Seen just now on FB. Thank you Allan Edward Tierney for skewering the dangerous, barely conscious default assumption – nourished by Western education, news media, entertainment industries and other forms of drip-fed opinion manufacture – that “we” are the good guys. … Read More »
CV-19 as fictitious is not the only conspiracy theory in town. Just yesterday a fellow dog walker, a likeable bloke and seemingly sane, gave his view of the corona virus as unleashed by China. The “communists”, he told me, are … Read More »
I’ve just read two posts on the Information Clearing House website. Both bear yesterday’s date and combine (as does ICH) a capacity for accuracy and insight with flawed understanding. One, on deepening inequality in the USA, I hope to address … Read More »
In comments exchanged below my recent Buddhas of Wall Street & Pentagon post, the issue of ‘shorting’ or ‘short selling’ came up. Its tangentiality notwithstanding, I linked to a capitalist-friendly explanation, prompting fellow Sheffielder and rambling partner Dave Hansell to … Read More »
Hard as I try to vary my sources for masthead quotes – from Vladimir Putin to Leonard Cohen, Lenin to Steve Coogan – blogger Caitlin Johnstone remains overrepresented. She is so damn quotable on top topics of the day. Here … Read More »
I began political blogging ten years ago, with increased intensity in the past five or six. On a few issues – Russia, the 2016 US Election, Brexit, Syria, Venezuela – my positions, and reactions to them, have threatened or actually … Read More »
What would you do if stuck in a lift with John Pilger? Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in a new book reviewed here by Media Lens, quotes with approval a fellow journalist saying he’d stick pins in his eyes to … Read More »
An exchange below one of my pieces in OffGuardian a few months ago had me ‘othered’ by a posse of commentariat for “approvingly” quoting writers this armchair clan frowns upon. How did I recognise my BTL detractors as an armchair … Read More »
The above job listing appeared yesterday on the twitter feed of the New York Times. Today, Caitlin Johnstone writes: People only just beginning to research what’s wrong with the world often assume news reporters are knowingly propagandizing all the time. … Read More »
The real difference between Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand and love them rejoice that Byron died at thirty-six, because had he lived he’d have become a reactionary bourgeois; they grieve that Shelley died at twenty-nine, because he … Read More »