We Begin Bombing in Five Minutes. Cold War Culture in the Reagan Era w/ Prof. Andrew Hunt

Posted inPeoples' History, pop culture

In an amazing new interview, we talk with Prof. Andrew Hunt (@aehunt) about Cold War culture during the Reagan years.

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We talk about the array of protest movements in the 1980s that took up issues such as the nuclear arms race, U.S. intervention in Central America, and American investments in South Africa. And we discuss the “cultural resistance” of the time– film, television, music– that critiqued Washington’s Cold War policies and posed a challenge to the Cold War’s excesses of the Reagan era.

The Protests in Iran w/ Professor Giuseppe Acconcia

Posted inForeign Policy

The “hijab protests” in Iran have continued and intensified for weeks now, and we talked to a journalist and scholar with a longtime familiarity with the country. Giuseppe Acconcia, @stradedellest, professor at Padua University, has been a journalist working out of Iran and is the author of “The Great Iran,” and most recently co-authored, with Lorenza Perini, of “The Arab Uprisings: Protests, Gender, and War, 2011-2021.”

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Acconcia here provides us with background to the new conflict, the critical role Iranian women have played in the resistance in Iran for some time now and the current state of the uprising, and other factors, like the Iranian economy and sanctions, that are affecting the current protests.

Defending Mendocino’s Sacred Sites

Posted inClimate

The “Mendocino War” was a bloody conflict between the Yuki tribe and white settlers in Northern California. White settlers raided and stole Yuki lands and massacring hundreds of Yuki in the process. The Yuki fled to “The Mountain” in what is now known as the Jackson Demonstration State Forest to escape the violence. Those villages in the forest are now sacred sites to the Coastal Yuki and Northern Pomo tribes.

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The state of California is allowing logging companies to log the 50,000 acre Jackson Forest for profit to finance CalFire’s operations fighting wildfires. Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s direction for California state agencies to co-manage state lands with local Native American tribes and seek opportunities to return State lands to Native American tribes, the Dept. of Natural Resources has only designated 75 acres as “sacred sites.”

Noam Chomsky on Why the Democrats Suck..

Posted inChomsky, Peoples' History

The past 50 years have seen a dramatic shift to the far-right in American politics. On the heels of the 1972 McGovern debacle, the Democrats all but abandoned their New Deal heritage and moved swiftly to a stronger pro-business position and embraced Neo-Liberalism. They abandoned class politics and giving priority to workers and the poor and instead have embraced ID politics and wokeness. As the Republicans stole elections and Supreme Court seats, gerrymandered congressional districts, packed the courts, and ran scorched-earth campaigns at every level, the Democrats have offered a timid resistance at best.

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In this fantastic interview, Noam Chomsky gives us a history and analysis of the evolution of the Democrats from the party of FDR to a party that’s Republican-Lite. We discussed the Carter campaign, the Trilateral Commission, the DLC and the Clintons, Obama, Democratic hawkishness, and other factors in the Democratic retreat from progressive ideas, all while the GOP waged an open and ruthless war on workers, non-whites, women, and others.

Don’t miss this important interview with the world’s greatest living intellectual.