World Analysis Newswire Archive

This post is a response to Charlotte DuCann’s beautiful and heartfelt post over on the Transition Norwich blog arguing that Transition needs to more explicitly embrace activism.  It is wonderful to see, whether through that blog, through Transition Voice, or through the emerging social reporting project, new voices coming through in the Transition blogosphere.  Charlotte speaks powerfully to the split that some of those engaged in Transition feel, that they almost need to keep their activism ‘in the closet’ in order to remain engaged.  She states that she sees her post as a ‘working document’, and invites reflections, so here are a few of mine.

This week's entire show is devoted to a recent speech by the pioneer of the free software movement, Richard Stallman. He gives a history of copyright law, and how it has become a tool of corporations to maximize profit by creating scarcity. He explains the technical and legal sides of some recent battles about DRM, and the moral and pragmatic reasons why people should refuse to use proprietary software.

Structural violence is the effect of a systemic imbalance in society that prefers the interests of some over others. Its dynamics are less visible than that of direct violence, where the causes are generally easier to identify. The use of direct violence is mostly a state affair manifested in armed conflict. The participation of the general population is predominantly one of inaction. Structural violence, however, tends to involve the participation of the general population which is both a cause for concern and optimism.

“Turkey pioneers the process aiming at normalization of politics and history in the [Middle East] region”

[Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, interview on ‘TRT Haber’ TV channel, 25 May 2011]

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is "the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington." For years, it's "drawn on a well-organized, well-connected, highly visible, successful, and wealthy Jewish population," subverting potential opposition.

Obama's May 22 AIPAC speech affirmed rock solid support for a "strong and secure Israel," leaving Palestinians entirely out of his equation, despite paying disingenuous lip service to their interests.

An official AIPAC statement expressed gratitude for his assurance that Washington doesn't expect Israel to withdraw to June 1967 borders, besides explicitly calling Hamas a terrorist organization, ignoring its January 2006 electoral victory as Palestine's legitimate government.

The show this week looks at the so-called financial 'crisis' from two different perspectives. Firstly, I give an audio commentary on a presentation I created last year, Understanding the Financial 'Crisis'. Next, Michael Hudson speaks on The Spectre Haunting Europe, detailing the financial goings on in Europe, focussing on the evisceration of the Latvian economy and expanding upon his prediction of a new feudalism and a neo-liberal style fire sale of the European welfare state.

Attached is a recording of a talk at the Sheffield Anarchist Book Fair held on 21st May 2011, titled, Luddites Organising Forum.

Attached is a recording from a talk held on 21st May 2011 at the Sheffield Anarchist Book Fair, titled "Elephants, Dogmas and Taboos: a Friendly Critique of Anarchism".

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo "sought arrest warrants" for Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law intelligence chief, Abdullah Al-Sanous, on "charges of orchestrating systematic attacks against civilians (amounting to) crimes against humanity."

Moreno-Ocampo is an imperial tool, following orders. Claiming ample evidence shows Gaddafi "personally ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians" is gross hypocrisy with no credibility whatever. His announcement was strategically timed to justify war by accusing government victims of crimes, portraying NATO lawlessness as a noble initiative to deter them.

No conclusive answers this week, as we consider possible motivations behind the recent attacks on Libya that underlie the rather overused cover story of humanitarian intervention. As an introduction, we read Ellen Brown's article Libya: All about Oil or All About Banking?. This sets the stage for our main presentation, by Vijay Prashad, a professor of international relations, whose invaluable insights and pieces of history you are unlikely to hear on commercial media.

Each year, the US State Department publishes human rights reports for over 190 countries. Its April 8-released 2010 China assessment can be accessed through the following link:

Unsparing in its harshness, it calls China "an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitutionally is the paramount authority,"

Indeed, China's no model human rights champion. However, America's record is far worse at home and abroad, yet self-criticism is absent. Moreover, rarely do major media reports discuss abuses. Instead they regurgitate managed news, suppressing full and accurate disclosure of Washington's most deplorable human and civil rights record at home and abroad.

On April 10, two days after the State Department's report, China's Information Office of the State Council published its own comprehensive report titled, "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010,"

In its report, the US State Department charges were mostly without corroboration. In contrast, China, under six major headings, used data from the US Justice Department (DOJ), FBI, other US agencies, state ones, and think tanks, as well as international and US media reports. They reveal a far different America than official Washington and managed major media reports, concealing dark side truths important to reveal.

bobby roberts and his sick show has been attracting protests all over the place
in whitburn bobby was demo'd loudley
in blaydon he was demo'd loudly and made the papers and tv
today bobby announces his next venue Gosforth race course

NZ has been taken over by a 'bicultural' tribal elite. The human rights omissions are killing people and leaving many with lives barely worth living. They have an anti-human rights philosophy, 'discriminatory collectivism, which aims to destroy individual and collective potential and any bottom-up challenge yet human rights regards the individual as a person (and spiritually, I believe, God regards the individual has having a 'name').

This week's show looks at the health impacts of chemical pollution. At home, profit maximisation is steadily toxifying the environment of North America as corporations hide behind deceitful and outdated legal guidelines. In Nigeria, we see how $hell are blatantly dumping whatever is expedient, using a mixture of lawyers and violence to try to stifle objections. We conclude with a 2005 recording about the damage of pre-natal exposure to environmental toxins.

With the death of Osama bin Laden, there is a perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to bring to an end the decade-long “War on Terror” by withdrawing from Afghanistan and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The past month has been a difficult one for anyone who wants to be at all knowledgeable about our world. First it was necessary to avoid the endless and endlessly useless reporting of the British royal wedding. No sooner had that media monstrosity ended when we were told that the United States government had succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden. The orgy of hatred and rancid triumphalism was immediate and a sickening sight to behold. Crowds of rabid Americans descended upon “ground zero” the world trade center site, to wave flags and chant as if they were the winning football team.

You see people will accept lies if their lives get better. As their lives get worse, they will inevitably ask questions. And as their lives disintegrate, they will start looking for both answers and suspects. That was and is the swimming pool full of gasoline that Barack Obama is lighting matches in.

If the United States of America does not immediately announce a massive drawdown in Afghanistan, the world will keep asking questions about OBL because our lives will be getting worse, not better, by the day. And every time Mr. Obama opens his mouth about 9-11, he pours more gasoline into the pool and asks for another box of matches.

It was not my choice. Barack Obama has placed 9-11 back on the table again. Mainstream media, of course, can't say Jack Diddly about this theater of the absurd, even though they’ve been cornered into asking a few pseudo-hardball questions. They are, after all, criminally culpable for the endorsement and concealment of something they damn well knew was a lie, murder, and high treason ten years ago.

An interesting article on the current state of affairs of young people and the leftist movement in Ukraine. Interesting to read the history of current Russian Ukrainian oligarchs to see how they started out, but you need to delve deep, much further than "their own" "official" biographies which don't often mention how they "started out" as racketeers, smugglers from an early age and grew from out of the Soviet black market underground, and became ologarchs after Yeltsin took power.

Media Lens is a media analysis organisation set up by David Edwards and David Cromwell in 2001 to highlight the shortcomings of mainstream media reporting in Britain. Sending out regular email alerts to its subscribers, it questions the coverage of key topics by ‘impartial’ sources like the BBC, as well as traditionally liberal publications like the Independent. Ultimately, it hopes to encourage members of the public to challenge journalists and editors over the way they report. After publishing a couple of Media Lens alerts in Now Then in the past few months, we spoke to David Edwards about the venture and how it got off the ground on the month of its 10th anniversary.

During filming for the upcoming documentary feature 'The Crisis of Civilization' Dean Puckett asked best-selling author and international security analyst Dr. Nafeez Ahmed for his thoughts on the recent death of Osama Bin Laden.