The UK passed a grim milestone yesterday, as Boris Johnson announced that officially recorded coronavirus deaths have passed 100,000. Only five countries have crossed this number: ourselves aside, there is the US, Brazil, India and Mexico.
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” As in the 2003 global anti-war protests, internationalism from below contrasts sharply with an international conspiracy of powerful states and their clients.”
Analysis: As the world protests the slaughter of Yemen, Scotland has a special responsibility
Coronavirus, many imagine, is the great equaliser. However, new figures from Oxfam paint a very different picture.
Source Direct: Plunder and Pandemic
According to research from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, global ice loss is speeding up. There has been a 65% increase in the rate of ice loss over the 23-year survey, with the ice loss over the study period estimated to have raised sea levels by 35 millimetres.
Global ice loss reaching worst-case scenarios
The prospect of state collapse, whether orderly or disorderly, remains very real. That said, theoretical possibilities are one thing. Making it happen is quite another. States of Britain’s standing don’t just topple of their own accord. Any breakup of a venerable old imperial power requires concerted political agency – a plan, in short.
Source Direct: Roadmap to Nowhere?
SNP trade minister Ivan McKee evocatively called them a “shiny squirrel” while Nicola Sturgeon noted they were widely associated with “low-cost, low-wage, low-value opportunities”. Fortunately, the Scottish Government aren’t proposing “freeports” but “green ports”…
Source Direct: As Free as a Green Port
“Free trade regimes – either EU or UK – are incompatible with environmentally sound and socially just economic development, as the fishing communities know only too well.”
Analysis: Scotland’s fishing communities need more than European free trade
Joe Biden’s inauguration yesterday thus had the feeling of a global event, with all of us vicariously participating. Much of the media, including our state broadcaster, put objectivity to bed and resorted to fawning, like Nicholas Witchell narrating the birth of a Royal baby.
Source Direct: Biden with Me
“The biggest argument for nationalising the care home industry now is what will happen if the Scottish Government doesn’t intervene and continues to waste resources on trying to make the current market system work.”
Nick Kempe: The case for nationalising Scotland’s care homes
Capitalism, our system, is ageing, inept, bilious and barely able to rise from its sickbed. Economic news does not determine the constitution, but it does ask questions about what type of independence might be possible or desirable.
Source Direct: System Shock
“Only the course of coming years will tell us if Trump’s experiment in erratic anti-politics in power leaves a legacy of disorientation, or renewal on the right.”
Analysis: The Republicans are down but far from out
It’s tempting to ignore the Scottish Labour leadership election. Here will be two career politicians with milquetoast opinions fighting for the soul of a party that long ceased to matter in Scotland’s real power stakes.
Source Direct: On the Slab
The SNP’s launch of a new “independence taskforce” was greeted with a predictable round of predictable scolds from a predictable group of unionist leaders led by a predictable Scottish Labour leadership candidate.