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Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Actor Russell Brand reduces BBC newsman to stunned silence with scathing critique of the global corporate oligarchy

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Thu, 24 Oct 2013 18:35 UTC
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Actor and comedian Russell Brand is calling for a political and philosophical revolution in his guest editorship of the New Statesman magazine, and he explained what he wants to see in a passionately argued interview on BBC's "Newsnight."

Combative host Jeremy Paxman asked the British actor, who's known for his past drug use and his brief marriage to pop singer Katy Perry, what gave him the right to promote his political beliefs, particularly since he's never voted.

"I don't get my authority from this preexisting paradigm, which is quite narrow and only serves a few people," Brand said. "I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity."

He continued, issuing reams of prose even as the veteran TV reporter challenged him to defend his arguments.

"I am not not voting out of apathy," Brand said. "I am not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery and deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations."

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Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel's New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the Holy Land


David Sheen and Max Blumenthal
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:59 UTC

Comment: This video offers a shocking evidence that the modern 'state of Israel' is based on hatred and xenophobia. Any group of people that falsely defines themselves as 'chosen' by a false god, establishes a 'nation' on the stolen land of others and proceeds to commit slow genocide against the indigenous population will ultimately end up hating all 'others', just like modern day Israelis.



Max Blumenthal explained how The New York Times commissioned the 11-minute video, but after the paper's editors saw it, refused to publish it:

I was asked to submit something by The New York Times op docs, a new section on the website that published short video documentaries. I am known for short video documentaries about the right wing in the US, and extremism in Israel. They solicited a video from me, and when I didn't produce it in time, they called me for it, saying they wanted it. So I sent them a video I produced with my colleague, David Sheen, an Israeli journalist who is covering the situation of non-Jewish Africans in Israel more extensively than any journalist in the world.

We put together some shocking footage of pogroms against African communities in Tel Aviv, and interviews with human rights activists. I thought it was a well-done documentary about a situation very few Americans were familiar with. We included analysis. We tailored it to their style, and of course it was rejected without an explanation after being solicited. I sent it to some other major websites and they have not even responded to me, when they had often solicited articles from me in the past.

Blumenthal, author of the bestselling and widely promoted 2009 book Republican Gomorrah, also spoke about the difficulty he has had getting any mainstream media attention for his new book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.

Just like this video, Blumenthal's new book offers an unflinching look at the racist reality of Israel that America's establishment media simply does not have the guts to confront.
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Comet 2

Best of the Web: American Apocalypse: The case for divine retribution

Justin Raimundo
AntiWar.com
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:25 UTC
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I don't believe in God. However, I do believe in divine retribution. Without going into the specifics of this somewhat counterintuitive theology, suffice to say here that its central axiom is the idea that actions have consequences. One cannot go on committing evil without reaping a whirlwind or two. Eventually Nemesis overtakes Hubris, and the results aren't pretty.

This is our future. Or, at least, one hopes it is - otherwise, there is no justice in this world, or perhaps even in the next.

This struck me as I was reading a column by Steve Chapman, a mildly conservative journalist with vaguely libertarian leanings: according to him, people on the right (of which I count myself one) are "addicted to apocalypse." He takes us through decades of conservative apocalyptic rhetoric, from Ronald Reagan predicting the end of freedom in America due to the depredations of Medicare to Ted Cruz - the liberal media's villain of the moment - who recently said:

"The challenges facing this country are unlike any we have ever seen. ... (T)his is an administration that seems bound and determined to violate every single one of our Bill of Rights. We're nearing the edge of a cliff. ... We have a couple of years to turn this country around, or we go off the cliff to oblivion." Citing Reagan, Cruz declared: "One day we will find ourselves answering questions from our children and our children's children, 'What was it like when America was free?'"
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Dominoes

Best of the Web: The de-Americanisation of the world has begun - emergence of solutions for a multipolar world by 2015


Leap - GEAB 78
Wed, 16 Oct 2013 09:48 UTC
USA flag
© unknown
It's one of those times when history accelerates. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations on the shutdown and debt ceiling, October 2013 is one of them. It's the deadlock too far which has opened the eyes of those who still support the United States. A leader is followed when he is believed, not when he is ridiculous.

"Building a de-Americanised world": this statement would have raised a smile a few years ago. At most it would have passed for provocation by Hugo Chavez. But when we are seeing the United States' bankruptcy in real-time and it's an official Chinese press agency that says so (1), the impact isn't the same. In reality, it's describing out loud a process which is already well underway: simply, it's now allowed to speak about it in public. At least US government deadlock has the merit of loosening tongues (2). Let there be no mistake, this analysis hasn't appeared in the Chinese media by chance, and it reflects Beijing's hardening tone.

In fact, if the whole world is holding its breath before this pathetic game of the US elite; it's not out of compassion, it's to avoid being swept away in the fall of the world's first power. Everyone is trying to free itself from American influence and let go of a United States permanently discredited by recent events over Syria, tapering, shutdown and now the debt ceiling. The legendary US power is now no more than a nuisance and the world has understood that it's time to de-Americanise.
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Attention

Best of the Web: Real justice, love, technology only possible after 1% arrests for OBVIOUS Crimes

Carl Herman
Washington Blog
Fri, 18 Oct 2013 23:24 UTC
SOTT psychopaths rule our world
© SOTT.net
Preface:

Q: Hey, Herman, when will you shut-up about arrests of criminals?

A: When arrests or surrender of 1% OBVIOUS criminals centering in war and money have been accomplished.
Americans cannot imagine real justice because they are dominated by 1% "leaders" in government, banking/finance, and media who:
  1. Blatantly violate war law, war-murdering more than WW2 Nazis (~30 million since WW2).
  2. Blatantly defraud Americans by trillions of dollars every year by lying that a "debt system" is a "monetary system."
  3. Blatantly lie through media that war-murders protect "our freedoms" while hiding all "reasons" for war were known to be false as they were told. They hide that all American freedoms under the Constitution have been destroyed by our own government.
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USA

Best of the Web: Why I will never, ever, go back to the United States

Niels Gerson Lohman
Huffington Post
Wed, 16 Oct 2013 14:24 UTC
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After a year of traveling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel.

This trip, however, was for my dad. He, a trumpet player, loved New Orleans and had died a year ago. It felt like the first sensible trip I undertook this year. I had been searching for ways to forget about the last hours at his deathbed. He had been ill for 15 years and his body just would not give up. It was a violent sight. I had decided the trip to New Orleans would put an end to those memories.

Usually, I barely plan my trips in advance. But this time I had booked everything: my train tickets, hotels and my flight back to Montreal, from which I would depart back to Amsterdam. In total the trip was supposed to take three weeks. The confirmations and tickets I had printed and tucked away in a brown envelope I had bought especially for the trip. I like things to be neatly arranged. At home, in Amsterdam, my house enjoys a slight version of OCD.
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Wall Street

Best of the Web: Max Keiser on the truth about U.S. government shutdown: America is one giant hedge fund


RT.com
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:37 UTC
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Washington's struggle to govern itself has already cost the American economy hundreds of millions of dollars on the first day of the government shutdown. And things are likely to get even more expensive, with neither Republican nor Democrat lawmakers willing to back down from their stance on Barack Obama's signature health care bill.

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USA

Best of the Web: Exceptionalism: A film that studies the origins of American exceptionalism


RT
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:38 UTC
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What is American exceptionalism? Where does the US's world monopoly on democracy come from? How does the US give itself license to do as it pleases?

"Exceptionalism" is a film by RT correspondent Anissa Naouai.

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Green Light

Best of the Web: The birth of the 'de-Americanized' world

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:32 UTC
de-americanized world
© Unknown
This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It's time to build a "de-Americanized" world. It's time for a "new international reserve currency" to replace the US dollar.

It's all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon's mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts - and that applies especially to the Washington elites. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Long gone are the Deng Xiaoping days of "keeping a low profile". The Xinhua editorial summarizes the straw that broke the dragon's back - the current US shutdown. After the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, after the war on Iraq, a "befuddled world", and not only China, wants change.

This paragraph couldn't be more graphic:
Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.
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Colosseum

Best of the Web: Impending collapse of civilization is mathematical certainty, says University of Connecticut professor

Dave Ross
mynorthwest.com
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:22 UTC
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© "White House Down" film image Professor Peter Turchin has spent years developing a model that uses numbers to explain historical cycles - like the fall of the Roman Empire, the Rise of Communism. And he says the end of America's superiority is next - unless something drastic happens to avert it.
There is a mathematical formula created by a professor at the University of Connecticut which appears to be predicting a huge social shift - and which may explain why we're in the shutdown and debt ceiling crisis.

Professor Peter Turchin has spent years developing a model that uses numbers to explain historical cycles - like the fall of the Roman Empire, the Rise of Communism.

He measures things like income inequality, the minimum wage, and health - which he measures by life expectancy and the average height of the population.

And the bottom line is - the wider the gap between rich and poor, the unhappier the general population is, and the closer people get to revolution.

We are, right now, climbing that inequality curve and all the signs are there: low taxes on the rich and low wages for workers.

Comment: See also:

Cliodynamics: Explaining and Predicting Human History

Transforming history into science: Arise 'cliodynamics'

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