One of my favourite covers of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell with drawing by Paul Hogarth. Penguin, 1962. This version also includes the writer's 1943 essay "Looking back on the Spanish war".

When violence expert Bandy Lee publicly warned that Donald Trump likely presented a danger to the nation’s health, she was ostracized by the psychiatric community. It turns out she was right.

No, this isn’t a front page from the 80s that shows how far we’ve come since then. The Sun is genuinely arguing that cutting the drink drive limit “could deal a fresh blow to pubs making customers worried to have any alcohol at all” before getting behind the wheel.

Mourning a true master, Béla Tarr. And remembering the all night screening of his 7 hour magnum opus, and the certificate he issued, as if we were kids at Little Chef who had eaten all our dinner.

If you have to tie yourself in knots to do a deal with a proven bad faith actor that deal is fundamentally not worth doing. Trump hasn’t even bothered enforcing his own ceasefire in Gaza with a belligerent ally he has leverage over. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Just a bunch of stupid, craven, disgusting pigs so poisoned by their own vacuous national culture they treat opening new frontiers of death and destruction like open fast food restaurant franchises. I cannot put into words the contempt I have for these utterly wretched dogs.

5 years ago today wp.me/p15p2Q-aSs

What’s the betting Trump just straight up tells Europe to choose between Ukraine & Greenland?

‘We seem to be living in an era of competitive shamelessness,’ writes Akshi Singh in a new column reflecting on the book ‘A Philosophy of Shame’ by Frédéric Gros.⁠ ⁠ Read the full article: artreview.com/a-philosophy...

every fascist intellectual is nothing more than an adolescent pseud with faux gravitas whose output is sophomoric fanfiction the sole purpose of which is to rationalize fascist barbarism

The emperor-cult shit continues to be some of the most disgusting, authoritarian crap this regime does.

When people in the media call Trump a "lame duck," they're fooling themselves.

Eating a baked potato (with one hand) for Bela tonight

Short video talking about this original 1936 photo of French International Brigaders in Madrid.

"Without light in the darkness, you cannot make movies." RIP Béla Tarr 🖤 1955 - 2026

Béla Tarr, 1955-2026 🤍

Bela Tarr, 1955-2026 I interviewed him once & he smoked so much that the bar staff intervened & swore so hard that the translator refused to translate. Which is to say that he was as tough, hazardous & uncompromising as his films. Gone in a puff of smoke, hopefully raising hell someplace else

Most importantly, Miller is wrong. Plenty of stable societies existed that did not conform to his "iron laws". Such "laws" might apply, however, to centralised, hierarchical political systems, especially those dominated by psychopaths like Stephen Miller.

Chilling warning from a Trump-aide. ”the U.S. will use its military “unapologetically” to secure U.S. interests". “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” "Western countries should not have given up their empires and colonies after WWII". Madness.

The US is an empire in decline. Its attack on Venezuela is just the latest morbid symptom. New column 👇 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Wes Streeting, part of a govt that won't confirm it'd uphold an ICC arrest warrant, won't meet its obligations under the genocide convention, & won't condemn what the US has done in Venezuela, says he's concerned about the disintegration of the rules based international system

Even if she does have to give it up, she can be content in the knowledge she'll be a shoo-in for the Nobel Dignity Prize next year.

Corruption, violence, self-interest, stupidity. Contempt for international law. Idiots squabbling over who deserves the discredited Nobel Peace Prize. The international community spineless. Just horrifying. We’re through the Looking Glass - and everyone’s malevolent and carrying guns

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Machado praises Trump’s illegal kidnapping of Maduro and says he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. She also calls on Stockholm to give the Nobel Prize for Literature to Jeffrey Archer

the US invented a cartel so it could kidnap a head of state.

Yet another huge contract, awarded without any competitive bidding process, to Wes Streeting's favourite NHS supplier, the Hard Right US surveillance tech specialists Palantir, for military decision making capability.

This makes clear these are conscious editorial choices, not concerns over being sued etc It's exactly the same logic behind the mainstream media using euphemisms like "populism" or "hard right" rather than far right, racism or fascism These is a top-down legitimation of reactionary politics

Obama’s nonsensical prize for doing nothing was the beginning of the end, and the Nobel’s ultimate debasement lies somewhere between Machado and Trump.

The previous modern standard for murdering people en masse while effecting an arrest warrant involved members of a Waco religious cult (76), or group home occupants (11) in West Philadelphia or the Chicago abode of some Blank Panthers (2 dead, more wounded). Trump now holds the record.

The instability this loss of international rules could drive worldwide is terrifying.

Harvard has removed a resident dean -- a Black lecturer in psychology -- for writing posts critical of Trump and law enforcement www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Snow just in time for our annual epiphany, as we reread The Dead…

What the fuck

The first link didn’t work for me but this did. Taking a break from my essay to listen to it with a gigantic cup of tea … www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

‘This mania with banning and censorship goes back a long way, and concerns both books and films. Repressive colonial habits die hard.’ Granta interviews Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Indian history, literature, and his intellectual trajectory. granta.com/indian-tempt...

If John Pilger was around today, he'd have a lot to say about the Venezuela situation.

My personal view is that it all went wrong for Starmer when he couldn't bring himself to say that cutting off power and water to Gaza wasn't OK. He lost his credibility as a humanitarian and a human rights lawyer. He knew the answer. He couldn't say so. That was his moment.

BBC journalists have been banned from describing the kidnapped Venezuelan leader as having been kidnapped. The BBC News Editor has sent this to BBC journalists.

to the point as ever @nesrinemalik.bsky.social in the Guardian. Post-1945 international law had many issues but its demise poses even more www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"China is performing military drills around Taiwan. Vladimir Putin needs little encouragement, but the Trumpian doctrine of imperial dominion and discretionary right to launch military campaigns now mirrors Putin’s own, and further imbues Russia’s actions in Ukraine with validity."

The media need to stop beating their chests about how powerful our military is. It's a point of pride when your country has a strong military that keeps the peace. It's a source of shame when politicians turn your strong military into an international armed robbery gang.

Something really stinks in Starmer's government, otherwise why the refusal from government ministers to say it's wrong to keep invading countries, when last year the government had a firm line of self-determination regarding Denmark and Greenland? news.sky.com/story/uk-gov...

Not commenting on Venezuela is one thing, but Starmer's ministers not even being willing to say "no of course the US shouldn't invade a peaceful sovereign democratic NATO country, which is one of our closest allies" is quite another.

Having said that, WOW is this dude a cartoonish caricature of spinelessness. He’s like if the adjective “spineless” itself became a person. I do admire that when they receive deranged answers, British on-air interviewers (unlike our lot) are apparently permitted to say so.

In a weird way this clip frightens me more than any malevolent shit Trump or his people have said because it illustrates how shit-scared other countries have become of us, that they can’t say obviously correct things because they don’t know how we’ll react.

Elon Musk chatbot repeatedly making CSAM on demand should be one of the single biggest stories right now and it's effectively a collective shrug instead

Matthew Doyle handled No. 10 comms for 9 months. He's spent 27 years in spin. We know nothing about his views or values. So who better to sit in the House of Lords. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/wes...

Regards, September 1937, using a photo by Agustí Centelles of refugees fleeing from Franco's army, Tardienta, Aragón to warn of dangers posed by French far right, specifically that of Action Française. "They'd like to make France a new Spain" the subtitle reads. AF to Le Pen...