A progressive analysis of politics and the arts.
by Lotty Clare
The environmental and climatic impacts of war and conflict have long been silent causalities. Environmental implications throughout the timelines of conflict are huge. From deforestation, mining for metals, use of chemical weapons, ‘scorched’ earth tactics, plunder of resources, and collapse of environmental management systems. Natural resources can cause war, fuel war, and be destroyed by war.
by Edward Sudall
Economics in the west and UK is dominantly neoclassical. Other schools of economics are ignored to such a degree that they are mostly unknown to the voting public – who too often generalise economics as merely The City. Alternatives are rare even among education courses – often tokens.
This narrowness endangers human development because the failings of the neoclassical style of economics can be corrected by integration of alternatives. It skews politics also: the economy (that is the neoclassical one) is used as an inarguable defence for political policy, supported by the contradictory argument that economics is apolitical. Neoclassical economics pretends to be a science, shunning the political economy moniker and parading incomprehensible statistics as evidence, but this is wrong. Neoclassical economics, like anything outside natural science, is based on complex value judgements intersecting with politics.Continue Reading
Today in international relations we are witnessing a return to a new Cold War between Russia and the West. However, this Cold War Mark II is avoidable, and has only been institutionalised by the actions of both the West and Russia to antagonise one another, and rejuvenate the old Cold War which ceased since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now in the second decade of the 21st Century it is here once again. This new Cold War is characterised by increased tensions between the West and Russia, with rhetoric particularly from the latter becoming increasingly aggressive, and the use of economic measures such as sanctions against Russia by Western powers.
The recent Russian bombardment of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo has done nothing to ameliorate the current diplomatic tensions, only deepened it. However two important qualifications need to be made about this new Cold War that makes it different to the Cold War of the 20th Century.Continue Reading
In the years following the Second World War, Britain had shifted in ways many thought impossible. In the 1950s, amidst the fading colonial legacy of a crumbling empire, with increasing levels of immigration and the decreased faith in the power of the free market led, the country’s middle class felt stranded. These revolutionary changes in the country’s fabric radically challenged the ideas they had been raised to adhere to in the name of success. Middle England was holding out for a hero – and boy did Ian Fleming’s gin-swilling womaniser give them one.
James Bond is a cultural artefact – an ideological snap-shot, emerging initially as the embodiment of the established order, in order to defend it. Such was the archetypal appeal of the character, and so in tune was he to the fears of the middle class, that he soon moved seamlessly between mediums. In a world where Britain’s influence seemed to be waning, and where marginalised races and genders were pushing for equality, Bond showed Middle England could still have it all – no wonder he’s cited as being David Cameron’s inspiration for foreign policy, 007 is a conservative’s wet-dream.Continue Reading
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