… few doubt that the middle east is in the grip of epoch shaping convulsions. Nothing speaks more eloquently to this truth than the astonishing territorial gains of Yemen’s de facto government, Ansar Allah, and their attendant threat to a … Read More »
After a brief trial last year, soon abandoned, I still can’t quite bring myself to ditch the colonial eurocentric term, Middle East, in favour of the politically correct but geographically inaccurate West Asia. It’s not just that key countries in … Read More »
Even some corporate media have turned on Ed Sheeran over his hand-wringing cowardice in dropping Macklemore. “Ed Sheeran’s blandness has finally come back to bite him“, writes Emily Bootle in the i-Paper. Not to be outdone, the Guardian’s deputy music editor … Read More »
Britain’s rightwing Daily Mail, September 3 2026 Let’s leave aside the vanishingly small prospect of Kemi Badenoch or other Conservative leader forming a future UK government. The real venom in this story from the agenda-setting Mail lies in its opening … Read More »
Lucidly comprehensive even by Brian Berletic standards, this podcast yesterday assesses the state of play in the US ruling class’s war on multipolarism. As usual, he refuses to indulge the wishful thinking of many who desire an end to the … Read More »
If I had a God I’d pray to him or her or it for fortitude and the strength to transcend fatigue, obtuseness and pettiness. For all the tens of thousands of hours spent over thirty years of meditation, I still … Read More »
In yesterday’s post – On global warming and AI for profit – I cited a meme often attributed to Slavoj Žižek; viz, that it’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism. Below the line … Read More »
Life and death go on of course, my post yesterday notwithstanding. I’ll be posting less, I guess, and leveraging time and effort by recycling third party output I deem worth airing. Steel city post, August 4 Those who wrote trade deals to profit … Read More »
Bloomberg, August 12 At the dawn of steel city scribblings in late 2015, when I still worried about alienating my liberal peers, I rationed my use of the term, ruling class. I knew it put people off. As a workaround … Read More »
Power still depends on the ability to impose costs. But the more important measure may increasingly be the ability to absorb them. * While most media focus, including this site’s, has been on Washington’s criminal war on Iran, the proxy war … Read More »