If you think PR’s image couldn’t sink any lower, you’d be wrong. Reading the stunning series this week published by the London Independent and the The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals a litany of reasons the industry is in desperate need of sunlight. And how many despotic regimes (and some supposedly friendly ones, such as…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Washington sends men to war and then expects them to shut up
Project on Government Oversight uncover a terrible tale of the US establishment punishing somebody who dared tell the truth about the US war machine: On a hot, parched day in June 2004, a convoy of Humvees was making its way across Iraq’s Sunni Triangle when a roadside bomb exploded, mangling the head vehicle and knocking…
Fresh air emerges within toxic US debate over Israel/Palestine
Cracks, very small cracks, are starting to appear in the age-old blindness towards Israeli apartheid. Why? Because a mute person knows that indefinite Zionist occupation of Palestinian land is bad for Palestinians, awful for Israelis and madness for America and the world (via Politico): Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan…
How post 9/11 world has helped corporations make a killing
Private prisons and detention centres are booming businesses (hello Serco). Crisis, real or otherwise, are exploited by corporations who come in to supposedly save the day (cut costs, increase efficiency etc). The reality, explained in this piece on Alternet about the US, is rather different: In a recently published report, “Banking on Bondage: Mass Incarceration…
When “liberal” Barbra Streisand can’t get enough of the IDF
Fund-raising for an occupying army is simply business as usual in Hollywood:
From inside the Sri Lankan military comes charges of war crimes
This was only a matter of time. I’m hearing that growing numbers of civil society groups inside Sri Lanka will continue pushing for accountability of Colombo’s vile aggression. The International reports: The Sri Lankan army ordered extra-judicial killings and assassinations… during the final days of the country’s civil war, according to… allegations made by a former member…
Memo to NSW Greens; Palestine needs your full support now
After a year of unprecedented Zionist assaults on democracy in Palestine and Israel itself, the NSW Greens capitulate to intense Murdoch media pressure and internal conservatism to back down from fully supporting BDS. News flash to the party: apartheid in Palestine isn’t going anywhere and avoiding a key human rights issue only makes you look…
Israeli journalism is (mostly) about repeating government talking points on “terror”
As ever, Gideon Levy in Haaretz nails the counter-narrative in the Zionist state: Israeli journalism censors itself to the point of harm. Part of it has become a means of entertainment while inciting our more base passions. Part of it now appeals to emotions, not reason, and deals with trivial rather than important issues, taking…
Wikileaks releases The Spy Files
Once again, Julian Assange and his team reveal how essential they are to modern news gathering: Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including…