Important victory for environmental NGOs and city of Paris in court ruling which deems Total responsible for emissions engendered when fuels it produces are burned, previously treated as an 'externality'. Next must come punitive fines for Big Oil's climate despoliage: euobserver.com/226432/as-eu...

It was never going to be easy for the post-nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary to turn public broadcasters into objective and pluralist--and so trustworthy--media, these having previously perversely echoed the Soviet model of the party-state: balkaninsight.com/2026/07/08/h...

Wise words from @casmudde.bsky.social as usual: social democrats should stop chasing the votes of old men who support the far right and focus on young women who are left-orientated. And principled figures such as Pedro Sanchez and Zohran Mamdani are leadership models: voxeurop.eu/en/cas-mudde...

The 'Brexit' vote 10 years ago reflected a post-imperial arrogance offsetting an ignorance of European reality--and Britain's relative shabbiness and shoddiness; eg, amid the heatwave, its cities have little over half the average European urban tree cover: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

@vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu seems to believe that she can dress up as technical 'simplification' and 'reality checks' her political agenda of corporate recapture of the EU and pursuit of #deregulation: euobserver.com/226371/eu-wa...

There has always been a starry-eyed attitude in Ireland to America in general and US-based multinational capital in particular. It has provided a too-convenient English-language tax haven in Europe, with a too-craven watchdog for Big Tech: euobserver.com/226563/irish...

Contrary to what some in France still refuse to accept, its post-colonial diversity is an asset, which the French Football Federation has cultivated through its investment in kids from the banlieue. It's what gives Les Bleus their competitive advantage: theconversation.com/despite-worl... #football

Unlike the Council of Europe with its normative postwar foundation, the economistic origin and path dependence of the European Union have meant it has never taken cultural policy, and interculturalism, seriously--so it is powerless in the face of the far right: theconversation.com/culture-is-t...

In defiance of the moratorium on new projects urged by the @iea.org, Big Oil is planning a 14% increase in output on 2024 levels by 2030. Why bother about saving the planet from fossil-fuel-induced catastrophe when there are the next quarterly returns to focus on? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

How did Michael Olise become such a brilliant footballer? He says he was 'enriched' by having four national parental influences. Important to highlight the reality and positivity of cosmopolitan living against xenophobes yearning for the 'good old days': www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer... #football

The climate-change deniers on the right and far right who have effectively abandoned the European Green Deal must be defeated by everyone on the enlightenment side of the spectrum, from liberals to radical left, uniting to save the planet from destruction: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

The EU supports free movement, because 'foreigners' are no more likely to be criminal and they bring labour resources to the host country. But it is happy that vast funds be spent on deporting those, with brown and black skins, originating elsewhere: euobserver.com/225652/the-r... #refugees #asylum

Under @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu II the @ec.europa.eu has abandoned the European Green Deal in favour of the corporate language of 'competitiveness', risking citizens' health by being captured by the chemicals industry: corporateeurope.org/en/2026/07/i...

Why have some bosses forced workers to return to the workplace full-time since the pandemic, despite the benefits of hybrid working, especially for women, and lack of effects on company performance? Organisational psychologists point to narcissistic personality traits www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/o...

Trump's place in American history is as far from the founding fathers he wants to join on Mount Rushmore as were the 19th-century populist 'Know Nothings' he echoes: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The US @democrats.org have put corporations before citizens and so lost their core vote. The left has often correspondingly retreated into self-righteous oppositionalism, but now the emergent universalism of an inclusive 'we' is encouraging: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... @socialists.nyc

Eurobarometer: 9 out of 10 Europeans want a Europe that is more united; 90% also want Europe to stand up for the rule of law; the predominant feelings among young Europeans are hope and confidence. Never did the world need more a Europe united in asserting universal norms: europa.eu/eurobaromete...

The conservative @eppgroup.bsky.social has not only behaved immorally in breaking the cordon sanitaire enclosing the far right, including on people movement and ecology, but has rendered itself dependent on the fascists since it has burnt bridges with all progressives: euobserver.com/225097/von-d...

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/ba...

Brick by brick, Orban's 'illiberal democracy' is being dismantled by its democratic successor: balkaninsight.com/2026/06/30/h...

Rugby-focused France was not always good at football. So the football federation established a national centre for player development in 1988. In international, unlike club, competition capital cannot buy players. France's social investment may bring the third world cup since Clairefontaine opened.

Populists ultimately fail because 'Stop the world, we want to get off' is a deluded response to globalisation. Even US Supreme Court conservatives baulk at Trump's tariff walls and attacks on ius soli for migrants' children: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/u...

That Ireland was a rogue state in Europe on corporation tax is well known; that it has been a lapdog for US Big Tech is not: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In all the discussion of Burnham, no one (himself included) has mentioned that the UK is crying out for a written constitution--its absence unique in the democratic world--entrenching citizens' rights & recognising the UK (not 'Britain') as a multinational state: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Russia's suborned legal system is being used to take homes from exiled Ukrainians: euobserver.com/224552/russi...

Spain's prime minister continues to stand out against the moral panic in Europe on 'immigration', not only adhering to universal norms premised on human dignity but also recognising the indispensable economic resources people movement imports: elpais.com/espana/2026-...

Countries that don't engage in 'performative cruelty' towards asylum-seekers permit instant or early integration into the labour market, so they can contribute and skills do not atrophy--but this would be a 'pull factor' according to a churlish and impoverished Britain: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Well done to @markhennessy.bsky.social for picking up on these remarks today. There is no point rushing towards de jure Irish unity via an early border poll, when de facto the island would remain divided as many Protestants hunkered down behind the 'peace walls': www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Health is the biggest spender in Northern Ireland, so, given the absence of 'fiscal effort' by the sectarian parties empowered by the Belfast agreement, health staff suffer while patients wait for ever for attention (I'm on an 8-year waiting list): www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/the-nhs...

The last decade of ever-more invasive profit-seeking pursuit of young people by unregulated 'social media' corporations has seen an explosion of mental ill-health, such as anxiety (via girls' negative body-images etc), for which taxpayers pick up the tab: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Europe has lost >200,000 lives due to heat in 4 years, says @who.int: euobserver.com/224139/at-32...

The dehumanisation of #refugees through the moral panic on 'migration' has blinded the EU to the push factors (conflict, trauma ...) while elevating the agents ('people-smugglers') who move them. Absent safe, legal options, the new restrictions just mean routes change: euobserver.com/224402/kille...

While Europeans burn, EU environment ministers perversely seek to dilute #climate regulations, the Polish rep even suggesting the focus should shift from prevention of global heating--it having arrived--to (increasingly costly and hopeless) minimisation of its impact: euobserver.com/224177/eu-mi...

The most frightening thing about #climate change is how, with the terrifying reality upon us, 'climate fatigue' is stimulating an infantilising blindness, even denial--as if it will somehow go away--fostered by irresponsible conservatives and far-right populists: www.irishtimes.com/environment/...

Looks like the anticipated #AI bust may be starting. That will hit Trump ahead of the #midterms: otherwise, the real US economy has flatlined because of his volatility, deterring long-term investment commitments with his daily mood swings: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/b...

It's a sad testimony to how backward the education debate in Ireland has remained since the churches seized control of mass schooling in the 19th century that still the only alternative considered is multi-faith--not the secular, enlightened public school normal in Europe: www.rte.ie/news/educati...

A convenient right-wing #Brexit myth is that it was 'mishandled'--so non-EU replaced EU immigration. But skill shortages are endemic in the UK because the market-fundamentalist Thatcher dismantled Labour's social-partnership-based sectoral training system: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The UK once had a contribution-based, social-insurance #welfare state. Shredded by two eras of Tory government, now the below-subsistence benefits of the most unequal state in western Europe require 'baby banks' on top of food banks, providing formula and nappies: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

As in Bosnia, in Northern Ireland the decades after the war have seen the sectarian protagonists conduct a (political) war over the war. Meanwhile the bereaved victims, their trauma unexpurgated, are condemned to live trapped in their moment of loss: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/norther...

Hard to overestimate the importance of progressive intellectuals and journalists (including @fotoole.bsky.social) in framing public debate in Ireland about the EU over the decades. The notion that it would follow the UK into the 'Brexit' abyss was always risible: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The only place (thankfully) where the 'Northern Ireland peace process' was copied was (courtesy of the Irish EU rep) Colombia. The same treating with sub-state violent groups rather than securing the rule of law has now been similarly exploited by the far right: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Many hoped the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia would foster postwar reconciliation. But the ethnonationalist entrepreneurs its collapse elevated ensured 'their' perpetrators of war crimes were politically labelled heroes, the 'others' villains: balkaninsight.com/2026/06/22/s...

As @nathalietocci.bsky.social rightly argues, Europe must not give up on mulilateralism and indeed can be to the fore in constructing a new international order--if it learns from its errors: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Trump's #climate idiocy has given the Saudi fossil-fuel theocracy even more licence to veto #COP progress--but cheaper renewables generation and electrical-energy use, as well as coalitions of the willing, are bypassing the denialists: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Consumption by the world's top 10% is disastrous re global heating and, even moreso, biodiversity loss. Only huge taxation of high incomes and wealth can deter such excess, while funding the massive public investment otherwise unavailable for the green transition: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The hegemony of capital has gone so far in the @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu II commission that the chair of Siemens, which has lobbied to weaken the EU AI act, has been appointed (while retaining his company position) as a special adviser ... on industrial AI: euobserver.com/222274/the-e...

Polish authorities have arrested a man in connection with the murder of a dissident Russian artist, who had openly criticised Putin. Donald Tusk says it may have been a political assassination. See John Sweeney's 'Killer in the Kremlin' for the previous series. balkaninsight.com/2026/06/19/d...

Ukraine's drone innovations, which Russia's lumbering economy can't match, could force Putin to accept a ceasefire--but one always fears he might instead choose the nuclear option: he once saw a cornered rat as a child and vowed never to be put in such a scenario. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/w...

This is how the 'social media' corporations must be brought to book--by treating them as publishers, as with professional media, thereby allowing defamation claims. Their business model would collapse if they could not abdicate responsibility for what is posted: www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

At some point progressive English politicians will have to join their counterparts across the UK in recognising 'Brexit' was an ignorant post-imperial spasm--the school curriculum in England didn't even address the EU--whose damage only reapplying can undo: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...