Category General
Recovery in Haiti doesn’t mean selling the joint to the highest bidder
During my recent visit to Haiti, working on a book and documentary about disaster capitalism, it was very clear that the US government, many NGOs and multinationals all wanted a piece of the country. And it’s working out badly. There’s a new book about how outside forces, especially Washington, continually attempt to control Haiti by…
When the corporate media is oh-so-keen to be bought
Here’s a disturbing report from Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian about CNN and its apparent willingness to broadcast sponsored news from less than savoury regimes. Is this what the crisis in journalism is leading to? Bought “news” on a supposedly independent channel?
That is what global “help” looks like in Afghanistan
America and China talk about assisting the war-torn country but the reality is so very different. The result? A supposed need to bring in private companies to fix the mess:
Shell is a glorious company that takes full responsibility for its actions (or not)
Interesting initiative that I discovered via The Yes Men. This website, murderisbad.com, is an attempt to highlight the reality of a multinational that wants to be beyond the law. Don’t let them: Shell was involved in murders in Nigeria. They would like everyone to forget about it. Shell has… blocked… 71,010 of their own employees from accessing…
Beware the jidadi felafel
We have been warned (via The Daily Currant): Minnesota Congresswoman… Michelle Bachmann… courted controversy today by claiming that falafel and other “jihadi foods” should be banned from school lunches in the United States. In an interview with local television station… KSTPin Minneapolis, Bachmann explained that after visiting a local elementary school she was shocked to find that… falafel… – a…
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on media outrage over Alan Jones and Facebook
Last night I appeared on ABCTV News24’s The Drum (video here) talking about the current media feeding frenzy over broadcaster Alan Jones and his offensive remarks towards Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The amount of time and energy spent on this issue, I argued, was utterly disproportionate to the comment itself. It was crude and wrong…
Understanding the Alawites in Syria
Nir Rosen, one of America’s finest independent journalists, has spent much of this year travelling around Syria. His latest dispatch is published in the London Review of Books: Syria’s Alawite heartland is defined by its funerals. In Qirdaha in the mountainous Latakia province, hometown of the Assad dynasty, I watched as two police motorcycles drove…
On Americans being keen to embrace torture and nuking “terrorists”
Welcome to the post 9/11 world in America. Stanford University’s Amy Zegart explains the details of a very disturbing public survey: A quarter of all Americans are willing to use nuclear weapons to kill terrorists. No joke. This was among many surprising findings in a new national poll that YouGov recently ran for me on…