Robin Wilson

The weakening of the #AMOC isn't a hypothetically scary future prospect, in which a collapse of the current would see temperatures in Europe plunge--it's already happening: www.newscientist.com/article/2595...

Former head of Israel's primary peace movement calls on Europe to recognise it must apply pressure to any post-Netanyahu government to avoid inertia--or worse--on the state's relationships with the Palestinians: euobserver.com/244874/i-led...

Once more independent legal experts produce a report evidencing genocide by the Israeli state. Once more, the far-right regime fails to address the evidence but condemns the criticism--as in the old days when the Soviets would just say all criticism was 'anti-Soviet': www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/w...

The decline of @menchesterunited.bsky.social under leveraged US ownership tells all about how a UK isolated from Europe and still wedded to 'free markets', including in acquisitions, and ignorant of collective ownership (Barca, Madrid, Bayern ...) sedately sinks: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Lula was re-elected, despite Meta's intervention. Public authorities, starting with the EU, must reverse the corporate colonisation of the public sphere & the displacement of professional media, ensuring 'social media' can no longer be exempted from libel claims: www.newscientist.com/article/2595...

Relief all around former Yugoslavia and the wider Europe as in Serbia the Milosevic legatee is brought down from his plinth by the student movement: balkaninsight.com/2026/10/26/e...

Only a rapprochement between civic-minded Israelis (including Arab-Israelis) and secular Palestinians, pushing back the Zionists and the Islamists, can resolve the conflict. Only the unions get that need for a common cause, behind which a divided Europe should rally: www.ituc-csi.org/Palestinian-...

Another authoritarian-populist domino falls in central and eastern Europe, after Kaczynski and Orban. In each case their post-Communist claim to be 'with the people' was destroyed by a pluralist constituency of citizens, from liberals through to the left: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

I just signed a petition calling on the EU to defend the International Criminal Court against Trump’s attacks. The EU has a powerful tool that could protect international law - mass public pressure will force them to act. Join me and add your name now: action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-10...

Northern Ireland's 'peace process' abandoned the rule of law by legitimising paramilitaries; its 'historic peace agreement' abandoned impartial constitutionalism by conceding mutual sectarian vetoes to the parties--anomie could only ever be the outcome: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/comment/opin...

If one ever needed a demonstration of Ulrich Beck's assertion that politics is a battle between corporations and NGOs for control of the state, this is it: www.theguardian.com/environment/... And the far-right populists are always on the side of the corporations.

The #TrumpSlump may even be starting before the midterms, as the #AI bubble deflates and inflation induced by tariffs and the Iran war sees interest rates and so interest payments on the $40 trillion US public debt (>2x its level when Trump was first elected) rise www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Scientists say >50,000 people died this summer in Europe due to extreme heat--3x as many as would have been so in the absence of human-induced climate change. Tragically, Timmermans' return to Dutch politics has left the climate-uninterested Von der Leyen unchallenged www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/c...

It's a great irony that the far right is so corrupt, when it presents itself as the voice of the unblemished 'little guy'. But since it speaks only of 'the people' and not the public good, private rent-seeking readily takes over when it gains access to public resources euobserver.com/244196/eu-pr...

Europe snubs Trump with the European Parliament awarding the annual Sakharov prize to the International Criminal Court, following the Nobel committee's peace prize (which Trump coveted) awarded to its former judge Navi Pillay: elpais.com/internaciona...

Marcuse's concept of 'repressive desublimation' explained how capitalism commodified desire, such that inhibition was removed yet capital's authority was unchallenged. The colonisation of the public sphere by 'social' media corporations has left misogyny untrammelled: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/w...

Big Tech has behaved as if above the law. US courts are increasingly deciding otherwise: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/t... #socialmedia

Unlike in his first term Trump's disapproval rate keeps tanking without hitting a floor. From petrol prices to Putin, and despite his carefully confected image, he is completely out of his depth, focused only on vengeance against perceived enemies and vanity projects: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/u...

All the 'competitiveness'--and so deregulation--talk in the EU is premised on GDP as the golden indicator of relative prosperity, yet on a wider dashboard of wellbeing metrics the more eco-social EU has in recent years overtaken a flatlining, corporate-friendly US www.socialeurope.eu/measuring-th...

Whenever a politician says they are making a 'pragmatic' decision, one can take it they mean 'unprincipled': www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Amid the media-driven xenophobia leading to the 'Brexit' referendum, no one thought to consider whether this was reciprocated in mainland Europe. It wasn't--despite the frustration caused by the UK acting as a 'free-market' outlier. Rejoining must mean commitment: euobserver.com/243824/meps-...

Key to integration is that 'foreigners' enjoy a sense of belonging. Amsterdam introduced votes for non-nationals in 1985, stimulating diverse representation (while reducing communal voting). The warning from France is what happens when exclusion instead prevails: www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/land...

Openness to the world's 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free' made an America proud of its liberty 'great'. By executive fiat Trump is repeating the nativist closure, driven by eugenic notions of racial superiority, legislated by Congress a century ago: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Fossil-fuelled states continue to do all they can to veto progress via the @ipcc.bsky.social in arresting catastrophic climate change. It's ever-more incumbent on 'coalitions of the willing' and sub- and supra-national levels of government to force the pace: www.newscientist.com/article/2594...

Trump and Infantino are pals because they are both devotees of the 'heroic (male) CEO' theory of organisational governance. There are only two problems with this: it is undemocratic and unaccountable and it leads to decisions based on vanity. Apart from that, it's fine: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

Just because conservative and far-right politicians across Europe and the Americas are turning a blind eye to catastrophic climate change doesn't mean it isn't set in train, with increasingly terrifying, irreversible outcomes increasingly likely: www.newscientist.com/article/2594...

Frederiksen lashing out at Sanchez is just conscience-salving on her part, she being quite isolated on the European left in supporting xenophobia on asylum in Denmark. By regularising migrants in the informal economy, Sanchez' government is protecting workers' rights: euobserver.com/243228/sanch...

Not only did Trump's green light for Netanyahu enable him to exploit the October 7 mass hate crime to pulverise Gaza (while the EU looked on); his massive cut in support for the UN has meant the World Food Programme is having to slash rations there: www.irishtimes.com/world/middle...

Marx identified the main contradiction in capitalism as the socialisation of the productive forces versus private ownership of the means of production--which explains today not only the rising interest in 'economic democracy' but also the socialisation of housing: www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/berl...

Revised Westminster legislation on victims of army repression in Northern Ireland during the conflict still fails to see that, if the rule of law is to prevail, veterans must face it with the same force as paramilitaries where they have been guilty of the same crimes: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Public authorities in Northern Ireland continue to defer to paramilitaries, rather than enforce the rule of law, meaning zones are marked 'red' for asylum-seeker accommodation where racist reaction is likely: www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

Decades of neoliberalism have eroded public goods such as accommodation & education while the falling labour share has seen rentier incomes soar. Crucial that left & green parties channel the anger democratically into consent for an agenda of wellbeing & equality: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

The Bretton Woods institutions have become irrelevant not just because of Trump's myopia: set up to support state-led economic development, with investment funds and stable currencies, they make no sense as levers to enforce 'liberalised' markets and austerity: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Criticism over the decades of the EU's 'technocracy' misses the point: the notion that market-clearing is 'neutral'--even peacemaking--allows private corporations to lobby as if 'non-political' stakeholders, displacing Europe's public good and citizens' democracy: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Risibly, protagonists of the Northern Ireland conflict were enabled by its 'historic peace agreement' to reinvent themselves as missionary peacemakers. None moreso than an evangelical politician--who opposed the agreement--now jailed for serial sex offences www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/...

Northern Ireland's 'peace process' remains flawed by Blair's personalised, 'sofa' politics, lacking (though a lawyer) commitment to the rule of law (cf Iraq). So he only questioned whether Adams was 'sincere'. Of course he was--about his goals by any means: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/...

With safe legal routes now denied to asylum-seekers (through the requirement of a visa to get on a plane) and their deportation (to third countries) facilitated, the right to asylum in Europe has effectively been abrogated and the principle of non-refoulement ditched: euobserver.com/242838/at-th...

The greening of Europe has been rolled back by conservatives and the far right, with claims as to the priority of defence. Yet the transition could not be more critical if Europe is to secure itself against the threats--from the far right, as it happens--it faces: www.socialeurope.eu/europe-must-...

Hard to overestimate the amorality of Von der Leyen's determination to stop #refugees reaching Europe by throwing EU taxpayers' money unaccountably at north-African autocrats: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/u...

The GOP has yet to come to terms with the fact that its own bigoted prejudices allowed a Putin instrument to become its leader and US president: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/u...

32 years after the paramilitaries' ceasefires in Northern Ireland, they are still treated officially as legitimate interlocutors, urged to 'transition' to something or other--rather than the authorities impartially enforcing the rule of law they daily flout www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/crime/r...

Behind the glamour of the elite game, inadequate finances and psychological stress weigh heavily on women footballers around the globe, while mental ill-health is inadequately attended to: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Brilliant panorama of European politics as big elections loom, with the far right a big threat, by @nathalietocci.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Ireland's benign image has a downside--an 'aren't we great?' complacency at critical moments. Like now, when it has caved in to big farmers and big Tech to attack the EU budget, when public investment has never been more urgent for the green transition and foreign aid: euobserver.com/242366/meps-...

In the perverse reasoning of a packed US Supreme Court in Buckley, money was deemed as equivalent to speech and thus campaign finance had to be unrestrained. The outcome? What journalist Greg Palast called 'the best democracy money can buy': www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/u...

As ever in NI, 'unionists' (ie political Protestants) challenged 'nationalists' (political Catholics) to uphold the rule of law while the latter claimed human rights. Neither recognised both are universal norms and the third, democracy, is at hazard again: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politic...

Even a Labour government at Westminster is blind to how British army repression fuelled paramilitarism & prolonged the Northern Ireland conflict. The rule of law should have prevailed then & should now--with individual veterans innocent until proven guilty: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politic...

No one in introverted England has joined the dots yet but the main reason Its men's & women's national teams have improved is that more players have played in mainland Europe, so they can now rival top teams whose players have mostly played in more than 1 country: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

The (conservative) Irish EU presidency is proposing an 8% cut to the draft budget, protecting deadweight subsidies to (especially rich) farmers, powerful in Ireland, at the expense of global aid, when the EU's legitimacy has weakened in the majority world over Gaza: euobserver.com/242145/meps-...

Unsurprisingly, members of the Republican party are increasingly uneasy that their president acts as if he were Putin's puppet: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...