Is Spotify Stealing From Artists?

Pete Townsend from The Who said “I think the guy that runs it is a f*cking crook.”

Robert Brown wrote:

The CEO of Spotify is worth ($)2.5 billion.

Meanwhile, all the artists are paid next to nothing, and everybody from Tool to Coldplay, to Taylor Swift has gone to war with Spotify over their unfair treatment of artists. Pink Floyd said this about Spotify, “those services (Spotify and other streaming services) should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses. For almost all working musicians, it’s also a question of economic survival.”

The Black Keys has a great one, “if somebody’s making money then the artist should be getting a fair cut of it. The owner of Spotify is worth something like $3 billion… he’s richer than Paul McCartney and he’s 30, and he’s never written a song.

”Beck said, “What Spotify pays me is not even enough to pay the musicians playing with me or the people working on the discs, It’s not working. Something is going to have to give.” (Beck won a Grammy this year, by the way.)

Thom York from Radio Head said, “I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.”

Accusations of False Flag in Kabul

Researcher and commentator Hadi Nasrallah noted on Friday that the leader of the Middle East resistance group Hezbollah “said that the US have been using helicopters to save ISIS terrorists from complete annihilation in Iraq and transporting them to Afghanistan to keep them as insurgents in Central Asia against Russia, China and Iran.”

Did the US Support the Growth of ISIS-K in Afghanistan?

Ocean Temps Hit Record

So, this is real according to NASA:

The ocean under Ida was close to the hottest ever accessible to a hurricane, and just as with heatwaves on land, ocean heat is rising. This isn’t a “new normal,” it is an on ramp to even more intense climate breakdown in the future, driven by the fossil fuel industry.

So is this, from the horse’s mouth:

Obama: "Suddenly America is the largest oil producer, that was me people … say thank you." pic.twitter.com/VfQfX1SR0x

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 28, 2018

2018: Was US aiding ISIS in Afghanistan?

Iran & Russia Accuse US of Aiding IS in Afghanistan

Ed Asner, Actor & Activist, Has Also Left Us

Abby Martin remembers, and reposted this video:

Spike Lee’s 9/11 Doc CENSORED by HBO

It was with profound disappointment that we learned last night from news reports that 30 minutes of Spike Lee’s HBO docuseries addressing the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 would be removed from the final episode, which airs 20 years to the day since the murder of our loved ones.

9/11 Family Members Call on HBO to Restore Final Episode of Spike Lee Series

Rampant Theft of Screenplays in Hollywood?

Maybe. This guy says he was ripped off three times.

Did Somebody Say “ISIS?”

By 2015 the game was up to those around the world whose brains weren’t damaged and controlled by US propaganda.

WHY ISIS EXISTS: THE DOUBLE GAME

USMC Captain: “I was living like Scarface.”

Mint Press is doing the best journalism around lately.

“I Was Living Like Scarface”: The Ludicrous Costs of the War in Afghanistan Revealed in New Documents, Testimonies

I had $50 million in cash. The most I ever had at one point was $24 million on hand, in $100 bills, sitting in safes in my bedroom. And there was hardly any oversight whatsoever. Once we signed that money out of the vault in Baghdad, it was up to me how to document that money was spent and where the money went…I had no requirement. Literally. I am not joking. No guidance and no requirement to provide documentation about where that money went.”

The Great Game of Smashing Countries

Back in the 1970s:

Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

John Pilger: Afghanistan, The Great Game of Smashing Countries

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honour the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”

The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a programme of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

Dune & the Empire

Or that the imperial bad guys in the film, complete with their noble houses, obscene material wealth and military might, are symbolic of their own governments, corporate powers and armed forces?

The Myth of Empire and the Real Message of Dune

When Westerners (see: Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Brits, Australians) see Dune this fall, I wonder if any of them will have any idea that Arrakis is a perfect symbol for Afghanistan (or even Iraq, or Bolivia, etc.). Or that the much coveted and fought over “spice” is code for opium (or oil, or lithium, or whatever the Empire and its imperial houses demand or wish to control).

The Obscenity of the Afghan War