The Post-Partisan Emporium

Omar Khan  COVID Bosh: The Illicit and the Desperate The lies are growing more desperate. Now more than ever, we have to cleave to what we can best discern and know to most likely, rationally, be the case. Questions I’ve been asked, answers I’ve sought to offer. How ‘remarkable’ truly is the COVID-19 narrative? Governments deceiving their people with half-truths and distortions is par for the course. Those WMDs still beckon from their illusory lair. The devastating cost, futility and denouement of Afghanistan shrieks at us. But war and peace are woven in the fabric of our national narratives. The “announcement” of a rare pathogen requiring the suspension of life as we know it, on no real data, and the stern, almost reflexive, stifling of any recommendations that seek to educate us away from raw panic, are a curious brew. What is remarkable is not so much the deception, but that far from the inculcated “majesty” of war and peace, and all the iconic stirrings of national identity, w...

Meditation and the Art of War The Education Wars Part II Mathew Crawford “ I never let schooling interfere with my education .” Mark Twain If you've never read Sun Tzu's  The Art of War , you've surely seen it quoted. Maybe you've seen it on a shelf at the bookstore. Why have generals like Douglas MacArthur and Colin Powell, not to mention intelligence officials and business moguls, consistently praise the 2,500 Chinese relic in modern times? Was that novel-sized book really written 2,500 years ago? Those who have read the "book" already know the joke:  The Art of War  spans 13 short "chapters". And they're not really chapters: these were scrolls set up in a tent where a Chinese military general went to meditate on cultivated and curated. The books you see in stores are largely filled with one or another historian's perspective on the ancient texts. Mikhail (Vokabre) Shcherbakov from Moscow, Russia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Without...

The number of children on antidepressants has soared. Is it a real crisis or one invented by psychiatrists seeking new patients? Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Author of How Fear Works : The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter  @Furedibyte 6 Sep, 2021 13:12 Get short URL © Getty Images / BrianAJackson 84 Follow RT on The medicalisation of childhood is one of the most depressing features of Anglo-American child rearing. Year by year, it’s getting worse. The problem of mental health is fast becoming synonymous with childhood. Unfortunately, the medical establishment is more than happy to solve the problems of children by shoving drugs down their throats. This alarming trend was highlighted by new NHS figures published at the end of last month that showed that...