Aslı Bâli and Samuel Moyn America is in decline. And so is Pax America: the American-led world order. While there are many genuine dangers of American decline, there has never been a better chance to say clearly how much the unipolar order always left to be desired, and to imagine a multipolar world that might secure… Read More What should replace the American-led world order?
Edward Luce “Tweets don’t overturn signed agreements,” said a Saudi official last week. Amid America’s broiling ocean of surrealism, being instructed by a dynastic autocracy on the sanctity of the contract stands out. Donald Trump had claimed to amend a US-Saudi nuclear deal on his Truth Social site the day after it was signed. That… Read More Trump’s waning sway over the world
As the far right fulminates about who ‘belongs’ in Britain, let’s remember Fritz Lustig, who arrived here in 1939, just months before war broke out. Initially jailed as an ‘enemy alien’, he played a vital role in a top-secret military intelligence unit Robin Lustig When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, Fritz Lustig,… Read More My father, the German refugee who fought the Nazis as a ‘secret listener’
Tom Engelhardt ( Tom Engelhardt Substack) – I recently drove to a gas station in Massachusetts to fill my tank with regular gas, the cheapest around, and, to my surprise, given what’s going on, it was only $4.59 a gallon. Okay, okay, I take back that “only” and admit it. It’s not good to joke about the nightmare… Read More America’s Imperial Wars, from Korea to Iran
As the bombing starts again, it’s clear the president has dragged the US into a limitless fiasco – and the world into an economic quagmire Simon Tisdall Feckless and clueless, Donald Trump is lost in Iran, unable to find a way out of the disastrous war he started. Once again, the US military is pummelling the… Read More Trump, not Iran, is the world’s greatest danger. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction
NB: An excellent commentary; except for one misnomer: when it comes to Western imperial establishments and their hangers-on, it’s not their moral stupidity, but their moral depravity that we are confronted with. The truth is as clear as crystal: they are irredeemably racist, as racist as the Nazi jurists who concocted the phrase ‘life not… Read More Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity
The cultural fascination with the middle ages rarely acknowledges that power is still won and abused in the same wayIt makes a mockery of the idea that we use “medieval” as a term of abuse to fling at others, when really it’s a term that correctly defines enduring and deeply shameful characteristics of our own… Read More Our tendency to persecute others is as alive today as in medieval times
Imagine then, for a moment, not the darkness of the cinema so much as the darkness of the king and queen’s pillared hall, where guests are gathered for feasting and for telling stories. Against the flickering fire, the bard strikes up with his harp and starts to sing, performing tales of adventure and loss, return… Read More ‘More postmodern than ancient’: why the Odyssey is everywhere, from Oz to Westeros
Seham Tantesh in Gaza and Julian Borger in Jerusalem A Palestinian driver bringing food aid from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) into Gaza has been killed by an Israeli soldier “in a field execution”, according to witnesses and the local truckers’ association, which said it may suspend operations in protest. Ahmad Esleem was shot in the head on… Read More IDF accused of ‘field execution’ of Palestinian driver bringing aid into Gaza
An interview with Magdi el Gizouli Adam Benjamin Sudan’s ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has killed thousands and displaced millions. The current crisis follows years of political upheaval across the country. In late 2018 and 2019, mass protests calling for democratic rule led to the collapse of the… Read More Marketing War (2023)
