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democracynow.org - Libya is experiencing its most intense fighting since the 2011 NATO-backed campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi. On Monday, the Libyan parliament that was replaced in an election in June reconvened and chose an Islamist-backed deputy as the new prime minister. This now leaves Libya with two rival leaders and assemblies, each backed by armed factions. Meanwhile the New York Times has revealed Egypt and the United Arab Emirates launched airstrikes twice in the last week against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli. Despite the strikes, the Islamist militants managed to solidify control of the capital of Tripoli by taking over the main airport. “[The U.S. and NATO] bombed the country and opened the door for the different militias to now compete against each other,” says Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College. “So the day Gaddafi was killed, from then onwards, the militias have basically been at each other’s throats.”

Vijay Prashad: 2011 NATO Bombing of Libya Led to Rise of Militias Now Fighting for Oil-Rich Land

Vijay Prashad speaks on the United States economic system to Occupy Boston on October 23, 2011.

Vijay Prashad at Occupy Boston

Welcome to SoundRead, the weekly books podcast of Hindustan Times, where  we discuss issues and news on books, publishing and the world at large.  Our inaugural podcast discusses the idea of dystopia in different cultures, and looks at such classics of the genre as English novelist George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984.

SoundRead: HT Books Podcast on dystopian fiction

The first episode of Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson's podcast, Citations Needed, tackles media hype surrounding the privatization of education.

Show notes can be found here:

2010 tax form for Participant Foundation used to fund Waiting for Superman (note: four donors-- Waltons, Eli Broad, Donald Fisher, Dave Einhorn): http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/261/261292762/261292762_201106_990PF.pdf
Gates $2 million contribution to film https://web.archive.org/web/20101016004049/https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Grants-2010/Pages/Participant-Media-LLC-OPP1019819.aspx

The economic, pro-Wall Street origins of charter schools: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/04/why-hedge-funds-love-charter-schools/

Guest Jennifer Berkshire’s blog: 
http://haveyouheardblog.com/
Guest Jennifer berkshire’s articles: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/tips-391 
http://www.salon.com/writer/jennifer_berkshire/ 

Books mentioned by Berkshire: The One Percent Solution https://www.amazon.com/One-Percent-Solution-Corporations-Remaking/dp/1501703064

New Orleans graduation rate stats article from 2014 by Adam http://citationsneeded.com/2014/05/24/charter-schools-katrina-memory-hole/

Harlem Children Zone original board: 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cq8wM7cWgAAUfHN.jpg

Further reading:


http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/turnover-charter-school-plague-article-1.3272954

https://newrepublic.com/article/140319/charter-schools-good-bad-black-students

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/11/11/myth-charter-schools/

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/01/vote-no-charter-schools

https://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/25/the-charter-school-hype-and-how-it-s-managed/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/26/the-future-of-charter-schools/

http://www.alternet.org/education/how-charter-schools-are-undermining-future-public-education

https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/03/10/i-was-a-charter-school-teacher/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPACwRgw04

Episode 01 : The Charter School Scam

In the second episode of Citations Needed, Nima and Adam breakdown the history and present "crisis" on the Korean peninsula.

Episode 02: The North Korea Memory Hole

Episode 03: The Rise of Superpredator 2.0

Episode 3 is about the media narrative surrounding the rise of so-called “gang raids” that have exploded over the past three years. These high-stakes, headline-grabbing spectacles target, almost exclusively, black and brown people and are carried out by hundreds of local, state, and federal officials with little scrutiny from the media. 

Our guest: Josmar Trujillo, a Harlem-based organizer, writer, trainer, and agitator.

See show notes here: https://goo.gl/JeXczy

Episode 03: The Rise of Superpredator 2.0

Iran, Iraq, and the New York Times’ Master Class in Reality Inversion.

In this episode we dissect the true history of what caused chaos in Iraq, who’s to blame and what the real motives were behind the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations designs for the country. All this in the context of a battle for control over remaining ISIS territory in Syria and Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv’s desire to stop the dreaded “Shia crescent”.

Show notes: https://goo.gl/zcGHvd

Episode 04: Iran - The Root of All Evil

On Episode 5, we explore the history of the media erasing socialists of color from the history books and present day discourse––a tactic that serves to both commodity and water-down black radicalism and pawn off leftwing politics as a uniquely white or middle class enterprise.

Our guests: Robert Greene II and Roqayah Chamseddine.

Show notes: https://goo.gl/QPYT7C

Episode 05: Purging Socialists of Color From History

In Episode 7 we explore how the media discusses the issue of BDS and the broader topic of Palestinian liberation.

Show notes: https://goo.gl/U4rCac

Episode 07: BDS & the Moral Narratives of Colonization

We discuss the cynical use of Human Rights to advance US interests with guest Glenn Greenwald. 

The conceit that the U.S. has been a dedicated and earnest promoter of “freedom”, “democracy,” and “human rights” throughout the world — even if, at times, a “flawed” one — is a defining narrative, largely taken for granted by major media. But how accurate is this assumption? What do we mean when we talk about human rights? What abuses are highlighted and which aren’t? Where do labor rights fit into the broader discussion of human rights?

On this episode of Citations Needed, we attempt to parse some of these complex questions and how they fit into a broader discussions of soft power and war.

Episode 08: The Human Rights Concern Troll Industrial Complex

“Insane”, “crazy”, “totally fucking nuts”–Trump’s mental capacity is the subject of much speculation, joke-making, and earnest concern. But how should the subject be approached by the media?

On this week’s show we explore the ethics of diagnosing mental health from afar, the conflation of mental health issues with moral turpitude, the negative effects of the media’s nonstop stigmatizing of “insanity” and how to balance all of the above in the face of the unique threat of Trump. With guests s.e. smith and Dr. Dean Burnett.

Episode 10: Ableism and the Ethics of Calling Trump “Crazy”

The idea that we’re “running out of money” and have to “tighten our belts" is a common trope in US media; the premise that the US government is like a household that must balance its books, largely taken for granted by liberal and right-wing outlets alike.

But is this premise correct? Is it true that the United States is over-budget and ready to explode with insolvency? Where does this conventional wisdom come from and whom does it benefit? 

On this and next week's show we seek to answer some of the questions. In Part I: Single Payer Propaganda War, we examine the primary talking points against Single Payer and other big government programs and how to combat them with guest Stephanie Kelton.

Ep 11, Part I: The Deficits Racket -- Single-Payer Propaganda War

Joining me for a special segment of the Very Bad Leftists Club is Irish author Frankie Gaffney. We talk about MMA superstar Connor Mcgregor, identity politics and socialist strategy, and Frankie’s education in the school of hard knocks. 

Check out Frankie’s latest work of fiction, DUBLIN SEVEN, which is receiving rave reviews from the critics: https://www.amazon.com/Dublin-Seven-Frankie-Gaffney/dp/1910742112

  Read some of Gaffney’s political writings here:  -https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/identity-politics-is-utterly-ineffective-at-anything-other-than-dividing-people-1.3087639
-http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/known-to-gardai-2716572-Dec2016/  

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Ep. 36: The Very Bad Leftists Club w/ Frankie Gaffney

The term "welfare" is thrown around so casually in political speeches and media coverage we hardly notice it anymore. CNN reports that “GOP will tackle Medicare, Medicaid, welfare in 2018," while The Washington Post insists that “Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill.” CBS News tells viewers that “Washington eyes welfare reform."

But what do these outlets and the Republican Party actually mean when they talk about "welfare"? What programs are they referring to? The exact definition of "welfare" – which supposedly ended over 20 years ago – remains unclear. 

While the word "welfare" and the welfare state has a positive connotation in Europe, in the United States it's more often than not a malleable propaganda term meant to dog whistle programs for African-Americans and Latinos while signaling to whites that their checks and corporate handouts will remain untouched.

In this episode, we dig into the racist history of anti-welfare crusades, the political purpose of pathologizing poverty, and the meaninglessness of phrases like "welfare reform," with guest Sarah Jaffe.

Episode 26: The 'Welfare' Dog-Whistle

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two-state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it.

Transcript: https://medium.com/@CitationsPodcst/episode-28-the-asymptotic-two-state-solution-part-i-e13e795ebc9d

But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza? 

In Part I of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Professor Noura Erakat.

(Post image by Hamde Abu Rahma)

Episode 28: The Asymptotic 'Two State Solution' (Part I)

This is Part II of our exploration of the so-called "Middle East Peace Process" and "two state solution" for Israel/Palestine. If you haven't yet listened to Part I, please do so here: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-28-the-asymptotic-two-state-solution-part-i

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. 

This "two state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it. 
But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza? 

In Part II of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two state" racket with Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Episode 29: The Asymptotic 'Two State Solution' (Part II)

Fighting against the far right forces of the Republican Party and their auxiliary white supremacist media makes attempts to appropriate notions of nationalism into a liberal mold a compelling short cut for Democrats looking for easy clapbacks and viral RT’s. The temptation to promote a kinder, gentler, "woke" patriotism is understandable.

But what is the collateral damage of this approach? From the justifiably horrified response to mass shootings to the jingoistic worship of all things military, what is the long-term downside of lifting up #VetsForGunControl and retired military brass as a counter to the vulgarity of Trumpism? Can the Left – including liberals – embrace a more holistic and anti-imperialist moral grammar that avoids short cuts and rejects the idea of nationalism altogether?  

We are joined by Maggie Martin, co-director of About Face.

Episode 30: Liberal Media’s Myopic Military Worship

1968 was one of the most seismic years in recent history -- Vietnam, the Prague spring, Black Power at the Olympics and protests on the streets of Paris and London. This interview is part commemoration, part reassessment. What remains of that turbulent time and where can we discern its features in our political landscape today?

Tariq Ali discusses May '68 on BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking, February 2018

Vijay Prashad-The Karma of Uncle Swami

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 29: The Asymptotic 'Two State Solution' (Part II)

Citations Needed Podcast