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The huge irony of Trump's Canute-like effort to remake America as a land of 19th-century Know Nothing xenophobes is that the 'huddled masses' drawn to its standard of liberty were critical to its 'great' economic entrepreneurship and cultural dynamism: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...

It remains impossible to explain Trump's fawning towards an aggressive Russia in his otherwise macho-imperialist worldview unless Putin has 'kompromat' on him, going back to his Moscow visit, as often suggested: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

All across Europe, homes are disappearing for ordinary people. Families freeze, students struggle, locals are pushed out — while investors get richer. Sign now to tell EU leaders: Homes for people, not profit.👉 action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-11...

#Climate catastrophe is already upon us, earlier than anticipated, not only because of still-rising greenhouse-gas emissions but also due to positive-feedback effects, such as heat-induced wildfires turning forests into CO2 sources, not sinks, and so more heating: www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

'Whichever way you look at it, dangerous #climate breakdown has arrived, but with little sign that the world is prepared or even paying serious attention.' www.theguardian.com/environment/... Fossil-fuel corporate power, poor global scientific literacy & the appeal of turning away remain too strong.

The digital 'omnibus' package for 'simplification' produced by the @ec.europa.eu echoes what US Big Tech corporations pressed through lobbying. And as in the US they are finding political allies in the far right: euobserver.com/Rule%20of%20...

There is every reason for the EU to increase aid to the majority world, with Trump dismantling USAID, especially for greenhouse-gas mitigation and social development--but not to throw money at authoritarian bordering states to stop #refugees seeking asylum in Europe: euobserver.com/Migration/ar...?

Trump has no interest in facts (unless they please him) but for the record the #homicide rate per 100,000 in London is 1 (2025 data); in Washington it is 27 (2024). One difference is obvious, across all of lower-homicide Europe--gun control (and no death penalty): www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

A Europe gripped by moral panics about 'illegal migration' and 'competitiveness' is failing even to take in #refugees recognised as such by the UN, despite the long-term net benefit they bring to host countries, in value added and cultural dynamism: euobserver.com/Migration/ar...

Under the far-right Netanyahu government, the destruction by the IDF in Gaza and the uninhibited crimes by settlers in the west bank are rendering the 'two-state solution' null and void, by making life impossible for Palestinians in what has become 'Greater Israel': www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Brilliant piece by an actual economist on how self-harming (as well as morally abhorrent) Trump's 18th-century mercantilism is: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Since the US 'social media' corporations were first challenged by Europe, with the 2012 @coe.int launch of a campaign against hate speech, they have claimed 'freedom of speech'. But this can legitimately be restricted if exercised at others' expense (art 10, ECHR) www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Guinness has managed to brand itself as stereotypically synonymous with Ireland in much of the world. Yet only market power has allowed it to marginalise the higher-quality alternatives--such as in Ireland the Beamish and Murphys stouts--to its monopoly might: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

'Fascism' is an abused label (think of Putin and his 'denazification' of Ukraine). Precisely, it is an unlimited assault on human dignity, uninhibited by universal norms, buttressing social hierarchies. By that measure, Elon Musk is unequivocally a fascist: www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

As Tony Giddens intuited long ago, #fundamentalism (regardless of which religious dogma is invoked) is defined by the refusal of dialogue. Violence is the only way it knows to respond to a globalised, individualised society: www.irishtimes.com/world/middle...

All we can do in the face of Trump's idiocy is stand by the science and keep telling the world: www.theguardian.com/environment/... #climate

Make America isolationist again: while Trump's support craters at home, his narcissistic anger at the world, allied to science phobia and misogyny, leads him to focus on ordering (legally or otherwise) US withdrawal from 66 international organisations, mostly UN-linked www.lemonde.fr/internationa...

Encouraging news from attribution science facilitating the holding to account of fossil-fuel corporations in the courts for their greenhouse-gas emissions destroying the ecosphere: www.newscientist.com/article/2508...

Excellent dissection by @nathalietocci.bsky.social of the sheer stupidity of Europe's timid reaction to Trump's Venezuelan decapitation, driven by a 19th-century US extractivism: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In Trump's narcissistic world, Venezuela's conservative opposition leader--more popular than him--is disdained, not only because she believes in democracy and the rule of law but also because she is the woman who took 'his' Nobel Peace Prize: www.irishtimes.com/world/americ...

Erdogan has criminalised all secular opposition--first Kurdish, then social-democratic--to his Islamist rule. The silence in Brussels is deafening--but then Turkiye was only the first dictatorship on its southern flank with which the EU did a refugee-rejecting deal: balkaninsight.com/2026/01/05/t...

Not only did Northern Ireland's 'peace process' not achieve reconciliation. It gave legitimacy to paramiliitaries for whom violence is the way to deal with perceived problems--the legacy appalling rates of femicide and racist expulsions, especially of Roma: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Fuelling the moral panic about #refugees crossing the English channel in dinghies (airlines & ferry companies can not carry passengers without visas), Labour is legitimising the far right; the flows--driven by desperation/climate, not 'people-smugglers'--continue: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The most obvious idiocy of Trump's narcissistic obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize--apart from his childish envy that the black guy got it--is that if 'might is right' is to replace multilateral dialogue war can be the only consequence: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

One UK Labour figure who hasn't lost his moral compass on #asylum is Alf Dubs. But then he was a child refugee from Nazism: euobserver.com/Labour/ar930...

Whether the working week is cut by days or hours is not a 'secondary consideration' (as one man quoted here says)--for women with children in nursery or school, fewer hours and more autonomy are crucial for better work-life balance: euobserver.com/Labour/ar930...

Detailed investigation by the @nytimes.com of how Trump's mafia-type organisation has turned the presidency into a vehicle for the enrichment of himself and his coterie: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

According to Oxfam, in 2025 'the $2.2tn growth in net worth for the world’s wealthiest 500 individuals would have been enough to lift 3.8 billion people out of poverty': www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de... A global wealth tax is essential to hit rent-seeking by oligarchs and to pay for public goods.

How to bypass the collective-action dilemma on #climate posed by the COP conferences' unanimity rule, which the fossil-fuel states insisted on? Progressive governmental coalitions of the willing and resort to the courts by NGO activists and public authorities: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Shouting macho slogans ('From the river to the sea Palestine will be free'), superficially donning the keffiyeh or flying the Palestinian flag fails to address the imperative of reconciliation in #Israel/Palestine. Women are at the heart of peacebuilding efforts: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Fascinating piece on the science of stress and its reduction: www.newscientist.com/article/2508... A yoga workout (with of course its physical-fitness benefits) ending in a restful 2-minute Shavasana not only calms metabolism in the moment but sustains that tranquillity to an extent through the day.

Despite Sinn Fein's 'left-wing' posturing for outsiders, @casmudde.bsky.social categorised it as on the margin of the far-right European family--its failure to confront racism and its endorsement of ethnic nationalism continue to evidence that: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

It's the most appalling historical irony: the far-right government in Jerusalem, crying 'antisemitism' at any and every criticism, has so dehumanised Palestinians that they have become only Untermenschen to be starved: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

Endless moral panics across Europe about 'migrants', 'bogus asylum-seekers' and 'people smugglers' have created the dehumanising climate to roll back postwar refugee rights--with no recognition of the long-term net benefit #refugees bring overall to host societies: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

Despite the bizarre embrace of Italy's 'post-fascist' leader by @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu, like all populists Meloni is clueless and at home she is fliundering: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'They make a wasteland and call it peace': the 'peace process' and Belfast agreement offloaded responsibility for Northern Ireland from London to populist parties which have made no 'fiscal effort' to raise revenue and so preside over a social basket case: m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/health/...

Europe needs to face the long-term demands of Ukraine's displaced millions--not just keep extending temporary protection to them: euobserver.com/EU%20&%20the...

Excellent reportage on the huge challenges facing the millions of people with disabilities in Ukraine in the wake of Putin's merciless war: euobserver.com/health-and-s...

#Football is a dialectical process: after Guardiola won 14 of 19 possible trophies as Barca head coach, he could not match that with @fcbayernmunich.bsky.social or Manchester City, as other teams reacted to tiki taka with more intense Gegenpressing + pass & move: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Farage is (thankfully) not going to be able to slough this off. And it's his own doing--having cynically and disingenuously cultivated a populist persona, not as the narcissistic xenophobe he truly is but as the jovial joker nursing a pint at the end of the bar: www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Even a pro-war neo-Stalinist is jailed on trumped-up charges in Putin's Russia--if he is an independent pro-war neo-Stalinist, and so deemed a threat: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Newsom: the world's fourth-largest economy--California--now runs 2/3 on clean energy on 9/10 days. Massive investment in battery usage is dealing with the challenge of intermittence with solar and wind: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Anyone who doesn't see Putin's fingerprints all over this killing hasn't read Jon Sweeney's definitive Killer in the Kremlin: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Brilliant by Raphael Behr on the #AI bubble inflated by tech-bro pretension: 'Should we build a world where AI is put to the service of humanity, or will it be the other way round? We won’t need ChatGPT to tell us the answer.' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Excellent piece by @spd.de veteran Gesine Schwan on Europe's increasing moral failure to show hospitality to refugees--in response to the rise of the far right but in reality only legitimising its dehumanising prejudices--and her party's silence about it at home: www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/gesin...

It turns out that under macho-man Musk DOGE caused lots of chaos but saved very little: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

One reason Trump is such a 'useful idiot' for Putin is he hasn't a clue that this war is all about reversing Ukraine's European trajectory since 2013, with its knock-on effects in Moldova and Georgia, and reconstituting a stripped down USSR: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/w...

US IR experts: 'The Trump administration wants ... respect and global soft power, which is why it is going after Europe. But it also wants to retrench, ... remaking the US into a regional power like Russia ... bullying ... in its neighbourhood. It can’t have both. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Starmer has foolishly tied his hands but the next Labour leader should obtain a mandate from the party, and then the citizens, for the UK to apply to rejoin the EU. That would take on Reform's lies, connect with the Lib Dems & Greens and bring a lift in the polls: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...