* Liberals temperamentally disinclined to distinguish social conservativism from creeping fascism will welcome the end of Viktor Orbán’s sixteen years as Hungary’s prime minister. So too will those who fondly believe the EU a benign and democratic entity. Me, I side … Read More »
With so much going down in and around the Persian Gulf, few of us noticed, let alone paused to make sense of, Israel’s airstrikes last month on the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali: eight hundred miles north of the Hormuz … Read More »
In the Guardian two days ago, Peter Beaumont asked why Israel is raining terror on Lebanon. What was the point of Israel’s surprise mass strikes on Lebanon that killed more than 300 people and drew widespread international condemnation? Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other … Read More »
Two nights at the in-laws’ beautiful house in Keswick saw me on Derwentwater’s shores on a wet Good Friday. Here’s me looking southward across the bay beyond Friar’s Crag … … southwest from the same spot, into a Borrowdale I … Read More »
Hind Rajab was a five year old Palestinian whose last days and hours were spent trapped with her murdered family in a car under Israeli fire as, acting on IDF evacuation orders, they tried to flee their home in Gaza’s … Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »