1998:Film critic Barry Norman with the then Sky TV's General Manager Elisabeth Murdoch for the launch of three new channels for Sky Movies.Peter Jordan/Press Association. All rights reserved. For those people passionately opposed to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the statement from Karen Bradley last Thursday would have aroused mixed emotions. One of the companies in which the Murdoch Family Trust (MFT) holds a controlling 39% interest – the US-based 21st Century Fox, hereafter “Fox” – is trying to buy all of Sky plc, in which Fox itself already holds a controlling 39% share. After a 10-week review by the media regulator, Ofcom, Bradley was advised that there were presently no…

A recent Supreme Court case involving an Asian dance-rock band called The Slants has served as a setback for critics hoping to find legal grounds for forcing the Washington Redskins to change their name. On Monday, the court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment provided for copyrights offensive names.  The Redskins organization While many has been under attack as cultural insensitive but the team has resolved to keep the name and imagery. Opponents hoped that legal recourse would force the Redskins to change their mascot.  The Slants carried on their fight to the nation’s highest court in the hopes that they could “take back” the hateful term that had been levied against Asians and Asian-Americans…

Italian art conservationist shows a badly damaged funerary bust from the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria that is being painstakingly restored in Rome, February 16, 2017. Vandeville Eric/Press Assocation. All rights reserved.The third annual meeting of the Syrian Civil Coalition was held in Beirut on January 27-30 2017. Compared with the first meeting of this group of people three years ago, it was a much a sadder occasion. In the summer of 2013, civil society activists were able to reach Beirut from all parts of Syria (government-controlled areas, opposition-controlled areas, and Kurdish majority areas) and the energy and enthusiasm, despite the terrible odds, that had its origins in the 2011…

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attended Sunday’s game between the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers, and naturally he couldn’t let a delightful afternoon at Miller Park go by without engaging in his favorite pastime: bullying. According to WISN 12 News, one of their reporters, Ben Hutchison, was seated with his relative Brad Joseph, who spied Christie (whose son is employed by the Brewers) trudging to his seat while toting nachos. From a distance of 30 feet, Joseph said, he was compelled to bark out Christie’s name and inform the governor that “he sucked.” Christie could not let this injustice stand, and so the two went at it. “I called him…

Donald Trump speaks during the joint session of Congress to deliver his State of the Union Address in the Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018. CQ-Roll Call/PA Images. All rights reserved.George W Bush gave his first state-of-the-union address on 29 January 2002, just four months after the 9/11 attacks. Sixteen years and one day later, on 30 January 2018, Donald Trump delivered his own opening performance of the ritual. Where their rhetoric on international security is concerned, the overlap between the two presidential speeches is remarkable. Just as Bush pro-claimed the "new American century", so Donald Trump is "making America great again". It is as if these tumultuous years have brought no…

Zachary Warren spends a lot of his time thinking about chairs. Desk chairs, to be more specific. Though there’s a range of chair sizes in the classroom where he’s taught for years in the Seattle Public School system, he says, “They don’t fit the kids. The desks don’t fit the kids.” The problem, Warren believes, is that public education in his state isn’t fully-funded. Which means equipment doesn’t always work. Or adequate supplies simply aren’t available. So teachers like him — who already struggle to make it on salaries that are well below what it takes to live in the blazing Seattle housing market — must dig into their own pockets to pay…

Surinamese radio and television entertainer Sylvana Simons entering politics to contest discrimination. During an interview by Wilfred Genee. De Balie, Amsterdam, 26 Nov. 2016. Wikicommons/De Balie, Amsterdam. Some rights reserved.Much to everyone’s surprise, it turns out that this is not the election we expected. At the start of the campaign season, with the right-wing populist Geert Wilders riding high in the polls, the prediction had been that it would come down to a race between the conservative Liberals and Geert Wilders’ populist, right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), leaving all others in the dust. Following on the heels of the US election of Trump and the UK vote for Brexit, and…

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget calls for a reduction in a plethora of social services, but it’s one cut in particular that has everyone arguing: Trump’s proposed $193 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps, over the next 10 years. The cut adds up to 25 percent of the program’s total budget. According to a report released in January by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 44 million people took part in the SNAP program in 2016. In Washington, D.C., more than 20 percent of the population uses the program to assist in feeding themselves and their families. But Trump doesn’t see it…

Luhansk landscape, 2017. Photo courtesy of the author. The war in Ukraine’s Donbas is now in its fourth year. This is mostly thanks to Russian military and financial support for separatist forces, and because of the ineffectual policies of the Ukrainian government, which has been unable to come up with a strategy to free the country from an external aggressor and end the crisis.  In the Donbas, local people are tired and disillusioned: “I don’t see how anything can change,” Natalya, a resident of the village of Zolote, in the Luhansk region, tells me. “Life’s pretty bad here. When there’s shooting, we hide in the cellar. There was a sniper…

The world’s political and economic leaders had a clear and immediate response to Trump’s blatant denial of reality on Thursday: We’re moving on without you.  Legitimate billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg certainly took this stance in the aftermath of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. According to the succeeding New York Times, Bloomberg has offered to pay the U.N. the $15 million the United States would have paid had Trump not pulled out of the deal. Bloomberg’s spokesperson, Carl Pope, told CNN Money that sum will fund America’s portion of the operating costs for the agreement. On Thursday, Bloomberg tweeted, “We can’t wait for national…