Cuba’s weaponized crickets, forever wars, feminist bombs

This week on Redacted Tonight, Lee takes apart the 2017 story that Cuba targeted US diplomats with sonic weapons. It turns out that crickets made the noise that supposedly gave US officials symptoms consistent with Traumatic Brain Injury. Deeper into the news, Lee covers new research which found that the pay for CEOs in Canadian businesses is starting to approach US levels of unequal pay. Also, the government shutdown is now the longest in US history and hundreds of thousands of government employees are still furloughed or working without pay. And the Yellow Vest movement in France continued into its ninth week, opening the question: ‘What can US social movements learn from the French protests?’

In the second half, Naomi Karavani addresses the news that four of the top five US weapons manufacturers are now led by a female CEO. Many have seen this as a feminist victory, but it exemplifies how an industry that profits off of destruction and death is able to use intersectional justice to make itself look progressive. For example, Girl Scouts of America recently collaborated with Raytheon on an advertisement. Meanwhile, US-manufactured weapons still regularly kill and maim women and girls around the world. Then, John F. O’Donnell tackles a recent report from The Economist that classified the US as a “flawed democracy.” It ranked the richest country in the history of the world at #25 in a Democracy Index made up of categories like ‘Civil Liberties’ and ‘Electoral Process’.

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