Asylum-seekers, often traumatised, are already left in limbo in the UK, with long waits for adjudication, while they cannot work & must be sustained by the taxpayer--all to deter arrivals. To review refugee status & delay naturalisation would just prevent integration: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The real #Kneecap tragedy is that life in west Belfast could be so untransformed by the 'historic' NI 'peace agreement' that 3 young men think it's 'radical' to invoke the macho symbolism of the IRA--specifically, its brutal abuse of 'anti-social' children: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politic...

London's Labour mayor is absolutely right: if Labour weren't so post-imperially insular, it would have learnt from wider European research showing that lost social-democrat votes have gone mostly not to the xenophobes but in disillusionment to greens and the left: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

For some years, the authoritarian @jlmelenchon.bsky.social has been an embarrassment to the French left. If @lafranceinsoumise.bsky.social is to have any future it must oust him and become a 'normal', participatory radical-left party: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Ireland's beggar-my-neighbour policy on corporation tax hasn't just contradicted its good-European stance (and the European goodwill it has enjoyed). It has also made it dangerously dependent on revenue from 3 US corporate behemoths: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

The moral panic in Britain about 'immigration' in recent years--ie about the human resources attracted to the UK in an era of globalisation and individualisation--has legitimised a #xenophobia massively deterring labour urgently needed in health and social care: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

As this piece shows (yet again), the arbitrary EU fiscal rules about public deficits and debts not only lack any economic foundation but also defy basic Keynesian insights on the negative multiplier effects of reduced public investment, especially in a downturn: www.socialeurope.eu/fiscal-conso...

Very disturbing piece about #racism towards black sportspeople in Ireland, evidencing as elsewhere that the US 'social media' corporations--and the 'free speech' absolutism of their owners--have given licence to every authoritarian personality to vent their spleen: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Putin may be a clueless autocrat domestically but, with his background as KGB officer in East Germany and later FSB head, he knows how to cause chaos in western Europe--not just Ukraine: balkaninsight.com/2026/02/26/w...

Super piece on the emerging alternatives to US tech monopolies, including this platform, which have enclosed the digital commons--with a shout-out for the ethical Fairphone, rightly picked out as the progressive (and very effective) smartphone: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

For the European Commission of @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu, 'simplification' has become a cipher for #deregulation to undermine social and environmental safeguards. The main European employers' federation has now adopted it to weaken workers' rights: euobserver.com/204473/bruss...

The EU could immediately restore some credibility as to its impartiality on Israel/Palestine by denying visa-free travel to Israelis due to their far-right government's human-rights depredations in Gaza and the west bank: euobserver.com/204293/eu-wo...

The very narcissistic self-regard which leads entitlled populists to claim to speak for 'the people' in massively unequal societies ensures their personal aggrandisement (Nobel prize hunt, ballroom) looks increasingly out of synch with public priorities over time: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/u...

After four years of fruitless attrition in Ukraine at massive human cost, Putin's retro-imperial fantasies mean half of Russia's budget is spent on the military or consequent interest payments. Unless Trump saves him at Ukraine's expense, he's living on borrowed time: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/w...

Only a cosmopolitan Europe can lead a runaway world to a safe harbour. And only 'coalitions of the willing' among EU member states can make that possible. But that will not be straightforward, writes @guillaumeduval.bsky.social : www.socialeurope.eu/why-a-club-o...

Brilliant first par in this piece on 'immigrants' taking Manchester United into the top 4 of the Premiership--standing antidote to the 'Brexit' idiocy: 'foreign' players & coaches, bringing different playing styles, have made it one of the best leagues in Europe: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

This is the disastrous effect unregulated 'social media' corporations have had on social attitudes as they have colonised the public sphere: more than half of young Spanish males now agree #feminism 'is only utilised as a political tool of manipulation and indoctrination': elpais.com/sociedad/202...

Nearly 20 countries condemn the moves by the far-right government in Israel to annex the west bank de facto, in defiance of Oslo: www.lemonde.fr/internationa...

Under the refugee convention states must consider #asylum claims individually. In this moral panic about 'migrants' the net benefits refugees bring overall to hospitable host countries are entirely missed, while huge sums are wasted on Frontex and deals with autocrats: euobserver.com/204199/right...

Because the Russian state has never been constrained by universal norms or a civil society, or questioned patriarchy (except briefly via Alexandra Kollontai after the revolution), appalling institutional brutality has always been an intrinsic feature, as now in Ukraine: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is right--there are two reasons for support for fascists: around the core authoritarian personalities are the latterly expanding group of those rendered socially insecure by a deregulated capitalism and its runaway crises: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Weasel words from SF, on Ukraine & an IRA killer, show how the 'republican movement' will never step outside the 'anti-imperialist' canon, of sympathy for Putin and paramilitary violence, in favour of universal norms--as it would be delegitimising its own history: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Europe needs to unite firmly against Putin ... and Trump: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

229 million women live in the EU, and they all deserve safe, affordable abortion care. 1 million citizens have spoken, and so has the Parliament. It’s time for the Commission to act: make safe abortion access a reality across Europe NOW! ✊💜 action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-02...

Narcissistic King Trump--if he could speak French he would say <L'etat c'est moi>--clearly can't cope with the separation of powers, 'checks and bakances' and 'no taxation without representation', so Congress decides tariffs. An explosion will come with the midterms: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/u...

Orban's electoral rival is not as awful--but, as with the defeat of the populists in Poland, his hostility to 'illegal immigrants' (ie #refugees) and silence on #LGBT+ rights indicates not so much will change in Hungary if he wins in April: balkaninsight.com/2026/02/17/h...

Blow for Trump as even his packed Supreme Court clearly rejects his use of emergency legislation to bypass Congress on introduction of #tariffs: www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

Macron and Scholz did not accept Russia would invade Ukraine and Putin thought victory would be swift. Why? Older, liberal-left Europeans would have recognised neo-Stalinism for what it was and anyone who knew Ukraine could have anticipated the popular resistance: www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

The UK's 'one-in, one-out' deal with France to stop #asylum-seekers arriving in dinghies has not only failed; absent safe, legal routes, it has also emboldened the very people-smugglers the home secretary salved her conscience by saying this sought to defeat: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The only reason Orban has survived in power much longer than the other far-right populists is that he has taken control of the media which would have exposed his version of their snake-oil peddling for what it is--while the @ec.europa.eu has looked on: euobserver.com/203675/how-o...

The global corporate intensification of #football not only challenges players' health but generates huge greenhouse-gas emissions--while the Gulf fossil-fuel theocracies are ever-present sponsors sportwashing their appalling human rights and environmental records: theconversation.com/football-has...

Another positive-feedback effect accelerating global heating--higher temperatures facilitate wildfires, which cause more GHG emissions, leading to higher temperatures ... : www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The far-right Israeli government dismissed the Gaza Health Ministry's casualty figures stemming from the IDF invasion of the strip, after the 7 October massacre. But independent survey research shows in fact the toll was 50 per cent higher than officially estimated: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

There's zero official contrition about this in Ireland but after years of opposing a minimum corporate-tax rate in Europe it should benefit from the 15% coming into force. US giants were always primarily attracted by a workforce with advanced technical competences: www.irishtimes.com/business/eco...

Before there is an AI-created disaster (or the bubble bursts in the US), let's remember Marx's comment on the difference between the worst of architects and the best of bees--the former can exercise human judgement and 'humans in control' should be the watchword: www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Former EU envoy to west bank and Gaza highlights how Israel's far-right government is trying to bully humanitarian NGOs: euobserver.com/203121/israe...

Excoriating UN report on the appalling treatment of migrants and #refugees in Libya, to which an increasingly xenophobic (though migration-dependent) EU pays to turn a blind eye: www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...

US Democrats don't see any need to learn from European politics (whereas European progressives follow the US). They should have seen Trump was part of the wider populist exploitation of social insecurity amid the deregulated markets they had supported: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

Neoliberal globalisation has not made the world safe for 'free markets', as its advocates claimed--just cleared the way for unprecedented concentration & centralisation of capital, as Marx would have anticipated, with a tiny group of male oligarchs ruling the world www.greenpeace.org/internationa...

The discrediting of Mitchell exposes the shallowness of the NI 'peace deal'. The 1994 ceasefires stemmed from the huge trade union peace marches and violence rose after 1998 until the dysfunctional post-agreement institutions were, as so often, suspended: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/norther...

Excellent obituary of the great left-wing Soviet dissident Roy Medvedev: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/w...

Trump's narcissistic cult of personality becomes ever more ridiculous as his approval wanes. Democrats should hammer away at the contrast between his private power- (and rent-) seeking and his neglect of the publc good: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/u...

Bad enough that victims of the NI conflict have to endure unexpurgated trauma, because of the Realpolitik via which the perpetrators were elevated, rather than the rule of law applied. Even more galling are the insults from the apologists for the latter: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/sister-...

Belfast became the 'race hate capital of Europe' because the NI 'peace process' left anomie in its wake. Treating with Catholic paramilitaries, then (in reaction) Protestant fundamentalists, it legitimised any identity politics defying universal norms, #racism included: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@labouruk.bsky.social has lost its progressive voters, since 'new' Labour took them for granted, and now even its long-suffering members have given up on its current, uno duce, una voce, leadership: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Europe needs to pursue digital sovereignty by supporting open-source alternatives to the US corporate monopolies: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

If Musk had stayed in South Africa, he would just be seen as another two-bit unreconstructed Afrikaner trying to stop the world. Unfortunately, he's the world's richest man with an online bullhorn for his apartheid-era reactionary racism: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The experienced environmental expert Fred Pearce explains why he maintains his 'optimism of the will' about the fate of global ecosystems: www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

Enhancing the global success of European firms requires an EU industrial policy, says the @etuc-ces.bsky.social. Yet nobody in the #competitiveness discussion is talking about that--since this is just a cipher for freeing capital from social and ecological guidance: euobserver.com/202737/corpo...

The EU #competitiveness debate is imprisoned by orthodoxy: deregulation to 'free' capital means a nationally fragmented market regime; hoping for private investment amid public austerity misses basic Keynesian points about liquidity preference and multiplier effects: euobserver.com/202873/two-s...