As the US-led coalition (France, United Kingdom, the unofficial assistance of Russia) expands its war against Islamic State, it is worth revisiting the work of Albert Camus. (More…)
Politics
A high court judge has ruled that the abortion ban in Northern Ireland is incompatible with the rights of women. This ruling tells you a lot about the region and its history in the UK. Under the leadership of Roy Jenkins, the UK legalised abortion in 1967 around the same time that the government also decriminalised homosexual relations and abolished the death penalty. (More…)
I’m absorbing the Kurdish equivalent of propaganda when the background noise changes from People’s Democratic Party (HDP) ads to the orchestral movements of poorly-acted dramas. (More…)
In the very interesting account which Mrs. Devereux Roy has given of the present condition of Algeria, she says that France “is now about to embark upon a radical change of policy in regard to her African colonies.” (More…)
Why ISIS as the standard-bearer of Sunni resistance? It is not the result of some lusting for barbarism on the part of the region’s Sunnis. It is not even because of the fearsome barbarity with which the Islamic State enforces its edicts (although that helps). Nor is it because its military and security structures are designed and run on Baathist lines (though that helps too). (More…)
Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the word “fascism” has made periodic appearances in American political discourse. Critics of the Patriot Act invoked it as a way of warning against the dangers of prioritizing security over liberty. President George W. Bush later described the nation’s primary enemy in the War on Terror as “Islamic fascists”. And conservatives even labeled Barack Obama a fascist. (More…)
Today, Northern Ireland is officially peaceful. 30 years of intercommunal violence came to a close in 1998, the Provisional IRA disarmed in 2005, and British troops withdrew in 2007 after maintaining a “temporary presence” for 38 years. Governance has since been divided between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein to ensure both communities are represented. (More…)
The intellectual foundations contemporary German fascism like increasingly in the long-forgotten writers and ideologues of the so-called “Conservative Revolution” of the Weimar era, which much better serve their needs than Hitler’s speeches ever could. (More…)
I was at a party when I first heard news of the Paris attacks. My friend and I curled around her phone, scrolling through the grisly details: two explosions close to Stade de France, gunmen attacking multiple restaurants, and an Eagles of Death Metal concert. (More…)
It’s quite right for Britons to be shocked by the atrocities in France. Parisians have now felt, for a brief moment, the kind of violence deployed in Syria. Yet, in our rush to blame the attacks on refugees, we find ourselves turning on the very people fleeing such terror in Syria. As if this were not bad enough, we have lost sight of our own violent history. (More…)
The case, as the generous American communities have shown they well understand, has had no analogue in the experience of our modern generations, no matter how far back we go; it has been recognised, in surpassing practical ways, as virtually the greatest public horror of our age, or of all the preceding. (More…)
Ambivalence towards reactionary thinking in Germany today – on the one hand, strongly rejected in official, polite discourse, while at the same time very popular – is best exemplified by the immense success of the writer and former Social Democrat, Thilo Sarrazin. (More…)