The needless darkness of this world can get to the best of us – even Jonathan Cook, a writer I hold in the highest esteem and who has always eschewed showy prose in favour of quiet but forceful reason. I … Read More »
Guardian, December 11, 2025 * Sometimes linguistic nuances matter. (Ask the ghost of Derek Bentley.) What did the Guardian mean by London venue ‘appalled’ after antisemitic imagery allegedly screened at Primal Scream gig ? That the image is unquestionably antisemitic … Read More »
Another AI generated synthesis – I shudder at the implications – in this return, in the context of US thuggery in the Caribbean, to Yanis Varoufakis. This crisp and powerful analysis of the stakes and implications, delivered in a shade … Read More »
Guardian, December 11 2025 Hear John Mearsheimer’s ten minute response to the news of yesterday’s seizure. It’s repetitive, which is not the professor’s style, while occasional strange pauses suggest an AI stitch together. Worth watching all the same, but you … Read More »
My flawed but brilliant teacher, a recently deceased Andrew Cohen, spoke endlessly on ego, not in its Freudian sense of self-organising principle but in its everyday sense of arrogant self importance, as the obstacle to ‘enlightenment’. Ego in that sense, … Read More »
China decisively played the rare-earth card. America is too dependent, too vulnerable. Ultimately, it had to compromise. But this raises the deeper question: why did the U.S. walk willingly into a self-made trap? The answer lies in its deep-rooted addiction … Read More »
Could not the key be that mysterious human attribute – love – that like despair cannot be measured, that finds in every other living creature a part of oneself, just the inkling in our hearts that everyone is us and … Read More »
My December 5 post – Venezuela: follow through or dial down – weighed competing factors before concluding that America’s ugly show of force in the Caribbean will likely end in a climb-down testing to the limit its narrative managers’ ability … Read More »
In comes Romeo, he’s moaning “You belong to me, I believe” And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place, my friend You’d better leave” In classrooms, workplaces and cults of marx-leninist or ‘spiritual’ stripe, I’ve spent my whole life feeling … Read More »
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same … This ‘semi sabbatical’ I keep … Read More »