“He sent what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called his “unidentified storm troopers” togged out like soldiers in a war zone onto streets filled with protesters in Portland, Oregon. Those camouflage-clad federal law enforcement agents were evidently from the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service and the Customs and Border Protection agency. Soon, hundreds of …
Not long ago we fondly believed that one thing all nations would have in common was access to the same digital technology, that is (mainly) the internet. We were wrong. Ever since Beijing began building its Great Firewall in 1996, its censored version of the web has diverged from the one used by the rest …
Why is the US corona virus situation such a disgraceful mess? All politicians in America depend on big donors for their elections. That is a given. But some governors, (mainly in the South) are more than ever in the pockets of the super-rich in a country of obscene disparities of wealth. Having donated handsomely, the …
Continue reading ‘The shame Americans should feel: corona virus and the big donations’ »
(This post is a bit longer than usual, but the injustice is so troublesome that I wanted to reproduce it; one won’t find it easily in the American media): Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) decries the Israeli government’s intended annexation of significant parts of the occupied West Bank (to start this coming Wednesday), for the …
Data on millions of US voters is being illegally traded on the dark web as the US is gearing up for the 2020 presidential election. The data could be used to attempt to influence voters. The dark web is a part of the internet not searchable using normal means. It is encrypted and visible only through …
Continue reading ‘US voting data being traded on the dark web’ »
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has confirmed that no progress has been made in the almost five months since the UK formally left the bloc. Britain has until the end of June to request an extension of the transition period, which is due to expire in six months’ time, but the Government has repeatedly …
Modern politics is impossible to understand unless one understands the so-called pollution paradox – the greater the risk to public health and wellbeing a company is the more it has to spend on politics, to ensure it isn’t regulated out of existence. The result is that politics is dominated by the most anti-social companies and …
Continue reading ‘Epicurus loathed politics then, and would do so today’ »
Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tried to plug a crucial hole in its preparations for a global pandemic, signing a $13.8 million contract with a Pennsylvania manufacturer to create a low-cost, portable, easy-to-use ventilator that could be stockpiled for emergencies. This past September, with the design of the new …
Continue reading ‘Something I don’t think we have been told about’ »
”Michael Bloomberg spent $1.2 billion on his failed presidential bid making it the most expensive in history, according to campaign finance filings. ”Bloomberg self-funded his 104-day attempt to secure the Democratic nomination, but only one primary contest: the tiny territory of American Samoa. Arguably, He entered the contest too late. He was not on the …
”Second World War commemorations were once characterised by gestures of reconciliation, but Vladimir Putin is changing that. The atmosphere ahead of May’s 75th anniversary of VE Day is becoming “poisonous”, not least where Poland is concerned. The country is generally regarded as the first victim of Nazi expansionism, but in a speech in December, Russia’s …
“It is high time our country showed contrition for its failure to protect Jews in the Second World War. “In a historic apology, Dutch. Prime Minister Mark Rutte finally acknowledged that too many Dutch officials supinely obeyed Nazi orders after their country was occupied. In total, 102,000 of the six million Jews killed in the …
Continue reading ‘The truth about Dutch resistance to the Nazis’ »
Organized crime is operating in every sector of Italy’s society (including our Italian) government, That’s the grim take-away from the most recent police report by the police anti-Mafia investigation division, the DIA. The dreaded Calabrian ’Ndrangheta has spread “everywhere” in the north and is now being emulated by other clans. A gang in the southeastern …
Authoritarian governments all over the world have latched onto a great way of stopping unwelcome criticism and subversive thought – suspending data services, phone calls, texting and participation in social media. As internet penetration has surged during the past decade, especially in the developing world, so have attempts to switch off the flow of information. …
Putin is now claiming that Poland invaded Russia at the start of the Second World War and that the Poles and Nazis amounted to the same thing! Could this just be a joke in bad taste? It is , in any case, total fake news. Stalin signed the Stalin Ribbentrop pact expecting to acquire a …
For years people have been complaining about Cyprus’s “golden passport” scheme. Launched in 2013, it offers citizenship to anyone investing €2m in Cypriot property, giving 4,000 members of the global mega-rich residency, voting rights and a back door into Europe. Earlier this year, President Nicos Anastasiades reacted angrily to claims Cyprus was abusing the practice …
To The Sunday Times In 1960s Oxford I would see Cecil Rhodes’s statue, think how wrong he was and walk on. That is life in an open, tolerant country: bits of our history are sticking up everywhere, and we are free to admire, condemn or laugh at them. I prefer that to a country in …
Xinjiang, China China has destroyed and built over scores of traditional burial grounds belonging to the Uighur people in the northwestern Xinjiang province, as part of what critics claim is a ruthless campaign to wipe out the history and cultural identity of the region’s indigenous Muslim population. Satellite images published last week showed flattened earth …
From The Guardian Last year Mexico registered 35,964 murders, an increase of three times the previous year. Only a tiny fraction of crimes committed are solved, and increasingly ordinary people are taking the law into their own hands, specifically, 174 times last year, lynching suspects wherever they can find them. Citizens are frustrated by incompetent …
From Tomgram, the site that comments on the defence industry: “Lockheed Martin Remains Top Gun in the Pentagon’s Cockpit “How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens …
Continue reading ‘The ultra-costly, underwhelming F-35 Fighter’ »
For ten years of my early life I went to compulsory chapel every day of the week while at school. This is what I learned about Christianity, as preached buy the moderate Church of England: Christianity means love your neighbour, forgive your enemies, help the old, the hurt and the sick, be unkind to no …
Indian-administered Kashmir remains under an unprecedented lockdown, subject to a curfew and without phone and internet links. It followed the announcement that India’s only Muslim-majority state would lose its autonomous status. Article 370 of India’s constitution, in force since 1949, guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir the right to make its own laws in all internal matters, …
The Guardian, on 7 August, ran an interesting article on the “border” between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The hard border is not currently there because of the terms of the Good Friday agreement, underpinned by the fact that both the UK and Ireland are EU states. If Britain leaves the EU with no …
From the New York Times: Many of the people who have worked for President Trump have ended up “diminished” or humiliated in some way. To that long list we can now add a new name: John Bolton. Trump’s national security adviser won the role by impressing the president with his regular bellicose contributions to Fox …
Continue reading ‘A humiliating way to treat an old warmonger’ »
To The Times Nick King is right to point out that “small and family businesses make up 99% of the UK’s business population and create over three-quarters of new jobs”. Moreover, most of these businesses are also domestic-only and therefore do not trade with the EU, yet are still bound by its restrictive regulatory regime. …
Unless there is a sudden and unexpected outbreak of patriotism and seriousness, today’s the day Boris Johnson will assume the title of Prime Minister of the UK. There have been some pretty terrible rulers of the country, but you have to go back to King John, Edward II, Henry VI or Charles I to find …
