The latest Eurobarometer before Munich Sec Conference. French feel most threatened yet have low trust in the EU to protect them. Finns and Czechs less afraid than 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇳🇱. One must wonder: what/who is the threat?

Never gets old.

When it comes to Eastern Europe/the Balkans, Epstein could not have found a better play pal. The disastrous trail of Lajčák’s ambition and mediocrity set back BiH and Kosovo in particular; his jokes about Ukrainian and Russian women in Epstein files speak volumes about his democratic credentials.

Scrolling through @financialtimes.com headlines: the fiction is so transparent that it seems surreal. DB profits - its offices were raided just yesterday for money laundering? Venezuela paid for its own oil through Qatar? Iran bombing imminent? Cuba screwed? Blackstone’s IPOs through the roof?

Meanwhile, in the nice parts of the world: Let them drown.

It should be possible to oppose aggression without rewriting history, n’est-ce pas @nytimes.com?

If anyone wants the unpublished second draft @hozic.bsky.social @dorobohle.bsky.social and me paper on this, DM or email me at my official UVa email. Also see @steffenmurau.bsky.social and me papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... free download.

It never ceases to amaze me how the category of “ordinary people” is deployed in political analyses, even critical ones, as if to underscore the extra-ordinariness, exception and/or elite membership of those who are doing the analysis (journalists, pundits, academics).

Shades of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, when women warned of the arrival of the British troops by banging bin lids on street pavements.

Last morning of a brief holiday from history, in which so much history happened, and not for the better.

A welcome reminder of the classic book on masculinities, class politics, and Nazism - Male Fantasies by Klaus Theweleit. Originally published in German in 1977, translated and published in the U.S. in 1987.

Here’s the better long form on the “interiorization” of the border regime and the coercive side of the US empire: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/enf...

Few scholars understand the arms trade and its implications as well as @annastavrianakis.bsky.social

Sobering analysis of transatlantic woes by @sophiabesch.bsky.social and @jyshapiro.bsky.social and some sage advice re alternatives. But, do European status-quo elites have the courage to face, let alone abandon, an abusive relationship?

More from the land of Stranger Things. I thought this Administration was going to shut down Fannie and Freddie.

RIPE enters 2026 with an editorial transition. Huge thanks to outgoing team @juanitamarieelias.bsky.social, @skostem.bsky.social, Kevin Young & Hongying Wang! In the next few days, we’ll introduce new editors: @johannespetry.bsky.social, @alibhagat.bsky.social, Ida Bastiaens & @mbabic.bsky.social.

Nothing warms my heart like the generosity of spirit of my compatriots

This is all like Game of Thrones now. Winter is here.

Just got War Economy, ed. by Jacqui True and @hozic.bsky.social! My chapter, 'Conflict for fuel', studies energy within war economies in Gaza and Ukraine via a feminist political economy framework. Energy vital for Russia's aggression, Israel's genocide, & capital in Ukraine. tinyurl.com/WaEc25

@seva.bsky.social is, of course, correct. Venezuela was a pre-arranged gift to (or from) Putin; Cuba is next. The spheres of influence and control are back. Yalta without the spectacle of Yalta.

If you had seen Dee Dee Halleck’s brilliant collage of Hollywood films and video representations of Latin America, Gringo in Mañanaland (1995), you would not have been surprised this morning.

Media coverage of Mamdani’s inauguration continues to paint him as an out-of-control radical. For insightful background of material struggles behind NY City Hall, read this piece by @ceaweaver.bsky.social in @phenomenalworld.bsky.social published last October.

RIPE had a banner year in 2025. Prior to this year, submissions to the journal were consistently increasing by about 2-10% per year. In 2025, submissions jumped by nearly 50%. RIPE received 910 manuscripts compared to 618 in 2024 and 552 in 2023, a significant deviation from our long-term trend.

Gramsci is everywhere.

Given Sir Keir Starmer’s role in the Global War on Terror and his decisions related to Guantanamo, the stance on ECHR is not surprising. What human rights anyway? Starmer urges Europe’s leaders to curb ECHR to halt rise of far right www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

Hollywood has been bleeding jobs for decades and has not made boundary-pushing movies since the 1970s.

Europe remembers Munich. The U.S. remembers Vietnam. No one remembers other, more recent, forever wars; peace agreements that rewarded aggressors or did not produce peace; millions of refugees shut out of the right to decent life; veterans committing suicides. What West, indeed?

What a thread on political economy/critical political economy/Keynes et al! Ferals of the world unite ✊😺

Scandalous Economics. “The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called ‘life among the lucrative and louche.’” All on the bodies of young women recruited at Mar-a-Lago and flown around Clintonworld on Epstein’s jet.

“Then there’s gender…” in this story of continuities and discontinuities of American political economy and competing visions of how to make it great again.

Coming soon in RIPE Series in Global Political Economy - War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital, co-edited with Jacqui True. More at: www.routledge.com/War-Economy-...

What better gift for the festive season for your loved ones than a comprehensive feminist analysis of the global war economy? Edited by the fabulous @hozic.bsky.social and Jacqui True and with a chapter by yours truly - www.routledge.com/War-Economy-...

Brilliant analysis of Europe’s descent to dependency by @cornelban.bsky.social - its new Wartburg moment - Europe risks turning into “an artifact of ambition fossilized by fear.”

Remember this next time Summers opines on lazy workers, tight labor market, interest rates, Open AI, allies in the Middle East, wokism, and an array of other topics that keep his hedge fund friends happy.

This is the kind of thing which makes me think better things are possible.

a must read from Rebecca Turkington and Saskia Brechenmacher on the dismantling of the bipartisan WPS architecture: foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/13/t...

This was a brilliant event with @lalehkhalili.bsky.social @iliasalami.bsky.social @triofrancos.bsky.social @stephensemler.bsky.social Podcast recording coming next week on @macrodosepod.bsky.social

echoing praise for @susglickman.bsky.social 's recent NYRB article on DoD, private equity, and silicon valley. pair with @hozic.bsky.social 's earlier piece on hollywood, the valley and DoD -> comprehensive picture. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/... www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

The developing world that could not afford green transition is doing it; the world that had all the money and alleged industrial policies for greening is back to fossil fuels and militarization.

Larry Ellison is funding Tony Blair’s Institute. No surprise Blair is President Trump’s choice for the Viceroy of Gaza.

With immense gratitude to @chris-clarke.bsky.social and @benclift.bsky.social for bringing to light this edited volume honouring the work and legacy of Timothy J. Sinclair. The contributions demonstrate that Tim’s research shaped understandings of finance and economic knowledge well beyond CRAs.

@edwardluce.bsky.social in FT is spot on. Combine his analysis with the revised job data from the BLS today and it becomes easier to understand why Bidenomics failed so spectacularly. European elites still wiggling in the grip of the Third Way should pay notice. The rest of us may be doomed.

Traveling authoritarianism.

“In 2024 alone, developing countries paid a staggering $921bn in interest, with African nations among the hardest hit. UNCTAD warns that rising global interest rates and a fundamentally unjust financial architecture are entrenching a cycle of dependency and underdevelopment.”

and see @jonathonpsine.bsky.social 's precise & illuminating (and lengthy, but a good thing) review of the book: www.cogitations.co/p/litigation...

After days of discussing European dependency at #EISA2025 with @dorobohle.bsky.social & @thunen.bsky.social, I laughed seeing this line: “Europeans have a sense of optimism only about the past, stuck in their mausoleum economy because they are too sniffy to embrace American or Chinese practices.”

Perhaps the Dutch learned something from Srebrenica?

Fascinating how men/economists write about demography and fertility as if children are all born in vitro, as if social reproduction was genderless, as if population changes are not reflective of social relations.

RIPE had 194695 downloads in Q2 2025, as opposed to 143240 in Q2 2024, an increase of 35.92%. Thanks to our authors, reviewers and readers!