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Reflections on a Neoliberal Ne’er-do-well’s Road to Redemption
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates ‘In the bad old days when I was embroiled in the business of churning out MBAs from capitalist ‘sausage’ factories masquerading as places of ‘higher education’ (business schools that were “the engine rooms of neoliberal indoctrination and elite formation” – Blunt, 2023), among many other harmful […]
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The Public Life of Noam Chomsky

A man of stupendous brilliance.” — Norman Finkelstein “A gargantuan influence.” — Chris Hedges “ … brilliant … unswerving … relentless … heroic.” — Arundhati Roy “Preposterously thorough.” — Edward Said “[A] fierce talent.” — Eduardo Galeano “An intellectual cannon.” — Israel Shamir “A lighthouse over a sea of hogwash.” — Kathleen Cleaver He had […]
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Why the News Media’s Job is to Groom Us

When all we have to rely on in understanding our relationship to the news media is the media’s self-proclaimed assessment of its own role, maybe it is no surprise that most of us assume the West’s “free press” is a force for good: the bedrock of democracy, the touchstone of a superior western civilisation. The […]
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Did The West Provoke The Ukraine War? Sorry, That Question Has Been Cancelled

Is it possible for an entire ‘mainstream’ media system – every newspaper, website, TV channel – to completely suppress one side of a crucial argument without anyone expressing outrage, or even noticing? Consider the following. In February 2022, Nigel Farage, former and future leader of the Reform UK party, tweeted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine […]
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Gaza: A Brutal Demonstration Of “Western Values”

I find Westerners in general, and Europeans in particular, extremely indoctrinated and obsessed with perceptions of their own uniqueness. Many see themselves as chosen people, after going through a one-sided education and after relying on their media outlets, without studying alternative sources. — André Vltchek, Soviet-born US political writer, 1963-2020. On 20 March 2006, on […]
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John Pilger: “A Majority of One”

Last week, the Observer reported that the slogan ‘united we will win’ is a fixture on Israeli screens ‘for most TV news and talk shows’. Raviv Drucker, one of Israel’s leading investigative journalists, commented: In general, the Israeli media is drafted to the main goal of winning the war, or what looks like trying to […]
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The Priesthood of Expertise

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, 1935 In The Death of Expertise, national security expert Tom Nichols warns that knowledge is under attack by an ill-informed public determined to replace […]
