Dan from Work Stoppage and Red Game Table tells us about the chilling history of the US and its intelligence apparatuses' collaboration with the Nazis, including how the CIA took Nazi human experimentation research and ran with it, leading to programs such as MKULTRA.
Music:
Fonola Band - "Bella Ciao"
Phil Ochs - "I Ain't Marching Anymore"
The Mountain Goats - "Maybe Sprout Wings"
Frederic Mercier - "Spirit"
Sources:
Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War by Christopher Simpson
Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas by Leonard Cole
Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949 by Charles Higham
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Search For the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control by John Marks
https://jeff-kaye.medium.com/a-real-flood-of-bacteria-and-germs-communications-intelligence-and-charges-of-u-s-4decafdc762
https://www.liberationschool.org/fascist-plots-in-the-u-s-contemporary-lessons-from-the-1934-business-plot/
https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/sirhan-sirhan
Eilex, Taylor, and Ethan look back on the year, going through the major events of each month and going on some longer digressions about COVID-19 vaccine backlash, critical race theory, the hope of labor struggle, and how easy it was to assassinate world leaders a hundred years ago.
Outro music: "Auld Lang Syne," Alexandrov Ensemble
In this episode originally intended to be recorded and released before Halloween, we go over the social/political trends undergirding 90 years of US horror cinema decade by decade. Eilex shares a few frightening Latin American folktales and their ideological basis in colonization, and Jeremy talks about No One Gets Out Alive (2021) and the messages behind it.
James Bell, “US Horror Film and the Capitalist Crisis (1974–1985)”, ep 1 of Prolekult
Mark Steven, Splatter Capital
Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster”, Commentary Magazine
This is a non-standard ITF episode because we had Jeremy back but we didn't have anything prepared, so we did an off-the-cuff roundup of the state of things, including blowing off steam about COVID, reading some absurd financial press opinions on China, and brainstorming timely bumper stickers. This one's all over the place, but we'll be back to providing thoughtful and researched content next time!
Any opinions shared by ITF members on this episode do not represent the views of ITF or its members.
Outro music: "Motherless Child," Romare
ITF's first in-person episode!
As a result, Eilex, Taylor, and Ethan have a wide-ranging and somewhat freeform discussion about happiness, what it means, how it's measured, and why capitalist ideology wants to quantify it.
Outro: "It Was A Good Day", Ice Cube
We interview conservationist Jules Jackson about the field of conservation, its relationship with corporations and its use in global capital, the narratives involved in eco-tourism, and how solving environmental problems is framed as an individual responsibility.
[EDITOR'S NOTES:
1. To supplement the recommendations at the end, we would also suggest participating in mass organizations and/or socialist parties and either finding what they're already doing related to the environment or finding new ways to do that work in those organizations.
2. Jules let us know afterwards that Jeremy Davidson was three years old, and the company was A&G Coal Corporation.]
You can reach Jules at JacksonJV@hollins.edu for comments or further questions!
Outro: "4 Degrees," ANOHNI
Suggested reading:
Brockington & Duffy, ed. Capitalism and Conservation.
Graf von Hardenberg, Kelly, Leal, & Walkild. ed. The Nature State: Rethinking the History of Conservation
Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
https://bluevirginia.us/2020/11/delegate-sam-rasoul-calls-for-decisive-action-to-cancel-the-mountain-valley-pipeline
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/opinion/lobbying-from-the-appalachian-mountains-to-washington-d-c/article_37288270-ad04-11eb-ac25-f7bfb6824fd8.html
https://roanoke.com/photo/photos-tech-professor-locks-self-to-mountain-valley-pipeline-construction/collection_b4ec55ad-77d1-54c5-a0a1-dec140b67443.html
https://all-med.net/pdf/our-roots-run-deep-as-ironweed/
https://appvoices.org/2021/04/16/tree-sitters-removed-mvp/
https://orionmagazine.org/article/moving-mountains/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4489461
https://measurepnw.com/blog/what-is-greenwashing-a-nestl%C3%A9-case-study
https://www.jstor.org/journal/conssoci
https://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/joe
https://antipodeonline.org/
Examples of bad things:
https://www.corvuscoffee.com/blogs/news
https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/5477/corporate%20environmentalism.pdf
In this free-ranging and discursive discussion, Alekx, Eilex, and Ethan talk about Western films (cowboy movies, not the whole capitalist cultural category) and how they portray Mexico and Mexicans, how the films launder settler Manifest Destiny and settler-colonialism, how gender is depicted and reified through the films, and US perceptions of citizenry, property, and morality are all mixed in with the ideas they contain. It goes all over the place. Yee haw.
Suggested reading/viewing:
Black, Liza. Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960.
Hernández, Kelly Lytle. Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol
Molina, Natalia. How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts
Diamond, Neil & Bainbridge, Catherine & Hayes, Jeremiah. dirs. Reel Injun: On The Trail of the Hollywood Indian. 2009.
Ford, John. dir. Stagecoach. 1939
Leone, Sergio. dir. Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars). 1964
McLagen, Andrew. dir. The Shadow Riders. 1982
Peckinpah, Sam. dir. The Wild Bunch. 1969
Sturges, John. dir. The Magnificent Seven. 1960
