In a basement office at the Royal Geographical Society in London’s South Kensington, grainy 16mm film footage flickers silently across the screen, one of over a hundred expeditionary and travel films digitized recently by the society and the British Film Institute. They are now free to watch on the BFI website.
There is nothing the American public treasures more than appearance.
When Trump made his way to deliver a mediocre State of the Union address in front of some of the most ineffective employees our country possesses, he knew all he had to do was appear Presidential.
And the results are in: According to a CBS survey immediately after his speech, 75 per cent of those who watched approved of the one-hour self-congratulatory session.
Any person with even a sliver of knowledge regarding American history would have bet in favor of this outcome.
Earlier this week, US Vice-President Mike Pence visited the Knesset confirming both his President’s resolve on the status of the Holy City, and America’s exit from the Peace Process.
Evo Morales will soon have been the president of Bolivia for 12 years, heralding the ascent of the indigenous social movements to governmental power. This ended the apartheid system against the indigenous that existed for 500 years in Bolivia. Morales won in 2005 with 53.7% of the vote, followed by re-elections in 2009 with 64.2% and 2014 with 61.3%.
There is a real – but largely concealed – war which is taking place throughout the African continent. It involves the United States, an invigorated Russia and a rising China. The outcome of the war is likely to define the future of the continent and its global outlook.
Sometimes it is useful to take a break from news bulletins and newspapers, and even from ‘friendly’ Internet publications.
Occasionally it is good to realize that there are actually two parallel realities that are constantly competing for the ‘hearts and minds’ of people living all over the world. There is real life and ‘fake life’. There is reality and elaborately manufactured pseudo-reality, which is designed to appear more real than the reality itself. It is like that chemically produced green apple shampoo that smells more authentic than the fruit itself.
A change in Quantity also entails a change in Quality.
― Friedrich Engels
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Researchers and journalists have begun to reveal the extent to which Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada are subject to surveillance by police, military, national security intelligence agencies and other government bodies. While security agencies have long looked beyond ‘traditional’ national security threats and set their sights on activists – even in the absence of evidence linking these individuals or organisations to any violent criminal activity – this reality is increasingly the subject of media and public scrutiny.
A ban by Israel on herding black goats – on the pretext they cause environmental damage – is to be repealed after nearly seven decades of enforcement that has decimated the pastoral traditions of Palestinian communities.
The Israeli government appears to have finally conceded that, in an age of climate change, the threat of forest fires to Israeli communities is rapidly growing in the goats’ absence.
Following the devastating years of the Second World War, colonialism stood on the precipice of total collapse. Tattered and torn by years of dreadful conflict that shattered entire cities and claimed the lives of millions, the once-great powers of Europe were suffering a new form of humiliation. From the British Raj to Indochina, Madagascar to Indonesia, a terrifying trend had developed.
