Re: [Marxism] Paywalls and how to get around them (The Atlantic)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2/16/20 10:31 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: Folks, if you use Firefox (a far superior browser to Chrome IMO) you can get around almost all paywalls. When you seen a link, such as the one from The Atlantic just posted below, in Firefox, "save as a pocket". Give it a name. Go the pocket page and then open it up. The Washington post on occasion has given me problems. Firefox takes a quick shot of the page before the paywall popup window opens and prevents you from reading what is there. This method simply eliminates the popup window. David Walters Thanks for the tip, David. But if you *do* have access to Atlantic or any other paywalled magazine or newspaper, please send the entire article as I do customarily with the NYT or Washington Post. I don't do this with leftist magazines since they generally don't rely on advertising. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Paywalls and how to get around them (The Atlantic)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Folks, if you use Firefox (a far superior browser to Chrome IMO) you can get around almost all paywalls. When you seen a link, such as the one from The Atlantic just posted below, in Firefox, "save as a pocket". Give it a name. Go the pocket page and then open it up. The Washington post on occasion has given me problems. Firefox takes a quick shot of the page before the paywall popup window opens and prevents you from reading what is there. This method simply eliminates the popup window. David Walters _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fuel for the Journey: Bhaskar Sunkara, Black Exclusion, and Reparations | Paul Sowers
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[Marxism] Ordinary Americans carried out inhumane acts for Trump - Baltimore Sun
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[Marxism] (PDF) Materialism and the Critique of Energy
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Re: [Marxism] The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President - The Atlantic
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2/16/20 12:41 PM, MM via Marxism wrote: "The votes haven’t even been counted yet, and much of the country is ready to throw out the result." Full:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/ The Atlantic has instituted a paywall so in the future, if you have access to the article, please send the whole thing. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President - The Atlantic
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * "One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebook’s algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan pages with names like “In Trump We Trust.” I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards, one of which required an application that seemed designed to screen out interlopers. "The president’s reelection campaign was then in the midst of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans’ understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceedings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump forums teemed with conspiracy theories. An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape around the biggest news story in the country, and I wanted to see it from the inside. "The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today? "As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: “That’s right, the whistleblower’s own lawyer said, ‘The coup has started …’ ” Swipe. “Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding …” Swipe. “The only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing …” Swipe. “Only one man can stop this chaos …” Swipe, swipe, swipe. "I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach. "What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise. "After the 2016 election, much was made of the threats posed to American democracy by foreign disinformation. Stories of Russian troll farms and Macedonian fake-news mills loomed in the national imagination. But while these shadowy outside forces preoccupied politicians and journalists, Trump and his domestic allies were beginning to adopt the same tactics of information warfare that have kept the world’s demagogues and strongmen in power. "Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. In conversations with political strategists and other experts, a dystopian picture of the general election comes into view—one shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous. "The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable. … "It doesn’t require an overactive imagination to envision
[Marxism] Damming the Lower Mekong, Devastating the Ways and Means of Life
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Feb. 16, 2020 Damming the Lower Mekong, Devastating the Ways and Means of Life By Hannah Beech NONG KHAI, Thailand — The water is so clear on the Mekong River in northeastern Thailand that the sunlight pierces through to the riverbed, transforming the waterway into a glinting, empty aquarium. It is beautiful but it means death. At this time of year in Thailand, this stretch of the world’s most productive river should be brown and swollen with silt. Instead, a prolonged drought and a huge new dam over the border in Laos, the first on the lower Mekong, have stolen the nutrients needed to sustain life. On another bend, the Mekong almost disappears entirely, a trickle of stagnant water surrounded by a lunar landscape of sere hillocks and desiccated roots. This is the season that fish normally spawn here, but there is no water. “Our nets are almost empty,” said Buorot Chaokhao, who has fished the Mekong’s waters in Nong Khai, just across the riverine border from Laos, for nearly five decades. “Maybe our way of life on the river is finished.” In October, the turbines of the first lower Mekong dam, the Xayaburi, began churning upstream from Nong Khai in Laos, after a series of test runs last summer. The effect of the Thai-funded dam was almost immediate, residents said. The Mekong ran clear and depleted, appearing an eerie, luminescent blue on sunny days. Algae bloomed, choking nets. Now, a monthslong drought has pushed the water level even lower so that parts of the river are no longer a waterway at all but a desert of dead plants and dried-out crustaceans. With about 10 more dams planned for the mainstream Mekong’s lower reaches and hundreds more on its tributaries, a lifeline for 60 million people is being choked. Tens of millions more will be affected as farms and fisheries are compromised, even as the rich and powerful across the region profit from the hydropower business. “We’re asking the question: Is this the breaking point for the Mekong?” said Brian Eyler, the director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia program and the author of “Last Days of the Mighty Mekong.” “The Mekong’s ecosystem is adaptable and resilient but the worry is that the river’s massive resource base won’t be able to overcome all these dams and extreme weather.” The Mekong has been so exhausted that the Thai government, long lackadaisical about environmental protection, announced on Feb. 5 that it had rejected long-held Chinese ambitions to blast rocks in the river to allow for bigger boats and more trade. Environmental groups warned that further manipulation of the river could be catastrophic. Ever since China, where the headwaters of the Mekong are fed by glacial melt, began damming the river early this century, the river has been producing less fish. For a population downstream that could once count on the world’s most abundant inland fishery for much of its protein intake, this change has been devastating. Amkha Janlong, 69, remembers how, not that long ago, she would go to a pier in Nong Khai and watch men heave in catches of fish taller and heavier than they were. The biggest of all, the Mekong giant catfish, weighs more than a tiger and used to feed entire villages. In some places, fishers are resorting to dynamite fishing to capture dwindling stocks. “The fish are getting smaller and smaller,” Ms. Amkha said. When she was young, she said, they were this big, opening her arms wide. Now they are tiny, the size of her little finger. Since the Xayaburi dam began operations in October, Wittaya Thongnet, Ms. Amkha’s son-in-law, has given up fishing altogether. “There’s nothing to catch,” he said. Still, Mr. Wittaya hasn’t been able to admit to his mother-in-law that the fish she still eats every day are no longer caught by him but bought at the market instead. “She doesn’t understand how much the river has changed,” he said. The fishers of Nong Khai used to farm to supplement their income, but the Mekong’s vagaries have upended agriculture, too. As the water recedes from the riverbank, Mr. Buorot has been forced to use pumps to nourish his riverside fields. Then in December, a sudden discharge from the Xayaburi drowned his lettuces, he said. “Too little water, too much water,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t know what is going on.” Nearly four months after the dam’s turbines began, people downstream are in the dark about its operations, even though the opening and closing of its gates affects millions of people. The Laotian government has said publicizing the dam’s schedule isn’t its duty and has hinted that
[Marxism] Dark Towers review: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and a must-read mystery | Business | The Guardian
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