It’s confession time … Without getting overly autobiographical, it is worth noting that my perspectives (whatever their value) on American public policy and global affairs reflect decades of first-hand, professional experience in both the Executive and Legislative branches of the US government. The former was at the Department of State as a commissioned US Foreign Service Officer, the latter at…
Oxford historian Sir Noel Malcolm analyses some of the specious arguments that continue to be made by the so-called ‘People’s Vote’ campaign. The ‘Leave campaign promises have been broken’ argument, the ‘trying to leave has turned out to be too difficult’ argument, and the ‘we’re only doing what Leave campaigners would have done if the referendum vote had gone the…
Mr. Schwager is a recognized industry expert in futures and hedge funds and the author of a number of widely acclaimed financial books. He is one of the founders of FundSeeder, a platform designed to find undiscovered trading talent worldwide and connect unknown successful traders with sources of investment capital. Previously, Mr. Schwager was a partner in the Fortune Group…
When Attorney General William Barr went before the Senate Judiciary Committee the other day to defend his handling of Robert Mueller’s report on the “Russian collusion” investigation, Hawaii’s Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono issued what struck many as a devastating accusation. “You’ve chosen to be the president’s lawyer,” she said.
Family Stability Network and Centre for Social Justice polling of young people and their attitudes towards Relationships and Sex Education The Centre for Social Justice and Family Stability Network commissioned an opinion poll of young people aged 14-17 in England to understand their views on changes to the provision of Relationships and Sex Education. This survey was conducted by Survation…
We rarely see a policeman in our town until two hours after a crime has been reported, so I was very pleased the other day to see a policeman and woman in the narrow street next to mine. They were peering under a car parked off the road. ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Good morning,’ the policeman replied. ‘There’s a rabbit…
In their first overseas deployment, the RAF plans to relocate its F-35B Lightning fighter jets to Cyprus later this year. In a press release, the Ministry of Defence provided further details: "The Lightning, as the aircraft is known in the UK, is the first to combine radar-evading stealth technology with supersonic speeds and the ability to conduct short take-offs and…
In a press statement given following a visit to Hungary, Italian Federal Secretary Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spelled out their determination that priority be "given to European culture based on Christian values". Prime Minister Orbán expressed his frustration with an equivalence being drawn between democracy and liberalism, describing his government's politics as "Christian democratic". The Government of…
The International Monetary Fund has produced another analysis suggesting that a no-deal Brexit would lead to steep short-term declines in UK output. As before, its claims look exaggerated with some elements of their work not standing up to serious scrutiny. The IMF estimates are based on a host of highly pessimistic assumptions, some of which are out of date while…
Discussion of Brexit and food has been grossly distorted by ill-informed scare stories, of which concerning America ‘chlorinated chicken’ is the most notorious. But there are also scares stories concerning the fate of farming in general, and of lamb production in particular. What are the facts? I have a close American friend, now living in Ohio, who is quite finicky…
Dr. Guoping Feng joined the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT in 2010. He is a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where he holds the Poitras Professorship of Neuroscience. He is also a senior scientist at the Broad Institute’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. Originally from Zhejiang Province in China, he received his PhD…
The crisis of our democracy has been a long time coming. Globalisation and supranationalism have eroded national sovereignty. The market and corporate power have ridden roughshod over society and democracy. A managerial and technocratic consensual politics marginalised conflicts of interest, and so disenfranchised millions of lower middle and working class people who were losing out from the liberal market settlement of four decades.…
Global linguistic diversity is under threat. Forty-six percent of all living languages are endangered. A language is being lost every three months, the vast majority of them without having been recorded or written down. Of even more concern is the loss of entire language families. While it may be possible to reconstruct well-attested languages - Manx is a good example…
It is frequently remarked by foreign visitors to Kazakhstan that a great amount of attention is paid to celebrations. Whether it is a national holiday or a family gathering, events play a particularly important role in Kazakh culture. Partly this would seem to be connected to the country's nomadic past where the seasons of life and of nature would be…
A new documentary from the Federalist Society and Heritage Society has raised significant concerns about federal criminal prosecutions in the US judicial system, and the role therein of federal prosecutors. Among the issues highlighted by the documentary are standards-less decisions about who is being prosecuted; the capacity of highly-discounted plea bargaining to effectively extort guilty pleas; and, the role of…
Cotton has in the past been a history-making crop. The American south's dependence on cotton as a cash crop during the American Civil War set it at a strategic disadvantage against the rapidly advancing power of the North. The American Civil War would suggest for those with eyes to see the strategic disadvantage of resource-dependent economies as against diversified, trading…
Industry, manufacturing, construction and infrastructure in the United Kingdom are dependent upon the reliable supply of metals and minerals largely from overseas. In this paper, Technical Politics will examine current consumption and supply of metals and minerals by the UK economy, and will look at the stress-resistance of the supply chain. Production Domestic mineral reserves and production capacity are of importance…
According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2016, the United Kingdom current account showed a trade deficit of £82.2 billion (£318 billion – £235.8 billion) with European Union versus a trade surplus of £41.1 billion (£243 billion – £284.1 billion) with the Rest of the World.[1] While trade with Central Asia is relatively small as a proportion of total…