Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Citations Needed, Episode 28: The Asymptotic 'Two-State Solution' (Part I)


The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two-state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it.

But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza?

In Part I of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Professor Noura Erakat.

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The Show



Episode transcript available here.

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The Guest

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Assistant Professor at George Mason University. In addition to teaching international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University, Noura is a co-founding editor of the digital magazine Jadaliyya and is a frequent presence on national and international broadcasts, including CNN, NPR, NBC, PBS, BBC, Democracy Now!, and Al Jazeera. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Foreign Policy, Jezebel, Al Jazeera, and elsewhere.

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Citations Needed is available on iTunes, Soundcloud and LibSyn (here’s the RSS feed). You can also check us out on Twitter and Facebook.

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Want More?

For further reading, show notes, a periodic newsletter, and more exclusive content, please visit our Patreon page and sign up to support the show!


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Citations Needed is a media criticism podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi, political commentators and media analysts working to call bullshit on (usually corporate) media’s ubiquitous reliance on and regurgitation of false and destructive narratives, tropes and stereotypes.

Citations Needed is produced by Florence Barrau-Adams. Our Production Consultant is Josh Kross. The theme is ‘Nonphenomenal Lineage’ by Grandaddy.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Citations Needed News Brief: How to Respond to Knee-Jerk Bigotry on Live TV


Badass fashion blogger and activist Hoda Katebi joined Citations Needed for an all-access News Brief to discuss her now-infamous WGN television segment. With Hoda, we explore what it means to "sound American," the politics of women's clothing, and why everyone with even a single drop of Iranian blood is expected to be an expert on nuclear energy and international affairs.



And, if you haven't seen it already, please watch Hoda's full appearance on Chicago's WGN9. It's really something to behold.


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Head over the our Patreon page and sign up to support the show. You'll get all the exclusive content!

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Citations Needed is a media criticism podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi, political commentators and media analysts working to call bullshit on (usually corporate) media’s ubiquitous reliance on and regurgitation of false and destructive narratives, tropes and stereotypes.


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Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Citations Needed, Episode 27: How the Media Mainstreamed Racist Pseudoscience


If one were to approach New York Times-reading liberals circa 1990 and tell them about a crime-fighting policy that arbitrarily harassed black and Latino youths who had committed no crime and threw the book at low-level nonviolent offenses, they would be rightfully outraged at the idea. But, if one were to couch this exact policy in pseudoscience promoted by mercenary sociologists and glowingly written up in The Atlantic, these same liberals would not only accept it, they'd be its primary advocates.

This is that story. This is the story of how the racist pseudoscience of Broken Windows and Stop-and-Frisk that started on the rightwing fringes slowly seeped into the centrist and liberal media and how two new racist pseudosciences, predictive policing and high profile "gang raids", are – again, with the help of liberals – taking their place.

We are joined this week by Josmar Trujillo.

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The Show



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The Guest

Josmar Trujillo is a writer and organizer based in New York City. He has organized around education, disaster recovery and policing. He currently organizes with the Coalition to End Broken Windows and New Yorkers Against Bratton. He has written for the Village Voice, New York Daily News, Newsday, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and In Justice Today.


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Citations Needed is available on iTunes, Soundcloud and LibSyn (here’s the RSS feed). You can also check us out on Twitter and Facebook.

***

Want More?

For further reading, show notes, a periodic newsletter, and more exclusive content, please visit our Patreon page and sign up to support the show!


***

Citations Needed is a media criticism podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi, political commentators and media analysts working to call bullshit on (usually corporate) media’s ubiquitous reliance on and regurgitation of false and destructive narratives, tropes and stereotypes.

Citations Needed is produced by Florence Barrau-Adams. Our Production Consultant is Josh Kross. The theme is ‘Nonphenomenal Lineage’ by Grandaddy.

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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Citations Needed, Episode 26: The 'Welfare' Dog-Whistle


In Donald Trump's 2011 book, Time To Get Tough, his ghostwriters Wynton Hall and Peter Schweizer - both Breitbart editors - wrote:
Kids who grow up in homes where a magic check appears each month from the government believe there's nothing wrong with sitting at home doing nothing while taxpayers bust their humps working to fund them. For an entire generation, government welfare programs are eradicating the virtues of responsibility, hard work, and self-reliance that built America.
Of course, stigmatizing those who participate in social safety net programs is nothing new, and is often coupled with coded, racist language meant to paint all recipients of government support as lazy black and brown people - undeserving moochers getting handouts from "hard-working Americans."

Indeed, the term "welfare" itself is thrown around so casually in political speeches and media coverage we hardly notice it anymore. CNN reports that “GOP will tackle Medicare, Medicaid, welfare in 2018," while The Washington Post insists that “Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill.” CBS News tells viewers that “Washington eyes welfare reform," as The Wall Street Journal warns that "After Push on Taxes, Republicans Line Up Welfare Revamp Next."

But what do these outlets and the Republican Party actually mean when they talk about "welfare"? What programs are they referring to? The exact definition of "welfare" – which supposedly ended over 20 years ago – remains unclear.

While the word "welfare" and the welfare state has a positive connotation in Europe, in the United States it's more often than not a malleable propaganda term meant to dog-whistle programs for African-Americans and Latinos while signaling to whites that their checks and corporate handouts will remain untouched.

In this episode, we dig into the racist history of anti-welfare crusades, the political purpose of pathologizing poverty, and the meaninglessness of phrases like "welfare reform," with guest Sarah Jaffe.

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The Show



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The Guest

Sarah Jaffe is a reporting fellow at The Nation Institute and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Guardian, In These Times, The Nation, Truthout, The American Prospect and many other publications. She is the co-host of Belabored, a labor podcast hosted by Dissent magazine, and the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans In Revolt.

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Citations Needed is available on iTunes, Soundcloud and LibSyn (here’s the RSS feed). You can also check us out on Twitter and Facebook.

***

Want More?

For further reading, show notes, a periodic newsletter, and more exclusive content, please visit our Patreon page and sign up to support the show!


***

Citations Needed is a media criticism podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi, political commentators and media analysts working to call bullshit on (usually corporate) media’s ubiquitous reliance on and regurgitation of false and destructive narratives, tropes and stereotypes.

Citations Needed is produced by Florence Barrau-Adams. Our Production Consultant is Josh Kross. The theme is ‘Nonphenomenal Lineage’ by Grandaddy.

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