ANNIE JACOBSEN ON THE HISTORY OF AREA 51

https://tinyurl.com/y9jultd7

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades.

Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now.

Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror.

This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

Journalist Annie Jacobsen: ESP and the U.S. Government

•Apr 6, 2017
Commonwealth Club

Annie Jacobsen, Former Contributing Editor, Los Angeles Times Magazine; Author, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis; Twitter @AnnieJacobsen

Barry Eisler, Novelist, Blogger, Former CIA Operative, Twitter @barryeisler—Moderator

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist and best-selling author who writes about war, weapons, U.S. national security and government secrecy. Her Area 51 was an international best seller and The Pentagon’s Brain was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Now, she has written what she says is the definitive history of the military's decades-long investigation into mental powers and phenomena. Jacobsen says that for more than 40 years, the U.S. government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases and downed fighter jets; to divine other nations' secrets; and even to predict future threats to national security. The agencies involved include the CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, Navy, Air Force, Army and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now, for the first time, Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs, using never-before-seen declassified documents as well as exclusive interviews with more than 50 former CIA and Defense Department scientists, analysts and program managers, as well as the government psychics themselves. Come hear this unusual program that may challenge your own perceptions of reality.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth
Jul 30, 2009
University of California Television (UCTV)
(1:06 - Start of Presentation) Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Recorded on 05/26/2009. [7/2009] [Show ID: 16717]
Mini Medical School for the Public
(https://www.uctv.tv/minimed)
Explore More Health & Medicine on UCTV
(https://www.uctv.tv/health)
UCTV features the latest in health and medicine from University of California medical schools. Find the information you need on cancer, transplantation, obesity, disease and much more.
UCTV is the broadcast and online media platform of the University of California, featuring programming from its ten campuses, three national labs and affiliated research institutions. UCTV explores a broad spectrum of subjects for a general audience, including science, health and medicine, public affairs, humanities, arts and music, business, education, and agriculture. Launched in January 2000, UCTV embraces the core missions of the University of California -- teaching, research, and public service – by providing quality, in-depth television far beyond the campus borders to inquisitive viewers around the world.
(https://www.uctv.tv)

Food and Diaspora, Professor Sidney Mintz, SOAS University of London

•Jun 27, 2017

SOAS University of London

This recently rediscovered Distinguished Lecture titled "Food and Diaspora" was given by Professor Sidney Mintz (Johns Hopkins University) at the launch of two new SOAS research centres: The SOAS Food Studies Centre & The SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies on 11 October 2007 You can find out more about this event at https://goo.gl/oh5fbg https://www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies/ https://www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiasp... Sidney W. Mintz is a Research Professor in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. A pioneering scholar in Afro-Caribbean studies and in the Anthropology of Food, Professor Mintz is the author of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History, Caribbean Transformations, and Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. The lecture will launch two new SOAS research centres: The SOAS Food Studies Centre & The SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Licens

THE NEW SPECTACLE 
Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism 

VPRO Documentary 
Dec 20, 2019
vpro documentary

VIDEOS AT THE END OF EACH INTRODUCTION

Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," reveals how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism? In this documentary, Zuboff takes the lid off Google and Facebook and reveals a merciless form of capitalism in which no natural resources, but the citizen itself, serves as a raw material. How can citizens regain control of their data? It is 2000, and the dot.com crisis has caused deep wounds. How will startup Google survive the bursting of the internet bubble? Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know anymore how to turn the tide. By chance, Google discovers that the "residual data" that people leave behind in their searches on the internet is very precious and tradable. This residual data can be used to predict the behavior of the internet user. Internet advertisements can, therefore, be used in a very targeted and effective way. A completely new business model is born: "surveillance capitalism." 

On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series. This channel offers some of the best travel series from the Dutch broadcaster VPRO. Our series explore cultures from all over the world. VPRO storytellers have lived abroad for years with an open mind and endless curiosity, allowing them to become one with their new country. Thanks to these qualities, they are the perfect guides to let you experience a place and culture through the eyes of a local. Uncovering the soul of a country, through an intrinsic and honest connection, is what VPRO and its presenters do best.

Original title: De grote dataroof Director: Roland Duong

 Research: Tom Reijner, Halil Ibrahim Özpamuk Camera: Adri Schrover Sound: Jochem Salemink 

Editing: Roland Duong, Paul Delput, Rinze Schuurman Production: Marie Schutgens 

Production assistant: Britt Bennink

 Image Editing: Rob Dorrestijn, Paula Witkamp

 Online Coordinator: Arja van den Bergh Commissioning Editors: Bregtje van der Haak, Doke Romeijn 

Shoshana Zuboff: Surveillance capitalism and democracy

•Premiered Nov 11, 2019

Alexander von Humboldt Institut for internet and society

The collection and analysis of data is changing the way economies operate. Are these changes so fundamental that they can be said to have led to the emergence of a new form of capitalism – surveillance capitalism? If people’s behaviour is made increasingly transparent, do we become a society in which trust is no longer necessary? Are individuals a mere appendage to the digital machine, objects of new mechanisms which reward and punish according to the determinations of private capital? How is social cohesion affected when people become dispensable as a labour force, while their data continues to provide function as a source of value in lucrative new markets that trade in predictions of human behaviour? How should we understand the new quality of power that arises from these unprecedented conditions? What kind of society does it aim to create? And what ramifications will these developments have for the principles of liberal democracy? Will privacy law and anti-trust law be enough? How can we tame what we do not yet understand? Shoshana Zuboff is a social scientist and author of three books, each of which has been recognised as the definitive signal of a new epoch in technological society. Her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism reveals a world in which technology users are no longer customers but the raw material for an entirely new economic system. Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School from 2014 until 2016. Making Sense of the Digital Society
The current rapid pace of technological change creates enormous uncertainties – and thus the need for explanations that help us better understand our situation and shape the future. The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) are therefore continuing the Lecture Series Making Sense of the Digital Society that was launched in 2017. The aim of the format is to develop a European perspective on the current processes of transformation and its societal impact. The first speaker of this year’s series was sociologist Eva Illouz, followed by Dirk Baecker, José van Dijck and Louise Amoore. The event with Shoshana Zuboff on 6 November is part of the Berlin Science Week 2019 and the keynote of the DigiKomm conference 2019. More information about the event and the lecture series: https://www.hiig.de/en/events/shoshan... Photo credit: Falling Walls Foundation #digitalsociety #ShoshanaZuboff #ZuboffBerlin

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff, Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Hilder & Shahmir Sanni

•Sep 30, 2019

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Shoshana Zuboff's book, 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism', reveals a world in which the sovereign forces in today’s economy are advertisers, manipulators, shadowy assemblages of state and private actors whose goal is to predict our behaviour, and change it. Their tools are surveillance, provocation and addiction. IIPP presents this special public lecture featuring Shoshana Zuboff; and a panel discussion with Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Hilder from openDemocracy and whistleblower Shahmir Sanni. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about our upcoming events: http://bit.ly/iippnews UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment Website: https://ucl.ac.uk/iipp Twitter: https://twitter.com/iipp_ucl ----------------------------------------------- The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and the British Library presents a public lecture series titled Innovation and the Welfare State. The dynamic lecture series brings together world-leading thinkers to debate how the 21st century welfare state requires rethinking healthcare, green growth, public access to knowledge and new forms of data ownership. Join us in this powerful discussion on delivering public value through innovation.

The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism

Streamed live on Mar 1, 2019

The Intercept

Join The Intercept’s senior correspondent Naomi Klein and Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” for an engaging discussion about the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism” and the quest by corporations to predict and control our behavior. #SurveillanceCapitalism

Big Tech Stole Our Data While Democracy Slept: Shoshana Zuboff on the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
•Mar 1, 2019
https://democracynow.org - Corporations have created a new kind of marketplace out of our private human experiences. That is the conclusion of an explosive new book that argues big tech platforms like Facebook and Google are elephant poachers, and our personal data is ivory tusks. We continue our interview with Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

Glenn Greenwald on US protests: Trump's push to deploy the military is 'threat' to democracy
•Jun 3, 2020

FRANCE 24 English

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald reacted to the protests that are spreading in the US and beyond after the death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in police custody. Greenwald said that although US President Donald Trump was hoping to play the law and order card to win re-election in November, he believed this could backfire. He also called Trump's push to send in the military to quell the protests a "grave threat" to democratic values, adding that it could "give a signal to other leaders around the world", such as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.

S

Opinion: Systemic racism is the real 'American carnage'

A majority of white Americans still cannot come to terms with what black people have known forever: Racism is systemic, systematic, and nowhere near gone. White America must step up not just for peace, but for justice.


The images of burning police cars, clouds of tear gas, looted stores, law enforcement officers pushing civilians to the ground and protesters marching undeterred are startling and shocking for us Americans, but they are not surprising.

The video of an African American man dying on camera under the weight of a white police officer's knee on his neck is gruesome and shocking. It, too, is not surprising — we have seen videos like these before.

Echoes of the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, come to mind; for older generations, it is deja vu to the Rodney King riots of 1992 and lynchings during the civil rights movement.

But today's mass protests are gripping the nation at a time when a pandemic has claimed more than 100,000 lives, with more than 30 million unemployed, sky-high wage and income inequality and political polarization that is tearing the country apart.

It now feels like the US is reaching a breaking point. The future of the country seems bleak and uncertain. What we are seeing is "American carnage" — but not of the sort Donald Trump likely imagined when he strangely invoked that term at his presidential inauguration.

Racism doesn't take a break

While America went on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, much of what characterizes normal life stopped. But the country's more fundamental and structural problems continued. Systemic racism is one of them, with numerous examples evident even as normal life came to a halt in recent months.

In February, video showed Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, being shot by two white vigilantes while out for a jog in Georgia.

In another video, a woman in New York's Central Park is seen calling the police on a black man who asked her to follow park rules and leash her dog, immediately telling them that "an African American man" was there and falsely claiming he was "threatening" her and the dog.

As the pandemic unfolded, people of color have suffered disproportionately high death rates from the coronavirus — also an indirect result of systemic inequality and racism. Yet armed white demonstrators occupied various state capitols to protest lockdown rules and shouted, intimidated and even spit at police officers, who handled them with the utmost care, in a glaring reminder that whites are treated differently by police.

Polarization blocks progress

Like nearly every topic in the US right now, the role of police and the criminal justice system are seen along political and racial lines. The 2015 Ferguson protests led to the creation of Black Lives Matter, a movement dedicated to increasing awareness of systemic racism and fighting the individual and collective biases that perpetuate it.

In response, countermovements popped up with the slogans "All Lives Matter," affirming the belief that Americans live in a colorblind society, and "Blue Lives Matter," promoting the view that police are heroes and have allegedly been framed for race-related violence.

DW reporter Jenipher Camino Gonzalez

It is no surprise that these movements have largely been supported by conservative-leaning whites. Polls have consistently shown that public trust for the police is higher among Republican voters, white and older people, while only a minority of Hispanics, African Americans, young people and Democrats share that trust.

In 2020, these opposing demographic, racial, and political lines are at their most antagonistic, fueling the country's ongoing fragmentation and tribalism.

These groups are actively kept apart by opportunistic political leaders like Trump, who actively stokes discord and whose place in the White House is a direct result of this high polarization and its resulting culture wars.

In such a deadlock, progress is blocked, and US streets will remain susceptible to bouts of violence.

White complacency must end

Statistics show it, studies expand on it and videos like those of George Floyd's killing crystallize it: African Americans are disproportionately targeted by police. Still, many white Americans cannot admit that the country's criminal justice system and police culture protect and benefit them.

Many white Americans cannot admit that racism remains an inherent societal problem and state structures are in dire need of reform to achieve equal treatment for the citizens they purport to serve. This inability of so much of white America to come to terms with its own privilege and empathize with minorities' experiences is the single largest roadblock to progress and reconciliation.

Those who are part of the problem must be part of the solution. People of color cannot single-handedly change a system that is inherently skewed against them; nor should they be forced to try. Throughout history, black mobilization has required a critical mass of white people joining the fight to tip the balance toward progress — during the abolitionist movement, the black suffrage movement, the civil rights movement.

The same is true today — but at a time when political tribalism reigns, can this happen once again? The challenge has never been so great and the stakes so high. If there is to be progress toward eliminating prejudice and racial violence, white Americans must stop being complacent about systemic racism.



IN PICTURES: US PROTESTS OVER GEORGE FLOYD, POLICE KILLINGS RAGE IN DOZENS OF CITIES
Media in the crosshairs
Many journalists covering the protests have found themselves targeted by law enforcement. On Friday, CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while covering the story in Minneapolis, and several reporters have been hit with projectiles or detained while on air. DW's Stefan Simons was fired at by police twice as he reported on the unrest over the weekend. 1234567891011

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AUDIOS AND VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC

From Ferguson, Missouri to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Date 31.05.2020
Author Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
Related Subjects The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Human Rights, Discrimination
Keywords Black Lives Matter, racism, George Floyd, police violence, USA, human rights, discrimination, minority rights

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3d4rE