Behind the News – March 14, 2024
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Upcoming Episode
Behind the News
12:00 PM (Noon) Pacific Time: Thursdays
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Global bourgeois rot
Vijay Prashad on how the North American and European bourgeoisies are a spent force, with nothing to offer the world (article here)
Correcting the record on the Black Panthers
Historian Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, takes on some myths about the Black Panther Party.
Fundraising special: the Desi diaspora, the newest finance capital
Jeet Heer on Indian Americans in politics and society (article here) • Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, on the new finance capital
The bankers’ club and how to bust it • the culture of immediacy
Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, on the finance racket and how to transform it • Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, on our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal present
Exhaustion and the climate crisis • shocker: recessions increase life expectancy
Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World • Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of this paper, on how recessions increase life expectancy
Why did South Africa charge Israel at the ICJ? • organizing unions in the society of sprawl • the widening war in the Middle East
Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel in the World Court • Eric Blanc (Substack post here) on organizing in a scattered and atomized society • Hassan El-Tayyab on the widening war in the Middle East
Who are the Houthis? • more on Hezbollah
Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State and the Quincy Institute, on the Houthis • political scientist Aurélie Daher with another view of Hezbollah
Electronic monitoring, and who is Hezbollah?
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative on electronic monitoring (the ankle bracelet kind) • Joseph Daher, author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God, on that demonized organization
More on Argentina, and Americans’ complicated relationship with psychoactive drugs
political scientist Jacqueline Behrend on Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei • Benjamin Fong, author of Quick Fixes, on Americans’ love/hate relationship with drugs