Clarification on anti-Semitism
I asked here (An apology) why the evil financiers are almost always Jews. This prompted an email from someone saying that it sounded like anti-Semitism. It was most certainly not. It was an ironic (and apparently not successfully so) question about how conspiracy types so often flirt (or worse) with anti-Semitism. Also, a lot of populist critiques of finance traffic in covert or overt anti-Semitism. I should resurrect an old polemic on that topic and post it here soon. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.
Yanis Varoufakis on austerity
Not only is he an economist, he’s now master of his own domain! Yanis Varoufakis on austerity: Cutting our noses to spite our faces.
An apology
I am so sorry that I did not know earlier, when I made a little joke about Wikileaks and 9/11, that Julian Assange had professed himself “annoyed” by the Truthers, causing them to denounce Assange as a tool of the CIA, the Rothschilds, Goldman Sachs, and George Soros. (Why are the evil financiers almost always Jews?) More here: 9/11 skeptics say Julian Assange being manipulated by the CIA.
Me on Russia Today TV
Here I am, debating the right again—this time two of them: another Schiff and “investor” Jim Rogers, who somehow gets all the headline credit. Lots of shouting and crosstalk, in line with the show’s name. CrossTalk: Socialism for the Rich (ft. Jim Rogers).
WikiLeaks: so much in the open
Looking over this latest batch of WikiLeaks, I’m struck by how few surprises there are, and by how much of importance goes on pretty much in the open. An attentive reader of the news with a decent knowledge of history basically knows most of this stuff already. I don’t mean this in the sense in which the bourgeois press is using it—by using the epithet “old news” to dismiss the significance of the revelations. What they want to dismiss is the truth that the U.S. (like most other nation–states, though they’re not… Read More
New radio product
Now up on my radio archives (explanatory links at original): November 27, 2010 Paul Street on the Tea Party, the dismalness of the Dems, and Obama’s elegant personal fit with that dismalness • Cordelia Fine, author of the excellent Delusions of Gender, on how all those claims of biological roots to differences between men & women are nonsense November 20, 2010 Monica Potts, author of this article, on (the lack of) green jobs • Yanis Varoufakis, author of this article, on a better way to do a eurozone bailout
Pacifica hires anti-union law firm
Pacifica laid off the Morning Show staff at KPFA allegedly because of a budget crisis—and they hire an expensive corporate law firm to deal with the consequences. How community broadcasting of them! Read all about it here.
Demented press release of the day
This just in. Gosh, sometimes I wish I lived in their fantasy world… Plenty to be Thankful for… if you’re Big Labor Doug, Who has more for which to be thankful this year, small businesses or Big Labor? The failure of Big Labor to move it’s job-killing Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act through Congress despite naming it a top agenda item is certainly on businesses’ list. Still, small businesses and workers are struggling to make ends meet as labor bosses continue to work to force unionization on workers to pocket union dues and… Read More
Gary Null nearly killed by own product
Someone posted this news to the comments, so I had to find out if it was true. Yes, it is true—Gary Null nearly died from consuming one of his products. Null is suing the manufacturer for negligence, specifically for allegedly including 1,000 times the recommended dosage of vitamin D. When Null first got sick, he consumed more of the stuff, hoping it would make him better. While he was suffering, his phone was ringing off the hook with complaints from irate consumers. At first, Null’s website denied anything was wrong. When a… Read More
Health lunacy: Adorno helps out
[This was originally part of this radio commentary, but I’ve posted it separately here.] And now a bit more Pacifica arcana, though that’s only the taking-off point. WBAI, the New York station where this program ran for 15 years until the interim program director decided to cut its frequency, has brought back health guru Gary Null to do a daily noontime show. Null was fired several years ago because of a personality conflict with an earlier program director. He really made the phones ring at pledging time, and his departure was financially damaging… Read More
Radio commentary, November 20, 2010
Stumbling recovery continues • bourgeois theories of unemployment • who gets UI? • how the StimPak helped • models for budget-cutting [The commentary also included an analysis of health lunacy, which I’ve posted separately.] stumbling along The U.S. economy continues its stumbling recovery. On Thursday, we learned that first-time applications for unemployment insurance, filed by people who’d just lost their jobs, rose slightly last week after falling decently the previous week—a fall that exactly reversed the rise of the previous week. The four-week moving average, which smoothes out the weekly volatility in… Read More
Letter on Null’s denialism: please read and act!
Since comments on this “blog” don’t get Tweeted and such, I wanted to point out two comments from George Carter of The Foundation for Integrative AIDS Research, and organization that sponsors clinical trials of alternative therapies for HIV/AIDS. Unlike Null’s ludicrous and dangerous HIV denialism, FIAR supports conventional therapies, but also sees great supplementary value in more “natural” approaches. This seems like an eminently sensible position, but apparently not sensationalist enough to appeal to the loons in the Null set. Carter’s first post outlines his position, and makes the point that HIV denialists, who… Read More
Pacifica death watch (cont.): Gary Null edition
Why care? Perhaps the wider world does not share my interest in the internal goings-on at Pacifica. I do have a personal interest. I grew up listening to WBAI and it helped make me who I am, for what that’s worth. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was an exciting and lively thing that showed a kid growing up in the intellectual wasteland of suburban New Jersey that there was a fascinating world out there. It not only featured radical politics (of all kinds—the coverage of the early gay movement was… Read More
Thank you!
I want to thank everyone who offered me support—and who wrote to the management of WBAI and Pacifica—during my radio travails of the last couple of weeks. It was really touching. And it persuaded me to keep going, even if I had to separate myself from the rot and madness of WBAI. Given the upheaval at KPFA, I can’t be sure how long things will go on there. But I’m exploring various options with some sympathetic and excellent colleagues.
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on November 27, 2010 by Doug Henwood
Radio commentary, November 27, 2010
Eurocrisis: bondholders need a haircut • how Ireland helps Google pay almost no taxes • Germany must screw periphery because it’s screwed its own workers All Eurocrisis today. I never thought I’d be saying this, but it must be conceded that Angela Merkel has a point or two. Not the way the German chancellor and many of her fellow Germans want to drive Greece, Ireland, and the other troubled countries on the periphery of Europe through the austerity wringer. Not that. But this: Merkel thinks that bondholders should take a hit. And… Read More