Global Politics Magazine

26/03/2023

This is an interesting piece about a new book on the Brighton Bombing. It's a real mystery why Patrick Magee used the name of well known Republican when he checked into the Grand Hotel. I talked to Pat Magee about 13 years ago for an article I wrote about peace, conflict and forgiveness. He's a very thoughtful guy who did a PhD while in prison on the portrayal of Republicans in thriller fiction. One might even say that leaving a name like that as a clue (which the police missed) is right out of a Freddie Forsyth novel like Day of the Jackal. By the time I interviewed Magee in 2012 he'd struck up two remarkable friendships with people who'd been affected by the Brighton Bomb, Jo Berry, whose father was killed in the bombing, and Harvey Thomas, who was Margaret Thatcher's head of communications, who I both interviewed for the piece (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-thy-enemy_b_1568445). The good thing is that due to the success of the peace process the question of why Magee used Walsh's name is more a historical curiosity now. Maybe with the stress of the moment he genuinely wasn’t thinking. If it was an homage to Walsh it’s understandable he’d deny it as it would have been seen as arrogant and foolhardy by his Republican comrades. Regardless, this 'mistake' wasn't noticed by Sussex Police, who saw the miners, not the IRA, as the major threat to the conference. Maybe we'll never know but this story is an interesting glimpse back at a very dramatic moment in recent British, and Irish history.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/26/false-name-brighton-bomber-nearly-exposed-ira-plot-kill-margaret-thatcher?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Why did the Brighton bomber, Patrick Magee, risk all by checking into the Grand hotel under the pseudonym of a fellow IRA member?

29/06/2022

Another fine mess. The Govt is caught between its zeal for culture wars on humanities subjects and the reality that teaching STEM subjects is costly. UK students will be the ones to lose out here.

‘Prof Colin Riordan, the head of Cardiff University, a member of the Russell Group, says that if universities start accruing bigger losses on their teaching, “they will have to start reducing the number of home students they take”. They are likely to cut back on UK places on nationally important subjects like science, engineering and technology, because they cost the most to teach, he says.’

Fears some institutions may recruit mainly international students – whose fees are not capped

01/05/2022

Great piece shared by a colleague who’s a Russia expert which takes aim at Mearshemier’s flawed idea of great power conflict which places the blame for the Ukraine conflict on NATO and the West. I think I’ll use this piece in future to explain the flaws in structural realism to students. It’s a gem.

‘Most of those who think in terms of “world order” and “great power politics” only impoverish themselves, because they talk only about dead entities or study them. The real catastrophe happens when this discipline becomes the basis for policies, when the language of geopolitics becomes the only language of power. Then the war begins.

[…]

Applied geopolitics sweeps living people with their thoughts and attitudes from the face of the earth, destroys their homes, leaves no values beyond the values of survival, makes power extraordinary and regimes and state borders sacred. This policy makes people die for the lines on a map.

[…]

Many observers have said that Putin is fixated on the idea of subordinating Ukraine because, as Zbigniew Brzezinski famously observed, “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire.”

[…]

We see a war that has spilled into Ukraine and into the world of the 21st century right from 19th- and 20th-century textbooks, including those written decades ago by the gurus of geopolitics.’

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/27/russias-catastrophic-geopolitics-a77505

Opinion | A toxic mix of early 20th-century geopolitics and historical ressentiment has become Russia’s ideology.

18/03/2022

Putin must be desperate if he’s staging performative rallies like this, and judging by the technical glitch he’s clearly not found his Leni Riefenstahl yet.

President’s five-minute address to flag-waving crowd is re-aired from start after ‘technical failure’

12/02/2022

Dr Tarik Oumazzane, a lecturer in History and International Relations at the University of Nottingham has an interesting piece on why Morroco's pragmatic and forward thinking foreign policy is helping recalibrate relations between the Global North and Global South.

"Today's Morocco is Not That of the Past". How Morocco is changing the relationship between the Global North and Global South.

29/07/2021

A great piece which reminds me of something Gore Vidal said in the 1960s regarding the Civil Rights movement and the long struggle against slavery, segregation, and injustice. Vidal said that the most useful and creative people in the United States from the very beginning have been the ones who said 'no'.

"Biles’s courageous decision echoes the actions of other Black public figures, from Naomi Osaka to Leon Bridges, who are refusing to sacrifice their sanity, their peace, for another gold medal or another platinum record. They are helping us all build a new muscle, helping us put one simple word at the top of our vocabulary: no."

Black public figures from Simone Biles to Naomi Osaka are helping us put one simple word at the top of our vocabulary: no

02/07/2021

This is a great piece by Anne Applebaum which addresses some of the areas I look at in my own research on democracy. And just as important, it discusses Jane Austen!

‘Famously, the critic Edward Said argued in a 1993 essay titled “Jane Austen and Empire” that what was not said about slavery and colonialism in Austen’s novels was highly significant. Austen’s father was a trustee of a sugar plantation in Antigua. That it relied on slave labor helps explain some of her family’s wealth; sugar plantations also explained the wealth of some characters in her novels. And yet they rarely talk about slavery. Being aware of their silence won’t help you understand why Elizabeth finally marries Mr. Darcy or why Mr. Darcy saves Lydia, and it certainly won’t explain the deep appeal of Austen’s novel across time and geography. If the absence of conversation about slavery is the only thing you know about Austen, then your understanding of her books will be severely impoverished. But if you are an Austen scholar, or just an Austen fan, knowing about the unmentioned sugar plantations opens up new ways of thinking about Austen and the world she inhabited. And that, in the end, is the point of scholarship.’

Marxist literary scholars and popularizers of critical race theory have one thing in common with certain GOP commentators: a tendency to see their own view of the world as the only valid one.

25/06/2021

23/06/2021

Tariq Ali's fascinating and wide-ranging review of Maxime Rodinson's biography of Muhammad deals with everything from Islamophobia in France to ethnic cleansing in Spain to the war in Yemen. A long read.

"Yemen is still being bombed by Western-backed Saudi armed forces. Were they to take the capital, they would have no compunction in destroying the mosque. The fact that it was visited by Imam Ali, the inspirer and first caliph of the Shia, would be an inducement."

Muhammad never claimed to be anything other than a human being: he was a Messenger of God, not the son of Allah, and not...

02/06/2021

This is a great resource for anyone studying Yemen's humanitarian crisis. The aim of the project was "to visualize the civilian death toll of Saudi Arabia’s 5-year long air campaign as well as that of US drone attacks in the country." https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/yemen-human-security-project/map/

Human Security Interactive Map Search through over 22,000 data points of air raid strikes during the war in Yemen. See the impact of war on Yemeni civilians over a 6 year period. View Map  Filter dates Each circle color represents a different year from 2015 to 2020. Filter the years and months to...

28/05/2021

The more accurate headline would be ‘Ministers launch second attempt to appoint Paul Dacre to Ofcom Chair after Paul Dacre is rejected’. What a shabby crony-filled kakistocracy the UK has become under Johnson. They think the normal rules & ethics related to recruitment only apply to ordinary people. This ought to be ripe for judicial review.

Government starts process from scratch, allowing PM’s favoured candidate second chance at job

25/05/2021

One wonders what Putin's financial stake is in the Sputnik vaccine? Disinformation would be more manageable if it wasn't being funded by states with unlimited budgets. Most things Putin does are mendacious but when it's health disinformation which will lead some people to not get vaccinated and die, it seems to be a particularly nasty type of mendacity.

'French media have pointed to the similarities between Fazze’s message and the official Twitter account of Russia’s Sputnik V – a viral vector vaccine like AstraZeneca – which has repeatedly claimed “real world data” shows they are “safer and more efficient” than mRNA vaccines.'

Fazze offered money to YouTubers and bloggers to falsely claim jab was responsible for hundreds of deaths

31/03/2021

This first season of America’s Dumbest Seditionists is quite something. As with the apparent unwillingness of 49% of male Republicans to get the Covid shot, perhaps we’re witnessing Darwinian natural selection in action here, which (ironically) many Republicans don’t believe in either.

‘Like many of the more than 300 people facing federal charges in connection with the siege, Miller thoroughly documented and commented on his actions that day in a flurry of social media posts.

After Miller posted a selfie showing himself inside the Capitol building, another Facebook user wrote, “bro you got in?! Nice!” Miller replied, “just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol,” prosecutors said.’

Garret Miller didn't speak to the law enforcement officers who arrested him on charges he stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, but the T-shirt he was wearing at his Dallas home that day sent a...

10/02/2021

Some great scientists doing some amazing work. A vaccine that takes out all coronaviruses and the common cold would be incredible. It’s a shame the US Govt was so shortsighted in the past in not funding coronavirus vaccine research, even when there was an ostensibly smart administration in office.

Scientists are working on a shot that could protect against Covid-19, its variants, certain seasonal colds — and the next coronavirus pandemic.

02/02/2021

A scary but interesting piece. The only point I disagree with is where he says "the solution, then, depends on vaccination." Surely, these variants show that vaccinations will only buy us time, with New Zealand/Taiwan/Australia/Singapore/China/Vietnam type elimination approaches being the only long-term solution. This also illustrates the absolute stupidity of countries thinking they can just vaccinate their own populations and let other countries suffer.

Somehow the coronavirus is rampaging through a city that was supposedly immune.

01/02/2021

You’d think there’s a happy medium Republicans can find between not punishing violent insurrection at all and the punishment of being hanged, drawn, and quartered that the gunpowder plotters received.

A cartoon by Paul Noth.

24/01/2021

A fascinating read by Dr Simon Taylor on how events of January 6 in DC bear comparison with both failed and successful efforts to seize power from the past, including those of Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hi**er.

"The immediate consequences of this putsch will no doubt have a dramatic effect on the future of democracy in the United States. Lessons will be learnt by different sides. The ease with which Mussolini was able to seize power in 1922 directly inspired Hi**er in his attempted Beerhall Putsch a year later. The subsequent failure of that putsch and the leniency of his punishment taught Hi**er to work within the system to bring it down and that he had more supporters within the state than he initially thought. The leniency afforded to Hi**er only served to strengthen his contempt for democracy. No doubt there will be some who look at the farce and see opportunity or what might have been had there been a more serious or organised presence guiding the rage. Such views may only be emboldened without severe repercussions or justice being served."

What the history of successful coups and failed putsches tells us about the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th.