From the moment Barack Obama moved into the White House, conservatives have been turning to him for sustenance. They know they can rely on him to recharge their ideological batteries. In the suburban and rural enclaves where the right is strongest, particularly in the South and Southwest, trying not to find public expressions of hated towards the President is almost impossible. (More…)
At first, Britain’s Labour leadership contest was just about remixing Tory clichés. Andy Burnham issued bromides of ‘aspiration’ with a Northern accent. Yvette Cooper criticised Ed Miliband’s pledge to ban EU migrants from benefits for two years, on the grounds that it should be four years. Unable to add anything new, Liz Kendall gave up, and accepted almost every Conservative policy. (More…)
“If I can’t dabke dance, it’s not my revolution.” We paint these words in the colours of our favourite flag on a white canvas, the banner for our flashmob in the British Museum on the first anniversary of Operation Protective Edge, in Gaza. (More…)
Although the fighting among prospective Republican candidates for President in 2016 has been receiving the majority of the media’s attention recently, thanks to Donald Trump, the conflict in Democratic circles may be nastier. Hillary and Bill Clinton may have stored up a lot of goodwill over the years, but a decent-sized percentage of their party still resents them for dragging it rightward in the 1990s. (More…)
The politic of Fascism revolves wholly about the concept of the national State; and accordingly it has points of contact with nationalist doctrines, along with distinctions from the latter which it is important to bear in mind. (More…)
The headlines of German papers today say everything you need to know. The Frankfurter Allgemeine is, as usual, full of useful tips for how to handle the exasperating upstarts in Athens. It’s also happy to report that German tourism in Greece set a new record this year. For its part, the Süddeutsche Zeitung gets to the heart of the matter, with a lead article on Germany’s “image problem”; and what a problem that is. (More…)
From the conclusion of the Aden Emergency in 1967, to the end of the Cold War, southern Yemen was known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and ruled by a Stalinist Politburo in Aden. Its ambitious domestic experiments, and Trotskyist foreign policies, were a constant headache for both its monarchical neighbours, and the nascent dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh. (More…)
On our first trip to Forest Haven Asylum, the trail dumped us in front of an imposing brick and cement block building. Ugly. Institutional. Lacking the gothic mystery of early 20th century asylum architecture. We decided to pass it by. Later, though, I discovered that the vast cement monstrosity epitomizes the systematic warehousing of humans in the United States. (More…)
The Germans, I am apt to believe, derive their original from no other people; and are now way mixed with different nations arriving amongst them: since anciently those who went in search of new dwellings, travelled not by land, but were carried in fleets; and into that mighty ocean so boundless, and, as I may call it, so repugnant and forbidding, ships from our world rarely enter. (More…)
Malala Yousafzai is making news again, after urging world leaders to cut “eight days of military spending” in order to fund education. On Tuesday, the Malala Fund announced an estimate that $39 billion would be needed yearly to fund primary and secondary education for children worldwide. (More…)
Until Bernie Sanders decided to run for President, Democrats in the United States were resigned to an exceedingly dreary campaign. Without being pressed to articulate a vision for people already inclined to vote for her party, Hillary Clinton would have moved farther and farther to the Right, hoping to win over that small but crucial portion of the electorate classified as “undecided”. (More…)
America is not post-racial. Events in Charleston and Ferguson prove that. Events in Charleston and Ferguson scream “We need a new revolution.” And while that total overhaul—which must be social and cultural and educational and financial and political—must address race, it cannot be focused exclusively on race. (More…)