The rest of the blog
Let’s not pretend there’s a serious policy debate here. The call to ban the burqa wasn’t a contribution to some Enlightenment café of ideas; it was a dog whistle blasted at full volume, a panic-button press designed to provoke.
Trans people are not confused. They are not misled. They have not been lied to. They are responding, with dignity and resistance, to a sustained campaign of dehumanisation, spearheaded by a cross-section of legal hardliners, culture warriors, so called feminists, and opportunists.
Amazon’s humanoid delivery bots aren’t just replacing drivers—they’re accelerating the creation of what William I. Robinson calls surplus humanity: billions rendered useless to capital.
This isn’t a defence strategy—it’s a subsidy for the arms industry, a performance of deterrence, and a reaffirmation of Britain’s role as obedient junior partner in the global machinery of capital.
On Larry Alan Busk’s Democracy in Spite of the Demos
Lee Anderson doesn’t want a solution—he wants a stage, and the small boats crisis is just the latest prop in Britain’s long-running theatre of cruelty
Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda, where settler colonialism is recast as civilisation and Palestinian resistance is pathologised as a death cult. He doesn’t analyse October 7; he sanctifies it.
Austerity at home, impunity abroad, this is the Britain that won’t count the bodies, so long as capital is kept comfortable.
In Capital’s Grave, Jodi Dean argues that capitalism isn’t simply in crisis, it’s decomposing into a new neofeudal order of rent, servitude and fragmented power.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is not just an attack on one activist, it is a chilling demonstration of how the state can manufacture criminality in real time, silencing dissent without justification or consequence.
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Finance Minister, delivered a powerful speech expressing solidarity with Palestinian rights advocates in Germany, despite facing a ban on participating in political events in the country due to his outspoken criticism of efforts to silence those who speak out against injustices faced by Palestinians.
In this scathing critique, Simon Pearson eviscerates Labour leader Keir Starmer’s recent Chatham House speech on the Israeli action against Hamas, arguing his bourgeois perspective perpetuates imperialist myths and distracts from the radical struggle needed for Palestinian liberation.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas has sparked heated debate globally, with some accusing critics of Israel’s actions of being antisemitic. This argues for nuance in understanding the crisis, differentiating between legitimate critiques of state policies and bigotry, and calling for ethical consistency in advocating for human rights on both sides.
The Middle East now stands on a knife’s edge as cycles of violence threaten to engulf the region in widening conflict. But even amid the drumbeats of war sounded by the powerful, hope persists in the solidarity of ordinary people demanding justice and charting a course away from the abyss.
The national question is a complex and challenging issue that defies any simplistic formula. It is a problem that is entangled within the intricate webs of history, culture, and power.