"If Alexis de Tocqueville ... were transported into the present, the authors imagine, this is what he would see: an inordinate and grotesque segregation of the population by class; an economy ruled by corporate monopolies, gaining ever-greater power through mergers and acquisitions; workers powerless to negotiate for themselves amid the suppression of labor unions; and reckless corporate managers whose only aim is to make money for their shareholders, acting with little or no regard for any public interest. He would see the transmutation of corporate financial power into inordinate political power, undermining the machinery of democracy and leading to a pervading disillusionment among the citizenry"
"In the early 1970s, the Italian government began to devolve many of its powers down to the local level; [...] sought to determine which parts of Italy were adapting best to the new challenge. [...] political systems in the south were vertical in nature—extremely top-down—whereas Italian cities in the north distributed power more horizontally—which is also to say, much more democratically. Putnam called the arrangements he found in northern Italy the “civic community.”
"they also trace a decline beginning in the 1970s. [...] it was not Ronald Reagan who brought the long period of liberal rule to an abrupt halt, but rather the baby-boomers of the 1960s who, turning from the communitarian idealism of the early part of the decade toward a more self-oriented direction, set off a chain reaction that ended up blowing the whole Progressive-liberal order to smithereens."
This article is very much liberal (and it shows everytime they talk about socialism), but still interesting enough.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159276/the-upswing-book-review-robert-putnam-shaylyn-romney-garrett
"In the early 1970s, the Italian government began to devolve many of its powers down to the local level; [...] sought to determine which parts of Italy were adapting best to the new challenge. [...] political systems in the south were vertical in nature—extremely top-down—whereas Italian cities in the north distributed power more horizontally—which is also to say, much more democratically. Putnam called the arrangements he found in northern Italy the “civic community.”
"they also trace a decline beginning in the 1970s. [...] it was not Ronald Reagan who brought the long period of liberal rule to an abrupt halt, but rather the baby-boomers of the 1960s who, turning from the communitarian idealism of the early part of the decade toward a more self-oriented direction, set off a chain reaction that ended up blowing the whole Progressive-liberal order to smithereens."
This article is very much liberal (and it shows everytime they talk about socialism), but still interesting enough.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159276/the-upswing-book-review-robert-putnam-shaylyn-romney-garrett
The New Republic
From I to We
Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s vision for a new civic community
"Two “red years” of strikes in 1919–20 known as the “biennio rosso” had horrified Italian bankers, industrialists, and landowners; their response was to finance the recently formed fascist paramilitary troops to destroy the powerful labor movement."
"The Italians used industrial killing methods (mustard gas) that are more commonly associated with Hitler’s and Stalin’s soldiers than with Mussolini’s rank and file . . . Indeed, the slaughter in Ethiopia was so out-of-keeping with the Italians’ self-perception as the more “humane” dictatorship that it has been edited out of popular and official memory. Until 1995, the Italian government and former combatants . . . denied the use of gas in East Africa.
On December 23, 1935 the Italians dropped barrels that broke up upon hitting the ground . . . projecting a colorless liquid . . . and a military officer comments, “a few hundred of my men were hit, their feet, their hands, their faces, were covered with blisters . . . I did not know how to fight this rain that burned and killed” . . . By the end of January, 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were systematically sprayed with gas."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/mussolini-italo-ethiopian-war-fascism-salvemini/
"The Italians used industrial killing methods (mustard gas) that are more commonly associated with Hitler’s and Stalin’s soldiers than with Mussolini’s rank and file . . . Indeed, the slaughter in Ethiopia was so out-of-keeping with the Italians’ self-perception as the more “humane” dictatorship that it has been edited out of popular and official memory. Until 1995, the Italian government and former combatants . . . denied the use of gas in East Africa.
On December 23, 1935 the Italians dropped barrels that broke up upon hitting the ground . . . projecting a colorless liquid . . . and a military officer comments, “a few hundred of my men were hit, their feet, their hands, their faces, were covered with blisters . . . I did not know how to fight this rain that burned and killed” . . . By the end of January, 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were systematically sprayed with gas."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/mussolini-italo-ethiopian-war-fascism-salvemini/
Jacobinmag
How Italy’s Colonial War in Ethiopia Foreshadowed the Barbarism of World War II
The Booker Prize shortlisting of Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King is the latest sign of rising interest in Fascist Italy’s colonial war in Ethiopia. The genocidal violence perpetrated against Ethiopians in 1935–6 was soon turned back onto European soil —…
"A bombshell report released last week by the RAND Corporation revealed an astonishing upward redistribution of $47 trillion from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent between 1975 and 2018. In their paper, authors Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards argued that if the country’s economic gains over that time period had been distributed as they were in the postwar era—that is, prior to the explosion of a bipartisan free market mania that slashed taxes, hobbled unions, and eviscerated public programs—median worker pay today would be about twice what it is."
https://newrepublic.com/article/159478/rich-people-hilariously-freaked-biden-presidency
https://newrepublic.com/article/159478/rich-people-hilariously-freaked-biden-presidency
The New Republic
Some Rich People Are Hilariously Freaked Out About a Biden Presidency
The mere prospect of a Democratic president nominally meddling with their plunder has generated anxiety among the wealthy. Poor things.
Forwarded from The Black Lives Revolution (BLM)
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/25/surveillance-sim-cloning-protests-protect-phone/ #SimLock #InfoSec #OpSec #Security
The Intercept
One Way to Prevent Police From Surveilling Your Phone
You can add a PIN code to your phone’s SIM card in order to prevent police from cloning it.
#video (very much socdem, but still, you can show it to liberals and conservatives)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDK2chgNPZM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDK2chgNPZM
YouTube
Ted Turner asks Carl Sagan if he is a socialist.
Interviewed in 1989, Carl Sagan describes in eloquent fashion how "socialism" is simply having a government that cares for its people.
I wake every day to this, by Marge Piercy
Cruelty seems to win votes.
The shouter is heard. The whisperer
shot to silence. Words turn
to worms and wriggle in our food.
We live in times dangerous
to butterflies, polar bears and us—
the 99% who don’t count.
I bathe in cold fear each dawn.
The news is a rabid bat.
Government is a deadly virus.
There’s no refuge from slow
murder by the state, pollution,
toxins on our plates, plastics
in our blood. Fast murder
by police. The ocean wants
to kill us for poisoning it.
We are a pox upon the earth.
Bees sing repent! Change
before we all die. Do you want
an earth where cockroaches rule?
source
Cruelty seems to win votes.
The shouter is heard. The whisperer
shot to silence. Words turn
to worms and wriggle in our food.
We live in times dangerous
to butterflies, polar bears and us—
the 99% who don’t count.
I bathe in cold fear each dawn.
The news is a rabid bat.
Government is a deadly virus.
There’s no refuge from slow
murder by the state, pollution,
toxins on our plates, plastics
in our blood. Fast murder
by police. The ocean wants
to kill us for poisoning it.
We are a pox upon the earth.
Bees sing repent! Change
before we all die. Do you want
an earth where cockroaches rule?
source
Monthly Review
Monthly Review | I wake every day to this
A new poem by Marge Piercy.
"Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.""
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
History News Network
The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in the quest for a co-called "Master Race," and IBM aided and abetted the effort.