"What is remarkable fifty years later is the extent to which the real world has disappeared from our discussions of conspiracy theories. We have replaced social and economic conditions with cognitive deficiencies, ancient mythologies with logical fallacies, history with atavistic biases. It is not just that we have projected the causes of conspiracism deep into the recesses of the human brain; we assume that these depths are easier to know than the world that surrounds us and more amenable to reform. The champions of debunking and the new information vigilantes are not interested in entertaining the possibility that the root cause of conspiracy theories may be located outside the mind and may require a reexamination of our economic and social arrangements. For them, the world is fine as it is; it is all a matter of bringing people in alignment with a reality which they fail to appreciate. Steven Pinker, one of the paladins of truth and rationality, suggests implementing nothing less than “debiasing” programs that would help individuals see that there is nothing wrong with the world and that everything will be okay if we let those in charge take care of it. The imperative is to adapt to a world given a free pass and avoid the temptation of meddling with it. Debunking ultimately turns out to be a defense of the status quo—not because conspiracy theories may be true, but because it uses them to further restrict the space for politics."

https://bostonreview.net/politics/nicolas-guilhot-bad-information

Pipeline company paid Minnesota police for arresting and surveilling protesters
Article, Comments

Bell #Hooks - feminism is for everybody

"Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where
females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility. Feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, imperialism. But it will make it possible for us to be fully self-actualized females and males able to create beloved community, to live together, realizing our dreams of freedom and justice, living the truth that we are all "created equal.""

It's an introduction to feminism, but here's the main takeaway I got from the book:"While visionary feminist thinkers have understood our need for a broad-based feminist movement, one that addresses the needs of girls and boys, women and men, across class, we have not produced a body of visionary feminist theory written in an accessible language or shared through oral communication. Today in academic circles much of the most celebrated feminist theory is written in a sophisticated jargon that only the well-educated can read. Most people in our society do not have a basic understanding of feminism; they cannot acquire that understanding from a wealth of diverse material,
grade school-level primers, and so on, because this material does not exist. We must create it if we are to rebuild feminist movement that is truly for everyone.
Feminist advocates have not organized resources to ensure that
we have television stations or consistent spots on any existing stations. There is no feminist news hour on any television or radio show."

Feminism is for everybody, by Bell Hooks

"So, Keir’s big offer? A Labour government that will teach you to better navigate the choppy waters of capitalism, while paying another company to soothe your worries when the stress becomes overwhelming"

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/keir-starmers-speech-the-best-thing-since-stale-bread/

"The more the economy becomes a matter of the mere distribution of loot, the more inefficiency and unnecessary chains of command actually make sense, since these are the forms of organization best suited to soaking up as much of that loot as possible. The less the value of work is seen to lie either in what it produces, or the benefits it provides to others, the more work comes to be seen as valuable primarily as a form of self-sacrifice, which means that anything that makes that work less onerous or more enjoyable, even the gratification of knowing that one’s work benefits others, is actually seen to lower its value—and as a result, to justify lower levels of pay.

All this is genuinely perverse.

[...] we have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of—as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it—“a life,” and that, in turn, means that furtive consumer pleasures are the only ones we have time to afford. Sitting around in cafés all day arguing about politics or gossiping about our friends’ complex polyamorous love affairs takes time (all day, in fact); in contrast pumping iron or attending a yoga class at the local gym, ordering out for Deliveroo, watching an episode of Game of Thrones, or shopping for hand creams or consumer electronics can all be placed in the kind of self-contained predictable time-slots one is likely to have left over between spates of work, or else while recovering from it. All these are examples of what I like to call “compensatory consumerism.” They are the sorts of things you can do to make up for the fact that you don’t have a life, or not very much of one." David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs #extract

source: The incoming insurrection

"the lessons of the global financial crash and the Great Recession of 2009, the ensuing long depression to 2019 and the economic impact of the pandemic slump are that introducing more capitalist production for profit will not sustain economic growth and certainly not deliver ‘common prosperity’.

Indeed, it is the capitalist sector in China that is in trouble and threatens China’s future prosperity. China’s capitalist sector is suffering (as it is in the major capitalist economies). Profitability has fallen, reducing the ability or willingness of China’s capitalists to invest productively. That is why speculation in unproductive investment has become ‘uncontrolled’ in China too. Far from the need to reduce the role of the state, China’s future growth through a rise in productivity of labour as the total workforce shrinks in size will depend on state-led investment in technology, skilled labour and ‘common prosperity’."

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/09/11/china-and-common-prosperity/