At the end of the Second World War a new era of globalization of capital and production began that continues on today and is enforced through manifold free trade agreements. Another turning point was 9/11. Since then, an increased military presence and an expanding security apparatus is leading to more surveillance and violence in the name of national security.
In addition, the disparity between rich and poor is growing ever larger and global society is experiencing the increasing regression of stability and civil rights. The current wars in the Middle East, the possible ignition of a new Cold War, terrorism and surveillance, financial crises, poverty as well as the flight of refugees or environmental catastrophe are all unfortunate and disastrous signs of our time.
Are these events interconnected? Can we see a pattern? Are they taken out of context or completely ignored? We will speak with international experts about supposed structures and connections to find out if and how we can make a change for the better of all. LIVE IN MUNICH. On the 15th of JANUARY, 2017.
THIS EVENT WILL BE BROADCASTED VIA INTERNET LIVE STREAM. THE LINK WILL BE AVAILABLE ON ACTVISM’S WEBSITE, YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND FACEBOOK PAGE ON THE EVENT DAY.
Our Topics:
- Privacy, civil rights and mass surveillance
- Western foreign policy and Germany’s role
- US foreign policy and the military industrial complex
- Freedom and democracy in the current economic system
- Function and role of independent and mainstream media
- Development, possibilities and urgency of political activism and grassroots movements
EDWARD SNOWDEN
Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed that the NSA was seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the most significant reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. He has received awards for courage, integrity, and public service, and was named the top global thinker of 2013 by Foreign Policy magazine. Today, he works on methods of enforcing human rights through the application and development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation in February 2014.
Snowden will talk about privacy, civil rights and the surveillance state.
JÜRGEN TODENHÖFER
Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German publicist, doctor of law, former media manager and politician. He first entered German parliament for the CDU (Christian Social Democrats) in 1972, visited dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile in order to secure the release of political prisoners there, pushed for a reduction in US and Russian ICBM’s (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and supported the politics of German reunification. Todenhöfer was the first CDU politician to make public his entire income and was working as the head of Hubert Burda Media. In 1990 he retired from politics and public life and only resurfaced after the terror attacks of 9/11. Since then he has openly criticized the American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in many books. He has traveled to war zones, the countries of the “Arab Spring” and the so-called “Islamic State”, has interviewed Baschar al-Assad and the Ayatollahs of Iran, and was present in Gaza during the Israeli assault known as “Operation Protective Edge”.
Todenhöfer published numerous best-selling books. His books center around his conviction that peace should be achieved through negotiations only. In 2003 he wrote “Who cries for Abdul and Tanaya?”, decribing the war-stricken lives of a young Afghan boy and a young Iraqi girl. He wrote “Andy and Marwa” in 2005 wherein he describes the fate of the American Andy and the Iraqi girl Marwa during the Iraq war. It was followed in 2008 by the bestseller “Why do you kill, Zaid ?” which was followed most recently in 2013 by his last book “Thou shalt not kill”.
Jürgen Todenhöfer will address questions regarding Western foreign policy and Germany’s role.
JEREMY SCAHILL
Jeremy Scahill is one of the three founding editors of The Intercept. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!.
Scahill’s work has sparked several congressional investigations and won some of journalism’s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for Blackwater. Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film Dirty Wars, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Jeremy Scahill will address questions regarding US foreign policy and the military industrial complex.
RICHARD D. WOLFF
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, and the University of Paris I (Sorbonne). He is a co-founder and contributor of Democracy at Work, a non-profit organization that promotes democratic workplaces as a key part of a transition to a better economic system.
Wolff has published many books and articles, both scholarly and popular. Most recently, in 2012, he published the books Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Haymarket Books) and Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press). He writes regularly for Truthout.org. He has been interviewed on The Charlie Rose Show, Up with Chris Hayes, Real Time with Bill Maher, Democracy Now!, Al-Jazeera English, Thom Hartmann, NPR, Alternative Radio, and many other radio and TV programs in the United States and abroad. The New York Times Magazine has named him “America’s most prominent Marxist economist.
Wolff will talk about freedom and democracy in the political economy.
PAUL JAY
Paul Jay is the CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network (TRNN). He leads a staff of forty people covering international and U.S. news, including the new Baltimore Bureau. TRNN began in Toronto in 2007 and is now based in Baltimore, MD. TRNN is a non-profit, viewer-supported daily video-news and documentary service. It doesn’t accept advertising, government or corporate funding. Instead, it’s sustained by viewer donations and earned revenue.
Paul is host of the Real News show Reality Asserts Itself which features in-depth biographical and political interviews with some of the leading minds of our time. He is now heading up an initiative to create a Global Climate Bureau that will produce daily news about the urgency of, and solutions to, the climate change crisis. He is Executive Producer of the new documentary film “The Doubt Machine: the Koch Brothers war on climate science” narrated by Emma Thompson. Jay is also an award-winning filmmaker and was founding chair of Hot Doc! International Documentary Film Festival and executive producer for ten years of the CBC daily current affairs show counterSpin.
Paul Jay will address questions concerning independent and mainstream media and the role they play in our society.
SRECKO HORVAT
Srećko Horvat, philosopher and activist, born in Yugoslavia (1983), without permanent address. He published more than 10 books translated into more than 15 languages, most recently: “What Does Europe Want?” (together with Slavoj Žižek, Columbia University Press, 2014), “Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism” (Verso, 2015) and “The Radicality of Love” (Polity Press, 2015). He regularly publishes articles in the Guardian, New York Times and Al Jazeera.
He was one of the founders of the Subversive Festival and has participated in many movements, from occupations to the World Social Forum. Together with Greece’s ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis he founded Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25): www.diem25.org
Srećko Horvat will talk about the role of political activism and grassroots movements.
ZAIN RAZA
Zain Raza is the founder and senior editor of acTVism Munich. He is a journalist, activist and cultural promoter in Munich. As an activist he co-organized a number of demonstrations in Munich which included “March Against Monstanto”, and as a cultural promoter he brought hundreds of people together with his event “Pakistani on the Menu” that presented food, arts and music from many different cultures.
As a writer and journalist, Raza’s research on political and economic issues was featured on the Tribune Express which he left in 2013 to found acTVism Munich.
Since acTVim Munich’s founding Raza has directly overseen and directed the production of over 100 videos that include interviews and events with experts such as Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Yanis Varoufakis, Hans-Christian Ströbele, Katja Kipping, Abby Martin, Sarah Harrison, Annie Machon, Ray McGovern, William Binney, Thomas Drake and many others. To find out more about Zain’s background, click here.
INFOS TO THE EVENT:
- DATE: 15th January, 2017.
- LOCATION: Muffatwerk, Zellstraße 4, 81667 Munich
- TICKETS: SOLD OUT
- LANGUAGE: English
- PUBLISHING: Internet Live Stream, video release on YouTube in German and Englsih and audio broadcasting via Radio München and Radio Lora
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1175890255800670/
For more information, please visit:
acTVism: http://www.actvism.org/en/
Muffathalle: http://www.muffatwerk.de/
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