Many mainstream journalists love conflict. Gives them the opportunity to hang with military types in war zones and feel important. Truth be damned. Repeating official talking points is par for the course. History has shown that far too many blindly (wilfully?) spread propaganda. The next target is Iran. Why? Because Israel and Washington tell them…
Naomi Klein tells the Left to think about real climate change action
One of the savviest writers around, Naomi Klein issues a challenge in this interview with Solutions: Members of the Left have been resistant to acknowledging that this worldview is behind their support of climate action, while the Right confronts it head on. Why this hesitancy among liberals? There are a few factors at work. Climate…
The Guardian puts its best foot forward for journalism 21st century style
The British Guardian is a paper with a fine reporting record albeit with blind spots incorporated (including Wikileaks and war). They’ve just released a startling new ad that aims to showcase its “open journalism” style: Back in 1996, this is how the newspaper last promoted itself:
When in trouble with the truth, Zionists, dredge up Hitler (or related)
This never ceases to amaze me. While Israel’s occupation deepens every day and racism towards Arabs grows – see this “fury” over religious Zionist politicians demanding an Arab judge recite the Zionist national anthem – the mostly old and crusty Jewish spokespeople globally just want the world to better understand poor little Israel. In today’s…
What’s some dead Iranians for the sake of helping Zionism?
Words fail: Iran’s citizens should be starved in order to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, officials in Jerusalem said Wednesday ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Washington. “North Korea is halting its nuclear program in order to receive aid in food, and this is what should be done with… Iran… as well,” one unnamed official…
The #Occupy threat; US Homeland Security wants to know why capitalism so loathed
Yet another insight from this week’s Wikileaks information dump (via Rolling Stone): As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” dated October of last year,…
Shock! Horror! Iranians are human beings
What a sad story. At a time when armed conflict between Iran and Israel is increasingly likely, the reality remains that neither people know much about the other. This article is a window into that (via Associated Press): Israeli newspapers warn daily of the Iranian nuclear threat, but for the past week and a half,…
Brutal regimes will always find PR friends
If there is money to be made for defending rogue states (take Burma, Israel or Saudi Arabia), some Western hacks will line up for the job. Pro Publica explains just one: Earlier this month, a group of three young Bahrainis arrived in Washington to talk about reform in the small Persian Gulf nation, which has…
What Wikileaks tells us about corporate and government power (you can’t trust them)
So finally we learn, via the Sydney Morning Herald, that the Obama administration wants to crush Julian Assange and Wikileaks for the “crime” of revealing a litany of wrongs committed by Washington. And here’s the irony; after demanding answers from governments in America, Britain, Australia and elsewhere about the legal status of Assange, it takes…