Author: Mike Raddie

Tony Golden Memorial Cycle 2024

I never knew Tony Golden but I’ve read lots about him and I think I understand what his loss means; his death was an assault on goodness and decency, on the noble vocation of public service and self sacrifice. How fitting his annual memorial is so full of love and friendship.

The End of Press Freedom

Today there is a real fear that a journalist and publisher is about to be extradited from an ostensibly democratic country to face a sealed grand jury indictment, the charges of which may include espionage which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or even capital punishment.

BSNews is ‘Russian Backed’ and is Reported to OFCOM: We Respond

Greatly concerned about these accusations and desperate to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of this responsible citizen – and also hopefully mitigate any punishment by OFCOM, a body we both fear and respect – Mike Raddie responded with the urgency such an indictment deserves; almost immediately, in fact, after he’d made himself a nice curry, drank a few glasses of wine, and finished re-watching the last three episodes of Breaking Bad.

Dispatches from Damascus. Part One

USA, France and UK paid a collective cost of around $1.4 billion to fire their cruise missiles. It cost Syria about $1.4 million in air defence technology to defend itself against the attack. Call me a cynic but this looks awfully like a massive western money laundering operation to benefit Raytheon, Boeing and other corporate interests in the military industrial complex.

Movie Review ‘The Damp Squibel’: Cult hit or hit cult?

We don’t normally do movie reviews here at BSNews. In fact, we usually concentrate exclusively on geo-politics and foreign policy, steer clear of sports and let others cover gossip and popular culture. My co-ed occasionally reveals her anthropological fascination and ultimate exasperation with the insidious twins of celebrity culture and the advertising industry but for me, I avoid them both like the plague, I never watch TV and I wouldn’t know a Kardashian if one punched me in the face.

The New Axis of Evil: Understanding U.S. “Regime Change” in Syria

“In calm retrospect we can appreciate better the disastrous effects of the poison of
falsehood, whether officially, semiofficially, or privately manufactured. It has been
rightly said that the injection of the poison of hatred into men’s minds by means of
falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the
human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body. A fuller realization of
this is essential.”

Education in Syria

This documentary (by Sinan Saeed and Tom Duggan) explores the education system within Syria, the massive school building project beginning in the 1970’s culminating in over 20,000 new schools as well as the well attended free university system throughout the country.