Name: Downstream: The Moral Crisis in Corporate Britain w/ Dave Ward by Novara Media
Duration: 48 min 21 s
Description: In the middle of a grave cost of living crisis, bosses at Royal Mail, BT and elsewhere are imposing pay increases on workers way below inflation. On Downstream, Aaron Bastani speaks to CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about corporate greed, the shadowy world of CEOs, the return of the working class and how he plans to coordinate direct action beyond his union’s own disputes.

In the middle of a grave cost of living crisis, bosses at Royal Mail, BT and elsewhere are imposing pay increases on workers way below inflation. On Downstream, Aaron Bastani speaks to CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about corporate greed, the shadowy world of CEOs, the return of the working class and how he plans to coordinate direct action beyond his union’s own disputes.

Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

Downstream: The Moral Crisis in Corporate Britain w/ Dave Ward

A sociological analysis of capitalist criminality and the imperial US deep state, based on the concepts of the "higher immorality" and "crackpot realism," introduced by scholar C. Wright Mills in his book "The Power Elite."

This is PART 9 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Ben Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxcyvUfrXsc

You can support American Exception at https://patreon.com/americanexception

'Higher immorality' of US ruling class: Criminality of capitalist elites (with historian Aaron Good)

In October 1922, fascists came to power in the March on Rome. 25,000 Blackshirts swarmed through the streets and the King invited their leader — Benito Mussolini — to form a cabinet. Now, almost exactly a century later, Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) is about to become the next Prime Minister of Italy. She has praised Mussolini in the past.

This time, there are no squadristi in the streets, but many have still been hearing the echoes of Italy's dark past. Is the comparison with fascism warranted? Or are we seeing something more ambiguous take shape — the gradual radicalisation of an existing right bloc?

In this week’s episode of Novara FM, David Broder takes Aaron Bastani on a deep dive into the Italian far right — and explains what its mutations might mean for the rest of us.

Novara Audio: Radio For A Different Politics

Novara FM: Time to Say the F-Word? w/ David Broder

On Sunday, the World Cup kicks off in Qatar. How did a tiny dictatorship with a dismal human rights record, deadly summer temperatures and barely any football infrastructure end up hosting the world's biggest tournament? And what's a leftwing fan going to do about it?

Keir Milburn (Leeds United) and Tom Williams (Southampton) tackle the controversy in Pro Revolution Soccer – a five-part podcast series launching on 18 November. Tune in every Friday for expert guests and political punditry you won't find anywhere else. 

Head to novara.media/football for more.
Music by Matt Huxley. Produced by Chal Ravens.

Pro Revolution Soccer: Coming 18 November

The NYPD Gang Database profiles communities of color, Cleveland's mayor breaks a campaign promise for community control of police, and a conversation on which protests are considered legitimate, and which are not.

Black Agenda Radio December 2, 2022

Jeremy Gilbert returns to PTO for the final part of our conversation on his new book, co-authored with Alex Williams, Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (and How We Win it back). In this part of our conversation we talked about some of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's key concepts, including the assemblage and multiplicity, and how their ideas inform Jeremy and Alex's understanding of political change and left strategy.

Hegemony Now (part three) - w/ Jeremy Gilbert

It's not a matter of life and death – it's much more important. Football elicits some of the most intense emotions we're capable of feeling, from the hug-a-stranger joy of winning trophies to the phone-in misery of relegation. At the end of the day, it's only a game – but maybe games are more important than we think.

To discuss the emotional and social meaning of football, Keir and Tom are joined by writer, filmmaker and Clapton CFC centre-forward Juliet Jacques. They also speak to Novara's labour movement correspondent Polly Smythe about the trade union leader who's become an unlikely cheerleader for the Qatari government.

Keep up with Pro Revolution Soccer, the football podcast that doesn’t leave politics at the turnstile, every Friday until the World Cup final.

Produced by Chal Ravens. Music by Matt Huxley. Design by Pietro Garrone.

Pro Revolution Soccer Ep 4: Why Do We Love Football So Much?

What is it about Twitter that turns us into such objectionable creatures? What has social media done to the language we use and the way we interact with each other? Ash Sarkar talks to Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine, about the state of social media: tweets, memes, grief trolling, outrage porn, duckface, Spidermen and Jorts the Cat. Could our urge to tweet be diverted towards a more politically useful kind of writing?

Downstream: Twitter's Toxic Downfall w/ Richard Seymour

In this episode of Geopolitical Economy Hour, economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss inflation: what it is, what causes it, and what are the problems in how the Federal Reserve and other central banks respond to it.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZbB0jjDTM

Transcript here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/27/inflation-economists-radhika-desai-michael-hudson

What causes inflation? Economists Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson explain

We are joined by Abeba Birhane — Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation — for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI. We also get into the excellent work that Abeba and colleagues have done mapping the specific values encoded into, and the surveillance pipeline that influences, the vast majority of AI/ML research. 

••• Abeba’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Abebab
••• Abeba’s paper – The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3531146.3533083 

Stuff we referenced
••• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI will reshape society, acknowledges risks: 'A little bit scared of this' https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ai-reshape-society-acknowledges/story?id=97897122 
••• GPT-4 Technical Report https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf
••• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
••• The Sparks of AGI? Or the End of Science? https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-sparks-of-agi-or-the-end-of-science
••• GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/gpt-4-and-professional-benchmarks

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

243. GPT-4 and the Politics of OpaqueAI (ft. Abeba Birhane)

Dimitri and Khalid return to the Grotto of Truth Discord to answer more acolyte questions, starting with whether the mysterious 2002 plane crash of Senator Paul Wellstone was murder, and whether the East German Stasi practice of Zersetzung (psychological disintegration) bears any similarities to the purported “targeted individual”/gangstalking phenomenon in the US today.

Music:
Pop Projekt - Pop Projekt (GDR, 1987)
Immortal Technique - The Cause of Death (USA, 2003)
Karat - Jede Stunde (GDR, 1982)

For access to full-length Patreon episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the SJ Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe to the Al-Wara’ Frequency at patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Downstream: The Moral Crisis in Corporate Britain w/ Dave Ward

Novara Media

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