Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Austin, Journalism, and Video
The song performed before yesterday’s march at Austin City Hall was a lovely moment of international solidarity with the people of Palestine. I hope they could hear us.
This video represents me experimenting with CapCut to create more short videos in the style of TikTok posts or Instagram reels. As you can see, I’m still learning, but I’m also trying to get better at sharing my imperfect projects and works-in-progress more often too.
Posted in Act Out!, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video
So, you might be surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia recently gained a seat on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
That’s right — a country where male guardianship requires that women get permission to do everything from receive an education to travel, a country where women can not drive or leave the house without proper head-to-toe covering – and when they do everything is gender segregated — that Saudi Arabia was given a three year term as a member of the U.N. agency whose sole mission is to promote gender equality and women’s rights. Take a moment with that.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a nonprofit that tries to keep the international body accountable called the move “absurd — and morally reprehensible.”
Absurd as it may be — and it is fucking ridiculous — what’s even more absurd is that the appointment isn’t a sign that something is wrong at the U.N.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Infowars, an alternative multimedia outlet notorious for peddling hoaxes and anti-Semitic ideas, is now toeing a far-right, extremist line on U.S.-Israel relations.
The site’s shifting political viewpoint is another sign of the transformation that Alex Jones, the site’s founder, has undergone as he’s transitioned from an offbeat talk show host on public access TV to a Washington insider with intimate access to President-elect Donald Trump.
Despite his modest beginnings, Jones has built an expansive and profitable media empire that includes multiple websites, TV and radio programs, documentaries, and lucrative advertising deals that promote products ranging from Infowars-branded male “vitality” supplements to doomsday preparation supplies.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
President-elect Donald Trump has selected David Friedman, a notorious opponent of the peace process in Israel and Palestine and a financial supporter of illegal Israeli settlements, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Trump, who officially nominated Friedman on Dec. 15, is unlikely to quell the accusations of corruption and nepotism that have dogged the incoming administration with this controversial pick. Friedman is a long-time friend of the president-elect and a lawyer who helped Trump file for bankruptcy in 2004 and 2009.
Friedman fervently supports the ongoing expansion of apartheid Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and many political analysts have noted that Friedman’s political views actually put him to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s far-right prime minister.
An Orthodox Jew, Friedman maintains residences in both the United States and Jerusalem. In the formal announcement for his post released by Trump’s transition team, Friedman suggested that the U.S. embassy be moved from its current location in Tel Aviv to “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Though best known for their computers and computer peripherals like printers, companies under the Hewlett-Packard umbrella are engaged in another profitable, and far more nefarious business: enabling apartheid Israel to track the movement of occupied Palestinians.
Activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are calling for a week of action against HP beginning on Black Friday, the high-volume shopping day that occurs after Thanksgiving. Organized by the HP Boycott Campaign and the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups, 99 actions were scheduled in 18 countries around the world, including the United States, as of Monday afternoon.
The Israeli military operates checkpoints throughout the occupied West Bank. In order to pass through them, Palestinians must submit to facial and and hand recognition scanners. This biometric identification system, called the “Basel System,” is maintained by HP Enterprise Services, a company previously known as EDS Israel.
“The biometric data of nearly every Palestinian over the age of 16 is held by the Israeli authorities as part of Israel’s system of control and repression,” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign noted in an Aug. 13, 2014 post.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank of Gaza have expanded rapidly over the past year, seriously threatening many Palestinian communities and their farmlands.
“This practice doesn’t just mean expanding into Palestinian land,” journalist Abby Martin explained in an Oct. 31 episode of “The Empire Files.”
When Martin traveled to the region for several weeks in August and September to report on the effects of Israel’s apartheid policies on the indigenous Palestinian population, her movement around Gaza was heavily restricted by Israeli forces.
Martin continued:
