Hugo Chavez in the military. Photograph Venezuelan Presidency Venezuela is a Populist Kleptocracy by Richard Steinhardt The phenomenon of Chávez in Venezuela had far more in common with populism, Peronism, and caudillismo than with the Cuban Revolution; any Latin American could attest to this. At root, the knowledge of Latin…
Category: Phil Hall
Alcohol addiction
The High Wire Paradox of Alcohol Consumption
“Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it pledged the dead man.” Illustration for “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1927 Illustration Joseph Sullivan by Richard Steinhardt Alcohol is a great enhancer and destroyer of…
Boris Yeltsin
John Mearsheimer’s Offensive Realism: In the Land of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King
John Mearsheimer, photo John Mearsheimer, Wikimedia Commons by Philip Hall John Mearsheimer’s view, a development of the work of Kenneth Waltz, is that states seek to maximise power, defined primarily in military and territorial terms. Economics is a component of power, but it is secondary to the security dilemma in…
2/I Borisov
Don’t Panic, 3I/ATLAS is Coming
The trajectory of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, photo NASA/JPL-Caltech “Piensas mal y atinaras.”— Old Mexican proverb By Phil Hall While films like Don’t Look Up! highlighted the danger of accidental asteroid impacts, a more disturbing possibility exists: intentional planetary bombardment. An interstellar object traveling at 60 km/s, if artificially directed, could serve as the…
Algeria
Let Gaza Live: The Arab World Must Open Its Borders Now
Arab League Summit 2025, photo Government of Yemen, public domain Tactical Withdrawals Can Become Strategic Victories by Phil Hall The world watches the mutilated bodies of Palestinian children on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, weaponising their suffering for clicks and protests, yet none of these outraged demonstrators demand the one thing…
Cassiodorus
Think Like a Venetian
Poseidon in the Lagoon, Phil Hall / Bing We need a Deliberate Act of Civilizational Triage by Phil Hall “We are glad to make special inquiry about you, whom the nature of your dwelling-place and the fertility of your soil commend. For you live like sea-birds, with your homes dispersed,…
Assisted Dying
‘how do you like your blue eyed boy Mr Death’*
Wes Streeting, detail from his official portrait, photo Chris McAndrew There Are Not Enough Safeguards! by Phil Hall Any legislation of this kind must robustly safeguard against abuse, and guarantee that those who are seriously ill would not feel coerced or pressured to prematurely end their life. I am not…
Declassified
The Power of Sousveillance
Fatima Hassouna photographer, murdered in Gaza by the Zionists. Photograph: Fatima Hassouna Alternative media and citizen journalists have ripped apart Israel’s legitimacy, and caused the USA’s foreign policy to be globally reviled by Phil Hall I remember going on a demonstration in 1977. We went to Brick Lane to stop the…
Communism
Long live the victory of the USSR over Fascism
Photo – Paulo Oliveira, Pexels The USSR’s Victory Was Communist, Not Nationalist by Phil Hall For modern communists and humane socialists, the situation in Ukraine represents a triple shit show. On one side, there is the right-wing, recidivist Russian chauvinism that denigrates socialism, progressive ideals, and even Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich…
ANC
CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION
‘Blowing bubbles distracts these children from the war poster behind them.’ Front page of the Tanzania Standard, June 1971. Dar-es-Salaam 1971-72 by Phil Hall At twelve, I was bespectacled and precocious and political, living with my family in Upanga, Dar-es-Salaam. A towering kungu tree stood outside our house. It was…
Dhow
Lamu to Pemba by Dhow
Photo by Gavin Rain on Pexels.com by Phil Hall . The dhow tacks from side to side while its squatting boatmen take big swings at getting us to our destination. And the sailors sit and chat as miss the quay twice and chew quat. After a journey across open sea…
Baader-Meinhof
Raskolnikov in Mexico City
Torre Latinoamericana, photo Andres Perez pexels by Phil Hall . It was 1984, a year before the earthquake. I only had a small amount of money left and so bought a third class train ticket to Mexico City. The seats, set close to the floor, were made of hard polished…
AI
Does “humane” slaughter require human involvement?
Dorset Lamb, photo Phil Hall Moral justification requires human agency by Phil Hall . The essential question is this: Does “humane” slaughter require human involvement, or is it solely about the animal’s experience? Any system that removes the visible hand of human agency from life-and-death decisions is not progress, it…
Civil war
No Sanctuary for Dissenters?
Westminster Meeting House, photo Heather Martin The Raid on the Quakers Echoes Centuries of Persecution by Phil Hall . “When Quakers are raided, it’s not just a policing act—it’s the state attacking 400 years of moral witness.”— Margaret Fell, Quaker historian (2024 interview). On Thursday, 27 March 2025, around 7:30 PM, over…
April 22nd
The Balloonist
Murals of José Clemente Orozco, in the Hospicio Cabañas Photo by Edgar Mosqueda Camacho by Phil Hall . On the 22nd of April 1992, there were 10 petrol-gas explosions in northern Guadalajara, killing at least 242 people, injuring up to 600, and destroying 8 kilometres of city streets, making 15,000…
Al Andaluz
The Rosy-Fingered Dawn of Eurabia
Granada behind an ornamented wall in Al Hamra / Alhambra, Photo by Çisellee Forget fear mongering! Arab, Turkish and European unification is the way forward . by Phil Hall . The Mediterranean has always been a crucible of civilisations, a vast, interconnected world where cultures, religions, and peoples have mingled…
Blood Meridien
THE POWER & THE GORY
Closeup of the Alamo Defenders, Gillphoto, Wikimedia Commons Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian by Phil Hall + ‘What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.’ Francis Galton, Eugenicist, Darwin’s…
Community
A Plop in the Ocean
Are offshore tankers a temporary solution to the sewage crisis? by Paul Halas, Phil Hall, Steve Parker, Nicole Stocks, Karl Rutledge . . Officially, the United Kingdom ceased to be a developing country when Sir Joseph Bazalgette CB, a descendent of French Huguenots, designed a new sewage system to solve…
Aquatic comfort
Photo essay: The Aquatic Comfort of the Gulf
John Lawrence swimming, Phil Hall by Phil Hall ‘And your Lord taught the honey bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in habitations; Then to eat of all the produce of the earth, and find with skill the spacious paths of its Lord: there issues from within…
Personal experience
PART 1: WHAT WAS THE USSR?
The Icebreaker Yamal, made in a Leningrad shipyard in 1986, photo Pink floyd88 A personal view by Philip Hall In the first place, anyone who has been involved in the struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism in Latin America, Africa and Asia and in the more neglected parts of Europe…
Acorns
APPLES FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE BOG
An old Rosemary Russet in Wisley Gardens , photo Phil Hall by Phil Hall Eating an apple is like drinking milk. Apples come from a living organism, a relative. The original apple was a fig. Our ancestors co-evolved with fig trees. We are a by-product of fig tree ecology—along with…
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