Venezuela, Latin America, and other odds and ends
Originally published by SPERI, also at Latin American Diaries. Economic and political problems in Venezuela now threaten many of the real achievements of this alternative mode of regionalism in Latin America… Continue reading "ALBA: an important but poorly understood regional project"
Ahmed Merabet’s death is not the first I’ve witnessed on screen, but it has troubled me in ways that other deaths have not. Warnings of “distressing scenes” have it backwards.… Continue reading "Death is the ultimate intimacy: media wrong to show video of Charlie Hebdo policeman Ahmed Merabet’s murder"
Originally published in Huffington Post The introduction of contactless payment on London’s tube and bus network creates a new headache for people tapping in with their wallets, so why haven’t… Continue reading "Why no solution to Oyster-contactless ‘card clash’ on London tube and buses?"
Originally Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI). Radical left parties, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, did well in the recent European elections. But how far can they go? And… Continue reading "Chávez vs UKIP? How Latin America has reinvigorated the European left"
Published in the Caribbean Journal of IR and Diplomacy (2014). Abstract: Owing to generalised participation in Petrocaribe and increasingly also the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA),… Continue reading "Protests, polarisation, and instability in Venezuela: why should the Caribbean care?"
Originally The Conversation, also Epoch Times (English and French). Opposition protests against Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro over crime, inflation, and shortages show no sign of abating, and the March 5 anniversary of Hugo Chavez’s… Continue reading "Misrepresentation left, right, and centre in Venezuela protests"
Basically, whenever I connected my Windows 7 (64-bit) laptop to a local area network (LAN) or wifi router, I noticed that my laptop considered itself to be connected to two networks… Continue reading "Fixed: unidentified network (public) + cabled LAN (home) = no internet?"
Published by Huffington Post and Now Then Magazine Between the Cooperative Bank’s stock-market listing and Nationwide’s obscene executive pay, even the alternatives are no longer alternative: time to fight back. This weekend… Continue reading "Nationwide executive pay is a disgrace to mutualism: fight back at the AGM!"
Originally published by openDemocracy. I replied to individual tweets with my concerns. But I have 50 followers; they had hundreds of thousands. I was like a cartoon character plugging holes… Continue reading "Chronicle of a lie foretold: or, how I failed to stop Spain’s rightwing press from intervening in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election"
Published at Huffington Post, Venezuela Analysis, Latin America Bureau, and Correo del Orinoco. This weekend the legacy of Hugo Chávez has been raked over the coals one last time, but… Continue reading "Babette’s Feast with the refugees at PDVSA: the real importance of Maduro’s victory in Venezuela"