Russell Brand
Russell Brand gives his views of the Jeb Bush presidential campaign.
Tag: Trews
Is Australia Facing Social Issues Similar To The U.S.?
Russell Brand
In this episode of the The Trews, Russell Brand looks at the housing crisis in Australia and also looks at mass incarceration. Is the U.S. facing similar problems?
(Updated report)
Brand Looks At Trump In Scotland, Fossil Fuel Use
Trews
In this episode of The Trews, Russell Brand discusses world leaders’ pledge to end the reliance on fossil fuels and examines Donald Trump’s activities at his golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Russell Brand Looks At Tory Election Propaganda
Trews
Earlier this month, Britain was in an election cycle, and Russell Brand looked at the Conservative (Tory) political election propaganda. The Tories ran a host of political campaign ads, including on Facebook. One in every £17 pounds the Tories spent on the last general election campaign goes towards drumming up support on Facebook.
Brand analysed their policies, past promises and election tactics as well.
In the video, Brand mentions Quantitative Easing (QE), an economic maneuver governments can take in an attempt to improve the economy. What is Quantitative Easing?
Investopedia states that QE is an “unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply.”
“Quantitative easing increases the money supply by flooding financial institutions with capital in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity.”
Tories also ran attack advertisements that featured a famous note from a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury that implied that a Labour government would run the country to ruin by not controlling the budget. The note reads “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money.”
(Updated article)
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitative-easing.asp#ixzz3bRRskhEV
Russell Brand On The Possibility Of A Future Dystopia Of Water And Oil Shortages
Russell Brand
Four years into its drought, Californians are forced to cut back on water use by 25%, and they are looking to Australia for advice on coping with water shortages.
Russell Brand talks about the possibility of a future where water and gasoline are scarce resources.
http://news.yahoo.com/california-looks-down-under-drought-advice-134750332.html
Does Rupert Murdoch Have Influence Over The Media?
Russell Brand
Rupert Murdoch is an Australian American business magnate, who became managing director of Australia’s News Limited, inherited from his father Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch in 1952. According to Wikipedia, he is the founder, chairman and CEO of global media holding company News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate, and its successors News Corp and 21st Century Fox after the conglomerate split in June,2013.
Does Murdoch have a large amount of influence over the media?
21st Century Fox is known for possessing the media companies with the name Fox. That includes movie studio 20th Century Fox, Fox News, Fox (TV) Broadcasting, local Fox stations, and Fox radio. It owns other channels such as National Geographic. It also owns The Wall Street Journal and several other newspapers.
In 2014, Murdoch even made an offer to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN, the second largest cable news group in the U.S. (Fox News is the largest).
Does Murdoch have certain political views, or is he neutral?
Wikipedia states that News Corp papers were accused of taking sides in the 2013 Australian election. Following the announcement of the Liberal Party victory at the polls, Murdoch tweeted “Aust. election public sick of public sector workers and phony welfare scroungers sucking life out of economy…”
British newspaper The Independent wrote that Murdoch berated journalists at his papers for not doing enough to “stop the (left-of-center) Labour Party from winning the election” in Britain. He “warned them that the future of the company depended on stopping Labour from getting elected,” writes The Independent. After Mr. Murdoch paid a visit to his company’s The Sun newspaper, they devoted a two-page spread to the election – with the left-hand page containing a 10-point “pledge” to voters written by David Cameron.
What if Murdoch decided that a war in the Middle East (against Iran or Syria, for example) would be good for him or that he could profit from it? Do you think his news channels and print media would remain neutral, or would they push a pro-war agenda?
Murdoch’s News Corp owns several newspapers other countries as well. In England, he owns The Sun.
In fact, he seems to own everything under The Sun. Russell Brand talks about it in his “Trews” video.
(Updated article)
Russell Brand Looks At British Election Debate
Russell Brand
The national British election will take place on Thursday May 7th, as decreed by the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which was enacted on September 15th, 2011.
Recently, there was a televised debate that failed to give any party a decisive boost, according to The Week.
The “slugging match” that came afterward was over Trident nuclear submarines and the tax arrangements of people living in the U.K. who have a foreign residence, or “non-doms.” The debate appeared to have put the Labor Party on top of the heap.
Then came the “Challengers Debate,” which included the five main opposition leaders, but neither incumbent David Cameron of the Conservative Party nor Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, was there. Most pundits suggested that either Ed Miliband of the Labor Party or Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party (SNP) came out on top.
With three weeks to go, the British election still looks as unpredictable and unusual as ever.
Conservative and Labor are the two main rivals, and they remain neck and neck in the polls. The race between them has not looked so tight since 1992, states The Week.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats continue to trail Ukip, the Greens are still a factor, and the SNP’s position appears if anything to be growing stronger.
In this video, Russell Brand discusses the Challengers Debate.
More:
Russell Brand: Which Is More Important, Climate Change Or ISIS?
Trews
Comedian Russell Brand gives his reaction to Fox News’ coverage of President Obama’s statement that the media overstates the threat of terrorism in comparison to the threat of climate change.
In other news…
The British paper The Guardian has decided to put coverage of climate change “front and center.”
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: “…changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.
“The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.”
Rusbridger will be leaving the Guardian this year, and he asked himself if he had any regrets.
“Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.
“So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as ‘incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.'”
In other news…
Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, walked onto the floor of the Senate with what he declared was persuasive evidence climate change is a hoax: a snowball. Inhofe is the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, with jurisdiction over the climate problem.
The Huffington Post: “Indeed, even on his own terms, the snowball doesn’t make the point he thinks it does. Climate change produces wild and extreme swings in weather. That Washington, D.C., is experiencing record cold and snowfall is not refutation of climate change, but rather one more data point to add to the pile in support of it.”
Russell Brand Looks At The Politics Of The Oscars
Russell Brand’s Trews looks at the 2015 Oscars and some of the subsequent media coverage.
Trews
Russell Brand Looks At The Church In Britain
Reaction to news that the Church have criticized Brand over supposedly encouraging voter apathy and also attacked the current British political culture.
Trews
OK, Fine. 