ALBUFEIRA

[Uma ajuda para a compreensão de como a estratégia de TRUMP é apenas “o reflexo da estratégia dos diversos poderes instalados nos EUA” (Pentágono pelos Militares, Republicanos e Democratas pelos Civis), com os trabalhadores ─ “com direitos iguais a zero ou perto disso” ─ a imporem o regresso ao trabalho mesmo em plena Pandemia, “preferindo morrer da doença que morrer de fome”.]

“Coronavirus crisis raises questions about workplace safety agency (OSHA)”

(Donovan Slack and Dennis Wagner/USA TODAY/Apr 16, 2020/usatoday.com)

Workers are separated by sheeting

at a Tyson Foods plant in Camilla, Georgia.

In South Dakota, the virus struck hundreds of workers at a single pork processing plant. In Illinois and Michigan, a half dozen grocery workers died and others fell ill. In New York, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of dozens of transit employees. Among health care workers, at least 27 have died and 9,200 have contracted the virus.

As the country contemplates returning more employees to work and reopening the economy, the key federal agency tasked with ensuring workplace safety is drawing withering criticism from advocates who say the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is falling down on the job. (continua)

[eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/16/coronavirus-osha-covid-occupational-safety-health/2986364001]

(texto/legenda/inglês: usatoday.com ─ imagem: Tyson Foods)

The Political Economy of Zombies

By John Powers

“Um artigo muito interessante da autoria do escultor e bloguista John Powers (starwarsmodern.blogspot.pt) editado online por The Airship e simultaneamente muito útil para se compreender o que se passa em Washington, neste preciso momento. A ler, mesmo depois deste evento ser mais uma vez ultrapassado – no dia de hoje e pelo menos até ao próximo.”

Over the past few years, the zombie apocalypse has come to represent an alternative to neoliberalism – an ideology that admits no alternatives.

"Look at the movies that we see all the time. It's easy to imagine the end of the world – an asteroid destroying all of life and so on – but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism." (Slavoj Zizek at Occupy Wall Street)

I have never considered myself a "zombie guy." Horror isn't my thing, gore bums me out, torture porn isn't my kind of porn. But because of the flood of zombie films over the past 10 years, inertia has been enough to make me into a reluctant expert on the subject – which is not to say that I'm an actual expert, just that I know a lot more about zombies than I ever intended.

I do not discuss Walking Dead in this essay. I watched the first season of the show, but couldn't bring myself to watch after the little girl disappeared. (I likewise lost whatever love I had for Will Smith's I am Legend after the dog was infected.)

Recently, I flipped from passive consumption – "There's nothing else on"; "It was a long flight"; "Everyone else wanted to watch it"; "It was on Netflix!"; etc. – to being an active consumer. I read Colson Whitehead's 2011 novel Zone One a couple of years ago and just finished Max Brooks's 2006 oral history World War Z. So while I still don't consider myself a zombie guy, I can no longer pretend to be a zombie naif. ("Brains?")

More than anything else, these novels convinced me that my time has been well spent, because through them I realized that the political meaning of zombies has shifted from something pat and trite to something more complex. Zombies have become the way we imagine radical revolutionary change. More surprising, the zombie apocalypse is as close as we have come in the past 30-odd years to producing a convincing utopian vision for the future that grows out of our present circumstances. It's important, however, to begin with what zombies used to mean.

[continua em The Airship]

(imagem: Web – texto: airshipdaily.com)