Philip Roddis Just two reads this month. (You’ll see why when you clock the word count of the first one.) This past year I’ve been in an uncomfortable place vis-a-vis CV-19. On the one hand I’m impressed by sceptics like Germany’s Professor Bhakdi and America’s Professor Wittkowski. On the other I’ve been turned off by conspiracy takes …
Philip Roddis This month brings that rarest of occurrences. I’m recommending a Guardian piece: a tour of the mind of Jeff Bezos. You wouldn’t want to live there but I promise a rewarding trip. Also, and for your instant erudition, we have Pepe Escobar on why DC is so antsy about whose gas Germany cooks …
Philip Roddis What would you do if stuck in a lift with John Pilger? Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in a new book reviewed here by Media Lens, quotes with approval a fellow journalist saying he’d stick pins in his eyes to avoid such a predicament. Did the drone murders Obama signed off every Tuesday …
Philip Roddis At the beginning of this month the most dangerous nation on earth held the four yearly circus[1] by which presidents and other occupants of high office are chosen. Four weeks on, so much has been written, some of it by me – here and here for instance – that I’ve steered clear of it in my chosen reads …
Philip Roddis China leads the race for 5G leadership, a fact not only deeply alarming to Washington and Wall Street but with dire implications for a Europe left in the dust. Meanwhile a French Professor of Philosophy has a word or two to say on the links between liberalism and fascism. Last but not least, …
Philip Roddis There’s been more than one reason for my long silence on CV-19, so readers might forgive me – if they forgive me on nothing else – for so long an introduction to my first read of the month, by the Oxford theoretical epidemiologist, Sunetra Gupta. My second read’s a characteristically close argued piece …
Philip Roddis I won’t beat about the bush. The West is inhabited by two groups: those who know that we are ruled by sociopaths, by the criminally insane[1]; and that much larger group which, taking at face value the surface forms of democracy informed by independent media, either cannot or will not accept this admittedly …
Was Pyongyang’s destruction this month of a border town ‘liaison office’ – touted as symbol of reconciliation but in reality lacking the truth component – a further manifestation of Kim Jong Un irrationality? What game is Washington playing, yet again by proxy, in India’s mountainous and disputed border with China? And do black lives matter or don’t they?
As I had last month, I’d wanted in my three reads this month to start addressing the alarming bellicosity of Washington in respect of several nations, but most frighteningly with China. For all those with some inkling of the material factors placing the West and Eurasia on a collision course, such beating of war dreams – aided as ever by the ‘liberal’ Guardian – is wholly to be expected, but its predictability makes the warmongering no less worrying.
Philip Roddis For weeks my political focus has narrowed almost exclusively to Covid-19. It’s not that I haven’t noted other things. Increased Washington bellicosity over China, Iran and Venezuela has been hard to ignore, likewise the revelations of just how far the Labour Right went in their efforts to remove Corbyn. I’ll write on these …
