Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to enforce a nationwide truce in Syria, in the hopes of paving the way for a future political solution to the crisis, but both the Syrian government and opposition have their doubts about the truce. (More…)
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The dawn of the Trump Era was met with the sort of damp squib that might have suggested to a more thoughtful individual the brute realities of his situation. Habituated as he is to basking in the glow of the approbation outsized personal deference, the underwhelming crowd at his inauguration had the potential to act as a corrective (More…)
The extremely unfavourable reports I heard from Palestine caused me to defer my departure from day to day. When I applied to my consul for a “firmann” (Turkish passport), I was strongly advised not to travel to the Holy Land. The disturbances on Mount Lebanon and the plague were, they assured me, enemies too powerful to be encountered except in cases of urgent necessity. (More…)
In six months, federal elections will be held in Germany. The right-wing AfD, party which in recent months has been polling consistently well above 10%, will almost certainly enter federal parliament. Barring any unforeseeable catastrophic event, Merkel will remain in power, but the rise of the far-right has already shaken Germany’s politics. (More…)
Foreign intervention and the many proxy groups fighting on all sides of the conflict in Syria have further polarized the war and complicated the rules for accountability when it comes to civilian protection. (More…)
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher died last week. He was just 48 years old. Ideologically committed to the ethos of Punk Rock, Mark Fisher was an influential music critic and blogger at K-Punk. Unlike liberal critics, Fisher did not engage with pop culture without recourse to critical theory and politics. And by politics, I mean radical politics. (More…)
They weren’t supposed to hate Jews. Selectively anti-Semitic – meaning anti-Muslim, not Judeophobic – Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party has finally aligned itself with pre-populist fascism, condemning the country’s culture of WW II guilt, and shame over the Holocaust. (More…)
Lale Colak died upon release from Kartal Prison, Istanbul, on December 20, 2000. She couldn’t speak, her mouth was ulcerated, and her hair had turned white after 222 days without solid food. Lale’s mother says that she didn’t want to die, but was militantly devoted to a wave of prisoner hunger strikes that took aim at the expansion of Turkish mass incarceration. (More…)
The Syrian government’s new and unprecedented volunteer-based military unit is a window into the current state and the future of the Syrian military, explains Syrian journalist Abdulrahman al-Masri. (More…)
If I had a dime for every time some knowledgeable pundit has declared Marxism to be dead, well, I could spend a lot less time writing about capital and a lot more time enjoying it. The frequency of assertions of the irrelevance of Marx’s work varies directly with periods of calm in the global economy such as the so-called Great Moderation of the quarter century before 2007. (More…)
Remember the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama stood before the South African people to pay tribute to Madiba. “He makes me want to be a better man”, the American president confided with his audience. (More…)
Located in the middle of the Eastern Mediterranean, but historically dominated by foreign powers, Cypriots are making a last-ditch attempt to reunite their divided, sun-drenched island. (More…)