Before I get to Owen’s magisterial twenty-five minute take, let me summarise the five point response I gave yesterday, just minutes after learning of the Hanukkah murders. One, it’s a terrorist atrocity. Two, so is the Gaza genocide whose daily … Read More »
Guardian, December 14 2025 * I only learned of this minutes ago. Initial thoughts: It’s a terrorist atrocity. So, on a vastly more industrial scale, is the Gaza genocide whose daily war crimes must massively exceed a dozen slain to … Read More »
Those who wrote trade deals to profit from underemployment of U.S. workers and sweatshop labor overseas are omnipotent. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries that run healthcare for profit are omnipotent. The intelligence agencies that spy on the public are omnipotent. … Read More »
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 »