Violence, soaked in blood and stripped of shame, has become the defining language of governance in the age of Trump and the global resurgence of authoritarianism. Across the globe, democracy is in retreat, and with it, the very notion of moral and social responsibility. In its place, we find a brutal political grammar scripted by modern-day barbarians, disciples of greed, corruption, racial purity, ultra-nationalism, and permanent war. Compassion is mocked as weakness. The social state is vilified and hollowed out, derided in the language of a deranged anti-communism. And policies that produce mass suffering, engineered by the powerful and shielded by the myths of meritocracy and social Darwinism, are deemed not only acceptable, but inevitable. More

The difference between Trump’s high-end luxury tour of the Middle East and the situation in Gaza is startling. The distance from Riyadh to Gaza is 882 miles; Doha to Gaza 1120 miles; Abu Dhabi to Gaza 1400 miles (All distances are in flight miles.). But no physical measurement can accurately portray the distances between the three capitals and what is transpiring in Gaza. While the 47th U.S. president luxuriated among the world’s wealthiest leaders seeing how he could monetarise his presidency for himself and his family, the ostentatious display of economic “deals” was obscene considering what was taking place roughly one thousand miles away in another obscenity. More

Marking my calendar I no longer have the luxury of certainty that I’ll be dead before the end-times. The actuaries give me 14 more years, maybe one extra for being a vegan. That means I anticipate expiring in 2040, preferably in summer. Winter in Norfolk is depressing enough without a funeral. But President Trump and More