Weekendlæsning nr. 3

Interview med Bernie Sanders i Der Spiegel:
“Sanders himself was never a member of the Democratic Party. He calls himself a socialist, a part of the political spectrum that has long been shunned in the United States. When asked how the Democrats lost the blue-collar vote to a billionaire, he has plenty to say. This is, after all, his main issue.”

The Saudi Deal Shows Just How Broken the US Arms Export Process Has Become — Defense One:
“In the case of Saudi Arabia, even a cursory geostrategic review should have led the Pentagon to advise against Trump’s deal. Most obviously, the deal will provide Saudi Arabia with advanced weapons to use in its war in Yemen, where it has been accused of deliberately bombing civilian areas and committing other war crimes, helping to create what the United Nations calls the “largest humanitarian crisis” in the world. Beyond that, any major weapons sale to the Middle East – already in turmoil and driven by civil and sectarian conflict – risks further destabilizing the region. This deal may encourage the Kingdom to favor military solutions to its problems, will almost certainly heighten tensions with Israel, and poses a real risk of igniting an arms race with Iran. These are precisely the conditions that the Arms Export Control Act identifies as reasons to reject arms sales requests.”

Greg Grandin om voldelige optøjer i Venezuela — The Nation:
“In 2013, animated by a closer than expected national election (which brought Maduro to power following Chávez’s death), the losing campaign of Henrique Capriles (considered to represent the more moderate, “cuck” wing of the opposition for its willingness to contest elections) decried, with no evidence, fraud and called for protests. Eight Chavistas were murdered. A few months later, in 2014, the opposition called for more disruptive street protests, which left over 40 people, mostly Chavistas or government employees, dead. One motorcyclist was decapitated by a wire that anti-government protesters strung across a road, an improvised guillotine. More than 50 people have died in the current cycle of protest and counter-protest.”

Anden udgave af Corey Robins Reactionary Mind:
“Part 2 takes us to ground zero of reactionary politics: Europe’s old regimes from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Situated in three distinct moments of counterrevolutionary time—the English Civil War, the French Revolution, and the proto-socialist interregnum between the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik Revolution—it looks at how Hobbes, Burke, Nietzsche, and Hayek attempted to formulate a politics of privilege in and for a democratic age. The chapters on Burke, Nietzsche, and Hayek also focus on how these thinkers forged an aristocratic politics of war or the market in response to the rise of capitalism.”

Ny erkendelse i OECD: Frihandel skaber ulighed og arbejdsløshed — Politiken:
»Det er en af verdensøkonomiens førende liberale organisationer, som nu ændrer stil og meget eksplicit anerkender de skævheder, som globalisering og frihandel kan føre til. Det ligner en mild selvransagelse«

Fra P1 Orientering:
“Kan det få småbørnsforældre til at arbejde mere og længere, hvis man ansætter flere pædagoger til at tage sig af deres børn i landets vuggestuer og børnehaver? Og hvad når det gælder investering i bedre veje, skoler og sygehuse? Kan det fx være en god forretning for statskassen at forkorte ventetiden på hospitalerne, så flere sygemeldte kommer hurtigere tilbage i arbejde? Denne form gevinster ved investeringer i velfærd tager Finansministeriet ikke med i sine beregninger. Derfor giver Finansministeriets regnemodeller et skævt billede af virkeligheden, påpeger Det Økonomiske Råd.”

Antoine Lilti: How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy
(Longread i Viewpoint Magazine. En kritik af Jonathan Israel’s “radikale oplysning”)

‘Et opgør med fortielsen af Den Haitianske Revolution’
(Først udgivet på dansk i Marronage. Artiklen i linket er på engelsk.)

Når magten benægter klimaforandringerne — Information:
“Vi er nu nået til det punkt, hvor effekterne af klimaforandringer kan måles, hvilket – hvis vi tager Exxons forskere alvorligt – kan betyde, at vi ikke længere kan rulle udviklingen tilbage. I modsætning til fremtidsperspektivet i 1980’erne bliver vores fremtid derfor med sikkerhed præget af klimaforandringerne.Nu handler det om omfanget af skader og omvæltninger, ikke om at undgå dem fuldstændigt.”

The Public Medievalist special series: Race, Racism and the Middle Ages
“…racists—even within the ranks of the academic medievalist community—have, for far too long, warped our understanding of the past. And considering the recent uptick of overt prejudice, hate crimes, and politically sanctioned racism in the US and Europe, this series seems particularly timely and necessary.”

Anton Shammas: Torture into Affidavit, Dispossession into Poetry: On Translating Palestinian Pain — Critical Inquiry:
“Reading through the testimonies of Palestinian victims of torture, be it in the original Arabic on the webpage, say, of a Palestinian human rights organization like ad-Dameer, based in Ramallah, or in Hebrew or English translation, in the publications and on the webpage of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, based in Jerusalem, one is struck by the evasiveness of the style; physical and psychological methods of torture are mentioned or alluded to, but it’s very rare that a Palestinian would describe in detail the pain that ensued, within the confinements of language and the equally constrictive power of social codes and norms a Palestinian male is expected to adhere to. It’s hinted at and assumed but never explicit or foregrounded, for the simple reason that a Palestinian male, in a predominantly patriarchal society, would consider such an articulation to be unmanly. Pain, according to Palestinian machismo, shouldn’t be confirmed and acknowledged but rather brushed away, belittled, or dismissed as an attribute of weakness fit for weak women and children but not for real men who refuse to let the occupier think that their spirits were broken. Men who perform a major role in writing the national narrative, the unwritten convention demands, should always bite the bullet and never confess to the betrayal of the body.”

Interview med Norman Finkelstein om 1967-krigen — The Real News Network: