Perpetuating the Uribe Hegemony

How the Media helped to install and normalize Authoritarianism in Colombia

When they were finally allowed into the camp, the peasants found a hole in the ground and a few meters away, the body of Dimar, killed with a shot to the head. This assassination reactivated memories of the so-miscalled "false positives", or extrajudicial executions, that many of us in Colombia believed were ...
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Rudy Giuliani, Greta Thunberg, and Vaping

Episode 200

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Rudy Giuliani is most prominent today as a Trump surrogate, but after 9/11 he was known as “America’s Mayor.” Natalia recommended Ken Frydman’s New York Times op-ed about working for Giuliani and Matthew Yglesias’ Vox piece about his disregard for the rule of law.Scandinavian climate ...
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The Façade of Justice in Poland

Undermining the rule of law, hiding social inequality

Although social transfers do consolidate support for Law and Justice, especially among the new voters of the party, they are not a simple economic transaction, in which political support is exchanged for money. The welfare transactions are perceived as a symbol of a new beginning after three decades of austerity ...
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Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and New Media

Plan Andinia and Anti-Semitism in Argentina

Cuneo’s oral manifesto went viral across multiple platforms, such as What’s App, Facebook, YouTube, and endless email chains, sparking a public debate over Argentinean Jews’ sacred and exclusive loyalty towards Israel. Pro-Cuneo posts offered many cases of public figures, all of them Jewish, that were Mossad double agents or involved ...
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Could Turkey Just Be OK Again?

Media and the drift towards authoritarianism

Liberals in the U.S. were -- and some still are -- shocked. The election of Trump devastated the liberals’ American dream. Trump’s grotesque political style revealed that the U.S. wasn’t as awe-inspiring as the liberals imagined it to be. And yet, hadn’t they just elected the nation’s first black President? ...
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Whistleblowers, Church Arsons, and Co-Working Spaces

Episode 199

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: An intelligence officer has filed a complaint regarding Donald Trump’s interactions with the president of Ukraine. We discussed the history of whistleblowing and Niki noted the role of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers in shaping contemporary ideas about whistleblowing. Natalia referenced the founding fathers’ ...
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Hate Inc.

Why Today’s Media Makes us Despise One Another

I know this because I was hired to do this work, over and over. My commercial niche, in fact, was the vitriolic essay that got people spitting mad, or poked fun at someone audiences hated. I was the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog of journalism. I actually won the National Magazine ...
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Ukraine, Declining Bird Populations, and Luxury Parking

Past Present Episode 198

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Ukraine is at the center of the impeachment probe against the president. Niki referred to Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich and to Zack Beauchamp’s Vox piece about how the Ukraine scandal changed his ...
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Saving America’s Cities

Re-evaluating the complex history of urban renewal

Too often the era of urban renewal is depicted as an abstract contest between unstoppable urban-growth machines and the defenseless communities that became their victims. Following the career of someone like Logue allows us to grapple with the agency, motives, and constraints on all sides and, most importantly, to understand ...
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Trump Is America’s Father, and Dad is Sick

America’s Toxic Parent

The parent-child analogy does not presume that the state leader acts as parent, but that the state itself does. There has always been some overlap between state and individual when it comes to acting as parent to the people. Many heads of state are described in fatherly terms. It is ...
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