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A Q&A with Coleman Hughes, author of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.

By 1960 it was clear that Britain's Empire was finished. No wonder that the following year, in 1961, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan applied for the UK to join the European Community. After all, without its Empire, with the 'special relationship' with the USA soured by the Suez scandal, and with our Commonwealth severely diminished, Britain […]
The post End of the British Empire appeared first on EU ROPE.

By 1960 it was clear that Britain's Empire was finished. No wonder that the following year, in 1961, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan applied for the UK to join the European Community. After all, without its Empire, with the 'special relationship' with the USA soured by the Suez scandal, and with our Commonwealth severely diminished, Britain […]
The post End of the British Empire appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Thanks to the case of COVID that I'm still combatting, I've spent many evenings these past two weeks watching films I missed over the past few years -- with an emphasis on genre films that my spouse does not like all that much, including science fiction, overly violent action movies, and disaster films. She's again been away fulfilling a family obligation. These are the films I watched, ranked in order of my liking, with a few comments:Dune (2021) (HBO Max)This was far and away the best film I saw during the two weeks, but it is not without some significant flaws. I read the novel back in the late 1970s or early 1980s and saw the earlier filmed version not long after it was available on cable after a theatrical run. This version of the film told a compelling story with a clear narrative. I recall that the prior film sort of failed at that, but it's been many years since I saw it. Still, this movie's pacing is kind of slow and the plot turns on a betrayal that is not very well explained. I will watch the next one. Midnight Sky (2020) (Netflix)Ultimately, this film is a disaster film more than a science fiction film. If it didn't star George Clooney it would probably be a lot less watchable. The film makes some strange narrative choices -- relying upon a good number of flashbacks to Clooney's youth and showing some "normal" day-to-day activity on a long-haul space mission. Not all of the threads weave together into a coherent narrative. I mean, ultimately, what was the purpose of this film? It was mostly entertaining, in its way, but the writing could have used a few tweaks. The Old Guard (2020) (Netflix)The premise of this film is interesting -- imagine a small group of people who cannot be killed. Indeed, their wounds miraculously heal in a very short amount of time. This superpower gives them the ability to live for centuries and combat whatever foes they decide to identify. Charlize Theron is the main character (and leader of the fighting force), but she isn't given much to say that is all that interesting. Apparently this is based on a comic book and it has that feel. I kept thinking that someone who has read the comics would have a much better idea of these characters and their relationships. Without that knowledge, the film fails to connect on some level. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) (Netflix)If you ever wondered what happened to Jesse after the Breaking Bad series ended, then this film provides some answers. It was good to see some of the original stars make appearances in this film (often in flashback), but I didn't think it was as well-written (or well-paced) as an average episode of the original series. Better Call Saul is generally also better. It is worth your time and maybe should be a bit higher on this list. The Outfit (1973) (HBO Max)This film obviously isn't a recent release, but I had not seen it even though I've read a lot of Richard Stark's (Donald Westlake's) Parker novels. Those books are terrific, generally, and they work because the main character is basically a super-efficient criminal who nonetheless often runs into bad luck. The life of crime he selects is not easy. This film is not especially loyal to the original book and Robert Duvall did not make a very good Parker. And in this film he's named Earl Macklin. Greenland (2020) (HBO Max)At several points during the film I thought about ending my viewing. The story is clunky, featuring an "extinction-level" event for the planet, but focusing on the survival efforts of one family. The three members of the family are racing for shelter in a secret government bunker, but they become separated across Georgia and Tennessee thanks to a series of unfortunate events. One of these characters is a small child and the ongoing disaster is playing havoc with communications. Their reunion is all-too-easily achieved, frankly, even as it causes the father character to steal a car, fight for his life, and .... make peace with his father-in-law because of a prior act of adultery? The script is kind of a mess. 
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have officially declared war on the hijab in 2022, but the Hindu right's battle strategy has been set in place since at least 2014 when the BJP rose to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi. A tenacious master of populism, the BJP has successfully altered the mainstream Hindu perception of the Muslim as a threat to secularism. Within this imaginary, Muslims are believed to constantly seek exemptions from the secular regulations constraining the Hindu community.

From BEA state level data released on Friday. GDP grows 4.2% SAAR, Chained CPI deflated wages and salaries by 1.9%; Year-on-Year, 1.5% and 3.0% respectively. While NFP only grew 0.9% q/q AR, the Philadelphia Fed's early benchmark measure of NFP grew 1.5%. Figure 1: Wisconsin Nonfarm Payroll Employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure […]

China's emergence from its stringent zero-COVID policy seems to be the opposite of controlled and competent, two words that have otherwise been frequently used to describe its balancing act between capitalism and one-party rule. Beyond this, we are witnessing an unprecedented convergence of factors: a government crackdown on domestic Big Tech, population decline, a persisting real estate crisis, and the Biden administration's recent introduction of some of the most draconian export controls in history.

To discuss this crossroads in China's economy and society, Luigi and Bethany talk to Chicago Booth's Chang-Tai Hsieh. Amidst the paradox of escalating tensions and record-breaking bilateral trade, they discuss whether we are underestimating China, what advice to give to Western businesses operating there, and the long-term prospects for the country's economy and their global implications.

Hello listeners! This is a rebroadcast of Episode 2 of Transmissions, a new podcast I've been involved with lately. Transmissions is the official podcast of the Class Unity Caucus of the DSA, and I want to thank them for their permission to use this episode.



Our guest for this episode is George Hoare, co-host of the Bungacast (neé Aufebunga Bunga) podcast, and co-author along with Alex Hochuli and Philip Cunliffe, of The End of the End of History (Zero Books, 2021).



In this episode, we begin with a discussion of Francis Fukuyama's concept of the end of history, and how many intellectuals misread it as a 'triumphalist' celebration of American victory in the Cold War. The better argument, according to Hoare et al., is that Fukuyama was talking not just about the birth of a new era of liberal freedom, but of the dawning of an epoch of gloom - one which would bring disappointments to many of its more enthusiastic advocates.



We also discuss the war in Ukraine. So far, in western media at least, accounts of the causes of this war seem to rest upon simplistic caricatures of Putin's flawed personality. Yet these accounts are contested, and a well-reasoned minority opinion suggests the deeper issue is NATO expansionism. Given that the West is typically used to getting its own way, to what extent is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a kind of reality check for neoliberal technocracy? While the invasion of Ukraine is illegal and monstrous, can it be understood as marking the return of politics?



As the interview progresses, we touch on numerous core concepts from the book, including the anti-political turn - also known as the "return of dissensus." This turn was perhaps nowhere more clearly on display that in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. For Hoare et al, this moment occasioned the breakout across the United States of what they term 'Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome' (NOBS). However, argue the Bunga crew, it was not without its historic antecedents. And, in some ways, we can see the effects of NOBS already at play in the politics surrounding Silvio Berlusconi's rise to power in Italy, in the 1990s.



We also push back a little on Hoare in the interview, challenging some of the book's characterizations of the limits of left-populism. While it is undoubtedly true, as Hoare et al. contend, that left-populism is anti-political in the sense that it has no theory of adequate "authority," and that left-populist leaders like AOC and Bernie have failed thus far "to key into the agency of their own citizens," we put it to him that this may be more of a bug than a feature. After all, as Thomas Frank and others have argued in recent times, there is a long and venerable history of left populist success, in the United States.



Other topics addressed include the applicability of the book's arguments to the recent Canadian trucker rally against covid vaccination requirements, and contemporary debates around "techno-populism."



We hope you'll enjoy this discussion. If you want to find out more about Class Unity, here are some useful links:



Website: https://classunity.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/



Your hosts for this episode are Nicholas Kiersey, Steph K, and Dave F.

Peter Heather — However you line up the different factors involved, there's no doubt that immigration played a major role in the unraveling of the western half of the Roman... READ MORE
The post Migration and the End of Empire appeared first on Yale University Press.

The events of recent days are unprecedented. The last time units of Jewish and Palestinian fighters — military or paramilitary — went to battle on such a broad front in Israel-Palestine was in 1948. There have, of course, been various battles over the years in Gaza as well as West Bank cities like Jenin, and Israeli and Palestinian units fought one another in Lebanon in 1982. But there is no parallel to the scope of what has taken place here since Saturday morning, and not since 1948 have Palestinian fighters occupied Jewish communities on this scale.This fact is not just a historical anecdote; it has a direct political meaning. This murderous and inhumane attack by Hamas arrived just as it seemed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to complete his masterpiece: peace with the Arab world while completely ignoring the Palestinians. This attack has reminded Israelis and the world, for better or for worse, that the Palestinians are still here, and that the century-old conflict here involves them, not the Emiratis or the Saudis.In his speech at the UN General Assembly two weeks ago, Netanyahu presented a map of "The New Middle East," depicting the State of Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and building a "corridor of peace and prosperity" with its neighbors across the region, including Saudi Arabia. A Palestinian state, or even the collection of shrunken enclaves that the Palestinian Authority ostensibly controls, does not appear on the map.Since he was first elected prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu has tried to avoid any negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, instead choosing to bypass it and push it aside. Israel does not need peace with the Palestinians to prosper, Netanyahu repeatedly claimed; its military, economic, and political strength is sufficient without it. The fact that during the years of his rule, especially between 2009 and 2019, Israel experienced economic prosperity and its international status improved, was, in his eyes, proof that he is following the right path.The Abraham Accords signed with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and later also Sudan and Morocco, reinforced this belief conclusively. "For the past 25 years, we have been told repeatedly that peace with other Arab countries will only come after we resolve the conflict with the Palestinians," Netanyahu wrote in an article in Haaretz before the last election. "Contrary to the prevailing position," he continued, "I believe that the road to peace does not go through Ramallah, but bypasses it: instead of the Palestinian tail wagging the Arab world, I argued that peace should begin with Arab countries, which would isolate Palestinian obstinacy." A peace agreement with Saudi Arabia was supposed to be the icing on the "peace for peace" cake that Netanyahu has spent years preparing.Netanyahu did not invent the policy of separation between Gaza and the West Bank, nor the use of Hamas as a tool to weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization and its national ambitions to establish a Palestinian state. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 2005 "disengagement" plan from Gaza was built on this logic. "This whole package called the Palestinian state has fallen off the agenda for an indefinite period of time," said Dov Weissglas, Sharon's advisor, explaining the political goal of disengagement at the time. "The plan provides the amount of formaldehyde required so that there will be no political process with the Palestinians."Netanyahu not only adopted this way of thinking, he also added to it the preservation of Hamas rule in Gaza as a tool for strengthening the separation between the strip and the West Bank. In 2018, for example, he agreed that Qatar would transfer millions of dollars a year to finance the Hamas government in Gaza, embodying the comments made in 2015 by Bezalel Smotrich (then a marginal Knesset member, and today the finance minister and de facto West Bank overlord) that "the Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is an asset.""Netanyahu wants Hamas on its feet and is ready to pay an almost unimaginable price for it: half the country paralyzed, children and parents traumatized, houses bombed, people killed," Israel's current information minister, Galit Distel Atbaryan, wrote in May 2019, when she was yet to enter politics but was known as a prominent Netanyahu supporter. "And Netanyahu, in a kind of outrageous, almost unimaginable restraint, does not do the easiest thing: getting the IDF to overthrow the organization."The question is, why?" Distel Atbaryan continued, before explaining: "If Hamas collapses, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] may control the strip. If he controls it, there will be voices from the left that will encourage negotiations and a political solution and a Palestinian state, also in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] … This is the real reason why Netanyahu does not eliminate the Hamas leader, everything else is bullshit."Indeed, Netanyahu himself had effectively admitted as much a couple of months before Distel Atbaryan made her comments, when he declared in a Likud meeting that "anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas. This is part of our strategy, to isolate Palestinians in Gaza from Palestinians in Judea and Samaria."Strengthening the Gaza fence became another aspect of Netanyahu's strategy. "The barrier will prevent terrorists from infiltrating our territory," Netanyahu explained when he announced the start of work in 2019 to add an underground barrier that would end up costing more than NIS 3 billion. Two years later, Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai wrote in Ynet that the ultimate goal of the fence, which was considered to be an impenetrable barrier for terrorists, is to "prevent a connection between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria."On Saturday morning, that fence was torn down, and with it the broader Netanyahu doctrine — adopted by the Americans and many Arab states — that it is possible to make peace in the Middle East without the Palestinians. As hundreds of militants crossed the border unhindered on their way to occupy army posts and infiltrate dozens of Israeli communities as far as 18 miles away, Hamas declared in the most clear, painful, and murderous way possible that the conflict that threatens Israelis' lives is the conflict with the Palestinians, and the idea that they can be bypassed via Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, or that the 2 million Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza will disappear if Israel builds a sufficiently elaborate fence, is an illusion that is now being shattered at a terrible human cost.This is not necessarily good news. It is impossible not to define the actions of Hamas as war crimes: the massacre of civilians, the murder of entire families in their homes, the kidnapping of civilians including the elderly and children into captivity in Gaza — all of these violate the laws of war, and if the International Criminal Court does exercise its jurisdiction over Israel-Palestine, then those responsible for these actions will have to be prosecuted. In other words, Hamas' "declaration" that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still exists came at the price of the blood of hundreds of innocent people.It is also not necessarily good news because it seems that the conclusion Israel is currently drawing from the understanding that the conflict is here in Israel-Palestine, and not in Saudi Arabia, is to "overthrow Hamas" or "flatten Gaza." Likud MK Ariel Kellner and right-wing journalist Yinon Magal likely represent a significant portion of the Israeli public — and certainly the government — when they call for the response to be another Nakba.And yet, beyond the moral judgments, the attack by Hamas has brought all of us — especially the Israelis — back to reality, reminding us that the conflict began here, in 1948, and that no magic cure can make it disappear. And since Hamas, as strong and capable of surprises as it may be, cannot murder 7 million Jews, and since Israel — I believe — is not capable of carrying out another Nakba (or even recapturing Gaza), it is possible that from the trauma of the past few days will grow the idea that the conflict must be resolved on the basis of freedom, national and civic equality, and the end of the siege and the occupation.After the trauma of the 1973 war, which many are comparing to what is happening today, it dawned on Israelis that peace could come at the expense of withdrawing from the Egyptian territory it had occupied. The same realization can happen after the trauma of 2023.This article has been republished with permission from +972 Magazine. It originally appeared in Hebrew in Local Call.

The abortive Wagner Group insurrection could have significant implications for Russia's ability to react to Ukraine's counter-offensive.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action at universities doesn't end there. Conservative voices are now taking aim at corporate diversity programs. Tamara Box writes that it will be more difficult to achieve racial diversity in companies and organisations, as the numbers of university‐educated people of colour will drop and the pool of talent … Continued

The author of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America says colorblindness should remain our North Star during a live conversation with Nick Gillespie.

After newly re-elected president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered a heavy defeat in Turkey’s recent municipal elections, Sultan Tepe analyses the present landscape of political rhetoric and campaigns. Turkey's 2024 local elections Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came in second place in Turkey’s municipal elections on March 31 2024, losing control of major cities … Continued

On the last day of the month, we see m/m personal income and consumption coming out at consensus. Here's the picture of the key indicators followed by the NBER BCDC (of which personal income ex transfers and employment are key), along with SPGMI's monthly GDP. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll employment incorporating preliminary benchmark (bold dark […]