American Versus Foreign Films - and Politics as Usual...

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Tue, 03/02/2010

With Joe back from a stint in a Turkish prison, Joe and Abe get back to the business of discussing all things political and newsy. In this case, Joe waxes eloquent about why foreign films are so much better than anything produced in the world of American cinema. Except for Animal House, which is a work of enduring genius.

Of course, the conversation turned more political than THAT!

Recommended readings from our listeners:

Brand Obama, by Chris Hedges

The Century of Self - A British 4-part documentary on how Freud's work is being used to "engineer consent" amongst the Unwashed Masses, and control the population through Advertising.

Title: Abe and Joe 20100302
Producer: Joe Uris
Length: 57:20 minutes (26.25 MB)
Format: MP3 Stereo 11kHz 64Kbps (CBR)

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Two cents on Obama's disappointing presidency

Submitted by Al Bradbury and... on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 8:25pm.

Hey comrades,

I was listening to your show this morning and wanted to call in but couldn't because I was driving. Thought I'd drop a note and share what I would have said:

It's true that people voted for hope and change and instead got more of the same, and this should not surprise us at all.

After all, the presidency is just a job. Whoever is elected, whether their previous job was community organizer or CIA honcho, does the job as laid out by their bosses, the banks and corporations who write the big checks. If you can't be relied upon to do the job these bosses have laid out, you won't get near the first job interview.

As Naomi Klein and others have noted, the Obama campaign won the marketing industry's award for 2008. They successfully packaged a familiar product as something new and transformative, not unlike that new Starbucks in Seattle that's disguised as a local coffee shop. A presidential candidate was repackaged as revolution, but that's not what revolution is.

I think U.S. history has shown consistently that we do not make real change by electing corporate candidate 1 over corporate candidate 2, but rather by sitting in at lunch counters and sitting down in factories, marching and rioting in the streets. We didn't get the Civil Rights Act or the New Deal by electing reform-minded candidates.

We won those concessions by presenting a credible threat of revolution, by showing we were angry enough to flex the collective muscle of the working class in a way that genuinely threatened the rich. I think that's where our energies should be focused now.

Thanks for your work,

Al Bradbury (co-host of Monday night Labor Radio)