Years before the Snowden exposés in 2013, internet-savvy activists knew full well of the surveillance possibilities of the web, and the necessity of online privacy protection for political groups (and indeed everyone). And despite the almost-utopian air which accompanied the arrival of some of the new internet behemoths – eg Google and Facebook – only the gullible couldn’t see that these might easily turn out to be surveillance apparatus of the kind Orwell couldn’t have dreamt of.
This film is radical. With over a dozen NHS insiders as my witnesses, I will tell the alarming story of how the health service as we know it is being quietly abolished. Almost without our noticing, it’s been replaced by a system modelled on the US in which care is delivered by profit-maximising companies that charge patients for treatment which is anyway to be restricted and reduced.
Sometimes a piece of propaganda is so glaring you almost have to splash cold water on your face to make sure your eyes are not deceiving you. Take a bow John Simpson, the grandly titled ‘World Affairs Editor’ of BBC News. You don’t earn a moniker like that by offending the global power elite. But is it really necessary to genuflect before US President Barack Obama as Simpson did in a recent article masquerading as informed commentary?
There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
Brand has brought the idea of revolution of consciousness to millions of people who would never otherwise have been exposed to it. This rare and unexpected boon should be seized upon by activists who actually are working on serious models for fair, just and humane societies.
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished Royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
There’s an historic level of animosity right now towards Labour in Scotland. Many are simply seething. Many will never forgive them for siding with the ConDems and taking a leading part in the establishment’s Project Fear. Jones acknowledges much of this, but fails to concede his own negative part in that outcome.
Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion. War has been provided with a humanitarian mandate under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). The victims of U.S. led wars are presented as the perpetrators of war. Civilians in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are responsible for their own deaths.
Interview with German Editor Turned CIA Whistleblower Fascinating details emerge. Leading US-funded think-tanks and German secret service are accessories. Attempted suppression by legal threats. Blackout in German media By Eric van de Beek (Russia Insider) Exclusively for RI, Dutch journalist Eric van de Beek interviews the senior German editor who is causing a sensation with his allegations that the CIA […]
In truth, Jones is part of an Oxbridge, Guardian/Observer/Independent/New Statesman/BBC niche on the ‘liberal-left’ of the Establishment. It is acceptable because it indeed does not offer the kind of radical perspectives needed to question the very foundations of the status quo.
With impeccable timing, Henry Kissinger’s latest self-serving tome has just been released with its satirical title, “World Order”. In one fawning review, Kissinger is described as a “key shaper of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century”. Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East Timor and all the other victims of his “statecraft”. Only when “we” recognise the war criminals in our midst will the blood begin to dry.
Jonathan Cook, an ex-reporter for the UK Guardian, said that high profile journalists in the western media are “paid by the media corporations to limit our intellectual horizons.” Indeed, but they probably limit their own by insulating themselves, not just their audience, from facts and arguments that undermine an imperial worldview. Just stick to reading the corporate press and you’ll be very well insulated.
