Will Bibi ignore Biden and get his way, again?
Two weeks ago Iran, in response to Israel’s assassinations of the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, its most important allies in the Arab world, fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel. ...
Articles
Netanyahu invades Lebanon: only two outcomes are possible
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has launched his invasion of Lebanon. As usual in the opening stages of Israeli incursions into that fragile country, the signs and portents look ...
Are animals conscious?
A bit behind the curve (it was first posted last April), I have stumbled across ‘The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness’. It is a brave attempt by a coalition ...
Netanyahu is Israel’s curse, but he and his strategy are safe
Six Jewish hostages were murdered by Hamas last week just before the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reached them, and a controversy has erupted in Israel about whether Prime Minister Benjamin ...
Walls and deportations: an unstoppable trend
Fortress America and Festung Europa (Fortress Europe) are just starting to take shape; bare outlines of what they will have grown into ten years from now. But the trend is ...
The very precious life of Elon Musk
Elon Musk is heading for a crash. It’s only a matter of time before one or another of his random enthusiasms brings him down. But if I had the ...
Climate change: the August deadline and truly uncharted territory
When you spend four years writing a book on climate change, you get to know most of the leading players. I have never seen them so dismayed.
“By August, if ...
No comeback for Biden, he is now a lost cause
It really doesn’t matter whether Joe Biden is in peak condition intellectually during a second term as president. He did some useful things in his first term, but his ...
Iran’s rapidly eroding theocracy
“I have heard that people’s zeal and interest is higher than in the first round [of Iran’s presidential election],” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian TV just ...
Macron is arrogant but not stupid
Nothing else in France looks like the 1930s, so why should fascism? There really is a fascist movement in France, although it avoids torch-lit marches and jackboots. It has even ...
Ukraine blame game: Who started it?
There is one thing almost all populist nationalists agree on: the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the continuing carnage there was the fault of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. ...
The bigger game: Israel and Saudi Arabia vs Iran
Gaza, IDF, Hamas, Netanyahu, famine, terrorism, genocide, and on and on: the loud, incessant clatter of local issues and tactical moves almost drowns out the low, grinding noise as the ...
Stop the ‘Munich’ analogies: we’re not heading for a ‘great war’
Scarcely a week passes without some media pundit or attention-seeking historian warning that a Great War is nigh. As always, there are enough signs and portents around to make that ...
A little hope on climate change
It was technology that got us into this global climate crisis, and it will be technology that gets us out of it. Specifically, technology that lets us go on living ...
Will UK election be an extinction-level event?
“Why did he do it? We were all told it would be the autumn and we were hoping by then we could turn things around. It is very perplexing,” said ...
Crunch Time for Netanyahu?
It has not been a good week for Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, chief decision-maker in the war in the Gaza Strip that has already cost at least 35,000 ...
South African election: the fall of the ANC
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born,” wrote Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in 1929. “Now is the time of monsters.”
Gramsci’s remark is being ...
Thought experiment: buying the Palestinians out?
Last week a despairing reader asked me if the solution to the ‘Middle East Problem’ might be to throw money at it: just buy the Palestinians out. Offer every Palestinian ...
The mother of all climate feedbacks?
“Just like this year, last year the heat wave extended from parts of India to Bangladesh and Myanmar, and all the way to Thailand. This year it went further east, ...
Arctic seals and coral reefs: every little bit helps
“Without extinction, there would likely be insufficient ecological ‘space’ available for new species.”
What? Is this person saying that extinction is a good thing? But what about the scarlet-throated goat-botherer? ...
Indian elections: fascism is not necessarily India’s future
Extreme nationalism always looks foolish or even deranged to those who have not caught the virus, but in India it’s now official.
In January, India’s Ministry of Defence ...
Iran retaliation: A pantomime crisis, not a real war
Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader’, is embarrassed and humiliated by the complete failure of his drone and missile attack on Israel, but does US President Joe Biden have the ...
There really are rules when it comes to borders
History is mostly a matter of dates, and the key date is always that of the last conquest. All previous conquests are then magically forgiven and forgotten.
This observation is ...
Netanyahu needs the war to continue
What should you do when your government assures you that everything is under control and says there is no need to buy generators, stock up on food and withdraw money ...