February 2014

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Political Humour: Juice Rap News take on 'The News'

Picture: Juice Rap News Video "The News" - it's the most viral meme of reality on the planet: if it's not on "the News" it didn't happen - right? In Season 2 of Juice Rap News, intrepid anchor-man Robert Foster embarks on a new era of adversarial rap journalism by casting a critical eye on the paradigm that shapes our collective reality each night; featuring a smorgasbord of guests and correspondents. Meanwhile, what is going on in Finance, Show­biz and the Weather? Special surprise guests are in...

Society of Fences: A Solution to the 'Demographic Problem'

Picture: African asylum seekers protest courtesy You Tube screenshot. Mandisi Majavu - Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote that “the first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.” Modern nation states and their immigration laws are largely founded on this logic. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was appealing to this logic when he labelled African asylum seekers, who took to the streets last month to protest against...

Profit Over Principle: Scarlett Johansson's Disturbing Choice to Front For a Settlement Product

Picture: Scarlett Johansson courtesy Paul Bird/Wikimedia Commons Brian Walt - Massachusetts did not have a team in this year’s Super Bowl.  And last week brought news that Boston-based Oxfam America would not have an Oxfam ambassador appearing in a Super Bowl commercial either.  Scarlett Johansson's work for SodaStream violated the anti-settlement and anti-discrimination principles of the international Oxfam confederation.  As a consequence, Johansson chose her hefty contract with SodaStream over the social justice work of Oxfam.  As a rabbi...

Danger of Global Recession After 30 Years of Neoliberal Counterrevolution

Picture: Sox First Video Heiner flassbeck, Professor of Economics, Hamburg University, argues that the world is in a dangerous moment where it is sliding towards a global recession with all its attendant social problems. Globally, there is high pressure on low wages. In the past there was high pressure on high wages. However, 30 years after the neoliberal counterrevolution, it is the other way around. The situation is destabilizing the global economy and requires an intervention to strengthen the labour sector...

Enduring Racism in Small Town South Africa

Picture: WhyHunger Richard Pithouse - The road from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown winds past one luxury game farm after another. John Graham, a British soldier, drove the Xhosa people off this land, the Zuurveld, between 1811 and 1812. His soldiers burnt their homes, destroyed their crops and killed any man that resisted. It was John Cradock, the governor of the Cape Colony, who had given Graham his orders. Cradock had some experience in these matters. He had crushed anti-colonial rebellions in Ireland and India before being...

After the Sheiks: Is the Rule of Gulf Monarchs Approaching the End?

Picture: voltairenet.org Alex Doherty - Christopher Davidson is a Reader in Middle East politics at Durham University and the author of, most recently, 'After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies.' New Left Project's Alex Doherty spoke with him about the possibilities in the region for radical change, inter-state rivaly, a possible thaw between the United States and Iran, relationships with Israel, religion, women, Syria and more. ALEX DOHERTY: You describe a constellation of internal and external factors that...