#bbc world news is notoriously biases

[fagqueer]

girlie no one cares about the sub victims, they got a one way ticket to turbo hell, i promise, and if the media you're consuming is somehow glorifying them where are you getting your media? cos the world news sure is not pulling punches on this one? 14 year old on tumblr teens that think being mean to billionaires is not moral are not a major media outlet...

[things2mustdo]

Face it, the mainstream media is not only full of contradictions, but deep-seated, institutionalized biases. When a male or conservative does something, it is often considered horrendous. Yet when a female, liberal or a member of another “special” group does the same thing, passes are given or journalists’ eyes are averted.

Social media users with common sense political opinions have already started to compile these glaring double standards. Return Of Kings and its supporters should continue doing the same thing.

So here are five of the most egregious recent examples of hypocritical mainstream media madness:

1. Use of dead veterans’ families at political rallies or conventions

When Khizr and Ghazala Khan appeared at the Democratic National Convention to lambaste Donald Trump for his views on Muslim immigration and supposed behavior, commentators and journalists went wild with fanfare. Their son Humayun, a Muslim soldier, had died in Iraq. Trump was attacked for allegedly grandstanding about and minimizing Humayun’s death.

Meanwhile, many of these same newsmen and women, including Rachel Maddow’s stooge Steve Benen, derided the Republicans for featuring Pat Smith, mother of Benghazi fatality Sean Smith, as a speaker at their own Convention. Mrs. Smith had laid into Hillary Clinton over the latter’s role in and perceived indifference to her son’s death in Libya. So one family became heroes to the media for going public after their tragic loss, while another was portrayed as so weak in their grief that they were manipulated by big, bad Republicans into talking.

Moreover, Trump had nothing to do with Sean Smith’s death. Compare this to Clinton, who was the Secretary of State at the time of the American deaths at Benghazi and whose State Department had received numerous calls for assistance. Considering that Sean Smith and others died alongside U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the first American ambassador to be killed whilst serving since 1979, the woefully insufficient security precautions taken by the Obama Administration and Secretary Clinton should not have transpired. But this spotlight on Clinton does not make for good (liberal) news.

2. Psychiatric records for a war hero vs. medical records of a pathological liar

Countless liberals, both in the media and within other leftist cabals like mainstream Hollywood, have attacked those questioning Hillary Clinton’s health as “misogynists,” “sexists” and other undesirables. When these tags are unable to be used, leftists claim that even piecemeal doubts about her physical condition are nothing but conspiracy theories on par with Roswell UFOs and lizard people running the world.

Yet eight years ago, these same people were frothing at the bit to out John McCain for his supposedly poor health. Most perversely of all, they homed in on his decorated military service, suggesting he had Presidentially disqualifying mental health conditions from his service in the Vietnam War and the multiple years he spent as a prisoner-of-war. “Where are his psychiatric records?” bellowed one piece from Salon, in addition to a number of other articles that more than hinted at the same topic.

Whilst I, like many of you, revile his putrid, watered-down “Republican” policies on many issues, McCain had gargantuan balls in Vietnam. Here is a man who spent more time as a tortured prisoner-of-war, including a stay in the notorious Hanoi Hilton, than Barack Obama spent in the US Senate. As the son of the commander of US forces in Vietnam, McCain received numerous offers of repatriation from the North Vietnamese. He refused and would only accept being returned home once fellow American soldiers captured before him were released. By contrast, Hillary lacks the mental fortitude to tell the truth most of the time, not even after she’s had seizures, coughing fits, and dramatic collapses on camera!

3. Sexualizing political candidates (and removing their genitals)

When an artist by the name of Lushsux painted a mural of a scantily-clad Hillary Clinton, a local Melbourne, Australia council and numerous global commentators derided it as “misogyny” and “sexual objectification.” “Take female politicians seriously!” was the crux of their shrill arguments against the rendering. Lushsux then trolled his critics by repainting the mural so Hillary was dressed in an Islamic burqa. Soon after, multiple statues of a nude and testicle-less Donald Trump appeared in American cities. Unlike the Hillary artwork, the proliferation created huge fanfare and delight amongst both prominent leftists and run-of-the-mill liberal voters. Why is one act so offensive and the other so funny, particularly in age where body-shaming and mocking someone’s appearance is meant to be so taboo?

Most of the critical commentaries about the Trump statues that appeared in the mainstream media, of which there were few, failed to take into account one glaring significance of the testicle-less Trump. Short of them being violently taken or hacked off, how exactly could Trump have no balls? Imagine the furore if a statue, mural or other representation of Hillary Clinton had lacked breasts or shown her vagina circumcised/mutilated. “They’re condoning violence against women!” would be the stock-standard answer from liberals and their even more deranged SJW cousins.

4. Lesbian’s Olympic marriage proposal vs. heterosexual male’s Olympic marriage proposal

This is bad and misogynistic:

This is love and should be applauded:

Leftists rejoiced when Olympic official Marjorie Enya asked her partner, rugby sevens player Isadora Cerullo, to marry her using a microphone. Love wins, right, especially when it’s gay love? But when Chinese athlete Qin Kai asked silver medalist He Zi to marry him, the knives from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) came out. The BBC, unfortunately taxpayer-funded, published an article insinuating that Qin Kai was attempting to control He Zi with the very public marriage proposal. Not only could it be control, it could be awfully pernicious “male control.” Coverage of Enya’s proposal to Cerullo, however, got the broadcaster’s tick of approval.

If either of the two proposals is a form of control or narcissistic, it was the lesbian one. Unlike the Chinese diver, who was competing individually, the lesbian proposed to was part of the Brazilian team, which had not even been awarded a medal. Brazil had come ninth and that night Australia had beaten New Zealand for the gold medal. He Zi may not have won the gold medal, but she had actually participated in the final. But do not let facts get in the way of a good male-bashing.

5. Objectifying men vs. objectifying women

Cosmopolitan has established itself as a dual enabler of both ditzy female airheads and SJW political freaks. Over time, the magazine has come out strongly against countless normal displays of male sexuality, admonishing men who appreciate female breasts and buttocks for being “horrible.” Of the many Cosmopolitan pieces to take this line, an article in mid-2014 takes the cake for its ridiculous shaming of harmless, healthy behaviors. Ironically, though, covers for this publication feature the same sorts of thin, healthy women that men desire most in the first place.

Fast-forward a mere two years and Cosmopolitan went to the extraordinary effort of cataloguing 36 men whose crotch bulges tickled their fancy. Of course, numerous other articles during that time had objectified men in a way considered misogynistic when males do it to women, but the timing was amusing. After so much talk of valuing female athletes, whose physical accomplishments are far less than men, for their work and not their bodies, Cosmopolitan celebrated the years of sacrifice of male athletes by effectively taking photos of their barely clothed genitalia.

We could keep on going

Many other hypocritical pieces were penned about these situations, not just the ones I have referenced. Then there’s the great number of other articles we could assess and critique on separate issues. You may be convinced, and rightfully so, that the mainstream media is inherently biased. But we need to take this to the next level and disseminate the proof to wider audiences.

Journalists and commentators will continue their bad habits, that much is clear. What matters now is fighting back. Complaining about double standards only goes so far. Exposing them in an organized fashion stands a better much chance in helping us to arrest and then reverse this institutional bias.

As Return Of Kings readers, you are our extra eyes and ears. If you find more examples of extreme leftist media bias, bring it to our attention.

https://www.returnofkings.com/19995/anti-female-stem-bias-a-bayesian-explanation

The New York Times recently ran a long piece exploring the history of women in STEM fields and attempting to explain the ever-present difference between men and women in performance and participation in these fields. The article begins by citing research on perceptions of female aptitude in math and science:

“Researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. “

She shares an anecdote that is supposed to display the prejudice of professors against females in the field, but instead illustrates one valid reason for the bias displayed by the Yale study:

“Other women chimed in to say that their teachers were the ones who teased them the most. In one physics class, the teacher announced that the boys would be graded on the “boy curve,” while the one girl would be graded on the “girl curve”; when asked why, the teacher explained that he couldn’t reasonably expect a girl to compete in physics on equal terms with boys.”

Enter Bayes’ Theorem

Bayes’s theorem is a foundational principle of statistics and probability that allows us to update our estimations about the trueness of a fact based on new evidence. The math of Bayes’ theorem is simple and elegant, and the overarching idea is powerful — we can use evidence in a formalized manner to change the probability that something may be true, and this can often have non-intuitive results.

The classic example of Bayes in action is medical tests — for example, if 1% of women have breast cancer, and a mammogram detects the cancer 80% of the time with a 10% false positive rate, what is the probability that a positive result means the woman has cancer? If a mammogram is positive, the chance of cancer is less than 8% due to the presence of false positives, as well as the low baseline population rate of cancer.

What does this have to do with women and STEM fields? Readers of this site are familiar with the allure that even a plain looking girl can have at the height of her availability and youth. This isn’t just a factor when getting free drinks at the bar – it extends to the classroom, hiring for jobs, treatment in everyday life, and many other areas. Girls in primary and secondary school are judged to be better students, despite boys showing a significant advantage in standardized tests starting around middle school. The article highlights the ways that women are supposedly discouraged by the system, but makes no mention of the advantages they enjoy.

Put simply, women are more likely to be handed accomplishments without having to work for them, both due to the power of their sexuality and as unconscious overcorrection for their supposed disadvantages in opportunity. Given an applicant with a certain pedigree – a Ph.D, say, from a top graduate program —we will have a certain estimation of that person’s intelligence and aptitude. However, the “false positive” rate on those qualifications identifying extremely high aptitude is likely to be much lower for a man, who has not enjoyed the advantages of a feminized education system, catch-up programs, and the hint of his sexuality influencing the evaluations of his superiors.

The bias against hiring a woman whose qualifications are equal to a man, and their subsequent lower salary offer, is simply a use of Bayesian inference. It accounts for the implicit probability that the female will not be as good as her résumé suggests, to say nothing of the chance that she will leave her job to begin a family and leave her employer empty-handed at some point in the future. If, as the example above states, both men and women implicitly behave as if men are superior in math and science, we must give some consideration that this is a possibility.

If Men Are Better At Math/Science — What’s The Big Deal?

The media is encouraged to sing the praises of women where they excel compared to men, and females indeed show demonstrated advantages in many cognitive areas. They are better at language acquisition, picking up on non-verbal cues, and we are all familiar with their evolved capacity for psychological manipulation. Many would suggest that women have better organizational skills. They are incarcerated for violent crimes less often, are less prone to risky behavior, and are more resilient to psychological trauma such as PTSD.

But when it comes to exploring why men have long-demonstrated advantages in certain disciplines, the media scrabbles to ascribe the boogeyman of injustice perpetrated on the protected class. The article is quick to dismiss the repeatable and longitudinal difference between males in females in standardized testing, a long-standing form of evaluation that every college and grad school uses to give out valuable admissions spots. It also does not mention the lack of female representation in technology entrepreneurship, a field that is less dependent on credentials and more on individual drive, creativity, and aptitude.

It could certainly be true that women are discriminated against AND that they are simply less common at the far right of the aptitude bell curve necessary for competitive positions in academia. But I challenge you to find this idea entertained in any mainstream publication despite the mountains of circumstantial evidence. Larry Summers was tarred and feathered for even mentioning research on population dynamics as a potential driver of this difference. The lesson here is that, when you begin an “inquiry” by presupposing the conclusion, you will end up with a politically correct and eminently intellectually dishonest worldview.

Read More: The Anti-Male Commercial

[claritalunaluna76]

MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. This time, we speak to Mark Gillespie, founder of Three Six Zero and manager to huge artists like Calvin Harris. The World’s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip Music, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange – created with the music industry and its needs in mind.

Mark Gillespie grew up in Redditch, just south of Birmingham, England – where, as a teenager in the mid-’90s, he developed his passion for electronic music as a record collector and amateur DJ.

From there, he met local promoter Eddie Boulton, who gave him a job handing out flyers for Birmingham’s soon-to-launch legendary superclub Godskitchen.

Within a couple of years, Gillespie – deemed something of an internet-age whizkid within Godskitchen – was becoming an increasingly influential figure within the club, helping pick out emerging DJ talent, while also building websites, launching digital marketing campaigns and acting as a talent liaison.

This was a heady lifestyle for an 18-year-old dance music fanatic, which, by Gillespie’s own admission, invited “all kinds of crazy shit” into his life. Including the fact that local gangs – particularly the notoriously violent Birmingham Zulus – liked to frequent the club.

“For quite a while, I wore a bulletproof vest to work,” says Gillespie, matter-of-factly. “That was just being sensible; there’d always be standoffs between various gangs over who was and wasn’t allowed in the club. And then one night, this guy pulled a gun out and waved it right in my face.”

Funny thing is, Gillespie (pictured) doesn’t actually count this incident as his worst ever day at work. That came a couple of years before, when he considered turning his back on the music game for a ‘proper job’, by starting an engineering apprenticeship (similar to an internship) at UK car maker Rover.

“They were good people, but I hated it,” he says. “One day, I just stood up and walked out; I realized I had to make my music stuff work, otherwise I’d be at Rover for the rest of my days.”

Getting a gun thrust in his mush for Gillespie was, relatively speaking, still living the dream.

By 2003, Gillespie had progressed to booking the DJ’s at Godskitchen and its related festivals, as well as processing payments for talent and managing project budgets.

If anyone ever tells you that learning on the job is somehow bested by an academic education, let’s just run through the skills that Gillespie acquired within a few years of joining a nightclub as the flyer kid, aged 16: promotion, artist liaison, accounting, digital marketing, coding, talent booking, self-preservation – not to mention one of the best contacts books in the world of electronic music.

The next step was inevitable, wasn’t it? Godskitchen began releasing compilation albums through Sony Music, giving Gillespie a taste of how the wider record business worked.

Inspired by the likes of UK indie labels Defected, FFRR, and Toolroom, he hatched a plan to launch his own part-time record company – while still working at Godskitchen – and began scanning MySpace “for hours and hours most days, just trying to find new music played by interesting people”.

Eventually, Gillespie landed on the MySpace page of Scottish producer/DJ, Calvin Harris, and hotfooted it up to Glasgow to meet him. Leaving the city deeply impressed, Gillespie made a life-changing decision. “I pivoted,” he says. “I decided I didn’t want to be Calvin’s label – I wanted to be his manager.”

This was the beginning of what would become globe-straddling artist management powerhouse, Three Six Zero. Via his role at Godskitchen, Gillespie had become friendly with influential UK DJ and broadcaster Pete Tong and, in mid-2006, Gillespie passed Tong a CD with a bunch of Harris’s music on it. Tong played his track, The Girls, on his Friday night show on BBC Radio 1, and Gillespie’s cell phone began lighting up.

“I made the decision, right then, to quit my job and become a manager full time,” says Gillespie. “Calvin said to me, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Looking back now, leaving [Godskitchen] probably was a real leap of faith, but it didn’t feel like it at that moment.”

Before we come on to the status of Three Six Zero in 2019, it’s worth reiterating the enormity of Calvin Harris’s worldwide success. He has sold 12 million records globally to date, including 44 million singles, and has had 14 UK No.1s. He has also amassed over 16 billion audio and video streams.

Originally signed by Mike Pickering at Columbia in the UK, Harris is one of Sony’s bestselling, and perennially prioritized, global artists. He’s worked with everyone from Rihanna to Dua Lipa, Florence + The Machine, Sam Smith, Khalid, Pharrell Williams, Ariana Grande and Migos.

In tandem with Harris’s rise, Gillespie, alongside his former business partner Dean Wilson, has built Three Six Zero into a truly blockbuster player in the global music industry. Based in Los Angeles, TSZ has one of the strongest rosters in dance music globally – with Harris, Tiësto and Disciples on its books, amongst others. It also reps leading lights in other genres like Louis Tomlinson, Kacy Hill and Grammy Award-winning producer Noah Goldstein.

Gillespie has an excellent story about his first foray into the United States with Three Six Zero: A major record label was interested in hiring the British exec to run a dance music-focused subsidiary. He took the meetings, and the paid flights to New York, gladly – but while in town, he was also meeting with Roc Nation’s Jay Brown, with whom Gillespie and Three Six Zero ended up going into business with for almost a decade.

Today, after a transformational year, Three Six Zero is fully independent, and fully-owned by Gillespie. TSZ recently launched a new office in London, headed up by long-term friend of the company, Phil Sales.

Gillespie, a major movie buff, has also quietly made a name for Three Six Zero in the film world, managing the likes of feature-maker Brady Corbet, Shameik Moore – the lead actor in Academy Award-winning animated movie, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse – and bestselling author/ scriptwriter Bret Easton Ellis.

Three Six Zero’s ambitions in Hollywood moved up a couple of leagues earlier this year, when Music Business Worldwide broke the news that the firm had acquired Westbrook Entertainment. That firm’s on-screen talent – including Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jaden Smith, Willow Smith, Kenna and Crespo – are all now integrated into the TSZ family.

What’s more, Three Six Zero launched its own first feature film – the acclaimed Vox Lux, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law – at the end of last year. The soundtrack to the movie was released on Three Six Zero’s in-house record label, headed up by Pete Tong, which Gillespie runs as a JV with Sony Music Entertainment.

MBW recently sat down with Gillespie over dinner in Los Angeles to map out Three Six Zero’s history, and to learn what the British entrepreneur has up his sleeve for the future…

YOU’RE NOW FLYING SOLO AS THE HEAD OF AN INDEPENDENT THREE SIX ZERO – HAVING ALWAYS HAD BUSINESS PARTNERS SINCE YOU LAUNCHED THE COMPANY IN 2007. WHAT’S THAT LIKE?

The idea of running this company solo used to terrify me. But now it’s different: I like the autonomy, and I like that you can craft decisions that are entirely yours.

There isn’t any interruption in what you’re doing. In some ways, it’s more difficult, but in other ways it’s more enjoyable.

WHAT ARE THE BEST THINGS ABOUT THE MUSIC BUSINESS IN THE US?

I love the professionalism; people really take pride in what they do and that resonates with me. The level of execution that you see in the US business is very impressive – some of the festivals and the live touring setups in particular. You regularly come across people that are prepared to push the envelope [in order] to be able to ensure that really great and interesting things happen.

The potential scale in America is fascinating – the business here really thinks about things on a global basis. I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve managed to handle our business over here, and I’m really grateful that we’ve been enabled to do that.

We all know that some people [from international territories] come to the US with an attitude that they’re going to tell people what to do – to me, that suggests those people believe it’s somehow easy to conduct business over here, and it’s really not.

The flow of business and the way that things are done is totally different to the UK but I love it, and I’m hugely passionate about it.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE TRANSITION FROM CALVIN HARRIS THE FRONTMAN TO CALVIN HARRIS THE SUPERSTAR DJ? SOME PEOPLE IN THE STATES MIGHT NOT KNOW THAT HE STARTED OUT AS A SINGER, VERY MUCH IN FRONT OF THE DECKS – BEFORE EMBRACING HIS KINGMAKING ROLE AS THE ARCHITECT BEHIND THE SCENES….

It’s one of the smartest decisions that he made in his career – and it was all him. He used the live touring circuit in the early stages of his career to help establish his business and hone his identity.

At that moment in time [indie/dance crossover acts with ‘frontmen’] was what was happening in the UK, but he saw what was coming and very intelligently saw that the world was turning in a slightly different direction. He also happened to write some of the greatest records ever released at the right time. That always helps.

HOW GOOD IS CALVIN?

His successes broadly speak for themselves. I may seem biased but I think he’s the best writer/producer of his generation.

I love him as an artist and a person. He’s ridiculously hard working, always has been, and he’s a huge a supporter of mine. His drive has definitely helped pushed me along over the years.

OTHER THAN JAY BROWN AND ROC NATION, WHO ELSE HAS BEEN MENTOR FIGURES IN THE US FOR YOU?

Rob Stringer. He’s really perceptive, and gave me some of the soundest advice in the early stages of my career. He’s also helped guide me, on more than one occasion, through what can sometimes be quite a complicated and political business.

Then there’s Michael Rapino – one of the smartest guys in the industry. He has a very direct, knowledge-based approach, which I respect him for. [That approach] is why, above anything else, I think he’s so tremendously successful.

On the subject of mentors, no-one comes close to my mum. She was an entrepreneur and raised three kids on her own. We didn’t have a lot, but she managed to get us into a place where we all had enough.

Redditch is a very ‘normal’ place; part of it’s really nice, part of it’s shitty, and the town center is ‘burger, fries and two black eyes’. It’s not South Central, but it’s not Kensington either. She’s been an incredibly good example to me that if you work really hard, you can achieve important things.

WHY HAVE YOU GOT SUCH A HUNGER TO MAKE MOTION PICTURES OR AUDIO/VISUAL CONTENT?

Partly because I think that the world that we live in now requires the ability to work across multiple disciplines. And partly because I love film, and always have.

Film, TV, short-form digital content, music and socials all used to be very separate, different disciplines. But over the past few years, with the massive growth in streaming, they’ve all moved closer together – and I think they’ll continue to move closer together.

A lot of people ask me whether I’m moving more towards film [at the expense of music] and I’m not. I work pretty much every moment that my eyes are open, and the film thing began as a hobby. I decided to do a few things that made us a bit more of a [Hollywood] entity, and which showed that we have reasonably good taste.

We’ve had a few successes now, and I think that all of the practical lessons that we learn from the [film] business will be hugely beneficial to the music side of our business. But, by no means, am I getting out of the music business. If anything, I’m more focused on music than I ever have been for my entire career; I think this is the most exciting time that the music business has ever seen.

WHY?

There are fewer barriers. There is opportunity for all different types of music to be able to break through.

Also, streaming is working, so there’s the revenue there, if distributed correctly, for the industry to develop and build big artists.

Interesting things are happening in the music business on a daily basis. Since the start of my career, I’ve been hugely into technology, and hugely into music, and I feel like at this moment in time, I get to do a bit of both every single day.

WHY DID YOU START A LABEL WITH SONY?

Three Six Zero has always run labels since the beginning of our business. [The company previously released albums from the likes of The Prodigy in the US via a JV deal with Warner Music Group and label-managed Mau5trap, Rising and Fly Eye Records.]

Running a label helps define your level of taste as a company. It also means you can have different levels of involvement in the careers of talent. The most enjoyable part of that is the ability to work with other managers, actually.

As for why Sony, part of it is because [via Calvin] I’ve spent eleven years getting to know everyone in that system; if I need to ask a question of somebody in Mexico, I know who to pick the phone up to. I know all the label heads in all the major markets, and there’s some really great people there.

Sony’s a really good company at the moment with a great perspective.

YOU’VE HAD SOME BIG CHARACTERS AS CLIENTS DOWN THE YEARS, INCLUDING TRAVIS SCOTT, MORRISSEY AND FRANK OCEAN. ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS MOMENTS INVOLVED FRANK AND THE RELEASE OF BLONDE, WHERE HE COMPLETED HIS ALBUM DEAL WITH UNIVERSAL WITH A VIDEO-LP, ENDLESS, THEN INDEPENDENTLY RELEASED WHAT APPEARED TO BE HIS ‘REAL’ ALBUM WITHIN DAYS. HOW DID THAT SITUATION COME ABOUT?

Frank is a private guy, and that’s part of what makes him so great. So if that story is ever to be told, he should be the one telling it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL SEA CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?

The business needs to find a new format, in order to protect itself.

The biggest threat to the music business right now is decentralized networks. Thanks to Daniel [Ek] and Spotify, a new economy has been created in the business from streaming, but decentralization is a potential threat to that. Decentralization [i.e. blockchain technology] is something that was super buzzy for a year or two, and has gone away a bit, but I think it will swing back around at great pace in the next five years, and could be potentially devastating for the entire entertainment content business.

What happens after streaming is something that we need to focus on. The good news is that there are people within the major record companies and major publishers that are a hell of a lot more technologically savvy than they were when Napster hit.

One other thing is that I think other streaming platforms, from outside music, will want to get into music. That’s going to make things interesting but it’s potentially a threat as well – making sure that music is valued at the correct amount when that happens.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THREE SIX ZERO?

We’re in a place where we can largely do what we want, which is interesting. Over the last eighteen months, I’ve spent a lot of time reconnecting with my British roots, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, if everything came to an end tomorrow, I’d like to be seen as the guy who took some good British stuff to America and made it successful.

I hope for us to do more of that, which means spending a bit more time back in London, re-establishing the business there. I love seeing some of the new, young managers from the UK having a go at moving out [to L.A] and getting stuck in.

And obviously I’m really excited to see what we can achieve with Will [Smith], Miguel [Melendez] and the Westbrook guys. I’ve known them for seven or eight years, we all share a similar philosophy, and they’re very smart and innovative people. There is a real opportunity to work with them to grow our intellectual property [portfolio] while expanding our entertainment management business.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THREE SIX ZERO UK? LAST WE HEARD IT WAS BEING CLOSED BUT NOW IT’S BACK.

It would be impossible for us to be champions of British talent and not have an office in London. Phil [Sales] is our head in London; we’re partners in the UK business and we’re building it around him.

He’s very direct, he’s honest, he truly loves music, and he’s incredibly passionate about what he does. I’m seeing lots of great things happening in the UK, musically.

The British business seemed to get very locked off [outside the US] for about a year and a half, but that seems to be changing now.

WHAT SIZE DO YOU WANT THREE SIX ZERO TO BECOME AS AN INDEPENDENT COMPANY?

I’m definitely not looking for mass scale – I’m not trying to be the biggest anything ever again. That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career so far; being the biggest is not necessarily being the best.

Continually re-assessing what success means to you – especially after you have prolonged success – is the most difficult bit of running a business, but it’s essential.

A specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange, Centtrip Music works with over 450 global artists helping them and their crew maximise their income and reduce touring costs with its award-winning multi-currency card and live foreign exchange rates. Centtrip Music also offers record labels, promoters, collection societies and publishers a more cost-effective way to send payments across the globe.

Music Business Worldwide - July 10, 2019

[ladystylestores]

Ars’ summer reading guide for our very surreal summer

Enlarge / A lot of literature in this.

Look, we’re admittedly biased around the Ars Orbital HQ. Whether the best of times or worst of times, we routinely find comfort in a good book. COVID-19 has changed so much about our day-to-day lives, including some of our entertainment habits around things like gaming or streaming TV and film. But when it comes to precious reading time in between work and busy personal lives, we’re continually drawn to the stories that grip us—as grim as some of those may be.

This year’s staff summer recommendation/To Be Read list has a few newer releases, plenty of old classics, and a lot of alternate reality/sci-fi. Ars’ book tastes remain nothing if not on-brand, meaning we may never get through one of these without Douglas Adams being mentioned. Here’s everything, Hitchhiker’s Guides and others, we’ve been escaping to.

Enlarge / The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi

Sparth

Series starters

Sci-fi fans who enjoy engaging characters and story driven more by human interaction than technical wharrgarbl will enjoy John Scalzi’s latest trilogy, The Interdependency. The third book just released last week, and it ties things up neatly—a first, for Scalzi. The Interdependency is an old-school galaxy-spanning empire, with a twist—habitable planets are almost impossibly difficult to find, and in an effort to curtail war, the Interdependency was designed so that no system can survive without trade with the others.

This arrangement is fine, until systems begin being inexorably—and permanently—cutting off from access to one another, heralding a collapse of civilization itself. Scalzi lightly channels the kind of wry humor the late, great Douglas Adams was best known for, though never going over-the-top into outright comedy.

If you’re looking for something a little further off the beaten path, I’ve also been enjoying a series called The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells. I’m only a couple of books into the five-book series, but Wells’ description of a confused rogue AI in a cyborg body, with absolutely everything designed, maintained, and forcibly supplied by the lowest bidder, is both charming and engaging. The Murderbot has its own desires, needs, and goals—it’s just not too clear what those are, beyond doing as half-assed a job as possible in order to leave more time for trashy soap-opera consumption. —Jim Salter, Technology Reporter

Hachette

Sci-fi, lots of sci-fi

I read, um, kind of a lot—between 50 and 100 novels a year, most years—and I’m always happy to talk books. In these quarantimes, leaning in and running away seem to be the two big categories in my reading. Sticking to books that were published in the last decade (so leaving out annual comfort re-reads of Lloyd Alexander and Terry Pratchett), I have some thoughts.

If you like motley crews in space: Becky Chambers’s Wayfarer series, starting with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Chambers’s books are optimistic, character-driven science fiction; stories about people and how they feel in a strange and exciting future. Soft and cozy reading.

Just this week I also finished the two books to date in Alex White’s Salvagers series, starting with A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. Motley crew of talented space pirates, but also with magic and a set of moral codes. Zippy reading, genuine fun.

If you like cities: I cannot recommend N.K. Jemisin’s latest, The City We Became, highly enough, especially if you love cities and double especially if you’ve spent any time in New York. I haven’t lived in New York City since 2008, and I still could smell and feel and hear every single page. Cities have souls, and this is their story.

If you liked Hidden Figures: Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut books, The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky. As a Washington, DC, resident, I didn’t love my home being wiped off the map at the start of the apocalypse, but for all that a story of doom kicks off the tale, it is optimistic, Right Stuff spacefaring fiction at its finest.

And if you really want to lean into the apocalypse: Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers poses a pandemic from an animal-borne virus striking humanity right against the landscape of a US presidential election year. It’s the wrong book to read in our actual 2020 if you’re prone to giving yourself nightmares, but it’s still a very good book. —Kate Cox, Tech Policy Reporter

Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams are among the executive producers of HBO’s Lovecraft Country.

Two greats set in the past

Now is the perfect time to read Lovecraft Country, the 2016 dark fantasy/horror novel by Matt Ruff, since HBO’s adapted series will debut in August. Set in the Jim Crow era of the 1950s, it’s structured almost as a series of short stories, although everything is inter-related and hangs together beautifully as a whole. The first quarter focuses on Atticus, a black Korean war veteran and big H.P. Lovecraft fan, despite the author’s notorious racism. When his estranged father disappears, leaving a cryptic message, Atticus sets out on a road trip from Chicago’s South Side to rural Massachusetts. He’s accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia.

There are plenty of sly references to the works of Lovecraft for the astute reader, as we encounter a secret cabal called the Order of the Ancient Dawn, a haunted house, a strange pocket universe, time shifting, shape-shifters, an evil mannequin, and a cursed book. What makes the book so ingeniously subversive, however, is that the worst monsters are not eldritch terrors or a Shoggoth in the woods; it’s the stark racism and bigotry our protagonists encounter along the way.

Beyond that, I’ve got one other recommendation: Iain Pears‘ sprawling 1997 novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost. Part historical murder mystery, part philosophical rumination on the unreliability of human memory and personal narratives—aka the “Rashomon effect” after Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1950 film— the novel remains one of my all-time favorite reads that I return to every few years. The title refers to a quote from Francis Bacon, who held that all evidence is fallible, and yet there can be “one instance of a fingerpost that points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility.”

Pears is a former BBC reporter who garnered early success with his art-history mysteries featuring fictional detective/art historian Jonathan Argyll. Those novels are light and quite fun, but with Fingerpost, Pears attains a whole new level of thematic complexity. It’s almost as if he started out writing a simple tale of a 17th-century Oxford murder, only to be carried away as that world and its denizens came alive for him. It’s been justly compared to Umberto Eco’s 1980 bestselling novel The Name of the Rose, although I prefer Fingerpost.

This was a tumultuous period of enlightenment, when new scientific ideas were flourishing and conflicting with religious institutions, and political intrigue was everywhere. There are four sections, each narrated by a different character, each remembering their version of the 1663 arsenic poisoning of a man named Robert Grove many years later. A servant girl confessed, but the four witnesses—an Italian physician, the son of an alleged Royalist traitor, a cryptographer, and an Oxford archivist—each identified a different culprit, and only one will ultimately reveal the truth about what really happened. Pears masterfully evokes Restoration England, as Charles II regained the throne after Oliver Cromwell‘s short-lived attempt at a republic, and his characters (historical figures and fictional ones) are richly detailed. It’s a long book but so riveting that you’ll be tempted to devour it as fast as possible, and you’ll be pondering the nature of truth entirely by the end. —Jennifer Ouellette, Senior Writer

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[newstfionline]

Thursday, August 12, 2021

So much for ‘post-pandemic’ travel (Washington Post) The summer started on a hopeful note. Coronavirus cases were falling, and inoculation rates were rising on both sides of the Atlantic. The European Union moved to lift its restrictions on travel from the United States, and newly vaccinated tourists eagerly embarked on their first “post-pandemic” trips. But now three months later, the United States still hasn’t lifted the Trump-era rules banning most European travelers, the State Department is telling citizens to avoid 10 of the continent’s countries, and the European Union is considering shutting its doors once again to Americans, as U.S. cases soar. On Monday, after rumors circulated that the European Union would reimpose restrictions on U.S. travelers, the bloc decided against it, for now, allowing Americans to continue flocking to European cities and beaches, which have been desperate to revive tourism-starved economies. But the 27-member club also signaled that policy could soon change. The Council of the European Union, the body through which member states coordinate policy, said it would continue monitoring the countries, including the United States, where “the covid situation has deteriorated,” an official told The Post.

Hospitals run low on nurses as they get swamped with COVID (AP) The rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hot spots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients and are losing workers to burnout. Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oregon all have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic, and nursing staffs are badly strained. Michelle Thomas, a registered nurse and a manager of the emergency department at a Tucson, Arizona, hospital, resigned three weeks ago after hitting a wall. “There was never a time that we could just kind of take a breath,” Thomas said Tuesday. “I hit that point … I can’t do this anymore. I’m so just tapped out.” She helped other nurses cope with being alone in rooms with dying patients and holding mobile phones so family members could say their final goodbyes. “It’s like incredibly taxing and traumatizing,” said Thomas, who is unsure if she will ever return to nursing.

Pacific Northwest braces for another multiday heat wave (AP) People in the Pacific Northwest braced for another major, multiday heat wave starting Wednesday, just over a month after record-shattering hot weather killed hundreds of the region’s most vulnerable when temperatures soared to 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius). In a “worst-case scenario,” the temperature could reach as high as 111 F (44 C) in some parts of western Oregon by Friday before a weekend cooldown, the National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, warned this week. It’s more likely temperatures will rise above 100 F (38 C) for three consecutive days, peaking around 105 F (40.5 C) on Thursday. Seattle will be cooler than Portland, with temperatures in the mid-90s, but it still has a chance to break records, and many people there, like in Oregon, don’t have air conditioning.

A man claiming to be a Mexican cartel leader threatened to kill a TV anchor. She returned to her nightly broadcast. (Washington Post/BBC) Hours after receiving a death threat from a man claiming to be one of Mexico’s most dangerous criminals, the news anchor took to the air again. At 9:59 p.m. Monday, Milenio Television anchor Azucena Uresti posted a photo of herself smiling, sitting on a desk in an airy dress and impeccable makeup on Twitter and said she would be on her news show as usual. A minute later, the broadcast began. “This morning, an alleged criminal group issued threats against several media outlets and against myself for the journalistic work we do in Michoacán,” she said, delivering the news as if she wasn’t now at the center of country’s biggest story. Early Monday morning, a video began circulating on social media in which a man claiming to be Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the head of Mexico’s notorious Jalisco New Generation cartel, promised to murder her. He was surrounded by seven masked men armed with assault rifles. Even in a country ranked among the world’s most dangerous for journalists, the scene was striking: One of the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful criminal organizations threatening a national television news anchor over “biased media coverage.” One hundred and twenty-four reporters and media workers have been killed in Mexico since 2000. Groups representing journalists have supported her and demanded the government offer her protection. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that Uresti “was not alone,” and that she “could count on us” without providing any details of what the government would do to protect her.

Afghan officials: 3 more provincial capitals fall to Taliban (AP/Washington Post) The Taliban seized three more provincial capitals in Afghanistan and a local army headquarters in a blitz across the country’s northeast, officials said Wednesday, with the insurgents now controlling some two-thirds of the nation as the U.S. and NATO finalize their withdrawal after its decades-long war there. While Kabul itself has not been directly threatened in the advance, its stunning speed raises questions of how long the Afghan government can maintain control of its countryside. The multiple fronts of the battle have stretched the government’s special operations forces—while regular troops have often fled the battlefield—and the violence has pushed thousands of civilians to seek safety in the capital. The U.S. military, which plans to complete its withdrawal by the end of the month, has conducted some airstrikes but largely has avoided involving itself in the ground campaign. Hundreds of Afghan forces surrendered to the Taliban in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday. After holding out for days at a military base on the edge of Kunduz, an entire Afghan army corps surrendered to Taliban fighters Wednesday morning, handing over valuable equipment—much of it American.

Chinese court sentences Canadian Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison (Washington Post) A Chinese court on Wednesday sentenced Canadian businessman Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison, in a case widely seen as retribution against Canada’s arrest of a senior Huawei executive wanted by the United States. The Intermediate People’s Court of Dandong City said that Spavor was sentenced to the prison time for espionage and transferring state secrets overseas. The trial was held in March, but the judgment was not released until now, as the extradition hearing of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou enters a crucial stretch in Canada. Spavor will be able to appeal the judgment to a higher-level court in China, and it may be years before a final decision. Spavor and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig were detained in China at the end of 2018, days after Meng was arrested in Canada at the behest of the United States on fraud charges linked to Huawei’s business in Iran. The cases of the “Two Michaels”—as they are called in Canada—and Meng have significantly strained relations between Ottawa and Beijing.

North Korea tensions (Foreign Policy) South Korean officials say a recently reopened phone hotline with North Korea has now gone quiet, soon after Pyongyang expressed displeasure at plans for joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises next week. The usually twice-daily phone calls have not been answered for the past two days, Yonhap reports, as senior North Korean official King Yong Chol warned that its southern neighbor would “realize by the minute what a dangerous choice they made and what a serious security crisis they will face because of their wrong choice.” U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price has attempted to assuage North Korean concerns about the drills, saying the United States “harbors no hostile intent towards” the country, and that exercises are “purely defensive.”

Wildfires in Algeria leave 32 dead, including 25 soldiers (AP) At least 25 Algerian soldiers were killed saving residents from wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of the capital, the president announced Tuesday night as the civilian death toll from the blazes rose to at least 17. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population. Eleven other soldiers were burned fighting the fires, four of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said. The Kabyle region, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and with temperatures rising has had limited water. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools. The region has no water-dumping planes.

Ethiopia’s prime minister calls for mass enlistment amid battlefield losses to Tigray rebels (Washington Post) Amid a string of battlefield losses that have allowed rebels from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region to move into neighboring areas and down a key highway leading to the capital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s prime minister called Tuesday for a national war effort, including mass enlistment. “Now is the right time for all capable Ethiopians who are of age to join the Defence Forces, Special Forces and militias and show your patriotism,” Abiy Ahmed’s office said in a lengthy statement. He alleged that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political party that controlled Ethiopia for three decades and has been fighting the government for the past nine months, is being aided by “foreign hands.” In recent weeks, the war in Tigray has spread into the Amhara and Afar regions as the TPLF’s militia has pursued its stated aim of debilitating the military capabilities of Ethiopia’s government and defeating aligned forces from neighboring Eritrea and ethnic militias that support the government. The increased fighting has deepened an already dire humanitarian catastrophe. Millions of people in Tigray are relying on aid to survive, but obstructionism that each warring side blames on the other has severely hampered aid deliveries. Now, hundreds of thousands more civilians in Amhara and Afar have been affected.

[thisbluespirit]

#Out of the Unknown#No Place Like Earth#john wyndham#Single play#BBC#Stanley Miller#Peter Potter#Terence Morgan#Jessica Dunning#Hannah Gordon#Joseph O'Conor#Alan Tilvern#George Pastell#Jerry Stovin#Vernon Joyner#Bill Treacher#Geoffrey Palmer#Roy Stewart#Classic TV#Happy days: for many many years I have wanted to see this series. I was unreasonably excited when the BFI finally announced a release for#The surviving episodes; then unreasonably upset by the price (which hasn't wavered much in the 6 or 7 years since release). But my shitty#Job gave me a paltry bonus for not dying of covid and I decided it was high time I invested. Oh what a joy; the beeb must have raised an#Eyebrow when Irene Shubik (lately poached from ITV and Armchair Theatre) suggested this spiritual successor to Out of this World; the work#Involved in simply finding stories suitable for adaptation was mountainous and Sci fi is a notoriously costly production for TV and film.#Still they must have had faith: the alien landscape which opens this first episode is quite astonishing and suggests a budget somewhat#Above that of contemporaries like DW; as does the casting of a fairly big star like Morgan. This is wistful Sci fi by way of Jack London#Style romantic tales of wilderness and exploration; but there's a cynical and sharply political layer hidden at the centre of this tale.#A fairly modest first episode in terms of impact but a pretty impressive demonstration of what the fx department were capable of#That bodes well for the future of the series. John Wyndham was still alive at this point too: I wonder if he watched?#Or even if he was approached to adapt his own story? Eh probably not. He wasn't a TV writer and AFAIK the series didn't really do that 

Oh, well, now I’m jealous!  I once managed to get this when it dipped down SLIGHTLY and then the disc that had David Collings breaking down on broke down and I returned it and then they refunded me instead of giving me a new one so now once I had this but now I don’t.

altho it’s a poisoned chalice because a lot of mid 20th C SF one after the other does get tiresome.  All the amazing things these men can imagine!!  Except maybe that one day in the future women might... do a thing?  They might even be doing things now?  A shocking concept too out there for yr average 1950s/60s SF writer to conceive of. /salty

I do love the surviving JM one and David Collings particularly.  I’m not biased!!!  (And someone sent me a piratical version of the JM at least.  But I didn’t want to pay ridic amounts for the whole thing, I don’t want to pay it now when I’ve seen part of it anyway.   but. JEALOUS!!!

(I mean not of your way of earning it maybe but still)

Out of the Unknown: No Place Like Earth (1.1, BBC, 1965)

"You could belong here, if you would. Life is not something that can be stopped just because you do not like it. You are not apart from life - you are a part of it."

"That may have been true, once."

"And it is still true. You are merely existing now, and it is not enough. One exists by barter, but one lives by giving - and taking, when it is offered."

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/hate-news-fake-news-is-western/

Hate News or Fake News: Is Western Media credible anymore?

by Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan for Ooduarere via The Saker Blog

Western media is spreading fake news and fabricating stories with evil intentions. Western Media is biased and creating unrest and chaos in various parts of the world. Media is being used by the Western world to coerce, influence and achieve their ill-political motives. Unfortunately, Western Media is already dominating and controlling public opinion throughout the world.

Let me give you a particular example of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). BBC reported that the Saddam Hussain regime in Iraq possesses Weapons of Mass Destructions (WMD). America along with its allies attacked Iraq, destructed Iraq, killed millions of people, damaged Infrastructure, Power Houses, Telecommunication, Hospitals, Schools, Churches, Mosques, Roads, Industry, Oil Wells, Refineries, etc. Finally noticed that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Later on, the British Prime Minister of that time, acknowledged that the BBC news was not accurate, and information about WMD was not correct. But after damaging a country totally and harming millions of people, pushing Iraq into stone ages, one’s mere apology may not be accepted and may not be forgiven by humanity, irreversible damage to Iraq may never be forgotten by the history.

It is worth mentioning, Iraq was a very stable, oil-rich, and total welfare state under President Saddam Hussain. Education, health care was free of cost to its citizens, plenty of food, variety of food was available abundantly. Electricity was available in all parts of the country in abundance sufficiently. Fuel and items of daily use were available everywhere conveniently. The society was very much stable, satisfied and living a comfortable life. All factions of the society were enjoying harmony and was a tolerant society. It might be possible a few exceptionally politicians opposing the ruling party “Bath” or President Saddam Hussain, were victimized. They might be few in numbers or two digits only. But the vast majority of the nation was comfortable with the rulers.

But after the US war on Iraq, today, people of Iraq are facing a shortage of food, fuel, electricity, medicines, and items of daily life. No free education and health care are provided by the government. The society is extremely polarized, intolerance and factionist are very much common. Terrorism, lawlessness, and chaos are witnesses everywhere.

Is publically apology is sufficient to cool down the suffering of millions of Iraqis? Can anyone ignore the dirty role of the BBC? Is it possible, people of Iraq forget the BBC? Can the victim forgive the BBC?

It is only one example only. The same trick was played in the case of Syria. BBC reported that the Syrian Government possesses Chemical Weapons and is using against rebellions. Western Alliance NATO, under the US leadership, attacked Syria, killed millions of innocent people, displace millions of common citizens, damaged the whole country, and pushed the Syrian into stone ages. Forced the Syrian people to take asylum in the Western World where they are humiliated, especial the women and children are being abused. A huge portion is forced to live in temporary camps within the country, where life is very hard and lacks the basic amenities of daily life. Western World has made the life on common Syrian misery and curse only. While Syrians was a very stable country, may not be very rich, but with all basic amenities available conveniently. Nature has blessed the Syrians with best fruits and vegetables, and traditional Syrian food is one of the important attractions in the region. The people of Syria are very pretty and a superior creature. They can compete any beauty villain in the world easily. The law and order situation was very much comfortable and society was stable and living in harmony.

The same is the case of Libya, where ill-motivated fake News led to the destruction of a sovereign country. A very stable, oil-rich nation turned into chaos and lawlessness. A nation with all comforts and facilities has been deprived of even basic needs of life. A sate with total welfare for its citizens has been changed into a lack of everything like food, medicines, fuel, electricity, etc.

The situation in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, and Afghanistan is not much different than this. The US admits its role in spreading fake information about Afghanistan and admits its failure in Afghanistan. Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran are on the list and Western World is engaged in a hybrid war, where media is the basic weapon and in some cases over-engaged in spreading fake news and fabrication of stories to create chaos and promote instability.

In Pakistan only, we noticed many illegal radio stations operating by Western-funded NGOs, spreading hate, misinformation, and troubles only. Many media houses and individual journalists are hired by Western World and used as front-man or under-cover operation of hybrid war in Pakistan.

Only in the Middle East, around two million people have been killed, several million have been displaced from their homes, either to live in Camps or to move to other countries seeking asylums.

In fact, the world is full of such examples and unfortunately, the developing world is the victim and under direct target.

The recent reports regarding Mike Pompeo regarding lies, cheating, stealing, etc are further confirmation that information is deliberately changed to achieve designed results. The US role in

1970s ‘Operation Condor,’ in which South American dictators systematically tortured and killed dissidents in the region. An estimated 60,000 people were killed by the Latin American states in the clandestine operation, 30,000 in Argentina alone. Another 30,000 were disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned during the Operation. It is now known that the CIA was a guiding hand throughout the whole process, by training and helping military and civilian personnel. “Diplomacy and military strength go hand in hand. They are indeed intimately related. Each relies on the other,” Pompeo also admitted during the conference called “Why Diplomacy Matters.”

Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill actions for the CIA, all justified as part of the fight against those who question U.S. interests. Actions that continue until this day. In 2018, one of its offshoots, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) channeled over US$23 million to meddle in the internal affairs of key Latin American countries, under the flagship of “human rights” or “democracy,” which represent a real menace for national sovereignty and the continuity of progressive governments in the region and the world.

These are the only few known facts, there must be much more in various parts of the world similar incidents and fake news or spread of misinformation.

I believe the Western World is misusing Media and the spread of distorted information as an unarmed wing or tool of defense and diplomatic strategies, to achieve their evil goals. It seems Western media is notorious for spreading fake news and the fabrication of stories. They have lost their credibility at all. The intellectuals and people with common sense no more believe Western Media anymore. The credibility of Western Media is challenged and lost recognition among the people having conscious.

I have been traveling internationally frequently and come across many foreigners. Most of them have a very negative impression about Pakistan. But those who have travelled to Pakistan, are very different and praise Pakistan. In fact, media is projecting negative image of Pakistan, however, the ground realities are very different. I do not claim that Pakistan is perfect and everything is ideal, but reject the extremely negative impression posed in the Western Media. There might be many problems in Pakistan but just like other countries, not much different from the rest of world. In some respect, Pakistan is better than many other nations awhile facing few challenges too like other nations. Misinformation and distorted stories regarding Pakistan are part of Western Media war launched against Pakistan.

I understand some of you may disagree with my opinion and maybe offended but at least it may initiate an open debate. Let’s explore the avenues of a common ground where we can seek the truth. The common man is interested only in seeking the real facts and figures. Let’s judge the reports and news on an impartial basis and reach conclusion at our own. With the improvement of technology, and especially with the help of the internet and ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), it is possible for the dissemination of facts instantly. We should conceive the facts with open-minded and be receptive to facts only.

I wish for a peaceful world where justice, freedom, and truth will prevail. Let’s join hands toward this goal and all those willing to achieve this goal, be struggling till the victory. In fact, journalist is a holy profession and must not be politicized. Let the media work for the welfare of humanity. There are many media houses working very well and are serving humanity properly. We must salute them and extend our full cooperation. We must differential among good and bad News agencies or media houses. It is our own duty to judge the good and evil media and should appreciate the positive role of media where ever necessary.

I must offer my heartiest apology if offended a few of you. But willing to find common ground and extend my full cooperation, if it is desired by some of you. Let’s build a better world, where tomorrow should be better than yesterday. Our next-generation must not face the same challenges which we have faced. Love humanity, love peace, seek the truth.

Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist, ex-Diplomat, Academician, Researcher, member editorial board (World Scientific), Peace-activist, Geo-analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), Islamabad, Pakistan. E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com)

[theglobetrottergp-blog]

Sometime’s I become so preoccupied with exploring the world that I forget about all the beautiful English Countryside getaway locations right on my doorstep.

The English countryside is often, sadly, overlooked. Visitors from abroad flock to London, stay a few days before moving onto the rest of Europe. But they are missing the best bit!

Whilst England is famed for its pretty countryside with rolling hills, forests and rivers, the charming villages themselves are well worth a visit. There is so much history in England and old buildings, castles and churches galore to reflect this.

The English are notoriously a friendly bunch with a cracking dry sense of humour (if a little eccentric at times…)

Ok, full disclosure; I am English though living in Wales so I may be a tad biased when I tell you the English are the most friendly people worldwide. I’m sure there are some facts out there somewhere to back me up..?!

My favourite thing about an English countryside getaway is the multitude of cafes for afternoon tea, the beautiful walks and spending evenings in a cosy old pub, warming myself by a roaring fire and tucking into some hearty pub food.

So if I’ve convinced you to explore beyond London next time, here are 12 beautiful English Countryside getaways suggested by travel bloggers to inspire your trip to rural England!

But first a few of my own favourite places…

** Pssst, this article may contain affiliate links. If you have no idea what this means, click here and everything will be explained!**

English Countryside Getaway to The Lake District

I spent many a fond summer in the Lake District as a child. My Mum’s family live in nearby Cumbria and it was the perfect springboard for outdoor adventures as we grew up.

Back then I spent many a summer swimming in the freezing cold lake and I have to admit, that doesn’t hold QUITE as much appeal any more! But on a recent trip, I took to the lake on a kayak instead – a much more civilised way to enjoy the beautiful lakes!

There are quaint villages galore and plenty of places to stop for afternoon tea. If hiking is your thing then you are in luck as there are plenty of mountains for you to explore here in what I personally think might be the prettiest countryside England has to offer!

I would highly recommend staying at Rothay Garden Hotel in Grasmere. They have this beautiful conservatory complete with spa where you can sit in a jacuzzi watching the sheep stroll past. It’s so incredibly relaxing. There’s no swimming pool here but who needs a pool when you have a jacuzzi with a view like that?!

Grasmere itself is one of the cutest villages in the Lakes and is home to the smallest shop in the world which sells the most incredible ginger biscuits.

English Countryside Getaway to Monmouth

Well, you could argue that this is a Welsh countryside getaway as in truth, Monmouth borders both England and Wales. It’s the town where I grew up and recently I heard it was Britains happiest town according to Capitol radio!

It’s no wonder why really. Monmouth is one of those places where community spirit is really strong. There’s always so much going on whether that be a free music festival or a country fair. The pubs are always bustling and lively and there are plenty of cafes for a cream tea or two.

Monmouth is also home to the only remaining fortified medieval bridge in the UK making it a popular place for history buffs to visit. Read more about Monmouth in my Monmouth Visitors Guide.

READ MORE

Bristol City Guide by a Local

Cambridge City Guide by a Local

Monmouth Visitors Guide

A Weekend in Stroud

Brighton weekend guide

The Ultimate Europe Bucket List – 30 reasons to visit Europe

Get a free £25 Airbnb coupon

Over to the other bloggers…

English Countryside Getaway to Exmoor

By Suzanne Easton

Exmoor is located on the border of Somerset and Devon and is one of the smaller National Parks in England.

It is a beautiful area to explore with deep wooded valleys, streams and high moorland.  It was used as the inspiration for the Lorna Doone book by RD Blackmoore and still has a romantic wilderness feel.

Exmoor reaches the coast with the seaside town of Minehead being on the boundary of the national park, perfect for a beach walk or supplies before heading away from the town.

One of our favourite places is Tarr Steps.  An ancient clapper bridge with beautiful walks and wild swimming in the river during the summer months.  Nearby is Liscombe Farm with gorgeous dairy ice cream from the cows that you see grazing near the river.

Exmoor is also known for its deer rut.  High on the moorland in the autumn months, the stags collect their hinds and congregate showing great displays of their strength, fighting other stags and generally being aggressive and loud.

Staying on Exmoor is really special as it has Dark Skies status and the stars really do shine on the moors at night.  We love the Dunkery Beacon Hotel, indulgence but worth every penny.

Credit @ Suzanne Easton

English Countryside Getaways in The New Forest

By Nienke Krook

The New Forest is a favourite UK holiday destination with plenty of nature, museums, pubs and wonderful towns & villages. You can reach The New Forest in just 90 minutes by train from London.

From the town of Lyndhurst, you can do a circular hiking trail that takes you via the meadows through a denser area of the forest, then to the South and back via Clayhill to Lyndhurst. You’ll see plenty of wild ponies along the way!

Lyndhurst is also the town where Alice Hargraves (Liddell) lived, a lady who became the inspiration for the main character from the famous book “Alice in Wonderland”.

Other nearby places worth visiting are Lymington (where you can explore the marina, the wildlife conservation areas and the typical landscape of the salt planes), the Isle of Wight (a great place for wildlife spotting and other outdoor activities) and the Jurassic Coast (with dramatic cliffs and steep green hills).

To save money on your accommodation, we recommend checking out the local Airbnb options. We stayed in a small town called Bransgore, which proved to be a perfect base from to explore the different parts of this region.

(Get a free £25 Airbnb coupon here.)

Credit @ Nienke Krook

English Countryside Getaway to Hambledon in Hampshire

By Kelly Mongan

With its stunning vineyard and charming village pub, there’s no better place for a weekend away than Hambledon.

Located in Hampshire, this town is often referred to as “the cradle of cricket”, since it is where the modern cricket rules were first played (head to the Bat & Ball pub if you’re a cricket fan!).

Hambledon is located in South Downs National Park and therefore offers stunning countryside walks, through the vineyard and cabbage fields, or even up Butser Hill.

It’s also a Dark Sky zone, meaning you’ll be treated to the most wonderful view of the stars at night.

If you want to truly experience the English countryside, there is no better place to stay than Wriggly Tin Shepherds Huts. Wriggly Tin offers glamping in its finest form and is just a ten-minute walk from Hambledon Vineyard.

At the vineyard, it’s possible to do a tour and taste their award-winning sparkling wine.

If you’re looking to explore more of the area, Winchester is an easy day trip, as is Arundel Castle. Or, for walking/cycling trips, you have the whole of South Downs National Park at your disposal!

Credit @ Kelly Mongan

English Countryside Getaway to Wensleydale in The Yorkshire Dales

By Sarah Poitras

This summer, we spent four days in the Yorkshire Dales for our first English countryside getaway. We based ourselves in Wensleydale for our Yorkshire Dales holiday.

If you like walking, Wensleydale is a great place to visit in the English countryside. You’ll be treated to rolling green hills, picturesque stone fences, and of course tons of sheep. And it’s a great place for people of all abilities as there are many different walks of varying difficulty levels.

There are also castles! We particularly enjoyed our visit to Bolton Castle, which is quite well preserved and has beautiful grounds to explore. It would also make for a good family outing (we saw a lot of kids enjoying themselves).

We based ourselves in two towns, Hawes and Masham, for their locations and for their local culinary delights. Hawes is home to Wensleydale Creamery which makes truly delicious cheese. And Masham has not one but two local breweries: Theakston Brewery and Black Sheep Brewery.

In Hawes, we stayed at Spring Bank House, a traditional B&B, and in Masham, we stayed at The Bay Horse, a traditional pub. Both served tasty and hearty breakfasts and had friendly and helpful owners. We would highly recommend both if you’re looking for places to stay in Wensleydale.

Credit @ Sarah Poitras

English Countryside Getaway to Lacock, Wiltshire

By Chandrima Chakraborty

If you’re looking for some beautiful English countryside getaways, the village of Lacock definitely needs to be on your list.

Located in the English county of Wiltshire (around 30 minutes from the city of Bath by car), this little village will transport you back in time, to almost 200 years ago. It’s maintained entirely by the National Trust. And mind you, it’s not a museum. It’s very much a functioning village.

Take a stroll down its many alleys and admire the cute traditional cottages in the village. There’s also an old tithe barn, church, and workhouse.

Here you can see the honour system still in use. Residents lay out their homemade jams, marmalades, buns, and scones outside their homes – unguarded and unsupervised. You’re expected to take what you want and leave the payment right there.

If you feel hungry, stop for a bite at one of its cute little bakeries or cafes. Also, don’t forget to check out the Fox Talbot Museum and the Lacock Abbey (especially if you’re a Harry Potter fan).

The village has also been a filming location for many popular movies and TV shows including Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, and BBC’s Pride and Prejudice.

Lacock can easily be covered on a day trip from London. You might even want to combine it with a visit to Bath and Stonehenge like we did.

Credit @ Chandrima Chakraborty

English Countryside Getaways in Northumberland, North England

By Gemma

Northumberland, the northernmost county in England, is jam-packed full of beautiful countryside and activities.

During a recent long weekend visit, we packed in lots of great day trips.

Bamburg Beach was a highlight for us.  With long, open stretches of sand, it is overlooked by the impressive Bamburgh Castle.   It can be busy in the height of the summer, so arrive early if you want to enjoy some tranquillity.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is another not-to-be-missed destination.  Check the clearly marked tide times though for a safe crossing.  While away the hours exploring the traditional village and ruins on the Island.  it is also an ornithologists dream!

Moving inland we also enjoyed a visit to the Cragside Estate, although be prepared for a pricey admission fee.

Dogs are allowed on lead and there are lots of beautiful woodland walks and manicured gardens to appreciate. The large Rock Garden is particularly impressive.

We stayed in a cosy Airbnb cottage on a working farm on the Northumberland border near the Village of Hamsterley Mill.  It was a little worn around the edges but well equipped and comfortable and we had a view of the stabled horses from our window.

(Get a free £25 Airbnb voucher here.)

Credit @ Gemma

English Countryside Getaways to The South Downs

By Danielle Lawson.

Picture proper English countryside and there’s a good chance you think of bright yellow flowering fields, rolling green hills and winding tracks. That’s the South Downs.

This enormous Sussex and Hampshire national park is a prime picnicking spot, with great cycling and walking – and all just 20 minutes from the bustle of Brighton and Hove.

Come for the next eclipse or to stargaze (it’s a Dark Sky Park) or pop over on a sunny day to soak up the country air and get away from it all. Spotting wildlife will have you keen to stay and there’s a cracking pub, The Devils Dyke, where you can refuel with good food and drink.

For day trips, you shouldn’t miss exploring colourful spots on the South Coast like Brighton, Eastbourne and Worthing, which will also offer great hotels. The Courtlands Hotel in Hove is a great option for those looking to splash out, while The Brighton Breeze Hotel is somewhere budget that I have stayed and can recommend.

Got more time? Petworth House, Arundel and Goodwood (famous for the Goodwood Revival) are also close by.

Credit @ Danielle Lawson

English Countryside Getaways to Teesdale, The North Pennines

By Sarah Carter

Getaway to the little known Teesdale – part of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The River Tees flows down through the dale, providing stunning waterfalls at Cauldron Snout, High Force and Low Force, with spectacular and easy walks along her banks.

The gateway to this glorious dale is the market town of Barnard Castle, named after the castle of the same name which was built in the 12th century. Famous visitors to the town have included author Charles Dickens and landscape painter JMW Turner.

Here you’ll find great places to stay, including the friendly and welcoming 17th century Old Well Inn, which backs onto the castle walls.

There are other fabulous cosy pubs and the magnificent Bowes Museum which boasts links to the Queen Mother. Explore the famous Butter Market or Market Cross, now serving as a beleaguered traffic island, but which was once the town jail!

There are great walks – a short 6km round trip takes you between the two main waterfalls further up the dale from Low Force to High Force and back. This is a stunning area of England in which to take a break, no matter what the time of year!

Credit @ Sarah Carter

English Countryside Getaways to The Cotswolds

By Emily Cole

The Cotswolds is full of fantastic countryside; think thatched, honey coloured cottages nestling in the hollows of gently rolling hills, perfect for country walks.

There’s something for everyone in the Cotswolds. The most famous villages are Castle Combe, Bibury and Bourton on the Water, which are usually voted among the prettiest villages in the UK.

The Cotswold Way runs for 100 miles along the top of the hills linking Chipping Campden in the north of the region to Bath in the south.  Any section of this walk gives fantastic views and access to quaint towns.  Broadway Tower is a highlight along the route.

You can also discover a wealth of history in the region.  Sudeley Castle is a former royal palace and lies half in ruins, half still lived-in stately home.  Blenheim Palace is on the edge of the Cotswolds and is one of the most fantastic buildings in the UK. Cogges Manor Farm is a historic farm which was used in the filming of Downton Abbey.

There are numerous places to stay in the Cotswolds, although choosing a central location such as Barnsley House near Cirencester will allow you to get to both the north and south of the Cotswolds in less than an hour.

The Cotswolds are only a couple of hours away from London, making the region a perfect weekend getaway.

Credit @ Emily Cole

English Countryside Getaways to The Peak District

Just about an hour outside of Manchester lies the Peak District, a landscape like no other in Britain.

You will find rolling hills, moorland plateaus, and steep-sided deep dales. When you pair the amazing landscape with quaint villages housing amazing places to eat and drink, market towns, and historic houses, you are bound to have a vacation like no other.

Many people visiting the Peak District enjoy going out for a day hike that ends with a proper meal and ale at one of the many historic pubs you will find along the way.

Besides just hiking, you can go spelunking in a cavern, cycle the windy roads or even take a cable car up the famous Heights of Abraham.

If you don’t quite fancy the outdoor activities, there are plenty of villages to stop over and shop till you drop.

There are also plenty of charming bed and breakfasts to choose from if you would like to stay the night. While we were visiting we found a quaint little Airbnb to stay at where we were able to cook a full English fry up in the morning!

With everything the Peak District has to offer, it is definitely a must for anyone looking to visit a charming English countryside!

  READ MORE

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So which English countryside getaway is appealing to you most? Hopefully, you’ve got plenty of inspiration now to plan and English rural weekend trip or two!

Personally, I would love to spend more time in the Cotswolds!

Tell me about your favourite place for an English weekend away in the comments below!

And if you can share this article with your friends using the social share button sand pins below, I’ll be eternally grateful!

10 Beautiful English Countryside Getaways to Enjoy in 2019 Sometime's I become so preoccupied with exploring the world that I forget about all the beautiful English Countryside getaway locations right on my doorstep.

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IN This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, the academic Whitney Phillips explored at close quarters the world of online trolls. She embedded herself among the natives of websites like Reddit and 4chan and studied the toxic banter that is their stock-in-trade, a blend of postmodern nihilism, overt bigotry, and “voluntary, gleeful sociopathy over the world’s current apoplectic state.” The trolls’ knack for appropriating and repurposing mainstream media tropes prompted Phillips to label them “cultural dung beetles.” At the time of the book’s publication in 2015, one could have been forgiven for thinking that its subject was a niche subculture — a marginal if disturbing societal pathology on a par with any other sort of hooliganism. Within a couple of years it had become, by some accounts, something like a political force. There is a widespread perception that the enthusiastic support of a broad constituency of trolls, online pranksters, and far-rightist cranks played a decisive role in propelling Donald Trump into the White House in the 2016 election. This assessment sat very nicely with the trolls themselves, who were all too happy to take the credit for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. In the days after Trump’s election, a triumphant post appeared on 4chan’s notorious /pol/ message board: “We did it. /pol/ saved America.”

In Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House, the BBC broadcast journalist Mike Wendling casts doubt on this take. Wendling points out that the Republicans’ share of the white vote had barely budged compared to Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful run for president in 2012. For all the hype around Trump’s unorthodox and brashly chauvinistic campaign, his electoral victory had more to do with the Democrat vote slipping away than with any right-wing surge. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the alt-right was ever a self-aware and contiguous movement in the months leading up to the election. Wendling cites Google Analytics data indicating that the term “alt-right” was relatively little known prior to Hillary Clinton’s alluding to it in her Reno speech of August 2016. Clinton’s attempt to warn voters about this burgeoning radical fringe appears, in retrospect, to have put wind in the sails of the American far right, giving a sense of unity to what was in fact a hodgepodge of disparate elements. Wendling argues that the influence of sites like 4chan has been similarly overestimated: “[I]t is […] quite clear that the average voter in a key Midwestern state was much more likely to come into contact with Facebook, or someone who’d been on Facebook, than they were to be ‘red-pilled’ by 4chan.”

Alt-Right’s concise survey of the 21st-century far right begins by introducing the reader to the world views of various neo-Nazi ideologues, such as Richard Spencer, who is forthright about his white nationalist agenda: “I want what could probably be called a global empire […] a homeland for all white people, whether you’re German or Celtic or Slavic or English.” Wendling observes that the standard tactic deployed by trolls when arguing with liberal or left-wing opponents online — “exaggerate, simplify, burn down the straw man” — is echoed in the rhetorical modus operandi of media outlets like the far-right news organ Breitbart: “They are up front about their biases, which resonate with and whip up their core audience. It’s a messy, shouty tabloid mainlining hashtag steroids.” The book features pithy pen portraits of some of the main players, like Milo Yiannopoulos (prior to getting the Breibart gig he was “a megaphone looking for a movement”) and Alex Jones, whose Infowars program boasted some eight million viewers prior to being shut down. Jones’s bizarre brand of paranoiac extremism reached its nadir when he told the grieving parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook that the massacre had been staged, and that they themselves were active participants in a liberal conspiracy designed to compel Washington to pass gun control laws.

Wendling’s prognosis is relatively sanguine. He observes that many of the alt-right’s alliances have splintered since Trump took office, and that several of its big personalities have fallen out with one another. The alt-right brand certainly seems to have lost some of its luster of late: it is indicative of the term’s disrepute that even someone as petulantly obnoxious as the far-right journalist Paul Joseph Watson recently felt the need to expressly distance himself from the alt-right in a tweet, even though — as Twitter users were quick to point out — he had aligned himself with the movement in a number of older tweets. The Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, who is perhaps a few centimeters to the left of alt-right but shares some of its obsessions, recently claimed not to know who the alt-right are. None of this quite amounts to repudiation, but it does point to a telling ambivalence, at the very least, about the connotations associated with the label. Wendling is probably right to speculate that this particular iteration of American far-rightism will be crushed by the weight of its own contradictions and the feckless incompetence of some of the personalities involved. But it will persist in some other guise so long as its underlying pathologies continue to proliferate, particularly if mainstream news outlets like Fox News continue to provide a platform for bigotry and hatred.

The most illuminating insights in the book are Wendling’s brief but revealing interviews with various ordinary people who identify as alt-righters. Taken collectively they constitute a somber and pathetic portrait of stunted and self-pitying manhood finding consolation in chauvinism. That a great many of them are single and or childless would be unworthy of note were it not so conspicuously off-brand: “For a group obsessed with the promulgation of a race,” Wendling notes wryly, “many activists seemed supremely disinterested in actually breeding.” Another common trait is their apparent inability to grasp the connection between discourse and real-life events — a somewhat ironic failing, given their fixation on the power of media. One particularly conscientious interviewee tells Wendling that he takes “great pride in making sure that nobody I meet or interact with from any race […] is affected by my beliefs in any physical way.” The archetypal alt-righter wants to have his fascist cake and eat it: one moment he is railing in blustering earnest; the next, when people are murdered — as happened in Charlottesville in August 2017 — it’s all just an ironic lark.

Wendling draws an apt analogy here between the radicalization of young would-be jihadists and the creeping brainwashing that ensnares vulnerable and credulous young men in right-wing online communities: “Once drawn in, they are conveyor-belted along a path of ever-more-extreme content, and slowly drawn into a radical bubble which warped their sense of reality.” A penchant for MAGA caps and Confederate flag-waving is merely one manifestation of the phenomenon at hand; the loose-knit community of self-styled “incels,” or “involuntary celibates,” several of whose members have carried out mass-casualty atrocities in recent years, is another. Though stereotypically populated largely by scrawny “beta” types, theirs is unequivocally an ideology of radical chauvinism every bit as dangerous as the militaristic machismo of common or garden neo-Nazism. “Alt-right” was only ever a buzz phrase; it may be fading from prominence, but the death cult remains at large. Homicidal mania is the logical end point of all such movements: both in the macropolitical context and at the level of the individual, they stand for nothing except the negation and destruction of the other. As one 4chan poster put it in those dog days of 2016: “I wanted to see everything burn and get lots of happenings.”

¤

Houman Barekat is a writer and critic based in London, and founding editor of Review 31. He is co-editor (with Robert Barry and David Winters) of The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online (O/R Books, 2017).

The post Get Lots of Happenings: On Mike Wendling’s “Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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