Section: World

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The US has foiled a coup, but could we?

Mick Fletcher

Several writers, including West Country Voices’s Tom Scott and Sadie Parker, have drawn attention to the disturbing parallels between the anti-democratic activities of Trump in the USA and Johnson here. Many, however, are reluctant to accept that Johnson is in effect Britain’s Trump, despite the fact that this dubious accolade was bestowed by none other […]

Something lost to find again

Catrina Davies

Catrina Davies discovered her true self in Europe. In September she left Cornwall for Portugal, from where she reflects on severance, belonging and betrayal. When I was ten my parents took me and my sisters to France for a week. We drove onto the ferry at Plymouth, all squashed into our Citroen AX, disembarked in […]

Dark Wednesday: Trumpism has also stained and frayed British democracy

Sadie Parker
montage of Johnson and Trump pictured together

Judging by the liveliness of social media platforms well into the night, as 6 January rolled into 7 January on the European side of the Atlantic, half the UK was glued to CNN – watching agog as insurrectionists invaded government offices in Washington D.C. They stormed the Capitol building, the heart of American democracy, equipped […]

All eyes are on vaccination, but testing failures must not be forgotten

Sadie Parker

In my own small way, I was caught out by the closing of the borders the weekend before Christmas. Matt Hancock ran around Britain’s TV and radio studios telling stunned presenters and audiences that Covid-19 was “out of control” in London and the South-East. That’s the modern-day equivalent of screaming it from the rooftops. It […]

Trump and ‘Britain Trump’

Tom Scott

The US president’s descent into lunacy and fascistic violence holds a lesson for the UK. It was not so hard to predict that Donald Trump’s rage at having lost the US election would lead inexorably to violence, and I was one of several to do so a few weeks ago. The story is not over […]

Hope and horror

Anthea Simmons

I had begun an article on the confirmation of more hopeful signs for democracy in the USA coming from the run-off elections in Georgia…and not because Democrats won, but because the long hard effort to secure voter engagement right across the electorate had paid off. I will return to the subject, because there are important […]

Pilgrim’s shame – the price of cheap meat

Tom Scott

While argument rages over whether Cornwall should have been assigned to Tier 1 of the government’s social distancing regime, little attention has been paid to the US company operating the meat-packing plant in Cornwall which has been at the centre of a major outbreak of Covid-19. Tom Scott lifts the lid on its grim record […]

The Lone(ly)Star State

Margaret Ellis

Like many others I have spent all too many hours recently gazing at CNN, willing those voting numbers to change, and remove President Trump from the White House. In the process I have learned a great deal about the geography, sociology and politics of the United States, thanks to their excellent and informative coverage. This […]

Eurodog welcomes Champ and Major Biden

EuroDog

The world – and its dogs – heave a sigh of relief as sanity and empathy triumph in the US Election. Trump was the first President for 130 years not to have a Presidential dog.

Pieces of China

Jenny Steele Scolding

Lhasa is packed with pilgrims, poor country farmers and nomads who visit the monasteries and temples every winter. Their obeisance involves dragging themselves on their bellies across the square and round the temples, their knees protected by rags, their hands by wooden blocks. In the Potala, one-time palace of the exiled Dalai Lama, those who […]

Winter night skies – ancient and modern

Bob Mizon

Arching across the winter night sky from horizon to horizon is the silvery stream of the Milky Way, our galaxy of possibly half a trillion stars, the second largest of a family of about fifty galaxies that form the so-called Local Group. The Milky Way flows through ancient constellations: Canis Major, the great dog; Orion, […]

Brexit messes up lives: a personal post on third nation national status

Guy Hanley

Editor: When Priti Patel smirks her delight at the ending of free movement, she neglects to remind UK citizens that, whilst our European friends and neighbours have been denied the unfettered freedom to move to the UK, we have lost our rights to live, love, work and retire freely in the EU member states. 27 […]

EuroDog is in hibernation from the news

EuroDog

Hear, interpret, respond: After deciphering what is going on behind the news, EuroDog decides to ride out the current storm until a silver lining turns up next week – paws crossed….

Cannabis – time to reassess?

David Haysey

The tide is slowly turning in one of the early fronts of the culture wars, as scientific possibility and questions of personal freedom challenge the assumptions of an earlier generation. Throughout its history, on questions where private vice encounters the desire to create the perfect ‘city on a hill’, the United States has lurched between […]

Who will protect our democracy from industrialised disinformation?

Tom Scott

Several recent events have raised urgent questions about the threat to our democracy from unscrupulous digital operatives. Disturbingly, these questions remain largely unanswered by a report this week from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Last week, Channel Four reported on a data leak from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that revealed how ‘Team Trump’ had worked […]

Letter from America – Medicare part 2

John from across the pond

You’ve probably heard about ‘Obamacare’, but maybe not Medicare. They aren’t the same thing. I don’t know much about Obamacare except that it protects my insurance for pre-existing conditions: it is my only legal protection. There are so many provisions to it, but basically it is a resource to help people find some kind of […]

Museums and galleries respond to the climate crisis

Virginia Button

The US west coast is on fire, the hurricane season is off to an early start and in the UK a year of unseasonal weather has resulted in the worst wheat harvest in decades – yet more reminders that climate change is a pressing and immediate global crisis. And, as leaves fall and mists rise […]

Ancestral voices, prophesying doom

Tom Scott

Why do nations sometimes lurch into spectacular acts of self-destruction? A strange fervour that seized the Xhosa people of South Africa in the 1850s may shed some light on Brexit, writes Tom Scott. The history of southern Africa is not short on plunder, cruelty and betrayal. But as a student of it some years ago, […]

Belarus and the impact of Chernobyl on its struggle for freedom

Peter Webscott

‘CIA! CIA!’ the man wobbling towards me on his bike shouted as I tried to take his photograph. It was a shock. My embarrassed companions moved me on. We were standing in the main road through a small village deep in southern Belarus in the early 1990s where foreigners were a rare sight indeed, probably […]

The Lizard’s vagabond girl

Jenny Steele Scolding

I lie in bed and listen to the waves crashing on the shore. I pull back the covers, cross the bedroom and settle into my rocking chair in front of the window that overlooks the sea. Down in the cove, the fishermen have pulled the boats up high; a storm is brewing. I always start […]