There was a remarkable contrast this morning in two stories standing side by side on the BBC homepage. On the left, US President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows saying “we’re not going to control the pandemic”. On the right, one positive covid-19 case sparking the testing of all 4.7 million people in the […]
United States
Bob Gillespie, Global Justice Now activist in Glasgow, finds that the UK is looking increasingly isolated in the world, which makes a bad trade deal with the United States even more likely. The increasing likelihood of a “No Deal” Brexit will mean that the UK has only a deal with Japan to show off in […]
Bob Gillespie: There’s many reasons to worry about a UK-US trade deal
It’s difficult to not have at least one eye on US politics at the moment. As the Presidential election nears and Trump apparently makes a miraculous recovery from covid-19, the campaign appears to have returned to the same fire and brimstone politics before the President got infected. There is a spat about when or if […]
Trump’s big mistake? Blowing up a stimulus deal
‘A fish rots from its head’ is an old Chinese proverb that I like. When any system begins to fail, look to the top to figure out why. The international system is not headed by Boris Johnson, he is merely an opportunist looking to take advantage of new trends to protect his interests. No, if […]
Rule-breaking is the new normal in the era of US unilateralism
Imagine Jeff Bezos cloned 7.5 times. That would be the equivalent of the financial wealth of everyone in Scotland (including everything; pensions, properties, etc). Maybe even less, as the Scottish financial wealth calculation (£1.097 trillion) was in 2018 – after the pandemic crisis it has probably shrunk quite a bit. Bezos doesn’t have that problem. […]
What are we going to do about the Jeff Bezos problem?
The most remarkable thing about US President Donald Trump is not the amount of enemies he accrues. Nasty attacks on opponents is his way of doing politics. The remarkable thing is that he’s willing to throw all his friends under the bus at a moment’s notice; he has no loyalty to anyone. “I’m not a big […]
The US Presidential election will set the tone for post-Pandemic politics
“News that 649,000 UK workers have fallen off payrolls between March and June, and that millions more lost hours, means the dispute over the meaning of, and solutions to, mass unemployment is once again in motion.”
David Jamieson: Mass unemployment can challenge our economic model, but not without a fight
Of all the crazy stories of 2020 so far, the hand-to-hand combat between Chinese and Indian troops on the high-altitude rocks of the Galwan Valley is right up there. It sounds like something from a film. For hours, on steep, jagged terrain, around 600 troops fought each other with rocks, studded-batons and their fists. Most of […]
What hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan Valley tells us
“Solidarity will mean nothing if the people voicing it aren’t also doing what they can to advance the causes of those who are disenfranchised in their own countries. Anti-Blackness and white supremacy are global domination projects and they have affected every place on the planet.”
Black Lives Matter: Perspectives on an uprising
“The extent of US influence engenders the most profound questions of democratic sovereignty, war and peace, and economic and social life. These questions are posed afresh by the post-Cold War decline of US hegemony and its always questionable moral authority. Is there a viable alternative to being a province of the empire?”