s Dare to Discipline to Stormy Omartian’s marriage guide Power of a Praying Wife, Talia lays out how an image of the family and child-rearing built on subservience, authoritarianism and often enough violence has become part and parcel of our American landscape.” Any episode of In Bed With The Right is great, this one stood out this month.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: October 31, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: October 24, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: October 17, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: October 10, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: October 3, 2024
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war | Naomi Klein [the guardian] – “In Hebrew, zochrot means “remembering”, and unlike the re-traumatization currently passing for commemoration, remembering in its truest sense is about putting the shattered and severed pieces of the self together (re-member-ing) in the hopes of becoming whole. Re-membering the land. Re-membering the people exiled from the land. Re-membering earlier colonial genocides that shaped and inspired the Nazi Holocaust, which in turn shaped the state of Israel. Re-membering that Israel is right now in the grips of a nuclear-armed colonial revenge frenzy in the lineage of earlier colonial punitive expeditions, ones that also used art and collective sorrow as potent weapons of annihilation.” Klein also presented her argument on democracy now, if you prefer a video. But the article goes into much more detail and therefore is essential reading.
To Voice the Unspeakable | Rupa Marya–Deep Medicine [substack] – “For my advocacy, I have been harassed online, slandered and defamed as a racist, bombarded with racist death and rape threats through my social media accounts and work email, have had a plain clothes police officer show up to my lecture where he intimidated students who came to hear me speak, have been placed under investigation, and now, have been suspended indefinitely. What they seem to want is silence, reputational damage and career destruction. This week our only Palestinian faculty member was silenced; the lecture he planned for six months–at the request of students–was abruptly canceled.” Rupa Marya deserves all our solidarity as she risks losing her job for her advocacy.
How it Could Happen Now | Vicky Osterweil [substack] – “If anything feels far away at this moment, its the revolution. The genocide in Palestine and Sudan, flooding in the Appalachians and the Himalayas, wildfires in Argentina and Bolivia, and terrifying record sea temperatures, to say nothing of the far right claiming victory in Austria, and a US election that features an openly Nazi candidate promising Kristallnacht and mass deportation. But I think there is a clear series of steps that, again, could be taken today, that would initiate a revolutionary sequence.” A brilliant mind experiment.
[Articles English]
Remembering How Nonviolence Protects the State | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “how I accidentally wrote my first book” I wish i could accidentally write a book.
Femicide is rising, but where’s the outrage? [africasacountry] – “While feminist movements have made significant strides in naming, recognizing, and advocating against femicide, the rest of the world appears disturbingly indifferent.” One woman killed by femicide every eleven minutes. 1 every 11′.
The brutal truth behind Italy’s migrant reduction: beatings and rape by EU-funded forces in Tunisia [the guardian] – “Keir Starmer says he wants to learn from Italy’s ‘dramatic’ statistics. But a Guardian investigation reveals that EU money goes to officers who are involved in shocking abuse, leaving people to die in the desert and colluding with smugglers” Missed this article last month, so upsetting. And in the meantime the Albania story broke. It’s not just Meloni though, despicable as she is, it’s all of Europe allowing this to happen.
This mother made six attempts to raise the alarm about her sick toddler. Doctors told her he’d be fine. They were fatally wrong [the guardian] – “The death of her son, Micah, highlights the danger of medics ignoring parental concerns. ‘It was like they were gaslighting us,’ says Keri-Sue McManus” A heart-wrenching story, even if the article has some problems, like hinting at immunity debt among others.
Solid Ground | Julia Doubleday [the gauntlet] – “A few years ago, I learned that a person who is drowning doesn’t appear to be drowning. A drowning child generally won’t flail wildly and scream for help; instead, you’ve got to look for the silent kid. All the remaining energy of a drowning person is being used to keep themselves above water, until nothing remains.” Look for the people going quiet. They need our help.
September 2024 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “September 2024 was the second warmest September on record for the globe in NOAA’s 175-year record. The September global surface temperature was 1.24°C (2.23°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). This is 0.19°C (0.34°F) less than the record warm September of 2023, and broke the streak of 15 straight global record-breaking warm months; the first month since May 2023 that was not record warm. September 2024 marked the 50th consecutive September with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average and the 547th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average. The past eleven Septembers (2014–2024) have been the warmest Septembers on record.” All good, guys. September 2024 was not the hottest September on record. That was of course sarcasm just now. After El Nino the temperatures were bound to get a bit lower. This might get misinterpreted by the relativists and deniers. Watch out.
My 2007 Interview With Ursula Le Guin [margaretkilljoy.substack.com] – “I may agree with Shelley that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but he didn’t mean they really get many laws enacted, and I guess I didn’t ever really look for definable, practical results of anything I wrote. My utopias are not blueprints. In fact, I distrust utopias that pretend to be blueprints. Fiction is not a good medium for preaching or for planning. It is really good, though, for what we used to call conscious-raising.” This interview is from 2007, but from a book that is out of print. Loved what Le Guin said about the they pronoun.
The Academisation of Rave: Is Everyone Talking About Dancing, Rather Than Doing It? [the quietus] – “Could it be possible that the idea of “the rave” has become more appealing than actually going out? It’s certainly a Friday night feeling I’ve had once or twice. But there’s a strange contradiction to be untangled: we seem to be celebrating and analysing raving at the very moment that it’s in retreat as a cultural mainstay, no longer such an inevitable rite of passage for British youth, nor such a powerful engine for transmitting sonic vanguardism to the masses.” I get it, i fucking hate clubbing now, and i still idealize it at the same time.
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died because of a discredited view of ME. How was this allowed to happen? | George Monbiot [the guardian] – “Though it was highly controversial, the SMC championed the “biopsychosocial” school of ME/CFS research and promoted its favoured treatments, especially cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy. The story it seemed to push hardest concerned abuse and harassment by angry patients of scientists with a psychological view of the illness. The media ran and ran with it.” Crucial historic context of how ME/CFS and Long COVID were framed as psychosomatic.
Mutual Aid and Mosh Pits [in these times] – “Punk mutual aid is about the act of subverting, of creating alternate roots, networks and scenes for communities to take care of one another.” Yeah, sure, but let’s not get teary eyed. A lot of ex-punks turned into horrible people.
U.S. Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists [in these times] – “In These Times interviewed 18 Jewish professionals with 16 different Jewish organizations across the country, all of whom describe being fired, quitting under pressure, or seeing their roles disappear since October 7 for issues surrounding criticism of Israel or support for a permanent cease-fire. These stories are just a snapshot of what appears to be a growing trend across the Jewish professional world. At the time of publication, In These Times was continuing to receive tips about similar cases.” To essentialise Jewish people is actually antisemitic.
Jews and Democrats Are Not Sending Hurricanes to Kill Trump Supporters [in these times] – “Although recent Helene conspiracy theories hurt those in need of aid on the ground — FEMA says the flood of disinformation has impeded its work — the Right continues making them a foundational piece of their ideological framework, and for good reason. Widening inequality, deepening political dysfunction and spiraling climate crises all demand action, but the Right has little to offer the working-class members of its base by way of policy solutions.” This needed saying. Did this need saying? Apparently that’s where we’re at.
The Only Way to Believe | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “Sometimes you invest in belief because you found other drugs before desperation drove you to imagine something truly different. Sometimes you invest in belief because every ounce of your energy goes into trying to breathe, because this violence goes so deep you can’t contemplate the dimensions of it you just need to breathe, you can’t look back at the long path travelled and how much it resembles the path ahead because all you have the capacity for is putting one foot in front of the other, because if you lie down you will not get back up.” Don’t even know what to say anymore, read his substack you must!
From Hurricanes to Hoaxes: The Right’s Climate Denial Playbook | Kelly Hayes [substack] – “On the same day that I reviewed posts attacking meteorologists and climate scientists for their alleged roles in HAARP, I also watched a video of meteorologist John Morales in tears as he reported on the growing strength of Hurricane Milton. For years, scientists have warned the public about the rise of climate chaos and chronicled the damage done while also working to save lives. Now, scientists are being blamed for the disasters they have tried to raise the alarm about, with some people openly declaring that they should be lynched.” They tend to shoot the messenger. That part is not new. Social media as misinformation accelerator. That part is.
Don’t Let House Republicans Rewrite Trump’s Pandemic History [whowhatwhy] – “Trump’s gross mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak — along with his plan to further gut a national pandemic preparedness capability, which he had already crippled when he disbanded the National Security Council’s global health security directorate in 2018 — is one of many dark clouds that are, or should be, hanging over his bid to return to power.” Yes yes yes, this article does shed some light on why Trump is so fucking dangerous from a disability justice point of view, but sadly the Democrats aren’t much better when it comes to the pandemic.
Neighbors as Lifelines: The Power of Mutual Aid in Asheville [organizing my thoughts] – “Asheville is reeling from the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which has unleashed catastrophic flooding across the region. Despite its status as a would-be “climate haven,” Asheville received enough rainfall in just a few days to fill Lake Tahoe, leaving bridges washed out, homes destroyed, and many people still unaccounted for. Preliminary studies suggest that human-caused warming significantly amplified the storm’s impact. One analysis found that the extreme rainfall in Georgia and the Carolinas was made up to 20 times more likely by human-caused climate change, while another indicated that the storm was 20 percent wetter than it would have been otherwise. This disaster has swept away the myth of “climate havens” while highlighting a fundamental reality: in an era of crisis and catastrophe, we need each other to survive. This week, I spoke to several Asheville-based activists and organizers about the struggles they’re facing, and how mutual aid is enabling collective survival in storm-ravaged communities.” Mutual Aid to the rescue, yet again.
Inside Iron Mountain: It’s Time to Talk About Hard Drives [mixonline] – “When people in the 1990s started producing music using DAWs, the entire workflow became digital, from writing to demo to tracking and mixing, but there’s a potential challenge there, years later, for anyone trying to find the complete and final master. “What if somebody brought something in on an Akai MPX [sampler] and they didn’t fly those tracks in, they triggered them?” Koszela asks. “Did the samples ever get copied to a master hard drive? And if they did, are they labeled?”” A nice summary of the digital media storage conundrum.
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction [disconnect] – “But there was a political angle to this too. Conservatives have long claimed the mainstream press holds a “liberal bias,” and they’ve used that claim as a cudgel to consistently push major outlets to legitimize more and more extreme right-wing perspectives over the course of several decades. As social media rose and became politically important, they saw the opportunity to use that same strategy once again, claiming the platforms suppressed conservative voices and used the combined power of right-wing media and congressional authority to push executives to make decisions that benefited right-wing users and narratives.” Fcuk Zcuk.
New NIAID Director Scared of Masks | Julia Doubleday [substack] – “Watching people get infected and die during a pandemic is certainly traumatizing. But…masks didn’t do that. SARS-COV-2 did. The same virus you’re spreading when you refuse to acknowledge and mitigate it, despite being well-aware of the long-term and cumulative harms of continual reinfections. By claiming the mask is triggering your trauma by reminding you of COVID, you are essentially saying that you exist in a state of utter denial that COVID currently surrounds you.” The mask shaming will get even worse with Trump and RFK junior minor.
Disaster Compassion is Real in North Carolina | Killjoy [substack] – “Mutual aid looks mostly like meetings, spreadsheets, Signal loops (group messages), wellness checks, and deliveries. Deliveries by car, by truck, by ATV, by dirt bike, by pack mule, by helicopter, by foot. Neighbors who don’t even like each other are knocking on each other’s doors and making sure everyone has what they need.” Report from the ground from a girl with a van.
Eat, Pray, Pollute [truthdig] – “It happened with COVID,” said Pardo, and “happened before that with a terrorist attack and before that with a volcanic explosion in Iceland.” And it will happen, sooner or later, because of the climate crisis and unleashed geopolitical chaos. “Better than keeping on the tourism wheel, which smashes lives, territory and environment, let’s plan a transition process for Barcelona which reduces this risky dependence,” Pardo said. “How? Not easy to say, since nobody is trying that almost anywhere.” Fuck tourism, this ersatz-colonial bullshit needs to end.
Wasteland Warriors [in these times] – “The wholesale sacrifice of entire communities should be unfathomable. And yet, after decades of virtually unchecked capitalist pillage, America’s sacrifice zones are not extreme outliers. They are, in fact, a harrowing model of the future if the corporate monsters, corporate politicians and Wall Street vampires responsible are not stopped.” Capitalism must end. No way around it. And i have just the idea what could replace it. But no one asks me.
[Articles German/French]
Stehen Google-Ingenieure in Zürich im Söldnerdienst für Israel? [republik] – “Die Aktivisten innerhalb des Google-Konzerns setzen indes auf gewerkschaftlichen Widerstand, um das Business mit der israelischen Armee zu stoppen. Auch hier spielte Zürich jüngst eine wichtige Rolle: Im Juni 2024 fand die «Google Global Alliance» statt, zu der Google-Angestellte aus der ganzen Welt nach Zürich reisten, um die Themen zu besprechen, die sie bewegen.” The employers protests get ignored. Impunity.
In Deutschland ist das jüdische politische Denken geregelt [ak analyse & kritik] – “Politische Vielfalt und auch Streit sind dem Judentum inhärent. Hierzulande wird diese Meinungsvielfalt jedoch eingeschränkt – oft ausgerechnet im Namen des Kampfes gegen Antisemitismus” How Jewish voices critical of Israel get silenced in Germany. Of all places. Wow. Slow clap. Learn much from your history?
Adania Shibli: Das Buch als Feind [woz] – “Die palästinensische Autorin Adania Shibli erhielt für ihr Buch «Eine Nebensache» 2023 den LiBeraturpreis. Nach dem Massaker der Hamas vom 7. Oktober 2023 wurde die geplante Preisverleihung im Rahmen der Frankfurter Buchmesse auf unbestimmte Zeit verschoben. Hier die nie gehaltene Preisrede der Autorin.” And you published it almost a year later, what courage, dear WoZ.
In mindestens 26 Schweizer Seen liegt Armee-Munition [srf] – “Die Munitionsfabriken und die Armee haben seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Tausende Tonnen von Munition versenkt. Kistenweise wurde die Munition über Bord geworfen. Über Jahrzehnte war dies eine gängige Entsorgungsmethode für überzählige oder fehlerhafte Munition. Tief unter dem Wasser würden die Granaten keinen Schaden anrichten, so der Gedanke damals.” Explosive lakes, i can’t even believe what idiots we are on this planet.
Mithu Sanyal: «Was wir nicht wissen, können wir nicht erkennen» [woz] – “In meinen Augen sind diese Vorwürfe total unspezifisch. Es gibt nicht «die» Postcolonial Studies, das ist ein ganzer Wissenschaftszweig. Häufig arbeitet dieser sogar eng mit der Antisemitismusforschung zusammen. Ich finde zum Beispiel die Arbeit des Holocaustforschers Michael Rothberg zu multidirektionalem Erinnern total wichtig. Wir nehmen keiner Opfergruppe etwas weg, wenn wir auch andere Opfer anerkennen. Ganz im Gegenteil kann es Empathie auch über politische Grenzlinien verstärken.” Not a huge fan of this author, but in this interview she does make some important points.
Essay: Unerträgliche Gleichzeitigkeit [woz] – “Ein Jahr später, viele Geiseln leben nicht mehr, Zehntausende tote Palästinenser:innen – keine der publizierten Zahlen wird dem Grauen gerecht – und kein Ende in Sicht. Pogrome und Vertreibungen in der Westbank. Jetzt der Libanon. Zerstörte Existenzen, Familien werden auseinandergerissen, Verwundete, Versehrte. Hunderttausende in die Flucht Geschlagene, aber wohin? Von «Kollateralschäden» spricht die israelische Armee. Die Grausamkeit spiegelt sich in der Sprache. Eine Sprache, die auf Entmenschlichung zielt.” This article does offer the yes/and approach that Mushon Zer-Aviv has suggested. We have to both condemn what Israel is doing and defend its right to exist.
[Older articles, still great]
Femicide / Femizid / Feminizid: Sprechen wir über dasselbe? [goethe.de] – “Wenn Fälle von Feminizid nicht mehr als Vorwürfe gegen den Staat, sondern als geschlechtsbezogene Morde an Frauen (also als Femicide oder Femizid) verstanden werden, geht ihr spezifischer politischer Gehalt verloren. Für die Staaten, die von der internationalen Justiz als verantwortlich für die Straflosigkeit von Femiziden identifiziert wurden, ermöglicht die Einstufung von Femizid als “gewöhnliches Verbrechen”, den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit von der staatlichen Verantwortung auf die spezifischen Verbrechen zu verlagern.” Feminizid it is then. Not sure if this debate makes sense in the anglo sphere, where they always use femicide.
Elite Panic vs. the Resilient Populace [commentary magazine] – “Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies don’t just waste resources, one study notes; they also “undermine the public’s capacity for resilient behaviors.” In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.” I totally forgot where this article was mentioned. But it’s great.
R.I.P.
[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: rss) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]
Header Photo: Just some butternuts hanging out in the sun