Name: News Brief: 2000s Zombie Neoliberalism Lives On in Obama's New Netflix Doc by Citations Needed Podcast
Duration: 50 min 57 s
Description: The former President attempts to paper over class conflict and leaves the viewer equal parts manipulated and confused. Joining us is friend of the show Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News.

Obama is the worst that has happened to any kind of left wing that exists now in the US

In this episode: scamming hotels; when touring gets tough; thin profit margins; the brutal real estate market; signing to a label.

Interviews with: Ben Gibbard, Joel Hamilton, and Laura Dean.

Featured tracks: "The New Year" by Death Cab for Cutie, "It Ends With a Fall" by Okkervil River, and "You Were My Fiji" by John Vanderslice.

Keep the Dream Alive Part 2: Damage Control

This week we're joined by University of Chicago professor of history, Gabriel Winant, to discuss the social and political origins of the modern healthcare industry in places like Pittsburgh and Appalachia.

To learn more, you can purchase Gabe's book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Healthcare in Rust Belt America: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238091

And you can always support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 276: Infirmary Blues (w/ special guest Gabriel Winant)

Matt Christman goes off live on http://www.twitch.tv/chapotraphouse
Topics: Banks, Apocalypse

Grill Stream

241 - Armageddon Outta Here! 03.10.23

"Parents fighting schools to protect their kids are heroes, not book-banners," Fox News tells us. Are Privatized Public Libraries So Bad?" asks CityLab. "Huntsville Public Library could be privatized in aftermath of pride display dispute," reports Houston Public Media. 

For decades, public libraries have been under attack. Repeatedly, influential rightwing and centrist individuals, corporations, and governments––from Phyllis Schlafly to Ron DeSantis––have coordinated campaigns to weaken one of the most beloved and least means-tested public institutions in the country. They seek to, at best, restrict the materials, functions, and decision-making power of public libraries, and at worst, destroy public libraries completely, tossing aside the people who depend on them for education, employment, and often survival.

What is it about public libraries that inspires such contempt? What's responsible for the chasm between the US population's perceptions of public libraries––which are overwhelmingly positive––and policymaking that seeks to ruin those libraries? And who suffers when one of the few true public goods left in the US is targeted and seized by reactionary forces?

On this episode, we examine the decades-long right-wing assault on US public libraries, the history of book bans and defunding, attendant efforts to privatize public libraries, and how these intersect with the labor struggles of librarians nationwide.

Our guest is president-elect of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinski.

Episode 179: From Budget Cuts to Book Bans — The Decades-Long Assault on Public Libraries

"Charting a different course in the Vietnam War to fewer deaths and a better end," muses a book review in the Washington Post. "The Vietnam War was begun in good faith, by decent people," a Ken Burns PBS documentary tells us. "The Iraq War Reconsidered," reads a headline from The Atlantic.

Often, especially when an anniversary of a U.S. invasion or withdrawal rolls around, we're told that the devastation wrought by the US war machine was complicated, flawed, but ultimately necessary if not beneficial. Sure, the United States has killed millions, destabilized power structures, wrecked communities and economies, lied about the reasons for doing it all, and drawn the ire of people throughout the world. But, in hindsight, many in U.S. media insists, a horrible act of war from a world superpower wasn't an unequivocal, deliberate, and needless crime against humanity, but somewhere between a misunderstood righteous cause and a bumbling, good faith mistake motivated by humanitarian concerns.

An ideological system of reassurance therefore emerges. Once wars are broadly viewed as either wrong or a "failure" in the popular imagination — as in the case of Vietnam and Iraq — a cottage industry of punditry and pseudo-history emerges in the subsequent years designed to soothe the egos of elites and muddy the waters of both memory and reality for casual media consumers.

Put another way: we all see a dead body on the floor, no one can doubt this. No one can reasonably argue the destruction of Vietnam and Iraq didn't happen. So, this cottage industry springs into action, on behalf of those that caused the death, working to get the guilty party a charge of third degree manslaughter rather than murder. It was an accident, they were mistaken, they had bad intelligence, they were driven by concerns for freedom and human rights.

After all, those who destroyed Vietnam remained in power well into the 2000s. And those who destroyed Iraq currently run our major publications, universities, nonprofits, and think tanks. They still even run the country itself. So the incentive to make sure they all plead guilty to third degree manslaughter rather than first degree murder is tremendous, otherwise, we’re just a country led by war criminals — and this simply cannot be. We need absolution. We must remain, when all is said and done, innocent.

On this week's episode, we’ll explore the war revisionism industry, breaking down five ways in which media seek to sanitize and justify even the most notoriously unpopular and horrific U.S.-led and backed wars — namely Vietnam and Iraq — as unpleasant, imperfect, mistaken, but ultimately incidental byproducts of a noble and righteous empire that, above all, meant well.

Our guest is The Intercept's Jon Schwarz.

Episode 181: US Media's 5 Most Popular Revisionist Tropes About the Iraq and Vietnam Wars

The rest is just waiting.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 291: Rodeo Is Life

"Is artificial intelligence advancing too quickly?" 60 Minutes warns. "BuzzFeed CEO says AI may revolutionize media, fears possible 'dystopian' path," CBS News tells us. "TV and film writers are fighting to save their jobs from AI. They won't be the last," CNN reports.

Over and over, especially in recent months, we hear this line: AI is advancing so fast, growing so sophisticated, and becoming so transformative as to completely reshape the entire economy to say nothing of our shaky media landscape. In some cases, those in the press deem this a good thing; in others, a bad thing but in terms that get the problem all wrong. But virtually all media buy the basic line that something big and transformative isn’t just coming, but is in fact already here.

Obviously, we can't predict the future, but we can comment on the present. Yes, AI platforms can generate low-level marketing copy, pro forma emails, and shitty corporate art. But progress in these capacities does not, as such, portend a radical advancement into actual human intelligence and creativity.

Meanwhile, there’s little to no evidence to support the claim that AI, namely large language models like ChatGPT, actually can perform – or even intervene to save time performing – any type of high-level writing craft, journalism, fiction, screenwriting, and a host of “creative” production.

So why do we keep hearing otherwise? What purpose does this type of religious-like providential thinking serve? And who stands to benefit from the vague sense of a future of AI-written essays, articles, and scripts, no matter how terrible they may be?

In this episode, we explore media's current Inevitability Narrative, namely its credulous warning that ChatGPT is about to do the work of media and entertainment professionals, examining the ways in which this narrative, despite the evidence to the contrary, serves as a constant, implicit threat to workers and a convenient pretext for labor abuses like wage reduction, layoffs, and union-busting. We also review how this media hype works to obscure the very real, banal harms of AI, such as racism, surveillance, over policing and lack of accountability for the powerful.

Our guest is Rutgers professor Dr. Lauren M.E. Goodlad.

Episode 183: AI Hype and the Disciplining of "Creative," Academic, and Journalistic Labor

The former President attempts to paper over class conflict and leaves the viewer equal parts manipulated and confused. Joining us is friend of the show Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News.

News Brief: 2000s Zombie Neoliberalism Lives On in Obama's New Netflix Doc

“New Starbucks CEO plans to pull barista shifts in stores every month,” CNN announces. “Uber’s CEO moonlighted as a driver and it changed the way he operates the company,” Fortune insists. “Your DoorDash driver? He’s the company’s co-founder,” the Associated Press smirks.

Month after month or week after week, we seem to hear the same stories about bold corporate executives who’ve decided to roll up their sleeves—metaphorically or otherwise—and join their lowest-level employees as a delivery driver, barista, or retail worker. Their stated goal: to “stay connected” to and “better understand” the company, its customers, and its workers. 

While these attempts to foster and express empathy may appear noble on the surface, they’re anything but. In reality, the CEO-as-worker stunt is an entirely self-serving project, creating a pretext for worker surveillance and a distraction from labor abuses like poverty wages and union-busting, all the while seeking to convince the public that corporate executives are honest, hardworking folks, Just Like You. 

Today, we will be dissecting the past and present of Undercover Boss-style corporate maneuvers, looking at the ways in which the C-suiter-in-the-trenches routine advances the squishy concept of “empathy” in order to obscure and undermine the material needs and demands of labor. 

Our guest is Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of the Worker's Justice Project, a community-based, workers’ rights organization in New York City.

Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick

For hundreds of years the Rothschild banking family played a central role in conspiracist narratives. In the 19th century the Rothschilds’ massive wealth, war profiteering, connections to powerful governments, and pioneering banking strategies earned them well-deserved scrutiny. But myths about the Rothschilds eventually became a way to promote anti semitic attacks and disguise them as critiques of wealth and power. 

To help us separate fact from myth when it comes to the Rothschild family, we are joined by repeat guest Mike Rothschild (who, despite his name, is not related to the banking dynasty.) In our discussion with his upcoming book, Jewish Space Lasers:  The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories, we cover everything from the origin of anti-semetic canards, how the Rothschilds became a financial force in Europe, the evolution of Rothschild conspiracy theories, and a major 21st century financial scandal involving the Swiss arm of Rothschild & Co.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan,' 'Trickle Down' and 'The Spectral Voyager':

http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

QAA's Website: https://qanonanonymous.com

Music by Pontus Berghe.  Editing by Corey Klotz.

Mike Rothschild on Twitter
https://twitter.com/rothschildmd

Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/733925/jewish-space-lasers-by-mike-rothschild/

REFERENCES

Rothschild family to take Paris-listed investment bank private
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/rothschild-family-plans-take-its-paris-listed-investment-bank-private-2023-02-06/

1MDB: The inside story of the world’s biggest financial scandal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/1mdb-inside-story-worlds-biggest-financial-scandal-malaysia

Episode 243: Jewish Space Lasers feat Mike Rothschild

Did U.S. forces fight and kill a redheaded giant in the Afghan province of Kandahar? Is it possible to connect the dots about the United States’ role in Afghanistan — and the Middle East — without resorting to stories about giants? We answer these questions with Brendan James and Noah Kulwin of the Blowback podcast.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

Blowback: https://blowback.show
Noah Kulwin: https://twitter.com/nkulw
Brendan James: https://twitter.com/deep_beige

Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Episode 250: The Giant of Kandahar feat Noah Kulwin & Brendan James (Blowback Podcast)

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.

News Brief: 2000s Zombie Neoliberalism Lives On in Obama's New Netflix Doc

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