[Peace-discuss] Recommended and discommended videos I recently watched

[J.B. Nicholson]

Recommended:

ScheerPost: Is the Intercept a Deep State Success Story? (w/ John Kiriakou)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aMBuTzzYChY

- modern journalists don't need to be recruited into the CIA/FBI/etc. These 
journalists already behave in a manner consistent with reporting to these agencies.

- Jeremy Scahill helped get Daniel Hale (the fellow who exposed that the vast 
majority of drone attacks kill innocent civilians) caught

- entering professions with your own set of ethics because the organization won't 
teach you right and wrong

- one of the interviewers said journalism students don't know who Julian Assange is 
and don't care; journalists at a talk engaging in name-calling to describe Assange 
and not acknowledging that they republished Wikileaks information (merely calling for 
the next question from the class instead)

- this helps you understand why Jimmy Dore laughs at anyone who thinks that they need 
to go to journalism school to learn to do journalism


ScheerPost: SI: The NSA Is It’s Own Worst Enemy (w/ James Bamford)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fSNzDvugUgI

- another in a series of very informative interviews from James Bamford who has 
probably written the most about the NSA than any other living writer. This interview 
is also a promotion for his new book, "Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and 
the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence".



ScheerPost: Is Biden...Pro-Labor?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rD49Nj4Xe3o

- a far more substantive discussion of Biden's stance on unions than the More Perfect 
Union piece below. I remain skeptical of the value that pro-labor NLRB appointments 
mean a whole lot but the interviewee seems to think that these appointments mean 
quite a bit.

- this interview brings up a pay improvement to NAFTA that doesn't get covered much 
elsewhere.

- Walter Issacson's biographies of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk both lack any feedback 
from the perspective of the workers such as the roughly 1 million Foxconn workers who 
make Apple's iThings and thousands of Tesla workers. For a much better take on how 
horrific Apple is to their workers, consider reading "Dying for an iPhone" (a related 
interview from Chris Hedges when he had an RT show is 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0IgWeP7ngSo and a longer piece 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lnhqPYBAWqM ) and watching 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9hj0HSkCnL0 which is "Apple Whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik 
On Retaliation, Toxics & Corruption-Poisoning The People & Workers". Issacson's work 
is more in line with what passes for journalism in the tech world -- 
narrative-following, at times promotional, more hagiography than biography, and never 
seriously challenging those in power. Hence Issacson gets to interview elites and 
their friends/colleagues.




Discommended:

More Perfect Union: No President Has Done This Before
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mZaoixI1mGc

- one detail-free sentence ("President Biden himself intervened to stop rail workers 
from striking last fall") ostensibly covering how badly this self-described "most 
pro-union president" treated the railroad workers stepping into a strike in the 
making and busting that strike on behalf of railroad owners instead of standing 
behind the workers who wanted very meager improvements on the heels of a disastrous 
derailment spilling vinyl chloride in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023 which 
caused evacuating the town. A whole section of the video is on how previous 
presidents "used their legal authority to block workers from participating in strikes 
35 times".

- this piece is even self-contradictory: at 2m39s into the video the narrator says
> There's one previous moment, however, when a president took the side of workers 
> and it had a big impact. In 1936, General Motors workers in Flint, Michigan, sat
> down on the job to protest dangerous conditions in the plant. Unlike previous
> presidents who deployed violent tactics against striking workers, then President
> Franklin D. Roosevelt chose not to have the autoworkers forcibly removed. And
> after 44 days, the workers won a union. It was a defining moment that helped build
> a thriving middle class in the coming decades.

So I guess that the thing "no president has done [...] before" is show up, hold a 
bullhorn, and give a short speech? I kept hearing what the interviewees said and 
asking myself "How?" as in 'How did this visit improve your work picketing? How did 
that visit turn into beneficial policy?' but the piece offered no answers.

- the whole piece is light on substance and policy review which justifies the title. 
The piece is heavy on substanceless emotional argument which tries to convince you 
that Pres. Biden cares about workers. I suspect that this entire video has more to do 
with a Democratic Party-friendly outlet (More Perfect Union) pitching for Biden in 
his time of need (low approval ratings, poor economy, poor showing against Trump if 
elections were held today) rather than asking policy-based questions of interviewees 
and reviewing the matter by treating this short Biden visit as what it appears to be 
so far -- public relations.