Showing posts with label Al Jazeera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Jazeera. Show all posts

Monday, 31 October 2011

Alan Rusbridger & Slavoj Zizek Interviewed On Al Jazeera




Alan talks about his visit by the head of Scotland Yard to pressure him into dropping the phone hacking story. Zizek talks about the radio silence of the massacre and depravity in The Congo. Both specifically distance themselves from using the conspiracy word and yet are they not saying that corporate media is controlled? That some stories have the lowest possible odds of informing people?

It is controlled though mostly by (profit driven) agenda than micro managed orders being issued from Wizards behind curtains. That's what middle managers are for. However this is an even graver allegation than conspiracy which comes from Old French and before that Latin language of 'to breathe together'. 

Until the Anglo American media axis views all life as equal the media are a sizeable part of our problem. There are signs for hope but it does require more people to speak up in the public domain, and yet the silence on the most important issues of our times is a butchered and bleeding elephant tusk on the coffee table that the materialists would prefer not to talk about.

Even Al Jazeera showed us their line in the sand during the Arab Spring uprising though they are currently along with Russia Today providing a news service that is superior to most of the traditional Western media apertures.

Monday, 22 November 2010

Disavowal - Zizek On Intolerance of Tolerance & Only Foreigners Should Vote



Al Jazeera has to be the only media outlet giving people like Slavoj Zizek (who can talk for hours, his friends call him Castro) at least half an hour to discuss some of the most important challenges of our times. Zizek's deconstruction of tolerance is why I'm leaning towards his somewhat humorous reframing of a Stalinist mandate to fix things. 

This is a topic I've been straddling the fence on since I first challenged it in a theoretical sense with Sandrine in Hong Kong. It's not as if the answers are easy, but at least Zizek makes the point that there's an imperative for all of us to be philosophers here.

Update: Zizek on only foreigners should vote is kind of the big thinking I'm attracted to.