February 2010

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British Comedy Satirizing US-UK Led Invasion of Iraq Gets Nominated for Oscar

"In the Loop" is a British comedy lampooning the US-UK effort to attack Iraq. The film is a satire of the Anglo-American diplomatic wrangling in the lead-up to the war. It's been nominated for an Oscar this year and despite its serious subject matter, has been described by a New York Times review as the "funniest big-screen satire in recent memory." "The short summary is that everybody betrays everybody else, that opportunism trumps idealism and that telling...

The Activist Actor, Not the Celebrity Cause

Picture: Miraflores Press Office Fazila Farouk - "It takes all kinds," is an expression that couldn't be truer in Hollywood.  Regrettably, we tend to be served up a one sided view of Hollywood. We get to see the glitz and glamour, but rarely are we afforded the opportunity to peek behind the veneer of celluloid magnetism to catch a glimpse of the real people behind the superstars of today's movie industry. Why should we care about them? Well, because the heroes and heroines of Hollywood's silver screen wield an...

Building Cultures of Peace: Prioritising Partnership Over Domination

Picture: Mudkat Riane Eisler - We stand at a critical point in human cultural evolution. Going back to the old normal where peace is just an interval between wars is not an option; what we need is a fundamental cultural transformation. As Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them. If we think only in terms of the conventional cultural and economic categories - right vs. left, religious vs. secular, Eastern vs. Western, capitalist vs. socialist, and so on - we cannot move forward....

The Degeneration of the African National Congress

Picture: Vark1 Richard Pithouse - The degeneration of the African National Congress has reached the point where it poses a clear and present danger to the integrity of society. Julius Malema is one of the more flamboyant examples of how a movement committed to national liberation has become, in the words of Frantz Fanon, ‘a means of private advancement’. But Malema is hardly alone. The Communication Workers Union is entirely correct to have diagnosed an ‘embedded and deep-seated Kebble-ism’ within the...

Resource Curse: Oil in Haiti?

F. William Engdal, economist and author of "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order" has recently written about the possibility of a massive oil find in Haiti and how this might connect to United States (US) strategy in the Caribbean.  Engdal says, if you look at a geophysical map of Haiti, it jumps out that Haiti and ‘Porto Prince Haiti’ lies right along the convergence of three tectonic plates. Generally where there is such a...

Book Review: 'Small Change - Why Business Won't Save the World'

Picture: Make Waves Not Noise & Foreign Policy in Focus Robert Miller - Book: Small Change - Why Business Won't Save the World Author: Michael Edwards Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Reviewer: Robert Miller Michael Edwards spent years working for such organizations as Oxfam International, Save the Children, and the World Bank. Before writing Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World, he directed the Ford Foundation's Governance and Civil Society program. With this knowledge and expertise, Edwards challenges the notion that...