On the flip side I'll do the rarest bit of left punching and say that the silliest group of people on the planet are those who think China or Russia do anything of value— they could not even veto this half assed colonial resolution. Perhaps a bit less delusion is in order.

As one of the 3 dozen people on here who actually pay attention to this issue and MENA more broadly as a job it is still very amusing to see people think it's the left who loves this plan. The most voracious defenders of it are Blob careerists or their orbiters— Blinken, McGurk, Lindsey Graham, etc.

UN Security Council approves US-backed proposal for Gaza on.ft.com/49WbxuH

Korea is flexing here with this highly artistic floating solar farm, newly commissioned days ago. 47.2 MW of capacity located near the 50 MW Imha hydroelectric dam. The modules are arranged into the shape of Korea’s flag and the Mugunghwa, Korea’s national flower.

Torn between my general opposition to the Saudi state's existence and corruption writ large and my pleasure at seeing the meltdown that a subsection of the Blob is having over Israel not possessing a veto over US foreign policy vis a vis the rest of the region

And here's a whole new shift of picketers later today at CMB! UCU staff saying No to compulsory redundancies.

The south was a chattel slave empire until the 1860s and a de facto ethnic authoritarian state for the following century, which is well in living memory. I don't think we need to pretend that that hasn't left a distinctive cultural mark.

test the plausibility of this for yourself: ask "what sort of efforts would fully counteract the sociological effects of a system where people routinely sold their own children into labor camps?" and see how different your answer is from "years of open terrorism in defense of retrenching apartheid"

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class str-ahh I mean polarisation

The ‘polarisation narrative’ simplifies complex issues by constructing a spectrum where good should be found in the middle of diametrically opposed political positions New preprint article by @juanroch.bsky.social, @daniel-balinhas.bsky.social and I 1/ www.researchgate.net/publication/...

On the other hand - the Labour Party have finally defeated racism by making a brown person Home Secretary. This is a cool trick previously only deployed by the Conservatives.

Well we said Black and Asian home secretaries are used as a shield to implement racist policies a white man couldn’t get away with and there’s no starker example than this. The worst kind of identity politics.

Happy to report that this paper is now out (Open Access!) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

HT @benbraun.bsky.social for this chart. Tremendous resources to learn from: benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu... benjaminbraun.org/teaching/dat... benjaminbraun.org/teaching/fin...

We should reboot journalism completely. Start from scratch. They should get those old timey hats and a pencil and figure it out from there

“Reflecting on her experiences of skateboarding in Cairo, New York and other cities as a form of ‘rolling ethnography’, Alia ElKattan positions ‘seeing like a skater’ as a new way to approach urban landscapes.” @aliaelkattan.com lands a gnarly reflective shred without bailing

I wrote about skateboarding, Graeber, and Weizenbaum for Mediapolis' special issue on "Playable Cities". Had lots of fun with this one :) www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/11/seei...

NEW @phenomenalworld.bsky.social @polycrisis Its a Plastic Planet. You are poisoned by plastic, the world is plastic. @katemac.bsky.social & I asked @vbivar.bsky.social to analyse the fossil fuel industry's latest trick. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

Happy to have written about plastic for @thepolycrisis.bsky.social. Thanks to @70sbachchan.bsky.social for sourcing the excellent graphics. And thanks to @rebecca-altman.bsky.social and @anjakrieger.bsky.social for being my go-to's on all-things plastic. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

I love how they always look sequined and indignant

The LMU announces the cancellation of a seminar on the topic "the targeting of Palestinian academia". The cancellation announcement is titled "LMU as a place of pluralistic discourse". Couldn't make this up. www.lmu.de/en/about-lmu...

How long is autumn? And does autumn actually matter? Asking for a friend who is concerned about the health of a certain empire… lareviewofbooks.org/article/autu... policytensor.substack.com/p/the-longue... on-air.caricomassimo.org/media/pages/...

@benbraun.bsky.social and @cedricdurand.bsky.social answer the call by mapping the fractious MAGA base amidst hegemonic decline. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ame...

@benbraun.bsky.social gonna explain how financial hegemony ends in just 30 mins? Let’s goooo

I chose this topic for my LSE Research Showcase talk tomorrow for ... no particular reason. Open to staff, students, alumni and their visitors, and prospective LSE students. Registration via www.lse.ac.uk/research/lse...

yeah from the press release, the survey seems to be about the specifics of british empire slavery and then asking people what they think about apology and reparations. So saying "ahh british people dont know about them doing slavery" is way over reading it

ngl this is a pretty weak line to take

Fully funded PhD scholarships @qmulsse.bsky.social @qmul.bsky.social Doctoral research studentships for 2026 start www.qmul.ac.uk/about/hss/re...

Countering the trend towards fascism can take many shapes and forms but it cannot take the form of a blind faith support in the status quo and mainstream elite as has been argued for too long Some thoughts @reacpolrn.bsky.social on the latest developments in the UK reacpol.net/fascism-no-o...

"We must ask ourselves whether a liberal articulation of fascism is better than full fascism or whether both must be countered with equal vigour."

These policies stem (in part) from a fundamental failure to imagine being displaced, to think about what we would all grab from our houses if we were forced to run, to consider the fundamental inhumanity of stripping people of the only belongings that they have left when they ask for refuge.

And does the government remember who historically adopted this policy for a different set of refugees? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Since we are about to enter the Christmas season, here's a picture of Joseph and Mary with baby Jesus fleeing to Egypt to avoid persecution. Immigrants.

Image of the refugee as a sacred symbol

The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform. Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right. I questioned the Home Secretary on how she can be proposing such obviously cruel policies.

There are still some Labour MPs with morals and courage. The Home Secretary’s answer — that we have a moral duty to deport children — is utterly repulsive.

Mahmood: one of the names of prophet Mohamed PBUH - sought asylum in Medina- a refugee.

holy shit: “Among the 2,000 UK adults surveyed, 85% were unaware that Britain forcibly transported more than 3 million Africans to the Caribbean, 89% did not know that Britain enslaved people in the Caribbean for more than 300 years” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

reminded of eric williams's observation about britain's relationship to its history with slavery. "British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

What you are witnessing here is an educated professor of political science refusing to countenance the notion that a political party dominated by right-wingers who use right-wing rhetoric and pursue right-wing policies might be doing so because they are right-wing and desire right-wing ends.

Highly recommended! "Our Underappreciated International Reserve System" by Serkan Arslanalp, Barry Eichengreen, and Chima Simpson-Bell. www.nber.org/papers/w34478

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all we do. - James Baldwin

For all those in @teamlabouruk.bsky.social supporting Blue Labour. Just remember the liberal left is still a thing. There is already a Reform Party and those interested in its policies will always choose it over Labour. Faith, family and flag is a dead end for the left as we can see in real time👇👇

ngl if the liberal government doesn't collapse and the UK/US go full postliberal, i think there's a non-zero chance of this

Both the Budget and the asylum bill are disintegrating before they've even been formally announced. Absolutely dead government.

"The problem is this Labour government, in which Streeting is only a more compelling character with just as few ideas, competencies or materially defining projects." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This Labour government are (frustratingly) making my work more and more relevant every week. Five years ago, I argued that temporary protection policies for refugees are grossly unjust, and here we are making things worse for them again. philpapers.org/rec/BUXJIW

This is interesting — a recent study of mode share (the % share of transportation trips by car, transit, walking, biking etc) relative to city size and income levels in almost 800 cities in 61 countries. Interesting results. HT @davidzipper.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Its fine the US can just become japan