International Perspectives

Had Edward Snowden exposed the dirt of the Taliban, he would have been standing behind the lectern in New York at the UN hall on Friday, July 12. Whoever drafted Malala’s speech was taking no chances because they wanted a cinematic moment from a “mind-controlled victim” of the elite according to an Indian writer.

Unprecedented in the history of international relations, the governments of four European countries - France, Spain, Italy and Portugal - have closed off their airspace this week to the Bolivian president’s airplane. Is this a case of strict compliance with international laws or further proof of the servility of European ’powers’ towards Washington? To better answer this simple question, French pundit Salim Lamrani sets out a list of 25 facts.

China is Africa's number 1 trading partner. To counter Chinese influence and reinforce US presence, President Barack Obama set out on a week long Africa Trip 2013. However, Obama's propaganda tour which cost a hundred million dollars of American taxpayers monies did not go so well. It started out fine in Senegal, but when he came to South Africa, it went downhill which was not really highlighted in the Western mainstream media. It was total fiasco: He was confronted by thousands of workers and students who called him a "slave-trader," and accused him of war crimes and the betrayal of his electoral promises. Obama couldn’t even organise a photo-op at Nelson Mandela’s bedside, a symbolic image he had counted on as Italian geographer and geopolitical scientist reports.

Even though we have more access to information today than ever before, it seems like the U.S. population just keeps becoming more ignorant. So at what point does a society become so “dumbed-down” that it can no longer function effectively?

As the aftershocks of leaked NSA surveillance programs that has been going on for many years continues, China says it’s time for the U.S. government to make more self-examination instead of pointing fingers at other nations.

With potential perjury, a crime, by U.S. top officials, and new questions about spying, let's stop assuming everything is legal. No doubt, all the U.S. statutory and constitutional questions surrounding the NSA’s surveillance operations are why when publicly claiming that the program is perfectly legal, Obama officials also, refuse to make public their jurisprudential justifications for such a claim. The U.S. administration clearly fear that when subjected to scrutiny, the PRISM program will be shown to be, as Sen. Merkley put it, “Out of sync with the plain language of the law” and illegal as American journalist explains.

Orwell is getting a heavy workout these days, but one of his lasting contributions to semantics was offering the most potent example of how totalitarian states manipulate language as a tool of control and deception. U.S. National Intel Chief James Clapper lied. That makes him a liar. There are no semantic wiggling on the fact that the U.S. government does in fact spy on everyone on the planet as writer says.

Leaked draft versions of the EU negotiating mandate for transatlantic trade negotiations contain dangerous new rights for corporations. As a result, EU member states could soon find domestic laws to protect the public interest challenged in secretive, offshore tribunals where national laws have no weight and politicians no powers to intervene, warns Belgian campaigner.

The alleged benefits offered by programmes like PRISM are eclipsed by the pitfalls and dwarfed by the damage they do to society, claims UK campaigner, Andy Halsall..

Harry Browne’s book, entitled The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power), is considered an important book about Bono and celebrity, one of the few books about contemporary music that understands issues of colonialism and white privilege, especially in regard to Africa. The author called out U2's Bono as a fraud or incompetent boy who never grew up or faced facts. Browne's Bono resembled no entertainment or arts figure nearly as much as that other sad, sheltered boy, George W. Bush. Browne, according to Dave Marsh, described Bono as that little boy in man’s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea, a victim of the world’s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities (well, at least his own). If the book were a movie, as Dave Marsh critiques, that one might be able to measure the price paid just by the way Bono looks at himself in the mirror.

By outlawing dumpster diving, Houston is making life impossible for the most vulnerable.

by Rob Call May 23, 2013 (TSR) - There is a growing trend for advertisers to tie products to lying. It's not surprising. There are plenty of TV shows, particularly...