‘Succession’ and the dehumanization of today’s world

August 5, 2023

‘Succession’ is a TV series vaguely based on the family running the Fox Corporation. It shows the immense influence of such a company in the daily life of U.S. citizens, but what shocked the reviewer most is how it depicts the dehumanization of human relationships in today’s world.

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Humanity confronting annihilation

September 3, 2017

The peace march on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to commemorate over 70,000 lives lost at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9 in Livermore, Calif., bring up questions of Marxism, humanism, and the alternative necessary new society.

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Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?

September 7, 2016

Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.

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Workshop Talks: Reclaim our labor

March 7, 2015

Working in healthcare has been transformed in a very alienating way. The workplace is drowning in fancy hi-tech machines. Cadres of bureaucrats spend their working hours promoting the product of healthcare with marketing campaigns. The rank and file hear daily admonitions to smile more and are told, “Just be glad you have a job.” Bureaucrats preach “customers come first,” while cutting service and staffing. Hospital and HMO executives are in a race to eliminate labor as much as possible in their “product.”

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WOMAN AS REASON: Isla Vista murders fueled by misogyny

July 5, 2014

When you are despised for who you are, as those murdered by Elliot Rodger were—and women are not the only ones on a list that includes any differently sexed person, immigrants and all minorities but especially Blacks, people with disabilities, and that’s only in the U.S.—then a revolution has to be more than an economic change, it even has to be more than “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.” Revolution has to be so deep and total that all human relationships are transformed. To do so, it must be total from the start…

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Workshop Talks: ER certainties: death and co-pays

September 23, 2011

by Htun Lin

A patient shows up in the emergency room, expecting care, and wanting to be seen by a doctor. But the gulf between the patient’s expectations and the reality of HMO practice is right out of “The Twilight Zone.”

Even before the patient gets to see the doctor, a healthcare worker like me walks in [=>]

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