A problem and an explanation, both on the same front page.

Oh, please, give us a break.

📢 #CEEISAConference2026 | Contesting Imperialism(s) 📍 Sarajevo | 🗓️ 17–19 June 2026 The academic program is now online! Browse panels, papers & rountables👇 🔗 ceeisa2026.com Program chairs: Aida Hozić & Dženeta Karabegović

I spent this Sunday morning reading the beautiful writings on @equatormag.bsky.social site and listening to their podcasts. Read, listen, support, share.

I will never get used to the vacuous synchronicity of American leisure alongside wars: the latest bridal fashion, old Kindles dying, best chocolate. Life goes on in wars, always. But this cover is not about life - it is about forgetting, denial, erasure and … consumption.

Excellent account of encounters between the Vatican/Pentagon emissaries Christophe Pierre/Eldridge Colby. The article concludes with Pierre’s words: “The world is wrong when it treats aggression like wisdom and domination as realism. Refusal of hate is not weakness. Love is stronger than death.”

And @profpaulpoast.bsky.social has spoken.

Unaffordable daycare is a problem lack of public health care/insurance is a problem Lack of paid parental leave is a problem Abortion bans that make difficult pregnancies into crimes is a problem Expensive housing is a problem Fewer teen pregnancies is NOT a problem

In that vein, Chile has been replacing its old Mercedes public transport buses with modern 100% electric BYD buses. It’s not like they were coerced to do it by China, it’s more like that the Germans live in a long-gone era and refuse to build modern vehicles. The BYD buses are excellent quality.

The image is smalish but the withdrawals are huge. Private capital holders continue to price the current political/economic moment with attempts at mass exit.

“Perhaps most strikingly of all, the data demonstrates that women were far more often engaged in paid employment than historians have tended to assume.”

Looking forward to Lisbon for @europeanisa.bsky.social, presenting the work that @allysonedwards1.bsky.social & I are doing on youth militarisation in #Russia and appearing on a roundtable about the new book War Economy edited by @hozic.bsky.social and Jacqui True www.routledge.com/War-Economy-...

Europe may not rebound. Hit by COVID, the US push to de-couple from China, Biden’s IRA, the Ukraine war and the switch from Russian gas to the US/Gulf LPG, AI and platforms, Trump’s tariffs, loss of Chinese market, and now Hormuz: what’s left is a retirement zone. And it’s not even Florida ….

Apply!!!! I can think of a number of amazing IPE/CPE scholars 3-5 years from their PhDs who would be extremely well qualified for this position and could *diversify* Max Planck intellectually, geographically, and demographically.

Filipino defence minister Gilbert Teodoro today: “It is of vital importance to us that the strait of Hormuz be opened immediately and kept safe. Not only for the seafarers, but also for Philippine consumers. The poor Filipinos who need to pay astronomical prices for electricity, fuel, and power.”

This was/is a great book. And so misunderstood. History repeats on a loop.

The deadline for this year's CEEISA proposals - papers, panels, and roundtables - is April 10, 2026. The theme - Contesting Imperialism(s) - could not be more urgent, and Sarajevo and its history are an important vantage point from which to reconsider empires, their legacies, and their future!

Charles Tilley was correct: states are organized criminal institutions. They generate threats to extract resources; they disguise their racketeering as protection. Unlike mafias, however, states do not take care of the needy in their communities. They just throw them to the wolves.

Wow. And just like that, Europe is a rocket ship now.

This is an incredible documentation of the systematic, intentional collapse of American health science, by Elizabeth Ginexi. open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

Another BANger from @cornelban.bsky.social On energy geoeconomics geoeconomic.substack.com/p/energy-res...

@profpaulpoast.bsky.social now says that we are in a world war. We are confronted with a global conflict led by governments that most of us do not support. Bodies as fodder for new and experimental weapons, techno-dystopia as a likely outcome. A reminder: nothing like war to find moral purpose.

Sometimes a film can move a mountain.

Always worth reading 👇

This is so lovely. 🤓 Thanks to the @hist-isanet.bsky.social for showcasing historical work and to the committee for recognising Erased with this prize. 🥂 Congratulations to Yan Long for their honourable mention.

1/ "Higher energy, fertilizer and transport costs – including freight rates, bunker fuel prices and insurance premiums – may increase food costs and intensify cost-of-living pressures, particularly for the most vulnerable." Excellent report by UNCTAD unctad.org/system/files...

What inflation? Food is for the poor. Let them eat cake.

The 47th POTUS may not know the difference between a war and a reality TV show. He seems to think he can just change the channel or switch it off and on as he pleases.

Contesting Imperialism(s) - Central and East European ISA conference in Sarajevo, BiH, June 17-19, 2026. Deadline for proposals - April 10, 2026. There will be a pre-conference workshop for young scholars. For info, please visit: ceeisa2026.com

Nothing to see here, just a German military mega-contractor with cartel appetite (and a big male energy CEO who loves to hunt) ditching civilian manufacture and monopolizing earth-to-space production and building its factories all over (mostly Eastern) Europe www.ft.com/content/a326...

The room was almost empty when BN delivered his defiant speech at the UN in September 2024. But this photo grabbed my attention. It should have been taken seriously. He has been working on the realization of “the blessing” persistently, by all means available, come hell or high water.

The Oracle has spoken: “You go through this and then in five years, you realise you put somebody in who was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people.”

Presdent Trump as the reliable source of war information.

If I support wars + say appropriate things about dehumanized enemies + celebrate masculinity, can I get an island too?

Regime change is a bipartisan addiction. And … DJT has made peace with the Deep State. So all is well and back to normal in Washington DC.

Today, thanks to my academic colleagues, I was once again reminded of the world’s callous response to the Rwandan genocide, brilliantly captured in this PBS Frontline documentary.

How the Left was smeared and the UK citizens’ digital data and defense sold to Oracle and Palantir.

ECRs in IPE, who are applying to the Political Economy Beyond Boundaries (PEBB) section of the @europeanisa.bsky.social for the PEC in Lisbon, September 1-4, 2026, may also be considered for the two RIPE-sponsored panels. See the call below for details.

Tomorrow at 1:30 pm UK time, at Pembroke College, Oxford - “Italy as Bellwether” in the shifting European and transatlantic relations. The event is hybrid, offering both in-person and online attendance. To join online, contact Kate McKee, ISO events coordinator, at [email protected].

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.