Since 30 March 2018, at least 250 Palestinians have been killed and 6,000 injured with live ammunition amid Israel’s use of force against “Great March of Return” protestors in Gaza. Among the casualties, three health workers – Musa Abu-Hassanin, Razan al-Najjar and Abdallah al-Qutati – have been shot dead by Israeli forces while trying to …
Maduro is a tyrant; any defence of him is inexcusable. Under Maduro’s presidency, Venezuela’s economy has collapsed, inflation has skyrocketed and goods shortages are increasingly common. Despite being blessed with abundant natural resources, systemic corruption, cronyism and an authoritarian political culture have left the country in ruins. No one can defend Maduro and have any moral …
Continue reading ‘Brief thoughts on the crisis in Venezuela’ »
The Atlantic’s David Frum is one of my favourite American columnists. A thoughtful conservative and provocative Trump critic, Frum doesn’t shy away from eviscerating both the Right and the Left. In contrast to ever-increasing partisanship, Frum’s independence of thought and lack of partisanship makes for refreshing reading. Last November, Frum made the comprehensive case for …
Continue reading ‘Why Liberal Republicanism is an oxymoron: A response to David Frum’ »
President Trump has named a former Fox News journalist with no background in international relations as his pick for America’s new ambassador to the UN. The crucial role – which former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will be leaving at the end of the year – has previously gone to scholars, diplomats or experienced politicians. …
An article by Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. in the Washington Post of January 13th pointed out a crucial failing in the organisation of Congress that I was unaware of, and which I’m sure the general public know nothing about. This is the fact that the number of policy staff available to Congressmen has been allowed …
In America nowadays, we hear a lot about partisan polarisation. Republicans and Democrats couldn’t be more different, it is argued, with the former moving to the right, the latter to the left. This is certainly borne out on Twitter, where Trump’s dominance is matched only by self-described ‘socialist’ congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, in three crucial …
Continue reading ‘How the Democrats are becoming more like Trump’ »
My non-British friends often ask me why Britain voted to leave the European Union. Some are Europeans themselves, the vast majority of whom feel sad and bewildered by Britain’s departure. Others are American or Asian, who don’t know much about the EU beyond its primary function as a facilitator of trade, and so would like …
Continue reading ‘Why Britain voted Leave: Brexit explained to non-Brits’ »
Recently Theresa May strongly rejected the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum. Calls for such a vote have been growing among MPs, who claim it’s the only way of breaking the parliamentary deadlock. But May, who survived a Tory leadership challenge, insisted that another referendum would do “irreparable damage to the integrity of our …
It’s now more than 17 years later, years in which American commanding generals in Afghanistan repeatedly hailed the U.S. military’s “progress” there and regularly applauded the way we had finally “turned a corner” in the Afghan War — only to find more Taliban fighters armed with RPGs around that very corner. Finally, in the 18th …
Regular readers of Epicurus Today will have noticed an increasingly frequent number of posts on Brexit. This is because we have reached a crucial point in the negotiations, whereby the terms of our departure have been agreed, and just need ratification from the British parliament. The problem facing Britain’s lawmakers is that the country is incredibly …
Continue reading ‘The three choices facing Brexit Britain’ »
An estimated 85,000 children under the age of five have starved to death as a result of the conflict in Yemen, Save the Children has warned. The charity says the figure, based on UN data on acute malnutrition, is a conservative estimate. About 8.4 million people (a third of the population) are at risk of …
Continue reading ‘The US is complicit in the deaths of these children’ »
“After the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union imploded, keen observers were surprised to discover that the whole global military structure that Washington had set up “America’s empire of bases” or a “globe-girdling Baseworld” – chugged right on. It didn’t matter that there was no real enemy left on Planet Earth. It was, indeed, …
At least as far as the House of Representatives was concerned, this year’s midterm elections were a success for the Democrats. They gained a decent majority, won 40 seats off the Republicans, and won the popular vote by roughly nine million people in what was the highest midterm turnout since 1914. While not a complete …
Continue reading ‘Are the Democrats the party of the rich? And does it matter?’ »
As we see the Chinese undermining democratic values, such as free speech, we also have to observe that the Chinese are busy, not only lobbying, but using constant propaganda, censorship in academia, spying on American institutions, and using the Chinese Students and Scholars Association to glean secrets and techniques which are useful to the Chinese …
A friend of mine confided that he feared the Chinese. Should he be regarded as bigoted? I replied that I thought his fears were well justified. I referred to the history of the late 19th and early 20th Century history as a parallel. After the death of Bismarck, who created modern Germany, the tinpot Kaiser …
