UNITED KINGDOM

Imagine if George Monbiot, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, David Peterson, Jonathan Cook, Mark Curtis, Glenn Greenwald, Nafeez Ahmed, Robert Fisk, Naomi Klein, Russell Brand, Michael Moore, Julian Assange, Chris Hedges, Sharon Beder, Seumas Milne and others rejected the media moguls, billionaires, parent companies and advertisers, and offered their work completely free of charge from a single media outlet. Would the global public be willing to support such a group, such a cause, through donations? The answer, we think, is blindingly obvious.

The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. “American Sniper” caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society.

Of course, although this was addressed to the people in Scotland who had been campaigning for independence, there is a message here for all of us, denied as we all are by our governments of real democracy.  How can we wake ourselves up and take part in the kind of inspired political debate that the referendum on independence generated among the Scots, whichever side they were on?

UK industry is in intensive care. Should we throw open the door and allow America’s big business battalions to muscle in under cover of a trade treaty?
Critics claim that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being cooked up between the EU and the United States could:

The terrorist danger Westerners face is more theoretical than real. And how they intend to stop it is both ineffective and detrimental to their freedoms. Demonstration by Ambassador Craig Murray.

 

Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.
— Tony Blair, CNN, 15th January 2015

The existence of nuclear weapons makes Armageddon possible. If there were no nuclear weapons on the planet, the human race would have a dire threat lifted and could focus on the other, less instantaneous, threats to the survival of our species.

“What did they say that was so much wronger than usual that it required a network-wide apology?” Stewart asked. “How bad does bullshit have to smell before the odor is detected by people who live on a mountain made out of that substance?”

The Huffington Post  |  By Ed Mazza

On Saturday, Fox News did something that managed to shock Jon Stewart: The network apologized.
“I’ll be damned. It’s the rar

In this globalised world, if we launch weapons of great destructive power into communities abroad, incinerating and shredding women and children, we cannot avoid the fact that those who identify with those communities – ethnically, culturally and religiously – will take revenge on people here. If we are lucky it will be revenge on combatants. If we are unlucky it will be on our innocents. But either way, the truth is this. We caused it.
The post Inevitable Payback appeared first on BSNEWS.

“On international politics Charlie Hebdo was neoconservative. It supported every single NATO intervention from Yugoslavia to the present. They were anti-Muslim, anti-Hamas (or any Palestinian organization), anti-Russian, anti-Cuban (with the exception of one cartoonist), anti-Hugo Chávez, anti-Iran, anti-Syria, pro-Pussy Riot, pro-Kiev … Do I need to continue?
The post Murdering journalists … them and us appeared first on BSNEWS.