Donald Trump is No Populist
Newsweek
As Donald Trump begins his second term as president and the leader of a remade Republican Party, it's become common to refer to him and the "America First" movement as "populist." And yet something about the spectacle of Trump's election victory and the new Republican administration remains irreducible to the established notion of populism. To understand Trump's return, we must rethink this classification...
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How to Not Talk about Gaza
Europinion
It would be reasonable to assume that practically focused discourse would have practical and active implications. To insist that an idea is necessary, and to develop the method by which it can be put into action, would presumably have direct material consequences. Unfortunately, a persistent paradox in recent political history reveals the opposite: by a strange inversion, practical ethical discourse often sets the stage for an abstention from ethical action. This was one of the disheartening features experienced by many protesters against the Vietnam War...
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Why Project 2025 is a Threat even if Trump Loses the Election
Z Magazine
The glimpse of a potential victory for Kamala Harris in the presidential election has cast a false sense of security about the storm brewing around an increasingly radical Republican party. It is naïve to think that Trump’s loss would magically erase the Republican underbelly that is planning for a complete restructuration and reduction of government responsibility and civil freedom. Whatever happens, the proponents of a new radical Republican government are clearly in it for the long run, and they have made their aggressive intentions clear regardless of the election outcome...
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Starmer cannot "Reset" Europe-UK Relations
Europinion
Only a few weeks old, one of the emerging priorities for Starmer’s Labour government is to fix what his EU Chief, Nick Thomas-Symonds, called the UK’s ‘tarnished’ image in Europe following what many consider the Tories’ Brexit fiasco. Starmer’s EU summit earlier this week intended to do precisely this, to re-establish working relationships with Europe and to unify against the ‘storm that gathers over our continent’: Russia. In his own words, gathered with European leaders at the birthplace of Winston Churchill (Blenheim Palace), Starmer optimistically stated that it was time to “reset” Europe-UK relations in order to urgently unify in our fight against the Eastern threat. But what exactly is meant by “reset”? What point in time of ‘European unity’ would Starmer rewind to? The unfortunate fact is that Europe has never been unified in the sense that is required of it now...
Fibreglass in Marine Food Chain cannot be Ignored
Byline Times
As if the microplastic scare was not enough to attract attention to our destructive relation with nature, scientists at Portsmouth and Brighton University have just discovered thousands of fibreglass shards in just a few kilos of shellfish hauls.
Using a high-powered microscope they found up to 11,220 fibreglass particles per kilogram of oysters, and 2,740 per kilogram of mussels, Sky News reported last week.
The discovery of glass in sea organisms has been linked to the degradation of fibreglass – especially that used for boats – which is entering various ecosystems and beginning to pose a “new threat” both to natural species and human consumers...
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