I am going to bed wondering if war will break out on the Korean Peninsula.
Scary prospect bordering on unthinkable. With men like Donald Trump and Kim Jong un, unpredictable and reckless, it is possible that they will actually provoke the other to r
It is so difficult these days to know the truth about news events. Regarding the events in Syria in the last couple of days, I can't help asking myself a few questions. Did President Assad need this? Highly unlikely. Did President Trump need somethin
Read more…In world politics it is evident that some countries are more powerful than others and that, in various ways, the powerful dominate the weak. However, this is not as simplistically true as it at first seems. In my lifetime I have seen Vietnam, one of
Read more…There is an interesting article on the BBC site about providing a basic income unconditionally. It raises the fascinating question: if this were to catch on could history come to see Richard Nixon as the most prescient social reformer of the twentiet
Read more…It is clear from several recent news items that many of the leading figures in the EU now realise that the EU is under attack and while the threat from the East is obvious it is probably less actually threatening than that from the US. There is a gro
Read more…If we were not living in an age of nuclear weapons, I would think that we are currently getting quite close to World War III. Some very high stakes games are emerging.
UK leaving the EU means forming an alliance with the US just at a time when the US
Read more…So, American democracy still works, after a fashion. You can win the presidency spending a fraction of the amount of money that your opponent dispenses. You can win even though you are at odds not only with the establishment of the country, but even
Read more…In 2014 there were 33,599 gun deaths in the USA and in Japan, just six.
I was not able to find data for the question "How many people around the world were killed by US and/or Japanese munitions in the same period," but your guess is probably as good
Read more…What Does the UK Budget Tell Us?
The British government has just announced its budget for the coming year, though there will be some further announcements in the autumn. I think we can see some general indicators. Firstly, this is a cautious budget,
Read more…The world is changing rather rapidly at the moment. The world's leading capitalist country is apparently contemplating protectionism while the number one communist country is promoting globalisation and free trade! Under Cameron the UK did seem to be
Read more…Buddhists are refugees. We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This means that we do not take refuge in belonging to a national group, gender group, or any other kind of social classification. We do live in the normal social world and so we abi
Read more…In politics things tend to remain much the same for a good length of time even though conditions are gradually changing until those changes accumulate the edge of a 'tipping point' and then many things change quite quickly until a new stability is ar
Read more…Donald Trump has had a busy first week. The culmination of it is now his executive order on migrants which is "not a muslim ban". Of course, extreme vetting is not a new idea. The Spanish had it in place as a means of creating a purely Catholic state
Read more…Rumour and gossip have always been a characteristic of human society and what one reads in the newspapers does often have to be taken with a pinch of salt - especially some newspapers. However, this whole problem seems to have got a great deal worse
Read more…Whatever the outcome of the legal battles around president Trump's immigration order, there can be no doubt that there is going to be a vigorous campaign to deport as many illegal immigrants as possible from the USA. It has already started http://dld
Read more…The massive rise in "hate crime" across Europe and America is tragic. The fact that leading politicians in a number of countries speak in ways that foment it is deplorable. A kind of Nazism is on the rise. In Germany in 2016 there were on average 10
Read more…It rather appears that the new American president does not believe in the EU, is, perhaps, even frightened of it, and wants to do everything possible to see it fail. The person who is most likely to be the American rep to the EU seems to be of those
Read more…Here is a little piece that I wrote in March 2006
This item uses the example of Iraq to explore the contrast between civic and tribal society
The Example of Iraq
A couple of nights ago we watched the Panorama programme reviewing the British part in t
Read more…There is no simple way to tell how well a country is doing economically. Economies are commonly ranked in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and we then say that the US comes first, China second and so on. However, GDP is simply a measure of money
Read more…If we let go of the dogmatic principles of Liberalism and Conservatism, we can consider some real-politique aspects of the state of America. Is it possible that...
The increased agalitarianism of US culture that has admitted women, blacks, gays, Lat
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