drones

LIONEL PODCAST: The Destruction of Critical Thinking in the Name of Gawd

It’s the quiddity of human nature. To think and to dissect and to parse that which is apparent and real and not which is gift-wrapped and force-fed via mythology and folklore. While the world burns, while terrorism infects humanity, while hate and dissension and distance rule the day you can always post some syrupy and saccharine pic about peace and sunsets and bunnies and feel like you’ve done something. Forget historicity, e.g.

LIONEL PODCAST: On Bad Plastic Surgery, Psychotics on Buses, Pathetic Media Coverage on Everything, Incredible Brazilian Music and Myriad Miscellany

Stream of unconsciousness. No précis or proem or prolegomenon or introduction or summary or adumbration or skeleton or outline or pithy phrase or reference can or could possibly describe what this podcast is all about. But Charles Manson comes to mind. “Look down at me and you see a fool, Look up at me and you see a god, Look straight at me and you see yourself.” See?

International arms companies make a killing in Turkey: a case study of the Roboski Massacre

Today, Turkey continues its brutality in its war against its Kurdish population. The state is imposing new curfews daily in the south-east of the country. Hundreds of citizens have been killed so far, whilst the western mainstream media and politicians remain largely silent about the massacres. Anti-militarist activists in the UK, however, are taking action against atrocities carried out by […]

A World War Has Begun

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.”
Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

We don’t have to like Trump to understand him

Donald Trump is occurring. He’s no longer merely a punchline. Only a fool can say that his antics are not worth talking about (my line during the first few months of his campaign). Despite the GOP establishment’s best efforts, which were necessarily lame (we’re talking about the GOP here), Trump is the probable Republican nominee. Unless the “true” conservatives like Mitt Romney can manage to swing a brokered convention, The Donald’s got this in the bag. His opposition tells us a lot about how this happened.

Pink-Slipping Hillary

In March 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, about one hundred CODEPINK women dressed in pink slips weaved in and out of congressional offices demanding to meet with representatives. Those representatives who pledged to oppose going to war with Iraq were given hugs and pink badges of courage; those hell-bent on taking the US to war were given pink slips emblazoned with the words “YOU’RE FIRED.”