Batten down the hatches, its American politics again. Rita doesn't think much of the 'Citizens United' decision... Greetings my fellow American Persons! My name is Behemoth Inc. and I am thrilled to celebrate my newly minted power of speech with you today. First I must confess that I come from a ... Read More...
Politics
The sorry inheritance of a certain young Korean. What would it be like to be told at age 27 that for the next four decades you were going to have to kill, starve and oppress millions of people if you wanted to stay alive? A strange question you may think, and ... Read More...
Do you know absolutely nothing about tax? Don't worry, most 'experts' are the same, says Dabbler editor Brit... Is The Budget over yet? Specifically, the entirely misleading press coverage of George Osborne's announcements last Wednesday? Now I know a bit about tax, and by that I mean 'a bit' and no ... Read More...
Daniel Kalder looks back at the various vernal revolts of 2011 and argues we shouldn't get too excited. Sometime around the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a long period of abject Western media failure regarding the Putin phenomenon began. Journalists were so busy making fatuous comparisons to Stalin or hyping The New ... Read More...
Rita finds that the vicious polarisation of American politics infects even the season of goodwill... Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, sated with turkey and family togetherness, Americans abandon their homes to participate in an ancient ritual known as Black Friday. It is a bit like Pamplona’s running of the ... Read More...
Gaw ruminates on the significance of Solzhenitsyn's final work in a world where even disaffected and idealistic Occupiers no longer really seem very sure of anything... In a little less than a month we mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. I haven't seen a single mention ... Read More...
Capitalism for and against. There's a lot of it about, mostly against. But, this thing 'capitalism' - it doesn't really describe anything in particular, does it? Capitalism, at its most basic, is an arrangement where there are property rights and market relations governed, to some degree of effectiveness, by the rule ... Read More...
Rita Byrne Tull explains her test for revealing the cultural divide between America and Britain... First I must make it clear that I am not now nor have I ever been an imbiber of Coca Cola. So no statements made herein should be taken as either an endorsement or a critique ... Read More...
Nige examines a 19th Century poem that has experienced a sudden revival in popularity, having been cited as an inspiration by both Nelson Mandela and, um, Gordon Brown... My father's taste in poetry was that of an upright Edwardian. He had a personal anthology of poems of moral uplift and patriotic ... Read More...
From Nazi Germany to 9/11, Jonathon Green explains why true believers don't use slang... ‘Before [the Al Qaeda training camp] they were joking around and using slang. After the camp the guys were talking jihad, praying and quoting the Koran.’ British jihadist, quoted in Jason Burke The 9/11 Wars (2011) Last Sunday, as ... Read More...