RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/August 2016

August 2016
The sexual is political. For a quick summary of the essay, you can view the Reddit here Julian Assange is exposing innocent people to persecution with his reckless leaks. Veterans for Kaepernick. The Civil War’s forgotten anti-imperialism. The sad decline of Vox. Chelsea Manning is not a symbol, she is a person who is rotting in the carceral state we are all responsible for creating. How advertisers seduce our subconscious. The Burkini-Bikini False Equivalence and Your Disproportionate Outrage by an ex-Muslim feminist blogger. Selling T-shirts, lies, anger to miners left without jobs or hope. The scandal of EpiPens runs deeper than most of us realize. The real Wild West was the scene of state-organized displacement and mass class struggle, not rugged individualism. Elon Musk, Fatalist The Silicon Valley delusion. Why was the crack epidemic treated differently? The Daily Beast interviews a low-ranking ISIS member, highlighting the copious amounts of Kool-aid currently consumed in Raqqa. The Star Spangled Banner is a song that celebrates slavery. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/us/trump-a-working-class-hero-a-blue-collar-town-debates-his-credentials.html? Why Trump is seen as a working class hero in towns like Youngstown, Ohio.] Foreign Policy mag's three-part series on the origins of the Islamic State. Donald Trump broke the conservative media. Hillary Clinton could easily push America into open conflict with Russia. The Nusra Front’s trap for the Syrian Opposition. The slave-trade roots of US private prisons. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-why-get-worse.html? Why Syria's war only seems to get worse.] Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices Americans should be more concerned about the dangers pesticides pose than the unfounded dangers of GMOs. Phil Sandifer: The Blind All-Seeing Eye of Gamergate. Almost certainly the very last long form thinkpiece that will ever be written about Gamergate, and it's a blinder. How Peter Thiel killed Gawker. The culture of the smug, white liberal. How US CEOs are withholding revenue. French police are providing propaganda for ISIS by ticketing Muslim women on beaches and French feminists are failing Muslim women by supporting racist French laws. Why did the Saudis and other Gulf tyrannies donate to the Clinton Foundation? Gawker was murdered by gaslight. Here are some questions for those cheering its death. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/colonial-nostalgia-horrors-of-empire-britain-olympic? Colonial nostalgia is back in fashion, blinding us to the horrors of empire.] The climate crisis is already here but no one’s telling us Startup wants to "disrupt" the U.S legal system. Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine How a violent Jewish extremist group went from the fringes to the mainstream French Right-Wing. "A brief history of Scientology." The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics. John Oliver explains how poorly regulated charter schools are. A Popular Mechanics writer goes on the Conspira-sea cruise The forgotten government plan to round up Muslims in the US. [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-leak-prosecution-that-lost-the-space-race/495659/? The leak prosecution that lost the US the space race.] It's Time To Abandon The Belief In Witchcraft Because Witches Don't Exist By Ijabla Raymond, a Nigerian skeptic. "Muscular Christianity" - The Victorian-era movement that inspired the establishment of the modern Olympics. Why the Mormon church is building a huge compound in Phildelphia. California is no paradise for migrant farm workers. The trademarking of public language. Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host, admits that right-wing news outlets are responsible for the willful ignorance that has overtaken American conservatives. How Super PACs killed the Tea Party. How Aung San Suu Kyi and her U.S. allies deny Burmese anti-Muslim atrocities. Repressive policing isn't just about racism, it is also a class issue. U.S. peace activists should start listening to progressive Syrian voices. A new cryptocurrency scheme: SingularDTV, the Ethereum startup that's building a Digital Rights Management on their own private blockchain (and also in Ethereum, in a way that isn't clear), that will apparently get two million new Ethereum users in the next three years (to buy TV shows, not drugs), to fund and sell their TV show explicitly indented as propaganda for cryptocurrency and the Singularity (and just a soup&ccedil;on of Austrian economics). And why musicians and artists shouldn't touch it with a bargepole. On the teaching of US history: In Tennessee, Vanderbilt University is buying back the naming rights to a campus building from a Confederate heritage group that has promoted the whitewashing of Southern history for more than 120 years.  Meanwhile in Wisconsin, GOP Senator Ron Johnson is advocating the destruction of the "higher education cartel" by replacing history classes with Ken Burns DVDs. Milo Yiannopoulos' scholarly charity for white kids appears to have been yet another right-wing affinity fraud. More details. Meet Angela Corey, the Florida prosecutor who has charged 77 kids as adults this year; 65 of them were black, nearly half were under 16. The summer of the shill. Like Donald Trump? You’ll Love the Illuminati conspiracy theories. Trump fans are 4.2 times more likely to tweet about the New World Order than Clinton supporters — and four times more likely to follow professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/juanita-broaddrick-wants-to-be-believed? Buzzfeed interviews Juanita Broaddrick about her life after her alleged rape by Bill Clinton.] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/15/brunhilde-pomsel-nazi-joseph-goebbels-propaganda-machine? The Guardian interviews Brunhilde Pomsel, Joseph Goebbels’s secretary.] John Oliver explains the return of subprime loans through the auto industry. America's addiction to mercenaries. The tyranny of a traffic ticket. Louisiana sheriffs hid a gun that could free a man and then blamed Hurricane Katrina. How monetary hawks at the Federal Reserve helped to smash the American working class. Driven to suicide by an "Inhuman and Unnatural’ pressure to sell. The life and death of an Indian pharmaceutical salesman. With cupping gaining attention due to its use by Olympic athletes, Edzard Ernst reminds us that it doesn't work (warning: graphic image). In fact, he had to say it twice.  The decline of war.  Don't blame the masses.  New York Times Magazine publishes entire issue looking at the Arab Spring. What a professional physicist learned as a paid consultant to his apparently "autodidactic" counterparts. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/08/live-truck-wasnt-eligible-food-stamps I could only afford to live in a truck. But I still wasn't eligible for food stamps.] Labor must take on Capital. The Democrats’ tactic of accusing their critics of having allegiance to the Kremlin has a long, ugly history in U.S. The Olympics won’t help Rio. U.S. maternal death rate, already the highest in the developed world, is continuing to increase. Obama has expanded the ISIL bombing campaign to a 4th country and the media barely noticed. The prospect of President Trump has understandably put attention on the U.S. President's ability to order the use of nuclear weapons, which is basically absolute and unchecked.  In case you didn't know, think tanks have increasingly become fronts for corporate lobbying. Dinner, Disrupted Some problems befalling Indian reservations (although, this being The Federalist, there might some biases and the solutions not that good). There are embarrassing photos of me on the internet, thanks to my right-wing stalkers. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/how-an-1891-mass-lynching-tried-to-make-america-great-again? How a 125-year-old mass lynching tried to make America great again.] What Julian Assange’s war on Hillary Clinton says about WikiLeaks. [https://boingboing.net/2016/08/01/chelsea-manning-on-facing-lif.html? Chelsea Manning, on facing life in solitary after attempting suicide] The unsexy truth about Millennials: They’re poor. Khizr Khan's patriotism was amplified by the media but his criticism of US foreign policy wasn't. The Democrats will fail the Khan family like they failed Cindy Sheehan. Property rights may be the best way to improve the standard of living on Native American reservations. After all it worked so well last time it was tried..... A look at the factors behind the gender wage gap in the U.S. This is your life, brought to you by private equity. Criticizing Hillary Clinton is not going to elect Donald Trump.