February 20, 2024
In this moment of what a philologist or scholar of poetry might call correctio, Michael performs the self-reflexive, intertextual move of being in conversation with his own text as a form of revision....
February 20, 2024
"....activists ought to be clear-eyed about the limitations of regulatory interventions. While there is certainly utility in digital media and tech reform, antitrust legislation and similar policy courses are insufficient for large-scale social transformations that characterize Marxist aspirations..."
February 20, 2024
"...this is the problem that has actually plagued the entire attitude to vaccine development and production in this pandemic. A few companies have got the rights, and they are holding onto those rights, and they are only producing themselves. They must share this knowledge, and they must allow other producers, because that’s the only way we’re going to confront the crisis..."
February 20, 2024
"...In 2018, Venezuela was only able to import $11.7 billion in goods, according to Torino Capital. The impact on medicine imports was especially destructive. According to U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot, while its economy was still growing in 2013, Venezuela was importing about $2 billion per year in medicine. By 2018, that amount had fallen to an astonishing low of $140 million—an especially horrifying development because medicines are much more difficult to substitute with local production than food. It is impossible to deny that a collapse in medicine imports has killed thousands of people between 2017 and 2018, as Mark Weisbrot and U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs argued in a paper published in April 2019. Weisbrot and Sachs cite a 31 percent increase in general mortality in the 2017–2018 period, according to a survey by anti-Maduro Venezuelan academics. That increase works out to an extra forty thousand deaths...."
February 20, 2024
Recall "The Hanoi Hilton,” where captured U.S. soldiers were held during the war in Vietnam? If you do recall, no doubt, you're recalling the Official Story. So what really happened? Watch!
February 20, 2024
"...It's no accident, as historians like to say, that the Founding Father George Washington was a grand real estate speculator, just like the 45th U.S. President..."
February 20, 2024
How and why the U.S. left has tailed the ruling class on such a bedrock matter as conceptualizing white supremacy soars far beyond the confines of this brief response.....What does this mean for today? It means rejecting the new Cold War against Russians and Chinese and, instead, forging alliances with both. It means linking demands for reparations nationally with likeminded struggles in the Caribbean and Africa. It means realizing that the uncanny ability of some on the U.S. left to hand rhetorical weapons to the right to bash the oppressed – from “political correctness” to “cancel culture” – is hardly a coincidence or accident but simply another expression of a “cross-class alliance” that has propped up settler colonialism from its inception.....
February 20, 2024
Angus recounts the history of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). First developed in the late 1920s, by 1970 more than 750,000 tons of CFCs had been pumped into the earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1970s, scientists began to discover the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and the chemical industry went into full denial mode, arguing that scientists’ arguments were 'just theories'....As it turns out, the British Antarctic Survey had been measuring ozone levels since 1957....
February 20, 2024
"Here are a few pieces of advice I got from Michael, that I would have liked to have had earlier in my career: Make sure your case tells a story – a story of your client and a story of the law...Be wary of judicial and prosecutorial ego – but know that there are people with both power and conscience...Trust the capacity of jurors to learn and dispense justice...Decide what you want and ask for it...Don’t mistake lawyering for movement work – but don’t forget about the movement either...Believe that one case at a time can, over time, make a difference...Bring others along on your journey – and remember their contributions to it with graciousness and gratitude....."
February 20, 2024
"The federal courts should be a sanctuary in the jungle,” said Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer in the "Scopes" Monkey Trial. Legendary lawyer Michael Tigar took those words to heart. He hunted the jungle's predators — the likes of Pinochet. He defended its prey — the likes of Lynne Stewart and Julian Assange. He gave counsel to Panthers like Angela Davis, and, as you just learned, briefly shared a cell with the likes of Bobby Seale.
