mining

How the media spins today’s South Africa

The African National Congress Chief Whip in parliament Jackson Mthembu writing on the party website ANC Today last December accused the local media of bias against the ruling party.
To drive home his point, Mthembu drew on the work of Noam Chomsky’s and Ed Herman’s Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media which argues that the mass media serve special interests through the choice of stories, of emphases and – importantly – of omissions.

American Dreams: Destroyed by Debt and a Constitution Denied

The latest installment of the long-simmering Sagebrush Rebellion erupted early this year in the form an emotionally-charged, armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Controversial and well publicized, this standoff ended with the tragic death of a Mormon Arizona rancher by the name of Lavoy Finicum and the jailing of the remaining alleged perpetrators.

The Long Ignoble History of Westerners Exploiting Africans

What do you call people who try to make people believe what they say but ignore the results of what they do? How about spin-sploiters?
After a few years of research I have come to realize that there is a long and ignoble history of Westerners exploiting Africans while touting humanitarian objectives. Unfortunately, this practice is not confined to the distant past.
A leading Canadian NGO official, who then founded Québec’s largest mining company, provides a recent example.

What Tumeremo Massacre?

If the Boliviarian government has its way, one of the largest massacres of Venezuelan civilians in recent history will soon be swept under the rug, along with all the other disasters of the country. Indeed, the impending electrical blackout of the country—the shutting down of the Guri Dam’s hydroelectric system which provides some 60% of the nation’s energy is just days away—is only matched by the news blackout of the country’s catastrophic problems.

Rise and Fall of the Personalist Left

Over the past three years Latin American leftist leaders, who presided over heterodox ‘free trade’ and commodity based welfare economies, lost presidential, legislative and municipal elections and referendums or faced impeachment. They fell because they lost competitive elections, not because of US invasions or military coups. These same leftist leaders, who had successfully defeated coups and withstood gross US political intervention via AID, NED, the DEA and other US government agencies, lost at the ballot box.