Category Archives: ACADEMIC

Trump, Brexit & The Deep State: An Uncivil History

No surprise when we learn of Palantir Technologies’ involvement in the Trump campaign, alongside Cambridge Analytica. There’s even a third intelligence agency called Quid, but what of Wikileaks? Is it even likely they would be playing ball with Palantir, and its co-founder Peter Thiel? He is also the founder of Paypal, who staged the world-wide blockade of Wikileaks funding. It’s hard to imagine. Slavoj Žižek has aptly signalled how at odds their agendas are: “Assange characterised himself as the spy of and for the people: he is not spying on the people for those in power, he is spying on those in power for the people”. Peter Thiel also sits on the board of Facebook, and was the site’s first major investor.
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TRUMP, BREXIT & CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA – What is the real problem?

Speaking at a Sydney ‘Politics in the Pub’ event last month, Cathy Vogan, founder of THING2THING.COM and author of ‘The Wikileaks Tapes’, offered a comprehensive view of how the use of behavioural micro-targeting, big data and psychometrics by Cambridge Analytica got Donald Trump elected, and led to a vote for Brexit. This is an update of that talk. Continue reading

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Lessig: WITHER DEMOCRACY

On the eve of the Icelandic Elections… WITHER DEMOCRACY, by Professor Lawrence Lessig, speaking from the University of Iceland. Continue reading

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Symbiosis in Liquid Democracy & Citizen Journalism

The founder of Tesla Motors, co-founder of Paypal, and CEO/CTO of the company SpaceX, Elon Reeve Musk, aims to establish a colony of 80,000 humans on Mars by 2040. While fixing his short-term goals on sustainable energy production, Musk believes … Continue reading

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JOHN PILGER – A WORLD WAR HAS BEGUN: BREAK THE SILENCE

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.”

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years. Continue reading

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THE MEANING OF METADATA [Retention] – Scott Ludlam, Sam Castro & Jacob Grech talking global surveillance and the TPP

LADIES & GENTLEMEN, welcome to ‘Politics in the Pub’, where people can have a good old yarn about things we’re not supposed to know. It was a pleasure to serve in the interests of putting this one together. Scott, Sam, … Continue reading

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AUSTRALIANS ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS to refugee specialists

In the wake of a High Court break-through concerning Operation Sovereign Borders, AUSTRALIANS ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS to refugee specialists, Dr Joyce Chia and Dr Lucy Fiske, live at Politics in the Pub. Continue reading

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Dr Joyce Chia on Australian High Court’s Refugee Stance

Dr Joyce Chia, from the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW, spoke and answered questions from a live audience on Thursday evening at Sydney’s ‘Politics in the Pub’, regarding surprising developments earlier that day in Australia’s High Court. In her article for the Guardian, entitled ‘High court verdict spells the end for Australian immigration detention as we know it’, she made clear the implications of the Court’s verdict. Continue reading

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Antony Loewenstein on Gaza

According to Antony Loewenstein and Noam Chomsky, liberal Zionists and the younger generation have become increasingly uncomfortable with the actions of the Israeli State and its US backers. Listen here to the talk Antony recently gave at ‘Politics in the Pub’ in Sydney, on the subject of Gaza under attack. Continue reading

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THE TRUTH… about Mother’s Day

The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualised with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mothers everywhere to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of “Sons killing the sons of other mothers”. Continue reading

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