In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington has initiated its largest spending binge in history. In the process, you might assume that the unparalleled spread of the disease would have led to a little rethinking when it came to all the trillions of dollars Congress has given the Pentagon in these years that have in …
Continue reading ‘Covid-19 Means Good Times for the Pentagon’ »
Arson,looting and street protests are a volatile enough combination in themselves. But what made the runrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and other US cities even more incendiary is the growing presence of armed vigilantes. These self-styled militia, or “civilian patrols”, claim to be helping keep the peace, yet their arrival simply makes violence more likely. Witness …
Continue reading ‘If you are not concerned about vigilantes you should be’ »
When citizens of 13 EU member states were asked which of 35 countries they would be willing to offer financial help to in a crisis, the UK came below all but Colombia and Tunisia. On average, the UK received a net score of -8%, compared with 30% for Italy, 29% for Spain, and 17% for …
“Between 2014 and 2016, Republicans removed almost 17 million voters off the voter rolls. In addition to the voter registrations being invalidated before the current election, Republicans are enacting a plan to disenfranchise the black vote by rejecting their mail-ballots. It doesn’t get much worse than this. “Mail-in ballots by black voters are being rejected at the …
President Macron has condemned the defacing of a memorial to the victims of a notorious Nazi massacre in the Limousin. In 1944, SS troops stormed into the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, and killed nearly all of its 642 inhabitants. The men were shot in the legs and then set alight; the women and children were burnt …
It is of course appalling that a columnist for The New York Times should feel obliged to resign on account of the in-house bullying she’s had to endure. Bari Weiss was hired by the paper three years ago, as it sought to recruit voices that could challenge its dominant liberal ethos. And though no hard-line …
“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 …
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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’ »
