Extremism: Israel, Zionism and the rhetoric of nuclear weapons proliferation.

By Terence Bunch, 12th April 2012.

Over the course of the past year, Israel and Iran have supposedly engaged in a bout of rhetorical brinkmanship involving the further nuclear development on-going in Iran. Iran has stated that its nuclear program is of a peaceful nature and is confined to the pursuit of nuclear energy and medicine. Israel has claimed that Iran is attempting to weaponise this program in order to threaten its existence. During this period, media throughout the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the European Union have disseminated Israel’s 'fears' in wide format. On July 1st 2012, the European Union will halt all existing and new petroleum and petroleum products contracts to Iran in an attempt, it is claimed, to retard Iran’s development of nuclear material in weaponised form as it appears from the Israeli ideological quarter. To date, Israel has provided no evidence of any such attempt at w...more

Extremism, ethnic cleansing and nationalist rhetoric in Sri Lanka.

By Terence Bunch, 5th April 2012.

Rhetoric₁ derives from a long standing enquiry into the power of oral persuasion. It is linked to the combined use of language, symbology, mutually derived identity and relations between peoples and nations. Rhetoric when used by a skilled orator can be used in service to persuasion of a given argument, to elucidate a given or perceived truth, or can be used to obscure or obfuscate an argument or the truth. In any given environment, either political or cultural, rhetoric can be used to steer public opinion toward, or away from, a particular subject of enquiry. Rhetoric has been classified as particular to oral persuasion in the field of politics, but has also been cited as havi...more

Globalisation and the Business of World Television News.

By Terence Bunch, 14th January 2012.

Television news reporting in the modern era of Globalisation has gone on in tandem with major and serious structural political engineering of international relations between nations. Over the past 30 year period of Globalisation, television news broadcasting has led the way in international opinion forming. At present, there are a whole welter of large-scale media corporations disseminating information to an international audience over a 24 hour news cycle across time zones throughout most of the developed world. For many, internationalised business logic has come to the forefront as enabler of this information dissemination in service to the principle of Globalisation around the world. <...more