French dressing
I wonder is there anywhere in the UK where one can get garlic like this?
Quote of the Day
”Europe misread the world. The idea of a post-modern world order was always a mistake. At a basic level, Europe’s vision piggybacked on American power, and military power in particular. It was the US navy that kept sea lanes open, US alliances that deterred aggression, and the US security umbrella that made European welfare states possible. The post-modern order wasn’t post-power; it was just someone else’s power doing the work. No one makes that mistake now, post-Ukraine and post-Trump, as American power goes elsewhere.”
- James Crabtree
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
N17 | Tolü Makay and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra | NYE Countdown | RTÉ One
The N17 is the road that begins in Galway and ends in Sligo on Ireland’s West coast. It’s also the road that takes people to Knock (Ireland West) airport.
Long Read of the Day
Shiny happy weird and special
This an extraordinarily perceptive essay by Dan Davies triggered by the “most interesting conversation” he had last year. It stuck in his mind, he says, and changed his thinking more than any other. It sure makes uncomfortable reading for those of us who are involved in one way or another with policy making in democracies.
It was when the anti-immigration protestors were bothering refugees at the local airport hotel, and I decided I probably ought to show up at the counter-demonstration.
I quickly (re)learned the elementary lesson of British street politics – don’t show up on time because no other bugger will. There were about half a dozen people there for the first hour of the scheduled protests, mainly arguing with each other and a few bored police officers over who was going to stand on which side of a street.
Turned out that this wasn’t a mistake after all, because the people who had arrived early to the other side weren’t the ones who were really into the cause (people I later described as “bald men from Plymouth with rancid vibes”). I decided to strike up some conversations, mainly thinking “if it all turns violent perhaps they’ll remember me and punch someone else”.
It’s a bit of a cliché that racists always claim to have black friends, but I kind of believed it. The thing that really struck me when I was talking to these guys was not so much bigotry, but an incredible, overpowering sense of pessimism. While talking to me, at least, they tended to agree that the refugees were people and deserved to be helped… But they, more or less unshakeably … thought it was simply impossible for Britain to provide that help.
The consensus view on the other side of the police line seemed to be that our economy was stuck and shrinking, that there were no opportunities and absolutely nothing to spare. The people I spoke to had no hope whatsoever for their children and seemed genuinely surprised that I did for mine…
Do read on: it’s heading in a very interesting direction.
Books, etc.
Underground Empire was possibly the most prescient book published in 2023. Written by two prominent political scientists, it explained how the US had weaponised global economic infrastructure — fibre-optic cables, data centres, and financial systems like SWIFT — that had been originally built by profit-seeking corporations, rather than the government. One of the amusing things about the book (which I read when it came out) was a narrative suggesting that the electronic plumbing that gave the US unprecedented leverage over global communications and finance had emerged almost accidentally on its own territory.
The first administration to realise and utilise its power was Obama’s — for example in its dealings with Iran — but after Trump came to power in 2016, things changed radically. As the authors put it,
Trump did not build the underground empire, but he made it more visible and far more controversial. This certainly wasn’t because Trump himself connected the dots. When he discovered new tools of coercion, he was as delighted as a toddler with new toys, but he didn’t have sufficient attention span to really understand how to make other countries bend beneath the yoke. While he wanted tribute, Trump was often willing to settle for attention. Regardless, the United States extended its underground Empire in increasingly belligerent ways. And as its victim started paying attention, they began to piece together a different understanding of US power. Trump’s administration used the power of the US financial system, for example, to target not just terrorists but human rights officials. Overtime, it lurched haphazardly but irreversibly toward developing tools to target not just rogue states like North Korea but core assets of other great powers, like China.
It’s a terrific book. If you want to get a flavour of Henry Farrell in action, his recent podcast conversation with Ezra Klein would be a good place to start. He also has a great blog, Programmable Mutter
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