‘Post-truth’: a myth created by journalists?

Post-truth: how bullshit conquered the world by James Ball Post-truth: the new war on truth and how to fight back by Matthew d’Ancona John Lloyd has already reviewed these two books better than I could have done. I share his view that the existential threat of ‘fake news’ is sometimes exaggerated and that we’ve been in informational crises before. If Hillary Clinton had won the electoral college and if one in twenty Leave voters had stayed at home, then I wonder if these books would have been published. This is essentially a liberal moral panic. But as Rahm Emanuel said, ‘never let a serious crisis go to waste”

Necroeconomics: How Necro Legacies Help Us Understand the Value of Death and the Protection of Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The paper offers an analysis of how three historical legacies shaped the context for responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in England. They are firstly, necrospeculation, the ability to turn destructiveness into profit and produce new capitalist value. The second is the legacy of thanatocracy, the enactment of mass and organised killing as an official policy of the state. The third necro legacy, social reproduction, is not just about violent death and accumulation, but also the state’s divestment of responsibility to women for the protection of life itself. What these violent legacies have in common as they entwine throughout history is the continuing relationship between property, accumulation, and disposable peoples, showing how economic and moral value is both captured and erased through abstract classifications of class, race, and gender. Bringing these legacies on a journey, we will see how they are modified and repeated in the present. Death during COVID-19 was used as an opportunity for speculation, consolidation of political power, and manipulation of the economy in the interests of the super-rich, government ministers, their friends, and the virus. True to neo-liberal philosophy, they "never let a serious crisis go to waste." Their predatory practices led to many people being callously disregarded, neglected, and unprotected, exposing those considered to be surplus to state and capital requirements. The pandemic revealed that the social contract was broken as the matter of state responsibility for protection of the people was transferred by the government to individuals. The paper will also show how some groups attempted to protect others and save lives

Images of the 60s in the 80s: memories of social unrest in US tv series

In the 1960s American society was shaken to its foundations. This paper examines the representations of this decade two decades later, exploring the conflicting images of the sixties surfacing in various genre of the tv drama of the eighties. It queries how far any of them embody a genuine coming to terms with the times

A violence which must be named (Critique in times of coronavirus)

Across the UK two narratives currently dominate and frame much of the critique of the British government’s current response to the Coronavirus pandemic

Krishnamurti explained: a critical study

The acclaim accorded Jiddu ‘Krishnamurti’ (1895-1986) – as an apparently major figure in our modern understanding of all things spiritual – shows just how shallow western popular culture is when it tries to extend its reach beyond science, materialism and celebrity. Krishnamurti liked to portray himself as a wholly independent thinker, and as someone who encouraged similar independence of thought in others, yet he milked the role of an oriental guru tirelessly, discoursing from on high in an autocratic and commanding manner. At best his vast body of transcribed teachings is diverting nonsense; at worst he’s wasting our time. keywords: criticism critical analysis critique Jiddu Krishnamurti assessment evaluation appraisa