Author Archives: steel city scribe
Brian Berletic: “this ‘ceasefire’ is a trap”
Guardian, April 8 2026 * So, Persian civilisation won’t be ending quite yet. I’m featuring four reactions – with a fifth likely later today – to this morning’s news. Having had no time to gather my own thoughts, I add … Read More »
Brilliant rescue – or failed uranium grab?
Easter Monday. By now you, me and the cat next door have heard what POTUS No. 47 saw fit to post yesterday on his laughably named Truth Social. For her part former Trumpian stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene – “Christian, Mother, … Read More »
Insider dealing: how could it not happen?
Financial Times, March 30 2026 Before I get to this story, a few remarks. The US is not a democracy in any meaningful sense, but a corporate oligarchy posing with diminishing plausibility as one. Said Chris Hedges in 2022: US … Read More »
Varoufakis on form over Iran fallout
Today’s post picks up where yesterday’s left off. Not because it too features Owen Jones, in this case as host with the confidence and discipline to let his guest do the talking, but because it too takes as starting point … Read More »
Iran: global impact will be devastating
I last put Owen Jones and Iran in the same sentence in a post – CIA/Mossad fingerprints are all over this! – of January 18. At the time I was less than pleased with the man, accusing him of “bothsidesism”, … Read More »
Israel & USA – does the tail wag the dog?
Today a Caitlin Johnstone post – The More Murderous Israel Gets, The More We Hear about “AntiSemitism” – reminded me of a promise several posts back in the context of the criminal war on Iran. In closing Why are America’s … Read More »
Hezbollah v army of rapists
Elsewhere Norman Finkelstein, who lost most of his family on both sides in the Nazi Holocaust – and wrote of Zionism’s shameless exploitation of the same – diagnoses a case of Judeo dementia. Last one. There’s an old saying, literally … Read More »
Woodland stroll to Grindleford Station
Looking north to Higger Tor, and behind it Stanage Edge, but we turn left to drop down Padley Gorge I deal so much with the world’s ugliness that reconnection with life’s ineffable beauty is not an option. It’s an imperative. … Read More »
From my anti-imperial scrap book
Over time I tend to accrue miscellaneous half-writes: drafts awaiting a suitable moment, works in progress eclipsed by more urgent matters, else forays I abandon as not taking me any place I want to go. Often they wind up in … Read More »