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Researchers Against the War Machine - The Story of NARMIC

Derek Seidman Eyes on the Ties
NARMIC wanted to research the power and money behind the defense industry and get this research into the hands of peace activists who were resisting the Vietnam War so they could fight more effectively. They wanted — as they put it — to “fill the gap” between “peace research” and “peace organizing.” They wanted to do research for action — hence, their use of the term “action/research” to describe what they did.

Faces Places - Agnès Varda’s Double Portrait

Patricia Storace The New York Review of Books
Faces Places (Visages Villages in French) is an unexpected—and perhaps final—gift from the visionary eighty-nine-year-old director Agnès Varda. Varda had previously announced that her 2008 documentary self-portrait, The Beaches of Agnès, would be her last film, doubting that she had the physical strength to undertake another full-length feature. But chance, which Varda has often acknowledged as her best assistant, intervened; the making of Faces Places is the proof.

Dark chocolate is now a health food. Here’s how that happened.

Julia Belluz Vox
Thanks to a decades-long effort by the chocolate industry, chocolate is now being convincingly sold as a health food. But the chocolate-industrial-research complex distracts us from issues like what in our food contributes to the obesity and diabetes epidemics; chocolate certainly isn’t the solution here.

Lost Mural by Secret Communist Unearthed in Richmond Basement

Eli Wirtschafter KQED
The mural artist, Arnautoff, who at that time was a secret member of the Communist party, dropped subtle political messages into his mural. He depicts four dock workers on their (union-guaranteed) lunch break, discussing the news of the day.