What’s New February 2008

This page lists changes to this site for February 2008.

See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

Updated figures reported by UNICEF showed that approximately 9.7 million children under the age of 5 died around the world. That is the equivalent to some 26,500 children dying a day, or 1 child dying approximately every 3 seconds. The causes are often poverty, hunger and preventable diseases. While the number of under 5 children dying each year is declining, the pace of decline seems slow year after year. Since 1960, such deaths have fallen from 20 million to 9.7 million in 2006 and given the population has doubled in that time, the achievements could also be considered positively. However, UNICEF is concerned that progress has not been evenly distributed, with many countries not making much progress.

Many well-known films have had the advice of the military, even having parts of their script influenced by them. This benefits both the film producers (e.g. access to military bases or aircraft carriers and more authenticity) and the military (e.g. a chance to portray a more preferable image). Audiences are used to seeing films being promoted with merchandising such as toys, off screen, but on-screen a lot of programming contains a combination of product placement and military involvement. The media and advertising section has been updated with some additional information on these issues and their implications.

I have long had a reading list on this site of books I have read and books that are in my (growing!) queue. For a while I have been thinking about linking to a site such as Amazon so people can find out more about these books. I have finally done that, but also used Amazon’s associate/affiliate program so if anyone purchases a book via those links a small referral fee is earned that helps this site. So, if you have found the site useful and want to help out, consider purchasing book(s) via the reading list page. I hope that will be useful for you as well as me!

A new book is to be published mid-February, 2008, titled American Wars: Illusions and Realities (Clarity Press, February 2008). I was asked to contribute a chapter, and wrote the chapter titled, Illusion 5: The mainstream media gives us balanced reporting. I will shortly post some further information about this, but for the moment, please visit the link below (I also wrote another book a year ago, and will mention that shortly, too).

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