Monographs & Edited Collections (5,094 posts)

NYTimes

“In fact, most Germans rarely bumped into the Gestapo. They were satisfied with the dictatorship because they believed its promise to eliminate disruptive elements from public life: Communists, repeat offenders and so-called asocials who contributed nothing to the “national community.” Many citizens shared Gestapo fantasies of “cleaning up” the country by throwing “riffraff” into concentration camps. Family doctors and social workers joined Gestapo officers to identify “disabled” or “work-shy” individuals for incarceration or sterilization. A majority of Germans did not find the boundary between order and disorder arbitrary. The Gestapo gained legitimacy precisely because it left most people alone. “

This year, the AFB proposes a federal budget that takes decisive action on what matters to Canadians: creating jobs, reducing income inequality, lowering poverty levels, closing unfair and expensive tax loopholes, and getting the economy moving. The measures in this year’s AFB would lift a million Canadians out of poverty, double economic growth to 5.4%, and, at its peak, result in 460,000 new jobs, bringing Canada’s unemployment rate down to 6.4%.

According to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South.

A far-reaching deconstruction of neoliberalism’s economic agenda, political imposition and mystifying techniques

In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition.