Podcasts about Snyder’s Road to Unfreedom. Having finished reading Timothy Snyder’s book The Road to Unfreedom, I listened to three podcasts where Snyder is talking about his book. Boy- the guy can talk! Certainly he’s going over the ideas that he has already written in his book, but he can talk articulately about tangential issues as well. He comes over as more optimistic in person than I felt he was on the page. On April 9 2018 he spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia and answered, not always successfully, some interesting questions. He made a particular effort to speak about Russia, Ukraine, Europe and America all within the same frame. It’s notable that he emphasized that the Mueller investigation, which had not reported at that time, would be about the rule of law and not other issues. In Dan Snow’s History Hit, he speaks more as a historian, about the role of history in reclaiming the importance of time. Finally, Snyder is interviewed in a program titled “Liberal Democracy’s Misplaced Faith in the Future” on Trumpcast, which is a more blatantly politically partisan (i.e. anti-Trump) than the other programs, and this interview is far more U.S. oriented
Rear Vision (ABC) I listened to two podscasts that really tie in with current events. Trump, Greenland and the longer tale of American real estate talks about previous times when America has purchased land – from the French with the Louisiana Purchase, from the Russians when they bought Alaska, from Spain when they bought Florida, and Arizona and New Mexico from the Mexican as part of the Gadsden Purchase. However, in recent years America has been able to exert hegemony through the construction of bases without having to buy the whole country – some 500 of themacross the world. It is suggested that Trump’s plan for purchasing Greenland betrays his real estate developer tendencies, rather than a strategic plan.
The second podcast Kashmir in lockdown was about Kashmir and India’s revocation of Article 370. The two academics here tell of their perspective of this action from the point of view of their own country (Pakistan or India) although they do have quite a few commonalities. I’m uneasy about Indian assertiveness here, especially with two nuclear-armed countries.
Rough Translation Two good ones here. DIY Mosul is about the phenomenon in post-war Mosul (in Iraq) where people started volunteering to clean up the city- something almost unheard of after so many years of war. Yet an act that seems so benign wasn’t necessarily perceived that way by the post-war Iraqi government.
We Don’t Say That is about language in France -in particular, language for talking about blackness. There are two related stories here: one about a woman of French/American/Congolese origin who is trying to get a particularly offensive French term changed, and running up against the strict official controls on the French language. The second story is about claiming the word “black” in French, in a culture where race is not spoken about (even though it might operate powerfully). Really interesting.
Saturday Extra. Continuing with her series on Latin America, Geraldine Doogue talks with Gustavo Flores-Macias from Cornell University about the militarization of the Southern Border of Mexico/Guatemala, at the behest of the United States in Mexico Under Pressure. Mexico is beefing up its National Guard, an organization introduced in 2006 to deal with gangs, but which coincided with a higher murder rate in Mexico. Now the National Guard is controlling the Southern Border in a political ‘deal’ where U.S. chooses not to impose tariffs yet, as long as Mexico stops migrants coming through.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 