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Things I have posted recently
- The Year of Covid: Political religion and the Cultural Wars. Part 2.6. The Utilitarians: the birth of economics as a science. 18/04/2023
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.5. The Utilitarians I: Elie Halévy and the Philosophical Radicals 1750-1867. 12/02/2023
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.4. The EU’s legacy: 1789-1914: Science, Nature, Necessity. 29/03/2022
- The year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars. Part 2.3: The EU’s legacy, 1492-1789: Europe enters into the Devil’s Anus. 03/02/2022
- The Year of Covid 19: Political Religion and the Culture Wars: Part 2.2: The EU’s Legacy from the Middle Ages. 30/06/2021
- The Year of Covid 19: Political religion and the culture wars. Part 2. 1. Europe’s legacy: the first fifteen hundred years to AD 410. 26/02/2021
- The year of Covid-19: political religion and the culture wars.Part 1. 16/12/2020
- The UK Internal Market Bill: Supranational v. International law 14/09/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 3 Sino-US relations – a stable instability. 11/07/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 2 China becomes the prime global manufacturing and trading platform. 27/06/2020
- China in the World: Chapter 1. From backwater to world power. 16/05/2020
- China, coronavirus and the politics of paranoia 25/04/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part V. Modernisation or Vandalism? 09/04/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part IV. The pre-1945 Roots of British Supranationalism. 10/01/2020
- Brexit and the British Constitution: Part III. Efficiency, Parliamentary Sovereignty, Bureaucracy. 02/12/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament: Part IV. New law or constitutional aberration? 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part III. Assessment. 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court’s judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part II. The Arguments for and against. 06/11/2019
- The Supreme Court judgement on Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament: Part I: Definitions and timeline. 06/11/2019
- Apocalypse and Guilt: Why Savonarola and Greta differ. 01/10/2019
Category Archives: Oil, the Mid East and Gulf
America and the World: Part II. American century or Asian century?
How fares the American Century is a common question running through our three books. Joseph Nye, in Is The American Century Over? locates its starting date from February 1941, when Henry Luce, editor and owner of Life magazine, wrote an … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, China, Europe, India, Japan, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, The United States, World politics, business and economics, World war
Tagged Asia, China, global economy, Globalization, hegemony, Henry Luce, India, interdependence, Japan, melting pot, power shift, Russia, The American Century, The Farewell Address, tribalism, United States, world politics
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America and the world: Part I.
The key words in this cluster of books, focusing on the US, are emerging , retreat, closing and anger. Pankaj Mishra, in Age of Anger: A History of the Present, says that the paranoid hatreds of the present world have … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, China, Europe, France and Germany, India, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, The United States, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged Asia, Brexit, China, democracy, EU, European integration, France, Germany, globalisation, India, interdependence, liberalism, marxist-leninism, nationalism, pos tmodernism, Russia, supranationalism, technology, UK, United States, world politics
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Realpolitik and the European Union. Final Chapter: Part 2. The true challenge facing the Merkel-Macron tandem.
The UK’s certain idea of Europe. A USE maybe attainable. But the hurdles along the path towards it are innumerable, and as likely as not unknown. Not the least of these is that a USE would be at the very … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Europe, France and Germany, Greece, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics
Tagged Asia, EU, Euro, Europe, France, Germany, Globalization, Greece, interdependence, monetary union, Russia, supranationalism, UK, world politics
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Realpolitik and the European Union. Final Chapter: Part I. The true challenge facing the Merkel-Macron tandem.
Realpolitik- politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives-is flourishing in Europe. In fact, it never disappeared, but became absorbed within Europe’s society of states, dispersed and played out across and within the many international … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Greece, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom
Tagged Asia, EU, Euro, European integration, France, Germany, Globalization, Greece, interdependence, supranationalism, UK, world politics
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Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 11. Europe in the World. Part II. Russia, energy, demography.
The theme of Chapters 10 and 11 is the tension between a shrinking Europe living in an expanding world of nation states, while all the while seeking to dis-establish European nation states which experience global developments differentially. Chapter 10 discusses … Continue reading
Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 10. Europe in the World:Part I. The US and the rise of Asia.
The transformation of the world. In the key years of 1989-1992, it was Europe, not the U.S., which had the distinction of being both source and origin of the process which came to be called “globalization”—understood driven as technologically conditioned … Continue reading
Ken Clarke’s Memoirs and the June 23 Brexit referendum
Sooner or later, we are going to get very bored by Brexit, but not for a while, given the number of publications pouring from the presses. Here are two books on the subject. Ken Clarke’s Kind of Blue: A Political … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, France and Germany, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, United Kingdom
Tagged Euro, European integration, France, Germany, internal market, the EU, UK
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Corbyn’s Coda: in the shadow of the Swastika
Whenever Jeremy Corbyn has an opportunity, he makes the following statement, and then adds what seems to be a repetitive coda. “There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party”. Sir Eric Pickles, currently … Continue reading
Iran and China compared.
I have always been sceptical about external attempts to force regime change by boycott, diplomatic isolation or armed intervention. Six months before this article was published Prime Minister Blair in his Chicago speech sketched out the idea of conditional sovereignty … Continue reading
Global energy scenarios to 2035
Global energy is and always has been, highly controversial, particularly since the world’s conversion from locally supplied coal in the 1950s, to dependence on oil from the Gulf. The shift occurred swiftly . Changes in U.S. tax incentives in 1958 … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, World politics, business and economics
Tagged 2035., Africa, Brazil, business context, China, Energy, fossil fuels, France, Germany, hydro, India, Japan, Latin America, nuclear, Pakistan, Poland, renewables, Russia, scenarios, South Africa, the EU, the US, world politics
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Writing about history, politics & economics 