NM's blog

By Siomn Tisdall – a liberal who believes in 'international law' Related “I argue that contrary to the traditional understanding, the epoch of ‘formal imperialism’ was not the highpoint of imperialism’s embedding into international law, but that imperialism predated the epoch of formal colonies, and has survived it. There has long been a tendency towards the universalisation of the sovereign state, the fundamental juridical unit of international law, and in a modern ‘anticolonial’ system of international law, imperialism is hidden within law, but I argue that without it, international law could not exist… I argue that coercive political violence – imperialism – is the very means by which international law is made actual in the modern international system. “The international rule of law is not counterposed to force and imperialism: it is an expression of it… In fact… though it is quite true that ‘force decides’, the ‘equal rights’ it mediates are really, and remain, truly equal....

Convergence?

Stephen John Goldthorp There's absolutely no guarantees that Putin will stop his warmongering afterwards. Ned Ma Stephen John Goldthorp  you need to explain why. Stephen John Goldthorp Ned Ma  I already have under the reply to Edward Iley who beat you to that question. Suffice to say. Putin's demands are geared towards making future invasions even easier. Not towards Peace. Putin's previous record gives doubt that anything he says can be trusted. But he has sunk serious investment into trying to conquer Ukraine and failing. Ned Ma Stephen John Goldthorp  “Putin's demands are geared towards making future invasions even easier.” You haven't explained why. Why did Putin invade Ukraine and why doesn't want 'peace'? Stephen John Goldthorp Ned Ma  why is hard, maybe Putin isn't as smart as he thinks he is or as smart as everyone else makes him out to be. Putin doesn't seem to be able to form trusting relationships either on a personal level or with oth...

It is good to stay up to date with 'geopolitics', but political science without political economy does not reveal a more accurate picture of the world.

By Marc Scully 22 April 2025 Pope Francis has died and eulogies are pouring in praising his concern for the poor, marginalized and dispossessed. Tell that to the thousands of young boys molested and sexually assaulted by Catholic priests. Pope Francis was supposed to clean up that criminality against children in the church but he did not and it prevails. Cleaning it up would have required turning offenders over to civil authorities for prosecution but Pope Francis continued to protect them. Pope Francis had an avuncular persona but contrary to the eulogies he does not have an inspiring history when it comes to standing with the oppressed. Serious questions remain about his role during Argentina's Dirty War, an anti-communist rampage under the military junta from 1976 to 1983 when at least 30,000 people were disappeared or killed in the most barbaric ways like pushing them out of airplanes over the ocean. Those questions about Pope Francis' role don't go away and it isn'...

A liberal view What people get wrong The use of the analogy

“The myth of ‘Western values’ died in Gaza. Myths do not die. They are debunked or refuted. They often persist for a long time and are adaped to new contexts; they are part of a belief system. I remember well after Iraq and Afghanistan how people invoked ‘democracy’ and ‘Western values’ in a way not dissimilar from what the Bushes and Blairs and later the Obamas and Bidens articulated them. Recently, a student at the ‘best’ European university in social sciences told me that the myth of sectarianism in the Middle Ast is still being repeated. A white liberal, ‘MeeToo’ English woman what Russia was doing in Ukraine was ‘a Russian thing. It's in their history’. Zelenskyy's recent rise in ‘popularity’ among many is built upon ‘the myth of Western values’ defending Ukraine against an authoritarian Russian regime. Myths are strentghned through amnesia. History is brushed aside and Pavlovian conditioning is enforced.  We should remember how the emergence of ISIS was analysed. How ...

From an article available to subscribers “In  May 1945, soon after Germany surrendered, the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked people which country they felt had contributed the most to its defeat. At the time, respondents were highly conscious of the millions of Soviet troops who had died on the eastern front and their decisive role in weakening the Nazi forces, as well as the United States’ late entry into the war: 57% chose the Soviet Union and only 20% the US. When IFOP asked the same question this year, the ratio was inverted: the US scored 60% against 25% for the Soviet Union. “For many years, D-Day was seen as a relatively minor event…  In 1964 De Gaulle himself refused to attend: ‘Why should I go and commemorate their landings when they were a prelude to a second occupation of France? I won’t do it!’ “That all changed in 1984 amid growing US-Soviet tension…  The countries of the ‘free world’ made a show of unity, presenting themselves as defenders of ...

An excellent article ‘Even when things were at their worst, the majority of Americans were free to say what they thought for the simple reason that they never thought what they were not free to say’. — the atomic physicist Leo Szilard The new orthodoxy

John Gray is considered an English philosopher.  According to the British journalist Francis Wheen, Gray “has published dozens of increasingly apocalyptic books and articles on the need to end the Enlightenment project forthwith.” Excerpts from ‘ The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses?’ The New Statesman, July 28-August 17, 2023 “The West yearns for Putin to fall. But what happens if the Russian state collapses? If Ukrainian forces nonetheless fail to break through Russian positions, a frozen conflict becomes a realistic outcome. Western support is nearing exhaustion. Deindustrialised societies cannot sustain a protracted conflict when Russia is operating as a fully fledged war economy. The West is staking its endgame on regime change. What if that has the same result as it did in Iraq and Libya?” In the Russian Civil War of 1917-1921 “ Western military intervention involving British and other foreign troops exacerbated the bloodshed. As...

The main points in this long but very good article Gautam  Adani “was not only a beneficiary of the new political and economic order devised by Modi to consolidate Hindu supremacism in India. The neglected details of his frictionless rise show that after their calamitous romance with Russia’s oligarchy, Western politicians, journalists and bankers facilitated the ascent of another hyper-nationalist elite with dubiously sourced wealth and an extreme aversion to the rule of law and civil liberties.” “When Modi was barred from travelling to the United States and the European Union because of his suspected complicity in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, and many Indian businessmen recoiled from him, Adani worked hard to rehabilitate his associate. Since becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi has repaid the favour: he turned Adani into India’s biggest operator of private airports and ports, as well as its leading producer of power from coal-fired plants. McKinsey’s global managi...

“In the mainstream media Russia is a blank screen on which the West gazes transfixed at its own visions.” How the country ended up with Vladimir  Putin

"Russia's problem is our system. A system was created here that created such a person [as Putin]. The question of the West's role in creating this system is a very serious one.” — Grigory Yavlinsky