Karl Marx – The Mark Steel Lecture

If you know Mark Steel at all, it’s probably as a recurring guest on BBC comedy panel shows (Buzzcocks, QI, etc). However, he’s also an ardent socialist, and for those of you who are getting sick of badly sync’ed audio on video clips, I offer you the following audio clip: Mark’s lecture on Marx, an entertaining biography of a flawed but brilliant man, worlds away from the sinister figure of capitalist demonology and equally distant from the equally sinister figure of Stalinist hagiography.

click here to play the whole lecture

Dahr Jamail – Unembedded Journalist

Sick and tired of listening to the mainstream media pore over General Petraeus’ scripted briefing?  I know how you feel, and have the antidote: Dahr Jamail’s address (43 mins) at the Chicago Socialism 2007 conference.

Disgusted with the coverage of the war in American journalism, Dahr Jamail saved up and took his camera and his laptop to occupied Iraq.  His unembedded dispatches are now recognised as crucial sources of information from the warzone – and are almost unique in their independence from occupying forces.

Dahr’s book Beyond The Green Zone is released next month.

See also John Pilger’s address at the same conference, and the documentary The Bases Are Loaded.

Rule By Disaster

Nine eleven changed everything. Didn’t it?

Some perspective here, from two remarkable women.

Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein

In Alfonso Cuaron’s interpretation (7 mins) of her new book, Klein shows how shock and disorientation have been used to steal our world and sell it off, from the 11th September 1973 to the 11th September 2001 and beyond.

Come September – Arundhati Roy

This renowned 2002 lecture (74 mins) to the Lannan Foundation disusses nationalism, capitalism, and a century of bloody Septembers. Witty, moving and informative, it was later reinterpreted as the documentary film ‘We‘; see also the subsequent interview with Howard Zinn.

Transcript follows.

Is Another World Possible? Naomi Klein’s ASA address

Journalist and author Naomi Klein addresses the American Sociological Association, in a meeting themed “Is Another World Possible”. In an informed and inspiring talk (~36mins) on globalisation, altermondialisation and the end of The End Of History, Klein argues:

We did not lose the battles of ideas. We were not outsmarted and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.

Parts two to four follow.

Art, Truth and Politics – Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize Lecture

Almost uniquely among his contemporaries, the social conscience of poet and playright Harold Pinter prevents him from keeping silent on the atrocities of our age. Winning the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature gave him the platform for this powerful lecture (46 mins), though I do not believe it has ever been aired on a major channel.

Better-quality video is available from the Nobel Prize website. Transcript follows.