As “chief of base” of a CIA Black Site in Thailand, Haspel oversaw the torture and waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, who still hasn’t been charged with a crime.
Subjects Archives: Media
Media, Communications, and Literature
Willetts the conqueror (part 3): human capital
The following post is the third instalment of the multi-part review of David Willetts’ ‘A University Life’, you can find here the Introduction; Part 1 and Part 2. Parts 3 and 4 take a slightly different approach, diving deeper into the fundamental principles of marketisation, which centre on the conversion of qualitative experience and practice […]
Notes from the future
What’s happening in Cape Town now might soon happen to many places in the world. To prevent socio-ecological crises like this we need to manage our resources more rationally and collectively.
A Review of The Young Karl Marx
The success of The Young Karl Marx derives from Peck’s ability to demonstrate the relevance of Marx for the present.
2008 financial collapse all over again…? We need to understand the student loan speculation bubble
For those who may have missed it, a major economic indicator emerged regarding student loan debt last week. Excessive debt, like student loans, has become one of the biggest barriers to current economic growth in the United States. On Thursday, March 1, 2018, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, appeared before U.S. Congressional […]
Willetts the conqueror (part 2): creative destruction
Welcome to Pt. 2 of the multi-part critical Review of David Willetts’ ‘A University Education’. This part of the Review focuses on Willetts’ plans for so-called ‘alternative providers’ – a euphemistic term which should be read as synonymous with for-profit colleges and universities – and his reflections on wanting to see a British higher education […]
The New York Times’ uncanny comparison of Leopoldo Lopez with Martin Luther King
Journalistic standards simply don’t apply when it comes to the NYT’s coverage of Venezuela’s radical right-wing opposition, argues University of Oriente Professor Steve Ellner.
Willetts the conqueror: introduction
Before Jo Johnson and Sam Gyimah, there was David Willetts. As the Minister of State for Universities and Science from 2010 until 2014, under the Tory-led ‘coalition’ government, Willetts oversaw the introduction of a market into the English higher education system – often referred to as ‘marketisation’.
The case for free public transport
Transport has undergone enormous changes in recent decades, both in Scotland and across the world. Some have been cyclical: in Scotland’s capital, trams were built, dismantled, and then reintroduced. In other areas, we have seen consistent trends like the steady deregulation and privatization of services, which has left Edinburgh as the sole city in Scotland […]
The lesson from West Virginia teachers? If you want to win, go on strike
For many years now, observers have been ringing the death knell for the U.S. labor movement. West Virginia teachers haven’t just pumped life back into that movement—they’ve reaffirmed the fundamental principle that the key to building power and winning is for workers to withhold their labor.
The world market, ‘North-South’ relations, and neoliberalism
This article argues that Marx, too, knew more about the future than his present. Indeed, far from being merely a theorist of mid- to late-19th century capitalism, he elaborated the basic mechanisms, tendencies, counter-tendencies, contradictions, and social antagonisms that still shape capital accumulation and bourgeois societalization at the start of the 21st century.
Fake news by design
In the last decades, Western mainstream media have produced biased news and facilitated a selective discourse of shaming accompanied by devastating military interventions.
The poison and the tomb
It takes three days on the open sea to journey from the Marshall Islands capital to Enewetak Atoll. You can’t see the atoll until you’re just miles away as it’s only feet above sea level. As you get closer, the sun fades behind clouds and the islands are shrouded in mist. Beaches are fringed not by […]
Race traitors wanted: apply within
The term “white working class” captured much of the media analysis which sought to explain Trump’s meteoric rise and subsequent victory to the highest office in the United States. The obsession with polling and voting trends based in demographics is certainly nothing new.
Where does women’s oppression come from?
The liberation of women must be at the heart of the struggle for socialism, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
The media’s fake news about Latin America
TIM YOUNG demonstrates how Western coverage of South America is heavily biased against the continent’s progressive leaders, movements and governments.
Too hot to handle: Facebook mistakes Willendorf Virgin for porn
“An archaeological object, especially iconic, should not be banned from Facebook,” the Museum of Natural History in Vienna said.
A plea for Ahed Tamimi’s protection
The Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick of Che Guevara black and red portrait fame has done it again: He has painted a minimalist poster of another iconic leader of her people and of a worldwide liberation movement, this time of an oppressed child who had slapped power with her bare truth. When I read his rationale […]
The fight over free speech on campus
On university campuses around the world, “free speech” is becoming the favourite slogan of the right, sure to be raised during campus political controversies.
Google’s stranglehold on information
Last September, Verge writer Cat Ferguson uncovered that Google had unwittingly allowed shady generators to manipulate its AdWords system.
