Abby Martin's Empire Update wraps up the last weeks in US imperialism: Possible military expansion in Kenya, Army re-focus on fighting over the North Pole, Biden's obscene military budget, Yemen hunger strike, major Cuba policy announcement, and a historic pro-Palestine bill in Congress. 

Get EXCLUSIVE Empire Files content, and keep us independent & ad-free, at https://www.patreon.com/empirefiles​

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Empire Update w/ Abby Martin: Arctic War, Aid to Israel Challenge, Army VR Money Pit

A podcast about the internet, hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman.  From Gimlet Media.  Coming soon. 

Reply All Mic Test

Amber, Will and Chris talk to A. Savage, vocalist and guitarist for the rock and roll band Parquet Courts. 

Pick up their new album, Wide Awake!, here: https://www.roughtrade.com/us/music/parquet-courts-wide-awake

Chapo Trap House

Bonus: Interview with Parquet Courts' A. Savage

“Building a wall won't save America's crumbling middle class,” Elizabeth Warren tells us. “Sanders healthcare will raise taxes on the middle class,” a CNN headline reads. “There’ war on the middle class,” a Boston Globe editorial laments.   

The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.

But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty.

This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center.

Episode 91: It's Time to Retire the Term "Middle Class"

"Economists' forecasts for GDP growth in 2020 vary widely," says The Economist. "Algeria's GDP growth falls to 0.8% in 2019," one Reuters headline reads. "GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — grew at an annual rate of just 1.9% during the third quarter," NPR warns. Everywhere we turn for economic news, the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is held up as the key proxy for prosperity and sound fiscal policy. 

Since its codification as the new gold standard for measuring prosperity at the Bretton Wood conference in 1944, the GDP has been the most popular metric used by American and British media when measure a nation’s prosperity. The GDP, and its close cousin, the Gross National Product, have not been without its critics for decades, but prying it from its top position as The Most Important Policy Goal has been an impossible task. Despite many labor activists, environmentalists and economists leveling critiques at its myopic, capitalist ideology, the metric has remained central to how the media and lawmakers determine fiscal policy. 

But what is the GDP exactly? How did it become the go-to proxy for prosperity in Western media? What are its ideological inputs, and how did post-war notions of colonialism and extractivism helps cement its place in our collective mindset? And what, more importantly, do activists argue we should replace it with? On this episode of Citations Needed we will explore these questions and examine how centralizing Gross Domestic Product––by its very design––obscures climate crisis, labor abuses, racism, drudgery, and a whole host of society's ills. 

We welcome economic anthropologist Dr. Jason Hickel back to the show.

Episode 108: How GDP Fetishism Drives Climate Crisis and Inequality

Look man this episode gets pretty dark. Idk. Here's everything I could find about that Milwuakee house:

https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/watch-milwaukee-crowd-burns-down-suspected-sex-trafficking-house/

https://twitter.com/jonbernhardt/status/1275975081156587520

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2020/06/23/milwaukee-missing-girls-crowd-grows-rumored-sex-trafficking-house-shooting-fire-starts/3246406001/

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/06/23/suspected-sex-trafficking-house-burned/

https://twitter.com/Eugene_V_Dabbs/status/1275549018278379521

https://twitter.com/abcdentminded/status/1275664887725858817

https://fox6now.com/2020/06/23/milwaukee-police-investigate-missing-persons-reports-for-2-girls-ages-15-and-13/

ANYWAYS

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The People Under The Damn Stairs

A lot of you have some body pillows to throw away that's all I'm saying SMDH

Z 023 - The Claspers of Fate

Filmmaker and Twitter personality Rob Reiner looked back at the Kennedy/Johnson era through the lens of the Obama era in LBJ (2016), the story of how an idealist's vision can only be achieved by a pragmatism... and how the pragmatist's centrism may or may not have actually camouflaged an idealist the whole time. A piece of Boomer-porn, this movie is unmistakably the vision of a Joe Biden primary voter. PLUS: fiery hot thoughts on the Canadian Conservative Party leadership race, the Ed Markey/Joe Kennedy III battle, and the controversial release of TENET.

Michael and Us

#168 - The Centrist Manifesto

wow finally a fucking good movie

www.patreon.com/generationloss

075 // Shooter (2007)

Drew Kaufman from the famous 2 Minutes 2 Late Night rock and roll program is here to tell you facts about Hitler's train. Also Goku goes Super Saiyan if that is important to you

Z 047 - Beast Mode Wars w/ Drew Kaufman

That was too close! We were almost a Podcast sandwich!

This is the real wrap up to our Resident Evil mini-series! We talk about the Resident Evil gaming experience with Kyle and Kay from All Gamers are Bastards. If you want to check out part one fo this conversation, you can catch it on their podcast!

History may be over, but discussing Resident Evil with us on Twitter never is! twitter.com/HorrorVanguard

You can support the show for less than the cost of replacing all podcasting infrastructure with a complicated network of psychic mold on our Patreon page: www.patreon.com/horrorvanguard

133 - Resident Evil Video Games With All Gamers Are Bastards

A show about the internet, hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman.  From Gimlet.