I want to ask you to clear your mind for a moment and count to 10. 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10… In those 10 seconds, Jeff Bezos, the owner and founder of Amazon, made more money than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year. An entire year. …
Continue reading ‘The email below was sent by Bernie Sanders’ »
Last week I posted about why the centre-left is in decline. Today, I wanted to talk about a party that has bucked the trend. Since Jeremy Corbyn succeeded Ed Miliband as the British Labour Party leader following its defeat in the 2015 general election, he has done what hardly anyone thought possible- substantially increase the proportion …
Epicureans are not encouraged to involve themselves, or to comment on politics. Quite right. But there has to be a limit if you see your country, not to mention your planet, picked apart and lied to. How can we have peace of mind seeing Russian agents actively subverting the country in full sight and the …
I am reproducing a book review by Stephen Collins in this month’s edition of Prospect Magazine, because it needs to be emphasised and tepeated. The book is called “Principled Spying” by David Omand, a former head of GCHQ. (Georgetown University Press): “Twitter and Facebook have a darker side. I have seen them encourage the growth …
Continue reading ‘A former spy-chief says social media emboldens the far Right.’ »
If you type in ‘Epicurus and politics’ into Google, the first result you get is an excellent post by Robert. Here, he explained Epicurus’ arguments against politics- the needless anxiety caused by a gullible public being fooled by charlatans only interested in their own gain. Charismatic figures will emerge, appealing to the public’s sense of …
The Guardian reports (July 20th) that the Chinese government is busy creating an individual profiling system for each and every Chinese citizen, a “social score” which will indicate who is a “desirable employee”, reliable tenant, valuable customer, their eligibility for a loan, whether they are shirkers or a “waste of time”. And, of course, who …
In the 2015-2016 election cycle, the fossil fuel industry in America received over $20 billion in federal subsidies. These subsidies are not only encouraging economic behavior that is decimating our environment but they are putting the welfare of a dying industry above the future of life as we know it.
On Thursday, 12th July 2018, I took the train from my small hometown into London. I was only planning a nice paddle boat ride in a lake in Regent’s Park, to celebrate graduating from university. Instead, I was greeted with huge crowds, who had gathered to see Trump’s helicopter land in the park. Many of …
“My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.” (Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by Trump for the Supreme Court yesterday). Sounds correct, sounds …
“America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It’s founded on an idea and the idea is liberty. That is probably the rarest phenomena in the political history of the world; this has never happened before. And not only has …
Continue reading ‘Charles Krauthammer recently died. This is his view of the United States’ »
On June 26 2018, a young woman called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a Democratic primary for New York’s 14th seat in the House of Representatives. She beat the well-established incumbent Joe Crowley, running on a platform of radical wealth redistribution, relaxation of America’s immigration laws and enforcement, and strong policies to deal with climate change. In …
Continue reading ‘Should the Democrats embrace socialism?’ »
What will the Supreme Court look like in three months time? It will be majority Republican, the newest member picked from the outer ranks of the most quixotic and literal interpreters of the US Constitution. He (probably he, because women should be attending to the kids, don’t you know) will believe that abortion should not …
Continue reading ‘The Supreme Court threat to our peace of mind and liberty’ »
Two thousand years ago, Seneca reflected on the very matters that have consumed the minds of right-thinking men through all eras of humanity to the present day: “We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check and punish manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?”
US special forces are deployed in 148 countries, twice as many as have US ambassadors (70; Trumphas yet to fill the rest of the 188 ambassadorships. (The Conversation, 26 March 2018)
A short while ago this blog was discussing Brexit and the right wing of the Conservative Party. In the course of this I mentioned Jacob Ress-Mogg as a potential Prime Minister, and rather soon unless unforeseen events stop it. Two decades ago Jacob’s father, William, wrote a book, or manifesto, called .”The Sovereign Individual: How …
Continue reading ‘The lurking threat to British democracy’ »
