16 hours agoThe genius of Charles BukowskiRecently, I rediscovered the work of Charles Bukowski after many years. For those unfamiliar with Bukowski, he is one of the most popular novelists and poets ever to inhabit the American counter culture, with some of his works still considered classics and as popular today as they were when they…Culture6 min read
3 days agoMick Lynch has skelped the arse of the entire political and media class over the RMT rail strikesClarence Darrow: Trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. Margaret Thatcher: I can’t help but spit nails when just thinking about Trade Unions. Rarely does there come along an individual who captures the imagination of working class people in the process of…Britain4 min read
3 days agoZelensky’s deification is a metric of our infantilisationUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has, in the midst of a brutal conflict, been propelled from the most unlikely leader of a country mired in corruptionwith a parlous economy into something approximating to a Marvel comic book superhero, doughtily defending Ukraine against an implacable Russian bear in the cause of Western…Ukraine3 min read
5 days agoThe world needs Russia to win the conflict in Ukraine. Here’s why?So foul a sky clears not without a storm. William Shakespeare The conflict in Ukraine marks a major inflection point in human affairs, developing as it has into a proxy conflict between a resurgent Russia and a Washington-led Western ideological bloc whose global hegemony is being challenged as never before. …Russia Ukraine War5 min read
6 days agoCapitol riot, imperial decline, white supremacy, guns and hate. Welcome to AmericaWatching the Capitol riot congressional hearings, one cannot but be struck by how close Trump’s supporters came to succeeding in interfering with the peaceful transfer of power on January 6 2021. One also cannot but be reminded that what Trump and his supporters attempted in Washington, Washington has done all…America4 min read
Jun 16The enduring truths of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’Modern literature lacks the epic works that encompass and define the times in which we live, capturing that elusive but necessary timelessness symptomatic of the profundity required of a classic. Perhaps Don Delilio’s Underworld (1997) is the closest there has been to claiming that mantle over the past thirty years…Literature7 min read
Jun 15No Mr Blinken, Juan Guaido is not the interim president of Venezuela and Venezuela is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of WashingtonConfirmation that the office of US Secretary of State should rightly be renamed the office of US Secretary of US Imperialism has just been provided by the current incumbent, Anthony Blinken. In a recent tweet Mr Blinken continued the charade begun by former US President Donald Trump in referring to…Latin America4 min read
Jun 15Britain’s Rwanda deportation policy is the result of a jamboree of Brexit Union Jack flag-shaggingOn every level imaginable, the UK government’s attempt to solve the challenge posed by thousands of asylum seekers making their way across the English Channel from Northern France by deporting them to Rwanda in East Africa is barbaric and unworkable. Yet if not for the last minute legal intervention by…UK3 min read
Jun 14Grenfell was then and remains now a monument to Tory BritainNeither oversight, negligence, nor malfeasance lay at the root of the Glenfell Tower fire in West London on June 14 2017. Strip away the sickening obfuscation and platitudes peddled by the usual parade of confected politicians, and the roots of this disaster lay in the virulent disdain, bordering on hatred…UK4 min read
Jun 5The old world is dying…and that’s a good thingIn his book, The New Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan makes the salient point that “The decisions being made in today’s world that really matter are not being made in Paris, London, Berlin or Rome — as they were a hundred years ago — but in Beijing, Moscow, in Tehran and…China4 min read