BBC World Service – The Compass, Sugar-coated World – 3 parts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2vq6

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2vq7

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2vq8

The Compass: Slick – Nigerian Oil and Shell

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct41cw

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct41cx

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct41cy

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct41cz

When Shell D’Arcy strikes black gold, there are celebrations on the Niger Delta creeks.

ReCap Webinar: Noam Chomsky on Doomed to Extinction?

RCEA Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis – May 23, 2022

Rethinking Capitalism (ReCap) Webinar Series Capitalism is in a human, political, social, and environmental crisis. The Rethinking Capitalism (ReCap) Webinar Series is an opportunity to reflect on the failures of our cultural and production model. The objective of these talks is to foster awareness, cooperation, and activism among academics and guide policymakers in implementing corrective policies. The ReCap Webinar Series is jointly organized by RCEA-Europe ETS and CefES-DEMS, under the auspices of the JRC (European Commission).

Participation in the webinar series is free through zoom. Information on the webinar series can be found at: https://www.rcea.world/events/forthco…

Today’s webinar is entitled “Doomed to Extinction? Reflections on Sunset of Humanity and the New Dawn? “. Our speaker is Prof Noam Chomsky from University of Arizona. During and following World War One, Sigmund Freud wrote about the opposition between the life drive (Eros) and the self-destructive death instinct (Thanatos). Within this context, the very same survival of humanity so far is proof that the life drive is stronger than the death drive. Still, humanity has entered a new era of high extinction risk: the sixth mass extinction is ongoing, and climate change-related disasters are becoming more visible: tipping points, extreme weather, spreading of new diseases; and on top of this, a renovated risk of nuclear war. Will our life drive be enough this time as well, or is this time different and, therefore, humanity needs to achieve a higher awareness level to survive? And if this is the case, what would be the path toward this higher awareness?

See related:

• The Wit & Wisdom of Noam Chomsky – Decades Ago & Ever Since…

as well as:

• Some notes following Noam Chomsky

Grenada: Confronting my family’s slave-owning past – BBC News

Nearly 200 years after her ancestors were given a large payout from the British government when slavery was abolished, our correspondent travels to Grenada to find out how this grim legacy continues to reverberate today.

High up in the hills of the Caribbean island of Grenada, in the grounds of a former slave plantation, a cast iron bell hangs from a tree.

The ringing of the bell signified the start of another working day for West African slaves, harvesting sugar cane. Today, the Belmont estate is a popular destination for tourists. It’s a place to enjoy the local cuisine and visit the gift shop, where you can buy artisanal chocolate bars embossed with the image of the slave bell.

It was here that I came face to face with the brutality of the past – and the role played by families like mine.

“This is the sound of slavery,” said DC Campbell, a Grenadian novelist and descendent of slaves. He picked up a pair of shackles made for a child, turning them over in his hands.

The artefact, usually housed in the island’s national museum, would have been used on a slave ship on the infamous middle passage from West Africa to the Caribbean.

We looked in silence at the shackles for adults and children, the neck brace which could be tightened until a slave could no longer breathe, and the leather whip which was even used on pregnant women. So sinister in the bright sunlight.

“These were instruments of control and torture,” said Nicole Phillip-Dowe of the University of the West Indies, matter-of-factly. “There was an entire system of control to ensure that you get the labour you want, to get the profits that you want.”

• Listen to Laura’s story at BBC’s The Documentary – also available on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts
• And you can watch this weekend on BBC World News (outside UK) or on the iPlayer (UK only)

• Should black Americans get slavery reparations?
• The murder that drove America to the brink

Image caption, Garfield Hankey

…(read more).

Chris Hedges | Humans Have Become OBJECTS

Chris Hedges Fan Club– May 24, 2022

You may also like… Chris Hedges |
American Empire is FINISHED: https://youtu.be/OW52qqlQiJQ

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. His books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco, which was a New York Times best-seller; Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (2015); and his most recent, America: The Farewell Tour (2018). Obey, a documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on his book Death of the Liberal Class.

Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, West Asia, Africa, the Middle East (he is fluent in Arabic), and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005) serving as the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University.

Hedges, who wrote a weekly column for the progressive news website Truthdig for 14 years, was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher’s attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. He hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network.

Hedges has also taught college credit courses for several years in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University. He has described himself as a socialist, specifically an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.

-From Wikipedia

Chomsky: It’s as if Trump Administration Is Flaunting That U.S. Is Run by Goldman Sachs

Democracy Now!– Apr 4, 2017

http://democracynow.org – Naomi Klein has called the Trump administration a “corporate coup.” The Washington Post reports, “86 percent of Trump counties make less in a year than 27 Trump staffers are worth.” For more, we speak with world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky.

See related:

• Noam Chomsky – Years Ago & Ever Since…

Noam Chomsky (2014) “How to Ruin an Economy; Some Simple Ways

LeighaCohen – Feb 12, 2014

©2014 Leigha Cohen Video Production http://www.leighacohenvideo.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/LeighaCohen Noam Chomsky spoke at Third Boston Symposium on Economics on February 10th 2014, sponsored by the Northeastern University Economics Society http://www.northeastern.edu/econsocie… in Boston, MA.

Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on in this video are copyrighted to Leigha Cohen Video, All rights reserved. No part of this video may be used for any purpose other than educational use and any monetary gain from this video is prohibited without prior permission from me. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system is prohibited. Standard linking of this video is allowed and encouraged

Chomsky argued that certain factors, among them cutting federal funding for research and development and the growing gap between the richest 1 percent and everybody else, have led to the country’s current economic climate.

“The system is so dysfunctional that it cannot put eager hands to needed work using the resources that would be available if the economy were designed for human needs,” Chomsky said. “These things didn’t just happen like a tornado, they are the results of deliberate policies over roughly the past generation.”

Chomsky focuses on what economic actions that government, the super rich and corporations are doing that insures the US and other economies fail for the overwhelming majority of people. We’re a nation whose leaders are pursuing policies that amount to economic suicide.

This video also includes an extended 14 minute question and answer period with Dr. Chomsky..

See related:

• The Wit & Wisdom of Noam Chomsky – Decades Ago & Ever Since…

as well as:

• Some notes following Noam Chomsky

Robert Reich’s Full Testimony Regarding Corporate Profits and Inflation to Senate Budget Committee

Robert Reich – May 26, 2022

The Secrets Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Know About: Business, Finance, Marketing

The Film Archives – Oct 11, 2017

David Cay Boyle Johnston (born December 24, 1948) is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.

More on the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C…

The Making of Donald Trump is a 2016 biography of the American businessman, property developer and politician Donald Trump by the American investigative journalist David Cay Johnston. It was published by Melville House Publishing.

Johnston first met Trump as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer in June 1988 and likened him to P. T. Barnum. He subsequently reported on Trump for almost 30 years, and wrote the book in 27 days. In an interview with The New York Times Johnston said that Trump had “…seriously damaged his brand” with his presidential campaign and would “follow him for the rest of his life”. Johnston also felt that Trump was “masterful at understanding the conventions of journalism” and “remarkably agile at doing as he chooses and getting away with it.”

The book entered the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list in fifteenth position and spent four weeks there.

The book consists of 24 chapters, with an introduction and an epilogue. The book details Trump’s family history, personal biography and an account of his business career and marriages.

David M. Shribman, writing for The Boston Globe, felt that the book was “a chronicle of mobsters and mistresses, shady construction deals and financial shenanigans, monumental projects and miserable (and possibly illegal) business practices” and that “Much of this slender volume’s contents are already part of the public record; some of it is new”. Shribman noted that the book focuses on Trump’s personal and business life rather than his political career and that “More than a dozen Republican candidates and the entire Democratic Party have made the very same argument Johnston puts forward here. It is an important critique, yet an ignored one. Trump may, and probably does, have all these flaws. He also possesses perhaps the most important, and in some quarters surely the most appealing, message in this year of fear and discontent. The book that explains that is the one worth writing, and waiting for.”

The book was reviewed by Michael Russell for the Herald Scotland who wrote that the “24 short chapters of the very readable book contain substantial detail regarding Trump’s activities since that time. They also dig into his earlier years and some of his family background. As to the truth of these claims, readers will need to make up their own minds.” Russell felt that Johnston “sometimes comes across as being almost as self-satisfied and assertive as Trump” but concluded that “Inauguration, unlike baptism, does not wash away sins nor confer wisdom. If even a 10th of David Cay Johnston’s stories are true, then Trump is morally, intellectually, culturally, economically, legally and politically unfit for office of any sort. No wonder so much of the world is shaking its head but also holding its breath.”

David J. Lynch reviewed the book for The Financial Times and wrote that “Johnston has done voters a service with this unblinking portrait. He makes a compelling case that Trump has the attributes of both “dictator” and “deceiver” and would be a disaster in the Oval Office. …Yet, ultimately this is a dispiriting read. If Johnston’s rendering of Trump is at all accurate, it is not just the New York businessman who deserves rebuke. So too does an entire American political system that has put him within reach of the White House despite his manifest flaws.” Lynch was also critical of Johnston’s prose style, feeling that “This slim 210-page volume feels a bit rushed: the transitions can be choppy and, like his subject, Johnston has a healthy regard for his own abilities. …Tip: when you are taking down one of the world’s great narcissists, go easy on self-promotion” but that it “is a minor flaw in a work that delivers so much insight”.

Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021 Would Be 25 years Ago

MSNBC – Jul 13, 2021

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of the things the challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 when he was writing a book published just before his death in 1996. MSNBC’s Brian Williams shares the details.