Perhaps no figure from ancient Rome is as famous as the gladiator — a warrior of the arena that fought to the death against beasts, criminals, and other gladiators, for the entertainment of Roman society.

Gladiators have become heavily mythologized figures, in part thanks to famous works of fiction like the film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, or the classic Spartacus, but what were they like really?

EXISTENTIAL ENTERTAINMENT HAS INCLUDED WAR IN MOST EPOCH OF HUMAN SOCIETIES. AT THE LIMITS OF OUR ERRANDS, HOW MUCH LIES, PORKIES, BULLSHIT ARE WE PREPARED TO ACCEPT IN OUR SYSTEMIC SHARINGS OR LACK OF THEM — AND IN OUR CONQUESTS OF "OTHERS" WHICH WE DISGUISE AS PROTECTION OF OUR OWN SPACE?

LET'S FACE IT. WE NEVER HAVE HAD FREE WILL. WE HAVE BEEN SHAPED BY LANGUAGE, HISTORY — OUR OWN AND THAT OF THE TRIBE IN WHICH WE EXIST — THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE TRIBE, RELIGIONS, PROPAGANDA, GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS, OUR PHILOSOPHIES AND EVEN OUR "FREE-WILLED" CHOICES WICH INFLUENCE THE NEXT. WE KNOW THIS.

CHOOSING TO DEFEND A SYSTEM VERSUS ANOTHER TENDS TO PLACE LIMITS ON OUR FREE WILL.

IN 2018, THE GUARDIAN, AN ORGAN OF MEDIA PROPAGANDA, PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE THAT SUMMED UP WHAT WE HAVE EXPLORED OVER THE YEARS ON THIS SITE IN REGARD TO DEMOCRATIC CHOICES. AT THE LIMITS OF OUR ERRANDS, HOW MUCH LIES, PORKIES, BULLSHIT ARE WE PREPARED TO ACCEPT IN OUR SYSTEMIC SHARINGS OR LACK OF THEM — AND IN OUR CONQUESTS OF "OTHERS" WHICH WE WILL DISGUISE AS PROTECTION OF OUR OWN SPACE? 

Financial podcasts have been featuring ominous headlines lately along the lines of “Your Bank Can Legally Seize Your Money” and “Banks Can STEAL Your Money?! Here’s How!” The reference is to “bail-ins:” the provision under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allowing Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs, basically the biggest banks) to bail in or expropriate their creditors’ money in the event of insolvency.

The problem is that depositors are classed as “creditors.” So how big is the risk to your deposit account? Part I of this two part article will review the bail-in issue. Part II will look at the derivatives risk that could trigger the next global financial crisis. 

As a journalist, scholar and media reformer, I have been following the activities of WikiLeaks for over a decade, assessing the disrupting force of new radical platforms for disclosure. WikiLeaks is a crucial example of a digital platform that exposes the contradictions of the internet as a tool for openness and secrecy, freedom and surveillance, free speech and censorship.

by Benedetta Brevini

DECEMBER 2 2020

But it is much more. I don’t think that anyone would dispute the incredible impact that WikiLeaks revelations have had, not just to disconcert and embarrass power elites, not just to expose crimes in the public interest, but also for bringing renewed debates on free speech, digital encryption and quests for better protections for whistleblowing to the mainstream.

Although Jimmy Carter left the White House in one of the biggest landslides of the modern American era, tributes poured onto social media moments after the Carter Center announced that he would receive hospice care. The oldest-living former president elicited praise often reserved for public figures who have already died, but the attention focused more on what he did after his presidency than during it.

The CIA had funded 42 programs against Cuba, some of which targeted anti-racist, feminist and LGBT activists

Daughter of Raul and member of parliament, Mariela Castro (photo) is not so much recognized for her surname as for her action in favor of LGBT rights. The feminist recounts the advances of the Family Code in Cuba, one of the most inclusive on the Continent, and a heavy context of adversity, with the United States quick to recover progressive causes for hegemonic ends.

BY Lina SANKARI (L’Humanité Magazine)

Greg Sheridan, in his opinion piece of Tuesday 21 February, provides yet another display of his spiteful, vacuous journalism – his erroneous claims that I am not the progenitor of the APEC Leaders’ Meeting, and that my views on Australian strategic policy are eccentric and at odds with the US alliance.

PJ Keating reply to Greg Sheridan – The Australian, 21 February 2023

I will deal with the APEC Leaders’ Meeting first. This is easy enough because the Australian government records of the time are now open. Sheridan was never one to let evidence stand in the way of his prejudices and clearly prefers the fact that Bill Clinton failed to mention me in his autobiography re the Leaders’ Meeting than he does Australian archival evidence.

WASHINGTON, February 24 (Sputnik) - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that Americans dislike seeing countries bully each other, despite the United States maintaining an armed presence at approximately 750 bases across 80 countries.

"I think viscerally most Americans don’t like to see a big country bullying another, and they just feel it’s wrong and want to do something about it," Blinken said during an interview with CBS. 

The old rat had lived well

Avoiding traps and the poisoned rice

Eating human foods and drinking from their filtered well

But now he was arthritic from over-indulgence 

Of patés, brioches and victuailles imported from La France

About to die, unable to climb to the attic twice, not even once

I better commit suicide and eat those blue wheat pellets

I remember my days with the young female ratlettes

Thin and debonaire

I were suave, full of rat-pong and expertise in my lair

I am becoming blind as well, my beautiful black eyes becoming foggy

This is the price of eating too well, the refined crap from them bourgeois bins

Full of preservatives and nasty chemicals without names

But tasty nonetheless for the really refined palate of Sir James

Obese like the cat next door with whom I shared a plate on Frid’y

My research has led me to conclude that there’s an elite conspiracy to enslave us all and turn us all into brainwashed automatons mindlessly enacting the wishes of our rulers in a cruel dystopia built by the powerful, for the powerful.

Haha, just kidding. That already happened.

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Step one is learning that the mainstream consensus worldview is a lie, and that we’ve been fed power-serving propaganda since we were children about our society, our nation, our government and our world. Most people haven’t even made it to step one yet.

“Nobody is pushing” the conflict in Ukraine more than US State Department official Victoria Nuland, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday. Nuland, who helped to orchestrate the pro-Western coup in Kiev in 2014, has backed military strikes on the Russian territory of Crimea.

Nuland’s declaration last Thursday that Russian military bases in Crimea are “legitimate targets” for Ukrainian forces was interpreted by the Kremlin as proof of “US involvement in the Ukraine conflict.” In a post on Telegram, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow would respond to such attacks “using weapons of any kind.”

HOLLYWOOD AND THE MARVEL COMICS ARE FULL OF INCREDIBLE (NON-CREDIBLE) STORIES. TAKE FOR EXAMPLE THE MOVIE “SPACE COWBOYS”…. NICELY SET UP WITH OLD CHEESE ASTRONAUTS SAVING THE PLANET FROM THE NAUGHTY RUSSIANS WHO IN THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR HAD MADE A NASTY LOOKING SATELLITE DESIGNED TO SEND NUCLEAR BOMBS BACK TO PLANET EARTH.

OF COURSE, THE BENEVOLENT AMERICAN EMPIRE WOULD NEVER HAVE THOUGH OF DOING THE SAME THING.

SO IN THE STORY, BECAUSE IT IS A STORY, ISN’T IT? OUR OLD YANKEE BOYS COOPERATE WITH THE RUSSIANS TO DEFUSE THE AGEING SATELLITE SLOWLY COMING TO CRASH ON OUR LOVELY PLANET. BECAUSE THE RUSSIANS WERE CRAP AT MAKING ELECTRONICS, THE ELECTRONIC DEVICES ABOARD THIS NASTY THING HAD BEEN PROUDLY SUPPLIED BY THE AMERICANS.

ONCE MORE WE ARE FACED WITH A FORMIDABLE FOE: WESTERN PROPAGANDA, EVEN ON THE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CHANNEL THE ABC (AUSTRALIA) AND IT'S GETTING MORE AND MORE RIDICULOUS.

TONIGHT ON THE NEWS WE GOT A SAMPLE OF HOT SHIT CRAP… THERE WERE PICTURES OF A STADIUM FILLED TO THE BRIM OF RUSSIANS WITH RUSSIAN FLAGS SUPPORTERS OF PUTIN THE RUSSIAN DESPOT. 200 SOMETHING THOUSANDS CHEERING PEOPLE WHICH WAS, WE WERE TOLD, THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF DEAD RUSSIAN SOLDIERS IN THE DISASTROUS RUSSIAN INTERVENTION IN UKRAINE. 

OUT OF A TWO HOUR SPEECH BY MR PUTIN, WE GOT LESS THAN A THREE SECOND GRAB, EDITED IN A MANNER TO EXCLUDE CONTEXT…

WE STAND WITH UKRAINE AT THE ABC. WE DO. BUT NOT ON THIS SITE, HERE. WE CAN’T. EITHER WE’RE IDIOTS OR WE KNOW TOO MUCH. I GO WITH THE LATTER, I HOPE…

We reason wrongly in thinking that the defeat of President Zelensky in Donetsk and Lugansk, in Kherson and Zaporijjia, could mark the end of the fighting. Faced with the resistance Moscow has encountered in enforcing Security Council Resolution 2202, President Putin has declared that he still has to liberate Odessa and join Transnistria.

This is precisely what the Pentagon has been looking for since 2019. It is already preparing a second round in Moldova. Not that THE PENTAGON wants to defend the Ukrainians, then the Moldavians, but because it intends to strip his own allies.

by Thierry meyssan

Where does Europe go in the wake of the Nord Stream allegations? It is hard to see a Germany-dominated Europe diverging far from Washington. 

“NATO has never been stronger; Russia is a global Pariah; and the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience; in short, Russia has lost, Russia has lost strategically, operationally and tactically – and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield”.