No Picture

Video: The Death and Life of American Journalism

Source: Democracy Now!

Robert McChesney and John Nichols on The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again

University of Illinois Professor Robert McChesney and The Nation correspondent John Nichols, two leading advocates of the media reform movement, join us to talk about their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again. McChesney and Nichols argue that journalism should be seen as a public good and that the government should help save American journalism by granting more subsidies to newspapers and media outlets. read more

Image

Africa, Geology and the March of the Development Technocrats

'Environmental determinism' - the theory that Africa's development has been hindered as a result of 'the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit' - does not accurately explain Africa's poverty. Environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: "Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power." To tackle the real issues behind Africa's slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist.

No Picture

Obama’s secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all

Source: The Independent

Osama bin Laden’s favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father’s cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama’s vision can’t even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause – and we are giving it to him. read more

Image

Cognitive Infiltration: Your Government Appointees At Work

Cass Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures". (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?