(1) Max Blumenthal, interviewed on Jung & Naiv. An excellent interview with Max Blumenthal, contextualizing the assault on Gaza in the rise of right wing and genocidal rhetoric in Israel. (Hat-tip to Marjo van der Veen.) A wide-ranging interview, well worth watching the whole thing, but one point he makes (in response to a question from the interviewer, who is German, about anti-semitic rallies in Berlin) that is especially good: "Zionism is using Jews as human shields; they're speaking in the name of all Jews, and claiming that this war they are carrying out is being conducted in the name of all Jews." He also talks about the overlap between Zionism and anti-semitism, e.g., when Israel points to anti-semitism in France or Germany and encourages French or German Jews to move to Israel (as if to agree with the anti-semites that Jews don't belong in France or Germany). (I posted a great Real News Network interview with Blumenthal on Facebook and Twitter, but not here; it's also worth watching. See also Jason Stanley's Boston Review piece, When Protesting Israel Becomes Hating Jews, which I mentioned in my last links post.)
(2) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dave Zirin on Ferguson: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a really powerful piece in Time magazine, The Coming Race War Won't Be About Race, relating the protests in Ferguson to inequality and class warfare. Dave Zirin has an interesting response in The Nation, The Major Problem With Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Powerful Essay on Ferguson, which essentially praises Abdul-Jabbar's piece but takes him to task for prioritizing class over race. I stopped reading the comment section on Zirin's piece--even at The Nation's website, comments can be so toxic. But I can't help feeling that Zirin misinterprets Abdul-Jabbar. Anyway, both are worth reading. Also check out this Real News Network interview with Kevin Alexander Gray, a lawyer who is working with organizers of the Ferguson protests.
(3) Jayati Ghosh and Greg Palast on vulture funds and Argentina: D&S author and pal, investigative journalist Greg Palast, spoke with the Real News Network about Paul "the Vulture" Singer, whom a U.S. judge said Argentina must pay $3 billion for bonds Singer paid $30 million for. And here's economist Jayati Ghosh, one of the founders of and bloggers for our sister blog Triple Crisis, talking about the ramifications for the global financial system of the judgment and the Argentine default that would result if Argentina did pay Singer and the other hedge funds that have refused debt restructuring: The Outrageous US Court Judgement Causing Argentinian Default, from NewsClick.
(4) Heidi Shierholz, Bill Barclay, and Ron Baiman on the job market: The summer drought of new material on Doug Henwood's excellent radio show, Behind the News, is finally over; he posted a couple of new episodes recently. My commute to and from New Hampshire will be informative again for a while, vs. melting my brain with NPR, as I've been doing. The July 10 episode includes a segment with the Economic Policy Institute's Heidi Shierholz, talking about the flaccid job market. Doug's interviews with Heidi are just so great. (The second half of that episode features an interview with Sean Jacobs on the political economy of soccer. The "Active Culture" article in our current issue has a piece by our awesome intern Zion Griffin about "The People's Cup" activism in Brazil around the World Cup, which Jacobs discusses in the interview.) And here is what Bill Barclay and Ron Baiman wrote for CPEG about the July jobs report; and here is a statement Bill gave to the D.C. Jobs Summit in July.
That's it for this week.
--Chris Sturr