24 October 2013 — WSWS
In a retrospective this summer, “Seeing Red,” the British Film Institute celebrated the work of veteran film and television producer Tony Garnett. The BFI described Garnett as one of television’s “most influential figures,” who “produced and fostered a succession of provocative, radical and sometimes incendiary dramas.”
23 October 2013 — WSWS
21 October 2013
Central to us on the left is the dilemma of a seemingly indifferent working class to the changes that impact directly not only on our material well-being but on the corporatisation of our cultural lives. Some argue that it’s down to the prevailing sense of powerlessness as the gulf between those who govern and the governed, deepens and widens. But there is perhaps another explanation for our disenfranchisement; the role of the ‘middle class’ as a mechanism of social control.
1 September 2013 — Voltaire Network
According to the website magazine Foreign Policy dated August 28th 2013, the NSA would have intercepted communications between the chief of the Syrian chemical weapons unit and a high ranked official from the Syrian Department of defence. The latter was in panic after the chemical attack that cost the lives of 1 429 people [1].
27 August 2013 — WSWS
Yesterday US Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on national television to deliver a lying statement aimed at preparing public opinion for an impending US-NATO attack on Syria. It was his very own “Colin Powell moment.”
22 July 2013 — The South African Civil Society Information Service
Last week Inigo Gilmore’s documentary, South Africa’s Dirty Cops, was screened on British television. It deals with the torture and murder that have become common at the hands of the South African police and includes an examination of the two most high profile cases of political violence on the part of our police in recent years – the murder of Andries Tatane in Ficksburg in April 2011 and the Marikana Massacre in August last year.
2 July 2013 — Memoryhole Blog
A long-held desire of the technocratic worldview involves manipulation and control of a national and even international body politic. “This planetary consciousness,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes, brings into closer view a single indivisible humanity united by the soft tyranny of depersonalized and omnipresent coercion. “The sense of proximity, the immediacy of suffering,” he wrote at the height of the Cold War, “the globally destructive character of modern weapons all help to stimulate an outlook that views mankind as a community.”[1]
31 May, 2013 — Dissident Voice
They set the rules about what a win was. They lost in every battle they defined. Their loss is total. We’ve won the big stuff. – Julian Assange, Salon, May 10, 2013
25 May 2013 — Prensa Latina
Damascus, May 25 (Prensa Latina) The Syrian Arab Army continued its advance today the offensive in Qsseir, central province of Homs, after mercenaries group members surrendered to the authorities in the northern and central districts of the city.
The military evacuated irregular and broke down several shelters west of Homs-Balabak road, which runs through the center of the strategic town near the border with Lebanon and point between Damascus and the coastal zone.
20 May 2013 — Joe Bageant
See the introduction to this series of posts: Writing on Things Southern and Past
Lonzy Barker is missing. Has been for several months now. Nobody noticed it until that smelly old hermit didn’t show up here at Dalton Bayles’ post office store for his sardines and rock candy. “He could be layin’ over there in his pigpen dead or something,” says Dalton. Did I tell you, dear reader, that Lonzy Barker lives in a pigpen? Always has. Anyway, after three months of Lonzy’s government checks piling up in the pigeonhole, Dalton has decided Lonzy “just might be — I ain’t saying he is and I ain’t saying he ain’t — missing.”
20 April 2013 — China.org.cn
Following the death of Hugo Chávez on March 5, 2013, last Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela produced a narrow victory for the Socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro.
20 April 2013 — Global Research – Russia Today
GR Editor’s Note: The Testimony of the Tsarnaev Brothers’ Mother as well as media reports confirm that the two brothers were on the FBI Radar, under FBI surveillance for several years. The Tsarnaev family had been the object of persistent harassment. (M. Ch.)
16 April 2013 — Venezuelanalysis.com
This afternoon president Maduro said the opposition’s call for a general strike today had “failed”. He also blamed the losing candidate in Sunday’s elections, Henrique Capriles, for the seven deaths last night.
15 April 2013 — antiwar.com
Almost thirty years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment.
NBC’s Brian Williams is talking about North Korea, which has no weapons capable of reaching the U.S.–not the U.S., which has thousands of missiles that could hit North Korea.
It’s not easy to figure out what’s going on with North Korea. We hear that new leader Kim Jong-Un is making threats to attack the United States, South Korea or both–and that’s leading to some rather alarming, and alarmist, coverage.
As ABC World News reporter Martha Raddatz put it (3/31/13): “The threats have been coming almost every day, and each day become more menacing, the threat of missile strikes on the U.S., invading armies into South Korea and nuclear attacks.”
NBC’s Brian Williams is talking about North Korea, which has no weapons capable of reaching the U.S.–not the U.S., which has thousands of missiles that could hit North Korea.
It’s not easy to figure out what’s going on with North Korea. We hear that new leader Kim Jong-Un is making threats to attack the United States, South Korea or both–and that’s leading to some rather alarming, and alarmist, coverage.
As ABC World News reporter Martha Raddatz put it (3/31/13): “The threats have been coming almost every day, and each day become more menacing, the threat of missile strikes on the U.S., invading armies into South Korea and nuclear attacks.”
3 April 2013 — Mosaic Records
Jazz Scene U.S.A. was a short-lived syndicated television show shot in Los Angeles in the early ‘60s and hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr. This episode is given over to the Jimmy Smith trio with Quentin Warren and Donald Bailey. If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing this amazing musician live, enjoy this. – Michael Cuscuna
13 March 2013 — WSWS
The war in Mali will enter its third month this week. Some 4,000 French soldiers, and about twice as many African soldiers of an international force fighting in coordination with them, have conquered all the major cities in northern Mali. However, there are hardly any reports of the fighting, and almost no pictures.
4 February 2013 — New Left Project
The Why Poverty project is a recent collaboration between the Open University and the BBC that attempts to highlight the causes of global poverty and explain the different contexts in which it is experienced. The project was extensive, including a detailed website, radio programmes, and a BBC4 television series which will undoubtedly have had an impact on how poverty is understood by a wide audience. In my view, however, parts of the BBC 4 series, as well as the overall narrative of the project were not conducive to the project achieving its aims.
PBS ombud Michael Getler (
The New Dark Age 