Wide-ranging talks on all things relating to spirituality, meditation, yoga, current affairs, politics and philosophy. contact me via info AT peteyates.uk.
In this podcast we ask what happens when the MSM turns on the government, as it appears to be so doing at the moment as the UK government mismanages the COVID19 pandemic. Is the essentially propaganda function of the press changed by this development? We analyse the way in which it isn't. [Free. 25 minutes.]
In this podcast, we examine the role played by main stream media in the power dynamics of the global economic system. We focus on the BBC and Channel 4 UK news outlets and their reportage of the COVID19 pandemic which is somewhat critical of the UK government. The contrast between this critical reportage and the unrelenting and untruthful hostility to Labour in the run up to the 2019 election indicates, we argue, that Chomsky's characterisation of MSM as 'controlled opposition' is cogent. [We call it 'managed opposition'.] [Free. 22 minutes.]
In this podcast we identify four types of trauma that the global CORVID19 pandemic is inflicting on individuals and societies. They are to do with isolation and restriction due to lock-down, fear, anxiety and panic, increased awareness of death, and political / economic disillusionment. In the second half we attempt to discern how these traumas will continue to act in the future when the pandemic has subsided. [Free. 38 minutes.]
In this short podcast, we revisit the theme of naturally occurring communism, this time as it appears as a response to the COV19 pandemic and comes to be more widely valued. We consider whether it can further develop when the pandemic finally subsides and conclude that it might, but it will have to fought for. [Free. 14 minutes.]
In this short podcast, I examine the role of the UK's 'key workers' in the midst of the current global COVID19 pandemic. With a few examples I show how the nature of these workers is brought out of ideologically produced obscurity into the light by the crisis. Often low-status, poorly paid, and traduced and poorly treated by the conservative government, these workers, I argue, are both more necessary and more public spirited than, say, hedge-fund managers. [Free. 9 minutes.]
In this podcast I sketch out the features of the COVID-19 pandemic as it stands at the time of recording [15/3/20] before considering its political aspects. I argue that one feature of the catastrophe is that it is a black swan event further destabilising already unstable global capitalism. The inability of markets, neo-liberal ideologies and corporate profit fetishism to address the consequent, dire public health and economic crises is exposed very vividly, I claim. I then describe how the right will inevitably attempt to weaponise the resulting chaos, placing the human enterprise itself in jeopardy and how the broadly progressive wing of humanity must seize the initiative, both in terms of mutual aid organisation and on the ideological plane. Claiming the pandemic should not be politicised plays right into the hands of the malignant right. [Free. 24 minutes.]
This podcast is structured around a review of Peter Phillips' book, Giants: The Global Power Elite. I elucidate and assess the main points of the book, [1] that seventeen globally active asset management corporations each administer over $1 trillion, together totalling $41.1 trillion, [2] that these corporations are managed by 199 directors who Phillips gives brief biographies of; [3] that there are deep connections between these personnel and the three main propaganda and public relations global conglomerates, various 'think tanks' and policy bodies, and governments. I further relate this connectivity to the role of big data as it is extracted and exploited by the tech giants Google and Facebook. I rely on Shoshana Ruboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism to make the latter connection. In the light of Phillips' and Ruboff's rigorous scholarship, I consider the vilification of the UK left by the billionaire-owned media and the prospect of a radical, progressive turn in world politics and what is needed to ensure it. [Free. 29 minutes.]
In this interview renowned Yoga Teacher Godfrey Devereux about a recent turn his work has taken. Godfrey has dropped the language surrounding contemporary Yoga to talk instead about resilience and how it is a consequence of a certain meditative self-enquiry. I ask Godfrey to elucidate this and particularly in the context of impending ecological catastrophe. I give my own take on these matters which is more inclined to speak up for activism. Listen to the following podcast, The Yogi and the Commissar, in which I explore some of the themes that emerged and in the light of Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism. [Free. 32 minutes.]
In this podcast we examine the assertion that "A vote for the Conservatives is a vote for cruelty". We proceed by way an account of the ideological underpinnings of contemporary Toryism and their 'philosophical' roots, an empirical look at exemplary and actual sufferings caused by austerity, the psychology of Tory leaders and the class they represent and the psychology of the Tory base. The latter two are exposed through the use of the concept of resentment and the truism that power is a narcotic. We conclude that cruelty and the quest for the narcotic effects of power are deeply defining of conservatism. [Free. 19 minutes.]
Another podcast in our on-going UK General Election 2019 series: in this series we investigate the argument between the Tories who claim that they have no plans to privatise the NHS and Labour who contend that the Tories are hell-bent on selling it to American corporations in a no-deal Brexit future. This is quite detailed, examining the ideology underpinning Tory-ism, recent events and the history of the NHS. We incorporate a lived-experience testimony from a friend who had a harrowing experience looking after her aged mother as she succumbed to dementia. [Free. 50 minutes.]
