In the upside down world of the Daily Mail, If you're opposed to the US invading another country, kidnapping its president and then telling the world of its plan to "run" that country indefinitely, you're a "Maduro apologist"

that is what Bush said about Iraq - $7 trillion mistake

A gangster regime, with cheap dialogue to match

So many lies in Trump's rambling speech, but his easy segue from the illegal use of the military overseas to the illegal use of the military in US cities is really chilling

Hard not to wonder whether Trump has been using his recent hours-long phone calls with Putin to barter over Venezuela and eastern Ukraine; would be entirely on-brand for Trump to tell the Russian president about his invasion plan long before anyone in Congress gets the memo

Feels as if there's a real gap in the market right now for a peace prize for people who actually promote peace

The media reaction to Trump's plainly illegal invasion/abduction this morning has been mostly shock, but Venezuelan opposition figures with "close ties to the US security establishment" have been boasting about this outcome for months (this from the FT in October)

Happy new year, everyone! Seeing in the new year by burying our 2025 lemon pig with full honours, helluva year to be a lemon pig

Since the "tech prosperity deal" was engineered to give Sam Altman, Satya Nadella and Jensen Huang even more encouragement to build AI data centres and produce yet more AI slop, the UK may have dodged a bullet here

The madness of our civilisation, in which the super-rich are throwing money at AI which the rest of us don't want, and are meeting the ridiculous power demands of data centres mostly by burning gas and cooking our planet

I have a perverse admiration for the way in which Gianni Infantino has made FIFA an even more despicable organisation than it was during Sepp Blatter's constantly-disgraced tenure www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

I know I have been promising this forever but the Oxford Illustrated History of the United States will finally be out in June of next year, just in time to help unite the nation around the 250th

I wish the BBC would simply ask Lisa Nandy directly to confirm the widely-reported story that Keir Starmer dropped Labour's support for the crucial second phase of the Leveson enquiry into press corruption in return for Murdoch's backing in the general election

Not cat-related, but you've reminded me of @nicholasguyatt.bsky.social and the marrow spoons: bsky.app/profile/yvon...

After Trump I don't know how you go back to the presidency being even vaguely dignified and not perpetually batshit-crazy

ICYMI here's the recording of my chat last week about law, politics and autocracy in America with Jim Zirin, author and talk-show host. Some great questions from the audience and a persistent effort from yours truly to find some hope in the current moment www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj3o...

Surreal to see the media architects of Starmerism, the guys who cheered every one of Starmer's deceptions and assaults on the left, now scratching their heads about why he's become a terrible and reviled prime minister who stands for nothing www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Obviously this is another trumpet of doom hailing the imminent collapse of the AI bubble, but for now it's nice that Microsoft and Nvidia are helping to fund the gigantic settlement for all the authors Anthropic ripped off

“Mr Summers added that he would continue teaching at Harvard”

The AI bubble is now consuming non-AI companies which have been borrowing tens of billions to build data centres they can rent back to the AI companies. So much hubris but of course when the crash comes they will all get bailed out and the rest of us will be screwed

When you have a viciously right-wing media which has spent YEARS scaremongering about immigrants and insisting that immigration is the nation's most important issue, it's grim to see a Labour home secretary validate that narrative so shamelessly www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The focus should properly be on Mahmood’s grim willingness to lead McSweeney’s anti-immigrant crusade; but the central and enduring role of Murdoch’s Times and Sunday Times in laundering the McSweeney/Starmer project is a wonder to behold

it's often very hard for extremely successful and powerful people to understand that mild criticism from those they have power over is not equivalent to actually being oppressed.

It’s hard to even know where to begin with this. Professor Falk is in his 90s and one of the world’s most prominent international legal scholars. It beggars belief that he could even remotely be considered a threat to Canada.

Wow this is proper John Adams stuff. Weird that our government here in the UK is supposed to be left-leaning and has a gigantic parliamentary majority and yet spends all of its time doing Nigel Farage's bidding www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Trump was impeached in January 2021 for attempting to incite an insurrection; the Senate was too cowardly to convict him, which would have barred him from running again & spared us the current nightmare, but the claim that the BBC misreported his intention to steal the 2020 election is *fake news*

Truly hilarious that Starmer's best argument for saving his own skin is that ditching him as prime minister would threaten the UK's close relationship with....Donald Trump

The BBC’s core problem is that, like the NHS, it models the benefits and virtues of a not-for-profit public service in a world of rapacious corporate greed and unstinting right-wing hostility to the idea of the public good www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...

ICYMI the Telegraph's reporting on the BBC bias 'crisis' included the fantastical claim that the right-wing and unabashedly anti-woke History Reclaimed website is a legitimate arbiter either of historical fact or political balance

An orchestrated right-wing campaign against our public broadcaster is destroying the BBC while our supposedly left-leaning government with its massive majority either sits on its hands or cheers on the vandals

wondering how many seconds Trump can go without mentioning Zohran

Hilarious to watch Starmer’s allies this morning pretending that they haven’t really heard of Zohran Mamdani

Cannot be overstated that the liberal political and media establishment in the UK has spent the past ten users scorching the earth on the left while insisting that the very very best you'll ever get in elected politics is a Starmer/Cuomo type

No surprise that the establishment media here in the UK are coming for Mamdani this morning. The boldness of his vision shows up our Labour government for what it is: timid, in hock to wealthy donors, and totally devoid of progressive energy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If you have half an hour to kill this sounds like a great party

An amazing exploration of the fusion of creativity and progressive politics which has inspired so many people, both within and far beyond NYC

Cannot be said often enough that the political figure who inaugurated our age of lawlessness, arbitrary power and authoritarianism was not Donald Trump but Dick Cheney

Cambridge friends: come join us on Wednesday 12th November for a chat with Jim Zirin - lawyer, talk show host, and author of PLAINTIFF IN CHIEF: A PORTRAIT OF DONALD TRUMP IN 3500 LAWSUITS. Tickets free but going fast - here's the link www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/events/autoc...

Moved these guys from the front of the house to the pumpkin graveyard out back

incredible to hear former Sun editor David Yelland on the radio this morning praising the King and Keir Starmer for taking 'decisive action' against Andrew and Mandelson as if they hadn't also coddled/promoted them for *years* after we knew everything

The Reuters investigation of Trump's soaring profits since becoming president is *wild* - so 90% of his income is from his insanely dodgy crypto company, which routinely accepts payments of tens of millions of dollars from non-U.S. citizens who I guess just love the Trump brand

Haven't been to London since September but back then it was not "largely Muslim [with] women completely covered up"

So UCLA's draft agreement with the Trump administration bans foreign students who might criticise the US or Israel, and subjects any foreigners who actually make it to Los Angeles to mandatory training in "free speech and open debate"

obligatory Halloween cat content

Painfully on-the-nose metaphor for modern conservatism

Coming next spring, in time for what will surely be a lively but respectful debate about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration

That the US government is entirely shut down but Trump can somehow find the means to demolish the White House seems too absurd to be possible, I am looking for an irony epipen right now

⏰SIX DAYS LEFT to apply for the Cambridge US history job⏰ Thanks to everyone who's already applied; if you're considering an application, NB that we will NOT contact referees unless you're longlisted so you can throw your hat into the ring with minimal hassle networks.h-net.org/jobs/69140/u...

Wild to come home from work at 10pm and discover that UK university tuition fees *may* rise in line with inflation (i.e. stand still) *if* we meet "tough standards", thank you to the Labour government for your enlightened stewardship of higher ed www.theguardian.com/education/20...

It's instructive to compare the outrage about the BBC's swiftly-pulled Gaza documentary, especially from politicians, with the silence or steadfast denial within the media and political establishment about the actual genocide www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...