Geography Archives: United Kingdom

Grace Blakeley dissects the failure of finance capital and calls for radical measures to take it back under democratic control.

A history of the left in the Labour Party highlights the need for a strong extra-parliamentary movement, argues Chris Nineham.

On 3 September, a four-day legal challenge to the UK’s sovereignty over the Chagos Islands began in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The islands are part of an archipelago located in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), and home to U.S. airbase Diego Garcia.

Capitalism and global sustainability are incongruous with one another, according to a recent paper for the UN’s 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report.

An obscure agreement–the Energy Charter Treaty–allows energy firms to sue countries who take action to stop climate breakdown.

The nightmares that have shaped the past and await return slightly just below the surface of American society are poised to wreak havoc on us again. America has reached a distinctive crossroads in which the principles and practices of a fascist past and neoliberal present have merged to produce what Philip Roth once called “the terror of the unforeseen.”

About a dozen fascists stormed into the bookshop close to the shop’s closing time, attempting to intimidate staff and customers as they destroyed books and materials.

A sober analysis of the positions of Owen Jones and Paul Mason on a wide range of issues shows that they are in fact distinctly un-radical, frequently opportunist in nature, and (particularly in Mason’s case) openly reactionary and imperialist.

Britain is doing Washington’s dirty work and given the heavily increased ‘political chatter’ on Assange’s fate–it is quite likely the British government is looking for public reaction to be muted enough to simply arrest him, go through the motions and send Assange to certain solitary confinement on death row.

Tens of thousands of women, men, children, LGBTIQ people, human rights advocates, Labour politicians and general citizens have poured into the streets of cities all over the United Kingdom to protest Trump’s official four-day tour Thursday. The protests have highlighted U.S. President Donald Trump’s “racist” and anti-immigrant policies.

Why are thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence and economic devastation and flocking to the United States? Because of the American dream? Because the streets are paved in gold?

The British opposition leader said his country needs the war powers act to limit government’s control over military interventions.

In addition to subsumption of teaching and research, the third mission of neoliberal marketisation has been termed, “knowledge exchange.” The introduction of this mission represents not only a fundamental attack on the academic profession, but also a desperate attempt to marshal the knowledge-producing powers of universities to kick-start a stagnating post-crisis global economy.

On February 22nd the University and College Union (UCU) called for the beginning of a nation wide strike in response to Universities UK’s (UUK) attempt to shift of the Universities Superannuation Scheme from a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution pension.

Russian officials are voicing a full-throated dismissal of British accusations that Russia used a nerve agent referred to as “Novichok” in an attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The Russian Ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, is further charging London with making accusations in poor faith, while raising questions over whether the poison was already in the possession of the British government.

This reserve army provides an increasing number of desperate and mostly unionised workers to occupy the new, outsourced, deprofessionalised jobs while remind those lucky enough to retain work that they can be replaced if they dare to cause trouble.

Two weeks ago in Salisbury, less than 10 kilometres from the UK’s Porton Down chemical weapons establishment, a Russian and his daughter appear to have been poisoned. Sergei Skripal was a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a spy for the UK’s MI6.

To those who say it is obvious that Russia poisoned Skripal, it is worth recalling the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, in which a deadly strain of anthrax was mailed to many U.S. officials in Washington, killing 5 people and infecting 17 more, shortly after the September 11 attacks. There again, media immediately blamed the attacks on obvious targets of U.S.-UK war threats—the Iraqi regime’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program and its alleged ties to Al Qaeda. These all proved to be lies, serving Washington’s foreign policy interests as it sought to go to war in Iraq.

The British conservative media and party establishment are renewing their attempts to paint Jeremy Corbyn as a traitor. But given the failure of this approach in the past, why would they attempt it again?

Students are much too busy to think these days. So, when a junior comes to talk with me about the possibility of my directing their senior thesis, I ask them about their topic—and then their schedule. I explain to them that, if they really want to do a good project, they’re going to have to quit half the things they’re involved in.