Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Russell Brand on Revolution

Yeah your right, don't know what I was thinking.
You were thinking of this horror

article-1271235-09687564000005DC-339_468x365.jpg
 
Russell has said nothing in his Trews or elsewhere about the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He's probably better off not inflaming the situation, and making himself a target.
 
Last edited:
well he's now made a youtube video where he seems to just blame western foreign policy:



While it clearly does increase the probability of an attack taking place there was more to this that just western foreign policy, people have faced death threats and been killed long before the war on terror as a result of insults or perceived insults towards the prophet - that ideology, even just the idea that someone deserves to be punished for causing offense (not necessarily an extremist position within Islam even - in fact calls for a change in the law to allow prosecution for insulting the prophet is widely supported amongst British Muslims) ought to be challenged/changed. I'd wager that even if this magazine was based in Switzerland or Ireland they'd have still been facing a real threat for the content they'd published regardless of a neutral foreign policy. There was no US lead war on terror taking place when the Japanese translator of Salmon Rushdie's book was stabbed to death in the early 90s...

For whatever reason Russel just chooses to ignore the influence this ideology had on the attacks too.
 
well he's now made a youtube video where he seems to just blame western foreign policy:



While it clearly does increase the probability of an attack taking place there was more to this that just western foreign policy, people have faced death threats and been killed long before the war on terror as a result of insults or perceived insults towards the prophet - that ideology, even just the idea that someone deserves to be punished for causing offense (not necessarily an extremist position within Islam even - in fact calls for a change in the law to allow prosecution for insulting the prophet is widely supported amongst British Muslims) ought to be challenged/changed. I'd wager that even if this magazine was based in Switzerland or Ireland they'd have still been facing a real threat for the content they'd published regardless of a neutral foreign policy. There was no US lead war on terror taking place when the Japanese translator of Salmon Rushdie's book was stabbed to death in the early 90s...

For whatever reason Russel just chooses to ignore the influence this ideology had on the attacks too.


what do you mean ?
 
I'd wager that even if this magazine was based in Switzerland or Ireland they'd have still been facing a real threat for the content they'd published regardless of a neutral foreign policy. There was no US lead war on terror taking place when the Japanese translator of Salmon Rushdie's book was stabbed to death in the early 90s...

For whatever reason Russel just chooses to ignore the influence this ideology had on the attacks too.
Ireland isn't neutral in the "war on terror". Any time I've been in Shannon Airport over the last few years I've seen American soldiers and aircraft. It's well known they pass through there on their rendition flights.

I don't know if Switzerland have been up to owt.

ETA: I think blasphemy may still be illegal in Ireland in any case!
 
Ireland isn't neutral in the "war on terror". Any time I've been in Shannon Airport over the last few years I've seen American soldiers and aircraft. It's well known they pass through there on their rendition flights.

I don't know if Switzerland have been up to owt.
and if isis wanted to pass through the 26 cos i am sure the dublin govt would afford them the same courtesies they do the americans.
 
Russell Brand's doing quite a good program about drugs on BBC3 at the moment. Although his position is obviously pro abstinence, he's being pretty balanced and researching and presenting the program well.
 
Ireland isn't neutral in the "war on terror". Any time I've been in Shannon Airport over the last few years I've seen American soldiers and aircraft. It's well known they pass through there on their rendition flights.

I don't know if Switzerland have been up to owt.

ETA: I think blasphemy may still be illegal in Ireland in any case!

Both Switzerland and Ireland had troops seconded to NATO (of which neither is a member) in Afganistan
 
Russell Brand's doing quite a good program about drugs on BBC3 at the moment. Although his position is obviously pro abstinence, he's being pretty balanced and researching and presenting the program well.

I only caught the last half hour but thought it was really well done. His compassion with the two women drug addicts was touching.
 
Amazon review of Russel's wooky-booky by Robert David Steele - an odd goat-starer type who used to be in the "company" - ( taps side of nose )

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful
stars-5-0._V192240867_.gif
Brilliant, Intricate, Non-Violent, and Optimistic, November 4, 2014

This review is from: Revolution (Hardcover)

In relation to the 2,000 plus non-fiction books I have reviewed here at Amazon, this book is brilliant. Normally I would consider giving it four stars for lacking an index and endnotes, obviously needed for the poorly educated morons that cannot grasp the many (many) direct references to top authors and thinkers. For crying out loud, Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is received by the author in his home and cited in this book, as are so many others. So a solid five stars for impact and self-made erudition.

Let me state very clearly that the publisher has sodomized this author by not including an index, a bibliography, or endnotes. As the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reviewing books across 98 distinct non-fiction categories, I am blown away by the clever, poetic, and pointed manner in which the author has integrated a vast (vast) range of reading and personal conversations into this book.

Here are a few meta-observations, followed by some detailed notes. I found this book absorbing and moving. Those that say the author does not offer specific solutions are clearly illiterates who have not actually read the book.

01 Poetry and philosophy. Will Durant's 1916 thesis, now available as Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition, fits easily with this author's panoramic book of both the problems and the possibilities.

02 If Russell Brand can be clean for 11 years, We the People can overturn our blind addictions to toxic corporations and absentee corrupt governments. There is a marvelous personal story woven throughout this book, the bottom line being that the author has chosen to be clean and deal with reality, something 80% of the public will not do -- their drugs of choice being slave wages, alcohol, gambling, and pornography.

03 We ALL want to be delivered from evil, including the 1%. I am charmed by a brief report from the author of his encounter with Lady Lynn Rothschild (who is originally from New Jersey) -- not mentioned in the book is the fact that she sponsored a May conference on Inclusive Capitalism, and together with the Mars Family (Mutuality Economics) and the "black sheep billionaires" (Redemptive Capitalism), represents the fraction of the 1% that "gets it" -- restore public agency or get a pitchfork up your ass.

04 Citing Fawzi Ibrahim, we have a choice: capitalism or the planet. Restoring community is how we cope. I am reminded of two books in particular, Lionel Tiger's The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System and Human scale.

05 Overall the author comes across as a loving conscious spirit who means no ill to the 1% but is sharply focused on achieving dignity and fairness for the 99%. He has completed his own Hero's Journey, has climbed out of the abyss, and is now a voice for public healing.

SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS

01 Control and hold accountable all corporations, scrapping the World Trade Organization (WTO) and creating the World Environmental Organization (WEO).

02 Re-localize food and farming (the UN just announced that this is the only sustainable agricultural solution)

03 Prioritize life over profit by rejecting Gross National Product (GNP) in favor of more community and life-affirming measures.

04 Individual debt jubilee.

05 Route around governments with autonomous community-based organizations

06 Get the money out of politics, participate instead of voting, move toward Liquid Democracy

07 Shift the energy paradigm to include shutting down all nuclear.

08 Make society, not economics, central to how we organize.

09 Open information, open eyes, open mind -- restore public power with transparency.

10 Demand 70% affordable housing from any development.

11 Direct most government funding to social enterprises.

12 Free Wi-Fi everywhere

MINOR NOTES

01 This book is hilarious.

02 Among key intellectual influences worth noting are Joseph Campbell and Sir James Goldsmith. I would add two recommended books, Peter Linebaugh's Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance (Spectre) and Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History.

03 What US Government paid in bank bail-outs would have provided $50,000 a year to each homeless person in the USA.

04 60,000 of the homeless in the USA are veterans (independent fact check shows no fewer than 50,000).

05 Our attitude toward homelessness (obliviousness) is symptomatic of our attitude toward genocide, war, and general political and economic corruption.

06 Pedophilia is politics and politics is pedophilia. This is a nuclear grenade. Buy the book. I will certify that it applies in the USA as much as it may apply in the UK and across Europe.

07 Among the many corporations that should be killed (put out of existence) are Apple, Boots, Coca Cola, Disney, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Monsanto, Pfizer, and Time Warner.

08 The author lionizes Daniel Pinchbeck, whom I also worship, he was the publisher of my book in the signature line, and is a cultural and spiritual guru of the first order.

09 Among the most interesting elements of the book for me were sections deconstructing the Lord's Prayer, dismantling "Manifest Destiny," and sections throughout the book on the intersection between science, religion, and consciousness. There are so many books I would like to recommend, here I must limit myself to two: Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity and Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution.

10 I have MANY books annotated in the margins of this book, I mention this to make the point that anyone who demeans this author's erudite and poetic essay -- never mind the crap publisher screwing over the details -- is simply not well-read. With my two remaining links I offer Theresa Amato's Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny and the UK's only utterly genius Philip Allot of Cambridge, The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

The author concludes with a strong statement, very detailed, on the need to migrate toward community-based social enterprises and self-governance -- a Nobel Prize was awarded to Elino Ostrom for her book on Governing the Commons that made many of these points.

I am very happy to stand with the author on the substance of this book. It serves us all.

Robert David STEELE Vivas
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
 
Back
Top Bottom