Showing posts with label Crisis of Legitimacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crisis of Legitimacy. Show all posts

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Second Wide-Ranging Interview with Kate Frey of We are Many, They are Few

 We Are Many, They Are Few

Interview with Jim Kavanagh of the Polemicist on the corruption of US politics, taxation, the upcoming election and the current political moment.

Thursday, August 6, 2020

By Any Means Necessary Discussion of GDP Plunge and Trump Floating Election Delay (7/30/2020)

 Trump Floats Election Delay As US Economy Contracts At 33% Annual Rate

In this segment of By Any Means Necessary hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Jim Kavanagh, political analyst and contributor to Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net (where you can read his latest piece, "Over The Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd"), to talk about ongoing concerns that President Trump will attempt to postpone the elections and how this morning's unprecedented news that the US economy contracted by nearly a third in the last quarter may be impacting Trump's political calculus.


“By Any Means Necessary” on Radio Sputnik is hosted by Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman and aims to connect the political, social and economic movements shaping the world around us. With a sensibility informed by movements from Black Power to #BlackLivesMatter with a dash of Occupy, the show elevates the people and narratives that (while often ignored) are driving some of the most important changes in the world.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Discussion with Charles Dunaway on His Wider View Radio Podcast (7/30/2020)

Jim Kavanagh on the George Floyd Protests, COVID, and the election

This is the first episode since our summer hiatus and I am delighted to welcome Jim Kavanagh back to kick off our 4th season of Wider View.  
Jim refers to a recent article by Ajamu Baraka and echoes his call to expand the George Floyd protests into a struggle for the structural change that we need in this nation. (Broadcast on August 1)

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Monday, July 13, 2020

By Any Means Necessary Discussion of Biden's "Task Forces" & Continuing Crises (7/9/2020)

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Dr. Richard Wolff, Economist and Professor at the New School University and author of the new book “Understanding Marxism,” to talk about the latest discouraging jobless numbers, whether recent shifts in rhetoric from the White House and Congressional Republicans signal another round of stimulus checks, and how the failure of the ruling class to seriously address the public health or racial justice crisis is bringing the country to the point of collapse.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Wyatt Reed, a journalist, Sputnik News analyst, and By Any Means Necessary producer, to give an update on the "Bountygate" narrative and explain how moves by US intelligence agencies to distance themselves from the story has led competing factions within the security state and the mainstream media to move the goalposts on the story.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Kim Ives, editor of the English section of Haiti Liberte, to talk about his latest article, "Wikileaks: Secret U.S. Diplomatic Cables Highlight Danger that “Toto” Constant Might Elude Justice," whether Haiti's justice system is equipped to handle former CIA agent and death squad leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, and Constant's role in helping maintain foreign imperialist domination of Haiti.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Jim Kavanagh, a political analyst and contributor to Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net, to talk about the contradiction between attempts to draw progressives into the Democratic fold via Bernie Sanders' and Joe Biden's "progressive task force" and the party's ongoing push to flank President Trump from the right on foreign policy, the relationship between widespread substance abuse in working communities here and the various CIA campaigns to fund foreign proxy armies by smuggling narcotics into the US, and the role the mainstream media plays in legitimizing the imperialist coups they sometimes later repudiate.
[Related article: Joe or No?]

My segment starts ~59:30

Listen to "No End In Sight As Health, Economic, & Racial Justice Crises Swell" on Spreaker.

“By Any Means Necessary” on Radio Sputnik is hosted by Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman and aims to connect the political, social and economic movements shaping the world around us. With a sensibility informed by movements from Black Power to #BlackLivesMatter with a dash of Occupy, the show elevates the people and narratives that (while often ignored) are driving some of the most important changes in the world.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Donald The Destroyer: Assessing The Trump-Effect

Newsweek.com

Oh please say to me
You'll let me be your man
And please say to me
You'll let me hold your hand
Now, let me hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand

So, we’ve officially gone from The West Wing to Animal House. To the regret of Democrats and liberals, Donald Trump cuts a presidential image far removed from the Sorkinite Aristotelian Quaalude (h/t Emmet Penney) of a Jed Bartlett in the Oval Office. To the chagrin of Republicans and corporate conservatives, his demeanor increasingly resembles the adolescent antics of a Bluto punching it out ringside at the WWF. Politicians and commentators from both sides of the narrow aisle are all shocked and saddened at the ongoing insult to American “presidentialness.”

In a recent irruption of his self-sabotaging panglossia, Trump has given a bizarre interview to the New York Times in which, among other gems: 1) He warned the Special Counsel to stay away from his businesses.  2) He stated that health insurance costs $12 a year. 3) He taught his interviewers that the head of the FBI does not report to the Attorney General. And 4) In a series of blurts that I find particularly bizarre and telling, he repeatedly emphasized that French President Emmanuel Macron is a “strong” guy who “loves holding my hand… people don’t realize he loves holding my hand...He’s a very good person. And a tough guy…but he does love holding my hand.” As the man with the cigar might say, textbook symptomatic utterance.  (It's such a feeling...I can't hide. I can't hide. I can't hide.)

These are all signs of Trump's complete ignorance regarding policy fundamentals as well as his overwhelming narcissism. It's quite a bonus that it comes so obviously tinged with a familiar “bromantic”--i.e., per cigar-man, homo-erotic--attraction for strong men who (he imagines) give him the love he so desperately needs. There are charming versions of that in the playfulness of the locker room or at the chessboard, but it's somewhat more disturbing as a central, unrecognized obsession of the pussy-grabbing leader of the most powerful country in the world, whose discourse seems to whirl around a black hole of narcissism and need. It makes for a hollow and dangerous man.

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