Left-wing politicians, commentators and activists have increasingly become divided into a number of groups, all equally useless from the point of view of real social change. One group has replaced class politics with politically correct incantations on the rights of every conceivable minority. This is completely in line with the logic and demands of the neoliberal capitalism that is fragmenting society. Another group, while continuing to swear its fidelity to the working class, has replaced politics with role-playing, seeking to convince itself that nothing in the world has changed since 1917. Inasmuch as the working class imagined by this group no longer has anything in common with the actual working people who live under the new conditions (not always better, but different), each successive round of role-playing sees the members of the group increasingly remote from reality. Finally, a third group has ceased even to pretend to take part in politics, shutting itself away in the sphere of culture. The members of this group have built themselves the same kind of ‘ivory tower’ as the aesthetes of the early twentieth century, refusing to have anything to do either with bourgeois philistinism or with the crudity of the proletariat. This time, however, the tower has finished up daubed with radical slogans, and some-times may even be decorated with red flags.

The paradox is that the decline and disorganisation of the left movement (in all its varieties from moderate social democracy to hard-line communism) has done nothing to help capitalism, and in a certain sense has even served to deepen the crisis in bourgeois society. Left to its own devices after coping with external challenges and overcoming the danger of socialist revolution, capital in a strikingly brief time span has pushed all its own contradictions to the limit, creating the conditions for the multitude of crises – social, environmental, economic and so forth – that are now heaped one upon the other.

—Boris Kagarlitsky, The Long Retreat, (London: Pluto Press, 2024), xvi-xvii

Like a lecturer making his first appearance before the public, he saw everything that was before his eyes, but apparently only had a dim understanding of it (among physiologists this condition, when the subject sees but does not understand, is called psychical blindness).

—Anton Chekhov, „The Kiss“, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003), 74.

Guardian:

Climate breakdown and wildlife loss are deepening the EU’s “chocolate crisis”, a report has argued, with cocoa one of six key commodities to come mostly from countries vulnerable to environmental threats.

More than two-thirds of the cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat and maize brought into the EU in 2023 came from countries that are not well prepared for climate change, according to the UK consultants Foresight Transitions.

For three of the commodities – cocoa, wheat and maize – two-thirds of imports came from countries whose biodiversity was deemed not to be intact, the analysis found.

…

The report, which was commissioned by the European Climate Foundation, argued that large chocolate manufacturers should invest in climate adaptation and biodiversity protection in cocoa-growing countries.

“This is not an act of altruism or ESG [sustainable finance], but rather a vital derisking exercise for supply chains,” the authors wrote.

…

Paul Behrens, an environmental researcher at the University of Oxford and author of a textbook on food and sustainability, who was not involved in the research, said the findings painted an “extremely worrying picture” for food resilience.

“Policymakers like to think of the EU as food-secure because it produces quite a lot of its own food,” he said. “But what this report shows is that the EU is vulnerable to climate and biodiversity risks in some vital food supply chains.”

In May 2025 articles use phrases like „countries vulnerable to environmental threats“, „countries that are not well prepared for climate change“, „countries whose biodiversity was deemed not to be intact“, „the EU is vulnerable to climate and biodiversity risks“.

Drop Site:

Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide” on its internal Exchange servers, according to No Azure for Apartheid, a group of pro-Palestine Microsoft employees. The automated filter, which silently prevents such emails from reaching recipients was first detected on Wednesday—just after Microsoft’s Build developer conference faced repeated disruptions by the activist group.

…

The terms “Israel” and “P4lestine” do not trigger a block, the group said. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Guardian:

Israeli troops have fired “warning shots” at a group of 25 diplomats who were visiting Jenin in the Israel-occupied West Bank on an official mission organised by the Palestinian Authority to observe the humanitarian situation there.

…

The delegation comprised ambassadors and diplomats representing 31 countries, including Italy, Canada, Egypt, Jordan and the UK.

The IDF said it regretted “the inconvenience caused” …

I am fairly sure I didn’t read the city names other than Moscow when I was here in 2018, or if I did it was via Google Translate. I didn’t think about the hierarchy.

This is the Belarusian side of Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border. It’s a beautiful area, including a national park with old growth forest. It is within this forest that refugees are suffering and dying in order to reach the EU.