#podcast

*https://roarmag.org/2021/07/20/david-harvey-acc-s03e17/

"I think leftists can learn a great deal from this. Bernie has his flaws and made serious mistakes in both of his presidential campaigns, but he is very good at politics despite his marginal position. If he goes on a talk show, he will be discussing wealth inequality or the future of democracy, even if he is talking to a manchild like Jimmy Fallon. Staying relentlessly on message—and thinking about what topics we want to spend our finite resources and time talking about—is critical to having an effective, persuasive left. It’s easy to lose focus and forget what actually matters. We can get lost in personality drama. Sometimes leftists spend far too much time criticizing other leftists with very similar policy goals, seemingly forgetting that we need to build a unified movement against the right, a thing which can only happen if we treat each other as comrades (and are definitive about what it means to be a leftist, rather than embracing right-wing faux-populism). Perhaps we should directly lift Bernie’s approach and just keep a damn list. It’s fine to let our minds wander, to indulge in frivolity and amusement. But we have to know what’s on the list and train ourselves to always come back to it. Otherwise we will lose."

www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/how-to-handle-the-press/

"Earlier this year, German police arrested members of a neo-Nazi criminal network allegedly involved in money laundering as well as drugs and arms trafficking. Greece’s Golden Dawn was ruled a “criminal organisation” by a Greek court in October 2020, with its members involved in everything from money laundering to murder. In December 2020, Spanish police arrested radical right extremists allegedly involved in arms and drug smuggling, while in 2019 Italian police arrested a number of individuals who planned on forming a neo-Nazi party, including a leading ‘Ndrangheta member."

www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/what-links-organised-crime-radical-right/

"Gates tried his hand at education and failed miserably. His role in defining the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 vaccine program produced a fiasco that could have been avoided. Gates is now focusing on agriculture, becoming, as a member of the Sioux nation, Nick Estes, reports in The Guardian, the “largest private owner of farmland in the US.” Gates is now particularly active in India’s agriculture, which is currently undergoing a major crisis.

In all these cases, Gates steps in with cash and convinces others, especially public authorities, to support his projects with government funding that will be used to fulfil his, rather than the public’s, agenda. He runs his experiments, always designed as top-down management ventures. He then watches them fail and walks away, presumably a wiser man. Worse, the public only remembers that he put up the cash, not that he played Dr. Frankenstein or the sorcerer’s apprentice. The devastation he creates remains. In the best cases, the damage is local. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, it has been global."

https://www.fairobserver.com/more/global_change/peter-isackson-daily-devils-dictionary-bill-gates-agriculture-vaccines-philanthropy-news-12712/