Taking No Chances, The Empire Strikes Back With the BBC
“Russell Brand, who are you to edit a political magazine?” asks BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) interviewer Jeremy Paxman with all the arrogant irrelevance required of an establishment shill at the beginning of an eleven-minute interview on the BBC’s October 23 edition of Newsnight. Posted on the BBC Newsnight channel on Youtube, the interview had almost 6 million views in its first three days
Disappointingly, Brand does not immediately respond to the insult with something like, “Well who are you to decide who does or doesn’t get to edit anything in a …
Mediastanis a documentary film that follows the journey of a small group of WikiLeaks’ associates in their quest for media outlets to publish secret US diplomatic cables. These young journalists travel through Central Asia and interview editors of local media organizations with the goal of offering cables relevant to their country. In their Press Release, WikiLeaks calls the 94 minute raw film “Operation Cablerun…the world’s first truly global media event”. Julian Assange describes the Central Asia region as “the most fascinating geopolitical region in the world… ; on the top, Russia, on the bottom, China; in the middle, …
While the American Empire – and much of the policies being pursued – did not begin under President Obama, the focus of “Empire Under Obama” is to bring awareness about the nature of empire to those who may have – or continue – to support Barack Obama and who may believe in the empty promises of “hope” and “change.” Empire is institutional, not individual. My focus on the imperial structure during the Obama administration is not to suggest that it does not predate Obama, but rather, that Obama represents ‘continuity’ in imperialism, not “change.” This part examines the concept of …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 31st, 2013
Robin Hood tax supporters National Nurses United, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and European Parliament VP tell Congress to support “no brainer” tax on Wall Street.
In April, Jeffrey M. Jones of Gallupwrote that “…Americans rate John F. Kennedy [JFK], Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan much more positively in retrospect than they did while the men were president.” This positive rating has continued for years, with Americans rating JFK as the highest rated President in 2010. It is no surprise that this love for the royal Camelot dynasty has translated into the many conspiracy theories about his assassination in 1963, whomever they deem the culprit, which mainly circulate around the idea that the Vietnam war would have ended and the …
Third lesson: Being a US ally is not a guarantee of a country’s information sovereignty being respected. The cyberspace control is not an end in itself. The real objective is carrying out the traditional strategic mission of gaining geopolitical dominance over large spaces. It would be naïve to expect that the US cyber interference overseas could be suspended as a result of some concessions or friendly persuasions.
The evidence adduced by Snowden proves that the United States closely monitors the European Union’s central structures as well as the communications of its closest allies among the EU member states that stay beyond …
Sartre once remarked that the attempt to construct a philosophy that goes beyond Marxism simply recreates a pre-Marxist view that is no longer relevant to current understanding. In a recent issue of the London Review of Books (9-26-2013) I believe the philosopher Galen Strawson guilty of just such an attempt in his article “Real Naturalism.”
Engels long ago pointed out that there are basically two trends in modern philosophy — one which leads to idealism and myth making, and one which leads to materialism and the correct scientific approach to understanding the nature of reality. I hope to show in this …
In Part 1 of the Global Power Project exposé on the Institute of International Finance, I examined the origins and evolution of an organization representing the interests of global banks. In Part 2, I looked at the role played by the IIF and its leadership during the European debt crisis. In this third and final part in the series, I examine the relationship between the IIF and global central bankers.
Since the early 1990s, the IIF has been heavily involved working with central bankers, particularly through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, where private bankers have been granted a …
Throughout the years, Lebanon’s demographics have experienced periodic influx. But particularly in the last two years, the demographic shift has been so overwhelming due to the flood of Syrian refugees in desperate need for shelter. The situation is highly charged, if not perilous, considering Lebanon’s unmanageable sectarian balances, let alone the direct involvement of Lebanese parties in the brutal Syrian war. If not treated with utter sensitivity and political wisdom, Lebanon’s vastly changing demographics will not bode well in a country of exceedingly fractious sectarian politics.
The numbers speak for themselves. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 790,000 …
When someone with interesting things to say is granted a high-profile media platform, it is wise to listen to what is being said and ask why they have been given such a platform. Comedian and actor Russell Brand’s 10-minute interview by Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s Newsnight last week was given considerable advance publicity and generated enormous reaction on social media and in the press, just as those media gatekeepers who selected Brand to appear would have wished.
The interview was hung on the hook of Brand’s guest-editing of a special edition of New Statesman, the ‘leftwing’ weekly magazine owned by the multimillionaire Mike …
So, how do I say this? I went to Vacations International last night with my special education partner. She just got off work at 7 p.m., a day that, well, started at 7 a.m. You know, children, abused some of them, bad homes, bad things in their lives, and the developmental delays, the challenges of autism, etc. I got that goofy American huckster phone call that I had won a prize. I tracked it down — the total surveillance and sharing all personal information part — to the Clark County Fair when I took some of my clients there two …
As a rule the discussions related to what has been revealed by Edward Snowden about US global electronic surveillance boil down to violations of human rights and illegal interference into the private lives of millions in different parts of the world. If it were all about it, then the White House would not set so much store by the case and raise the issue of Snowden’s extradition to the top level of interstate discussions and even go as far as to cancel summits. Barack Obama was scared enough to cancel his appearance at international forums, which was the …
The new film Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars should be required viewing in all schools and homes in the United States, including the home of the U.S. president who could not be bothered to meet with the child victims of his drones who spoke in Congress this week.
One could even speculate what the appropriate fantasized outcome might be if, Clockwork Orange-style, Obama were compelled to view Unmanned. But fantasies are what got us into this. Former drone pilot Brandon Bryant opens this beautifully made, fast-moving film by describing his childhood comic book-induced fantasies …
One week we learn the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has contaminated the entire North Pacific with via the daily discharge of 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean. The following week we learn that Britain has approved the first new, “totally safe” nuclear power plant in 35 years, at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The snow job being perpetrated on the unsuspecting British public is that nuclear energy creates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide and that it’s cheaper than renewable energy. Neither is true.
Where Do You Put the Nuclear Waste?
Nuclear energy only looks cheap and carbon neutral if …
In March, I delivered a TED Talk at TEDxNovaScotia on “The Debt of Creativity,” which was about debt, creativity, the radical imagination, Gustav Courbet, student loans, indentured labour, the Paris Commune, globalization and whatever else I could cram into my 15 minutes of fame. I’m not a huge fan of TED talks, but I hope this one is OK.
You don’t have to search the internet for the truth. Sometimes it is right in front of you… inside the mainstream newspapers:
The Friday, October 18, USA Today main section, page 4A ran this story: “Army warns of trouble handling even a single war”.It goes on to say that “budget restrictions could render the Army at high risk to meet even one major war, a warning the Army is sounding because it sees another war as inevitable before long.” Did you catch that last part? The masters of this Military Industrial Empire are not only doing their best to scare the …
Whatever happened to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? You could be forgiven for thinking everyone packed up shop a while ago and forgot to inform you. There’s been barely a peep about it since the revival of talks was greeted with great fanfare back in July.
The negotiations, which have been conducted in a fug of secrecy, flitted briefly back on the radar last week when the US secretary of state, John Kerry, met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what the media called an “unusually long”, seven-hour meeting in Rome.
Much of the conversation was held in private, with not even officials …
If you are a minority, the Republican Party would really rather you didn’t vote. Last week, Don Yelton, precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party revealed on the Daily Show that voter suppression laws are meant to “kick the Democrats in the butt.” Said Yelton, “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it.”
My painting “Voter Fraud” — a 40″ x 30″ oil painting depicting a sign painter finishing up a sign reading “Whites Only!” hanging over an e-voting machine — reflects the hard hitting reality that …
Ahh, the beauty of our screen-screed – how the world is just loving being tethered to junk, screen birds, those angry little apps, the You Tube generation, everyone is connected, nothing is more important than Tweets, Texts and Triumphant Trilogies of Self-Aggrandizement on Flickr. What a pathetic mess the world has become, and as I work on my alternative sentencing story for the magazine gig I get paid for, the real fabric being “no new jails” groups – since, in Spokane (and it’s the same in other jurisdictions) the city-county taxpayer ends up spending 70 cents of every tax dollar …
