‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (October 16, 2023) – A selection of three articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, will Israel’s agony and retribution end in chaos or stability? Also, the backlash against green policies (09:58) and a disastrous workplace experiment (16:15).
Category Archives: Politics
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – November 2023
The Machine Breaker – Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”
In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the vast expanse of the Great Basin. His plan was to commit sabotage. First up was a coal-burning power plant near Carlin, Nevada, a 242-megawatt facility owned by the Newmont Corporation that existed to service two nearby gold mines, also owned by Newmont.
Forbidden Fruit
The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán
Phone service was down—a fuse had blown in the cell tower during a recent storm—and even though my arrival had been cleared with the government of Cherán in advance, the armed guard manning the highway checkpoint, decked out in full fatigues, the wrong shade to pass for Mexican military, refused to wave me through. My guide, Uli Escamilla, assured him that we had an appointment, and that we could prove it if only we could call or text our envoy. The officer gripped his rifle with both hands and peered into the windows of our rental car.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Oct 23, 2023
Beyond the Myth of Rural America
Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
Demanding that your friend pull the car over so you can examine an unusual architectural detail is not, I’m told, endearing. But some of us can’t help ourselves. For the painter Grant Wood, it was an incongruous Gothic window on an otherwise modest frame house in Eldon, Iowa, that required stopping. It looked as if a cottage were impersonating a cathedral. Wood tried to imagine who “would fit into such a home.” He recruited his sister and his dentist as models and costumed them in old-fashioned attire. The result, “American Gothic,” as he titled the painting from 1930, is probably the most famous art work ever produced in the United States.
When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby
In many states, lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.
American Chronicles – Beyond the Myth of Rural America
Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
What Happened to San Francisco, Really?
It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask.By Nathan Heller
The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle
Offsetting has been hailed as a fix for runaway emissions and climate change—but the market’s largest firm sold millions of credits for carbon reductions that weren’t real.
News: Poland’s Centrist Parties Prevail, Australia Indigenous Vote Failure
Sunday Morning: Stories And News From London, Ljubljana, Turin & Zurich
October 15, 2023 – From London, Emma Nelson, Latika Bourke and Yossi Mekelberg on the weekend’s big talking points. We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, as well as our friends and correspondents in Ljubljana, Turin, and Zurich.
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
The New York Times Magazine – Oct 15, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (October 15, 2023):
My Delirious Trip to the Heart of Swiftiedom
Taylor Swift’s greatest gift is for telling her own story — better than any journalist could. But Taffy Brodesser-Akner gives it a shot anyway.
Section 301, in the second-to-highest tier of Levi’s Stadium, floats 105 feet above Santa Clara, Calif. It comprises 251 seats — a mere hamlet in the vast 64,000-seat general kingdom of the place, but it was our hamlet, and on the last Saturday in July, we took up each one of those seats and watched, our collective breath held, as Taylor Swift emerged from a bevy of billowing pastel parachutes and rose up on a platform to perform the 47th show of her Eras Tour. A few songs in, she announced, laughing, that her father told her that Santa Clara had named her its honorary mayor during her two-night stay there and that the entire town had been renamed Swiftie Clara.
How Jesmyn Ward Is Reimagining Southern Literature
The novelist is competing with giants like William Faulkner, while mapping territory all her own.
By Imani Perry
Jesmyn Ward gestured with her eyes and a tilt of her face, hands on the wheel. “This crazy colored house right here? That’s my grandmother’s house. That’s the house I grew up in. And her sister lives there” — she pointed — “and then that little blue house? That’s my great-grandparents’ house.” She was driving me around DeLisle, Miss., her hometown and the inspiration for Bois Sauvage, the fictional setting of her first three novels. It is Deep South-in-August hot outside, and the air-conditioning was a relief. “My mom’s side of the family was all clustered around this road.”
News: Israel Issues North Gaza Evacuation Order, EU-China Trade Relations
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Oct 14, 2023
Will Israel’s agony and retribution end in chaos or stability?
Much depends on its offensive in Gaza—and its politicians and neighbours
Briefing
Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s retaliation will change both sides for ever
The miscalculations of Israel’s and Gaza’s leaders are being laid bare
News: Israel Readies For Ground Assault Of Gaza, Zelensky Meets With NATO
The Globalist Podcast (October 12, 2023) – Israel forms a unity government as fighting with Hamas continues. A former CIA officer tells us how Israeli and US intelligence could have missed what Hamas had planned.
Plus: Volodymyr Zelensky makes a surprise visit to Brussels for a Nato meeting and Thailand’s new prime minister courts foreign investment.
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