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European Russophobia and Europe’s Rejection of Peace
Europe has repeatedly rejected peace with Russia at moments when a negotiated settlement was available, and those rejections have proven profoundly self-defeating. From the nineteenth century to the present, Russia’s security concerns have been treated not as legitimate interests to be negotiated within a broader European order, but as moral transgressions to be resisted, contained, […]
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Confusion at NATO: Rutte, Russia, and Delusions about Trump
It was a speech unhinged in millenarian zeal. It was unapologetically hysterical in urging war while claiming to protect peace. It was also delivered with a note of profound self-denial: the US administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy had belittled Europe’s efforts in terms of ensuring its own security, not least of all its claims to […]
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The Ancient History of Socialism in North America
Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, when much of the United States celebrates a murdering, enslaving, profiteering, imperialist Italian sailor mercenary and missionary who couldn’t tell one continent from another, wisdom from ignorance, or value from waste. I was born and raised and have mostly lived in the eastern United States, and yet when I hear […]
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Ungrateful Lying Upstarts
Orientation Situating my article Often the rise of China and the Middle East appears to many Westerners as something recent, maybe 30 years old. Before that? Is Western dominance beginning with the Greeks and Romans – right? Wrong, not even close! The rise of the East and the South has roughly a 1,300 year history […]
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Spain’s Climate Catastrophe
In the 35 years since we first protested for action against climate change on the streets of London, we have often wondered what it is exactly we are trying to avert. Sometimes, notably in the wee small hours, we have tried to imagine how a destabilised climate might one day cause society to collapse. Would […]
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Non-binding Democracy
Roma fleeing the war in Ukraine on April 13, 2022 in front of the Main Railway Station in Prague (PHOTO: Richard Samko) Historically it has turned out that Roma occupy the position of outcast almost in all countries where they live. From 2005 to 2015 twelve countries of Central and Eastern Europe took part in […]
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Alternative Views: EU Presidential Election
Al Jazeera headlined with: “Von der Leyen’s re-election consolidates Europe’s shift to the right: The German technocrat’s second term at the helm of the European Commission will focus on business, conservative values and external security threats.” With respect to democracy and the transparency of the process that underpins Von der Leyen’s re-election, BBC noted: “Ursula […]
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The EU Elections: The March of the Right
The EU elections over June 6 to June 9 have presented a chaotically merry picture, certainly for those on the right of politics. Not that the right in question is reliably homogeneous in any sense, nor hoping for a single theme of triumph. A closer look at the gains made by the conservative side of […]
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Nationalism as the Religion of the Modern West
Orientation The emergence of a strange, secular god “I am the Lord Thy God, Thou Shalt not have strange gods before me” is not just a religious commandment. Every nation-state expects their citizens to give up or subordinate their regional loyalties, their class, their ethnicity and even their religion to this new god. If we […]
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A Word Like Peace Is Faster Than the Bullet of War
Erik Bulatov (USSR), Horizon, 1971–72. On 26 January, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) announced the start of a massive military exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024 that will continue until the end of May. Over 90,000 troops from NATO countries (and one partner country, Sweden), including fifty naval groups and more than eighty air platforms, […]
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