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The Beatles in 1962 after signing with Parlophone

Mike's Pith & Wind - Capitalism
I’ve been banging on about this for years now. I’ve never been able to work out why we’re not educated about the ins and outs of Capitalism when we’re at school. I’m not so much talking about the history of Capitalism as the practical application.
Mind you, it may well be taught in schools these days. I’ve been out of the educational loop for more than fifty years now but the circle of teachers past and present I find myself associating with don’t seem to know whether it is or isn’t. Either that or they simply don’t understand what I’m getting my knickers in a twist about.
By contrast, if you lived in Cuba or North Korea, you’d not only get a solid grounding on the history and philosophy behind their particular take on Communism and, incidentally, a withering critique of Capitalism, you’d presumably also find out what Communism means in practical terms for you as a citizen in the outside world, by which I mean the world outside the school walls, of course, not the world outside their national borders.
We in the West certainly get informed about the history and virtues of Democracy with a capital D, but there’s an evident coyness about revealing the philosophy behind the economic driver of the democratic world, i.e. Capitalism. I reckon it’s because there’s no satisfactory way to dress up the horrible truth.
It’s a bit like when Spectrum was invited by the Meatworkers Union (AMIEU) in 1970 to play a gig in at the Flemington abattoirs, which have since.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Dear Rupert
Denis Potter, the British playwright who died in June 1994, named his soon to be fatal pancreatic cancer "Rupert", after Rupert Murdoch, who he said represented all that he found despicable about the mass media in Britain. In fact, he said a lot more that was quite as true and prescient then and as it is now.
We often forget the scale of what Rupert has wrought. His newspaper resources remain staggeringly large: in Britain he still controls ‘The Times’, ‘The Sunday Times’ and ‘The Sun’. In Australia he runs ‘The Australian’, and daily and weekend papers such as the ‘Herald-Sun’ and ‘The Daily Telegraph’ in each major city. He controls around one hundred and fifty regional, rural and community suburban newspapers as well as twenty-nine magazines as diverse as ‘Vogue Australia’ and ‘Tattoo’. In the United States, apart.. read more