Month: March 2021

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What A Day - Standing Up For Sex Workers

In light of the Georgia shooter's claim that his attack was intended to "eliminate" "temptations," activists have talked about the killings in the context of violence targeted at Asian migrant sex workers, an often dehumanized and stigmatized community of AAPI women.

We spoke with Yves Tong Nguyen, an organizer with Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and massage parlor workers. She told us about the harmful repercussions of criminalizing sex work, why policing isn't the answer, and more.

And in headlines: an elderly Chinese woman who was the victim of a recent racist attack in San Francisco will donate nearly a million dollars to fight anti-AAPI racism, a cargo ship gets stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, and Montana's governor gets in trouble for shooting a wolf.

Show Links:

Red Canary Song

https://www.redcanarysong.net/


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The Daily Signal - What This Former NYPD Detective Has to Say About Attacks on Police

Rob O’Donnell, a former detective with the New York Police Department, was among first responders to the terrorist attacks that brought down the towers of the World Trade Center in 2001 as well as to the terrorist bombing there eight years earlier.


O'Donnell joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about what that was like.


"A few days before 9/11, I had a homicide [investigation], which probably helped me not be there as soon as I would have been because I ended up working on 9/10 to about 2 in the morning, where I normally would have been at work at 7," O’Donnell recalls.


"I responded straight down to ground zero on 9/11," he says. "And if I would have been at the police station, I would have been there that much sooner."


O'Donnell also discusses the violent attacks on police and other law enforcement across the nation, especially over the past year, related racial tensions, and potential reforms in police departments.


We also cover these stories:


  • Republican and Democrat lawmakers clash during a Senate hearing on Democrats' bill to nationalize elections.
  • Senate Democrats Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois say they won’t oppose Biden administration nominees. 
  • Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says the Biden administration is responsible for the influx of migrants to America’s southern border. 



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Tech Won't Save Us - Elon Musk Isn’t Saving Humanity w/ Manu Saadia

Paris Marx is joined by Manu Saadia to discuss the roots of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ visions for space, and why they serve the billionaires’ need for control, not the betterment of humanity.

Manu Saadia is the author of “Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.”

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

  • Elon Musk said he’s accumulating wealth to make life multiplanetary. Jeff Bezos said he can only think to spend his Amazon “winnings” on space.
  • In “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity,” Daniel Deudney outlines the two space paradigms discussed in the episode. You can also read a review of it.
  • Werhner von Braun, who was key to the US Apollo Program, was a Nazi scientist who came to the US after World War II.
  • Carl Sagan said “there is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. … For the moment, Earth is where we make our stand.” Elon Musk laughed at this and claimed Mars is the alternative, but Shannon Stirone explained why he is very wrong.
  • Salvage published an editorial on the immediate need to repair the damage done by capitalism.
  • Science fiction mentioned: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed,” Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein.

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Curious City - The Environmental Impacts Of The Chicago River Reversal

We dug into the Curious City archives and pulled out one of our favorites, a story about the Chicago River. Chicago’s bold maneuver to reverse the Chicago River diverted sewage away from Lake Michigan, allowing Chicago’s continued growth. But it was hardly a perfect solution. The effects of the groundbreaking engineering feat are still being felt today -- even as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Reporter Carson Vaughan has that story.
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NBN Book of the Day - Phil Zuckerman, “Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment” (New York UP, 2020)

Phil Zuckerman's book, Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment (2nd ed.) (New York University Press, 2020), points out that religious conservatives around the world often claim that a society without a strong foundation of faith would necessarily be an immoral one, bereft of ethics, values, and meaning. Indeed, the Christian Right in the United States has argued that a society without God would be hell on earth.

Zuckerman, however, challenges these claims. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with more than 150 citizens of Denmark and Sweden, among the least religious countries in the world, he shows that, far from being inhumane, crime-infested, and dysfunctional, highly secular societies are healthier, safer, greener, less violent, and more democratic and egalitarian than highly religious ones.

Society without God provides a rich portrait of life in a secular society, exploring how a culture without faith copes with death, grapples with the meaning of life, and remains content through everyday ups and downs.

Phil Zuckerman is an Associate Dean and Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is also a regular affiliated professor at Claremont Graduate University, and he has been a guest professor for two years at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In 2011, Phil founded the first Secular Studies department in the nation, he regularly writes for Psychology Today, Huffington Post, and numerous scholarly journals, and his books have been translated and published in Danish, Farsi, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Italian.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City.

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Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons - Local Innovator Uses Mushroom Power To Reduce Waste, Save The Planet

U.S. Landfills are at 85 percent filled, and that is a big problem because we’ll continue to keep on making trash, but won’t have anywhere to put it. Today on Reset, we have an innovator who is breaking down and recycling our waste using an unlikely method-mushrooms! For more Reset interviews, subscribe to this podcast and please leave us a rating. That helps other listeners find us. For more about the program, go to the WBEZ website or follow us on Twitter at @WBEZreset.
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Consider This from NPR - Colorado Shooting Reveals Limits Of State Gun Control — And Steels Activists For More

Colorado has universal background checks, a red flag law and the city of Boulder recently passed an assault weapons ban. None of it was enough to stop a man from shooting and killing 10 people at a Boulder grocery store this week.

State Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theatre shooting, reacts to the events of this week — and tells NPR why he still believes incremental action at the state level can help prevent gun violence.

Additional editing help in this episode from Bente Birkeland of Colorado Public Radio.

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The Government Huddle with Brian Chidester - The One with the Merritt Group Federal SVP

Matt Donovan, Senior Vice President for Government at Merritt Group joins the show to discuss the importance of developing agency-based marketing programs as part of your GTM strategy. We also discuss tactical steps to begin to building your messaging platform, new digital marketing technologies in the market you can take advantage of today, and best practices in delivering strategic value to your sales leaders.