Under Barack Obama, as former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro informed the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week, US diplomats viewed the notion of a “special relationship” with the UK as “a joke”. Unkind words, perhaps, but Shapiro “did us a favour” by telling the truth. The phrase “had freshness and relevance” when Winston Churchill coined …
(A bit long but scary reading and hopefully worth your time) For starters, both countries exhibit the familiar warning signs of excessive military influence. In Germany, the Army was essentially “a state within the state,” and scholars have all documented how military dominance distorted German thinking about its security and led to an overreliance on …
Continue reading ‘Kaiser Wilhelm and Trump, similaries between Germany and the U.S. (part 2)’ »
Stephen M. Walt, in the October 12, 2017 edition of Foreign Policy, (http://foreignpolicy.com/author/stephen-m-walt/) comments on the the parallels between Trump and the last Hohenzollern emperor: Kaiser Wilhelm II. The common features go beyond their individual characteristics. Not only do Trump and the kaiser share some unfortunate personality traits, but there are also striking similarities between …
I recently posted a piece on working mothers and unhappy children. Here are some further facts, published by The Guardian: A study of data from 674 GP practices across the UK has found that instances of girls aged 13-16 self-harming rose 68% in just three years. The figures, which chime with separate NHS data, also …
Continue reading ‘Young teenage girls and unhappiness, No. 2’ »
Only by leaving the EU will Britain be free to become a “social democratic nirvana”. So claim prominent left-wing advocates of “Lexit”. They argue that EU laws stand in the way of us reforming our economy along more Corbynist, that is, very left-wing, lines. But you only have to look at Europe to see this is …
