Blogs about Politics

In India, popular movements, not elections, will bring transformative change. Image credit Manuel Lopez for the World Economic Forum via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Deed. This article is from an upcoming issue of Amandla! as …

The Conservatives are known colloquially as the stupid party, so that its leading lights should utter stupidities is a given. The latest issuing from the lips of Jacob Rees-Mogg was about how the Conservatives might …

This weekend’s escapist and light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the early adventures of the DC character Black Lightning. BLACK LIGHTNING Vol 1 #1 (April 1977) Title: Black Lightning Villains: The 100 Synopsis: …

I’ve published a new academic article in Economic and Political Weekly on Gandhi’s attempt to recover the varna system so as to generate time for spiritual and civic activity and produce an Indian subject capable …

Tense, emotional climate science-fiction that doesn’t quite come together by Kevin Fox, Jr. This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the film being covered …

It's quite apparent that right now we're seeing the build-out of a whole new communications technology that hasn't quite hit the public eye yet—ubiquitous satellite broadband and telephony. This is still in the very early …

The Rayner and Elphicke stories wouldn’t stop Starmer taking office, but might haunt him once he gets there Henry Hill “Being more popular than an incumbent government that has been in office for 14 years …

The role of parliament in authorising the use of military force has been much debated in recent years, and most recently due to airstrikes against targets in Yemen. The Unit hosted an event with three …

The historian Arno Mayer, who had such an influence on my work and eventually became a friend, has died at 97. He wrote books on everything from the French Revolution to the First World War …

A preview of our Spring 2024 issue.

Dow Closes Above 40,000 for the First Time Ever We almost wrote this up yesterday, because the Dow crept up above 40,000 on Thursday, before closing slightly below. Yesterday, however, it closed above 40,000 for …

Alex Garland’s Civil War puts the front lines of his titular conflict in Charlottesville. The problem is that fact was already stranger than his fiction. Why Charlottesville? I am asked this often by people still …

Thanks to neoliberalism, government in the UK feels like one long trick played on the people. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 10th May 2024. The news should have stopped us in our tracks. …

I grew up, I think, at the climax of the Enlightenment, which had begun several centuries earlier. By Enlightenment I mean above all the idea that human reason could improve human life, economically, medically, and …

It’s the ides of May, almost. What’s this? I’m writing mostly at a “drafts blog” these days. I publish occasional roundups, with excerpts of that writing here. This post will be a roundup of March …

For quite a while I’ve been meaning to write a piece appreciating Ross Gittins’ 50 year run as Australia’s leading economic journalist. He’s one of the few who is neither an ideologue nor a recycler …

A question: if universities and colleges ‘should’ condemn Hamas’s morally abhorrent attack, why ‘shouldn’t’ they also condemn Israel’s morally abhorrent war of revenge?

CO2 emissions continued to increase in 2023 with now little chance of global warming staying under 1.5oC. Planting trees is part of the solution but only in the longer term. Even Hollywood is getting the …

Or ever? You might bet tempted to cite Kurt Vonnegut’s “Wear sunscreen” speech, but he didn’t give it and it was written as an essay by Mary Schmich. I’ve never heard one that I would …

Image via Big Serge Thought The good folk at the Institute for the Study of War can’t understand why so many people think the U.S. is losing in Ukraine. The skepticism comes from all directions …