Nationalists promote their agenda by masquerading as rights advocates | Glenn Greenwald
Readers of the American and British press over the past month have been inundated with righteous condemnations of Ecuador's poor record on press freedoms. Is this because western media outlets have suddenly developed a new-found devotion to defending civil liberties in Latin America? Please. To pose the question is to mock it. It's because feigning concern for these oppressive measures is a convenient instrument for demeaning and punishing Ecuador for the supreme crime of defying the US and its western allies. But this behavior illustrates how purported human rights concerns are cynically exploited as a weapon by western governments and, more inexcusably, by their nationalistic, self-righteous media enablers. This exploitation of human rights concerns drives even the most seemingly straightforward cases, such as the universal condemnation among All Decent People of Russia's obviously repellent punishment of Pussy Riot, the anti-capitalist, hardcore-leftwing punk rock band.
The Numbers - Movie Budgets
Note: Budget numbers for movies can be both difficult to find and unreliable. Studios often try to keep the information secret and will use accounting tricks to inflate or reduce announced budgets. The data we have is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate but there are gaps and disputed figures. A complete list of all movies for which we have budget information can be found here. Note: The profit and loss figures are very rough estimates based on domestic and international box office earnings and domestic video sales, extrapolated to estimate worldwide income to the studio, after deducting retail costs. See the complete list
Pursued by violence, pawns in Syrian conflict await an endgame | World news
'I escaped from Homs in February," said Abu Mohammed as his three children played in a nursery yard in Damascus. "We moved to Seida Zeinab and then that was bombed last month." All over the Syrian capital, in schools, hotels and houses, tens of thousands of people who have fled their homes because of war are now living in misery. They include hundreds who moved from other cities to what they thought was the safety of Damascus and have had to flee again. Attacks on the capital's outlying districts continue relentlessly. The cafes halfway up the tawny brown ridge of Mount Qassioun, which stretches along the city's northern edge, remain open but visitors have to pass army checkpoints to get there, under the big guns on the plateau above. As destruction creeps nearer, the mood has changed dramatically in the six months since I was last here. Khaled, a young man who lives with his parents in Old Mezzeh, showed me around in February. After the FSA retreated, the security forces moved in.
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Why didn't CNN's international arm air its own documentary on Bahrain's Arab Spring repression? | Glenn Greenwald | World news
In late March 2011, as the Arab Spring was spreading, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region. Featuring on-air investigative correspondent Amber Lyon, the CNN team had a very eventful eight-day stay in that small, US-backed kingdom. By the time the CNN crew arrived, many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. The CNN crew itself was violently detained by regime agents in front of Rajab's house. Lyon's experience both shocked and emboldened her. But she also resolved to expose just how abusive and thuggish the regime had become in attempting to snuff out the burgeoning democracy movement, along with any negative coverage of the government. CNNi's refusal to broadcast 'iRevolution'
Murat Aydemir | Girişimcilik üzerine, kısa kısa…
Jack Kerouac's ex-girlfriend lifts lid on beat novelist's rise and fall | Books | The Observer
The former girlfriend of the leading novelist of the beat generation Jack Kerouac has revealed details of their affair and his descent into bizarre behaviour on finding fame, in a new book to be published more than 40 years after his death. Joyce Johnson, an accomplished author, also dispels the myth that Kerouac's writing was effortlessly spontaneous. Where he claimed his novel On the Road was written in a blast of energy during three weeks in 1951 she recalls that he spent years revising his work and carefully crafted each paragraph. Her book is just part of a revival of the cult that surrounded Kerouac which has this year prompted three feature films and a documentary, as well as books and an exhibition at the British Library. Johnson, now 77, describes him as a "very odd person" who treated her dreadfully but was the love of her life. She was 21 when she met Kerouac. She said: "He spoke Joual, a Canadian dialect of French.
Chavez Döneminde Venezuela « Akademik Perspektif – Online Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi
Birleşmiş Milletler Genel Sekreteri Ban Ki-Moon, Chavez’in ölümünün ardından şu açıklamayı yapmıştır: “Chavez, zorluklara karşı mücadele etmeye karar veren, ezilen Venezuela halkının sözcüsüydü.” Venezuela’nın devlet başkanlığı koltuğuna 1999’da oturan ve 2013 yılına kadar bu koltukta kalan Chavez, bu dönem içerisinde dünyanın dikkatini hem siyasi fikirleriyle hem de ekonomik anlamda önemli işleriyle üzerine çekmiştir. Venezuela, 1998’de Hugo Chavez’in devlet başkanlığına seçilmesine dek isminden sıkça söz edilen bir ülke değildi. Bölgeye bakıldığında ise, Venezuela Chavez öncesi dönemde ABD’nin model olarak sunduğu bir ülke olmuştur. Chavez’in 1992’de ki darbe girişimi başarısızlıkla sonuçlanmış bununla birlikte Yarbay Chavez’i tutuklayan güçlerin onun bir kaç dakikalığına da olsa televizyonda bir açıklama yapmasına izin vermeleri, o ana kadar kimsenin tanımadığı bu subayın ülkede kahraman olmasına yol açmıştır. Chavez’in 5 Mart 2013 tarihinde Caracas’ta vefat ettiği duyurulmuştur.
Syria: the foreign fighters joining the war against Bashar al-Assad | World news
Soldiers! Soldiers!" The man hissed his warning as he hurried past, two bullets from a government sniper kicking up dust from the dirt road behind him. It was enough for Abu Omar al-Chechen. Abu Omar gave an order in Arabic, which was translated into a babble of different languages – Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, French, Saudi dialect, Urdu – and the men retreated in orderly single file, picking their way between piles of smouldering rubbish and twisted plastic bottles toward a house behind the front line where other fighters had gathered. Their Syrian handler stood alone in the street clutching two radios: one blared in Chechen and the other in Arabic. The fighters sat outside the house in the shade of the trees, clutching their guns and discussing the war. "What do the foreign news organisations and the outside world say about us?" Hundreds of international fighters have flocked to Syria to join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government. "This is my duty," he said. Advance Bab al Hawa
