It gave plenty of people giggles when Csanad Szegedi, a high-ranking official in the Hungarian far-right and explicitly anti-Semitic party Jobbik, found out in 2012 that he was Jewish. After some soul searching, he revealed to Israeli newspapers Ma’ariv, and The Jerusalem Post, in the fall of 2016 that he had become a committed Zionist, would relocate to Israel, and enter politics. (More…)
There is a painful episode in the Afghan war, which perhaps can be introduced in no place more fitly than in this. Whilst the prisoners, who surrendered themselves on the march between Caubul and Jellalabad, were suffering such hardships in a rude and inhospitable country, British officers were enduring unparalleled sufferings in the dungeons of an Oosbeg tyrant, far beyond the snowy mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. (More…)
Farah is a young woman living in Syria’s capital, where she faces the daily struggles of maintaining a normal life in a country being ripped apart by war. (More…)
The year was 1942 and I was eighteen years old. I was in Cairo on holiday arranged by my mother. She ran a hostel for the expats in Cairo. If I go into detail about mother’s job, I’ll never get to tell how I encountered King Farouk. (More…)
Revolution leads to repression. If the utopian convulsions of the 20th century are our guide, it would be impossible to conclude otherwise. The Soviet Union, Communist China, the Islamic Republic, capitalist Russia. In each and every case, the path to democracy was consistently compromised. (More…)
The last time Barack Obama intervened in European politics was during the Brexit referendum campaign. Coming out for the Remain camp, Obama backed the UK’s membership of the EU on the grounds of economic stability. (More…)
The machine, the synonym for production at large, has refined and subtilized—even spiritualized itself to a degree almost inconceivable, nor is there any doubt but that the future has far greater surprises in store. (More…)
Last year saw more refugees displaced and more people dying at sea than ever before. We look back at the major milestones and significant policy shifts of 2016. (More…)
I am wont, in these days of political turmoil, to find myself lying awake in the empty hours of the night. At such times I often read and reread the columns of Lewis Lapham. This is not only because of his consummate skill as a writer of short essays, but also because his writing from the 1980s, through the early noughties, functions like a sort of core sample of American culture. (More…)
As 2016 comes to an end, we’re hearing a lot of talk about the end of liberal politics, and even democracy itself, after the UK voted for Brexit and Donald Trump won the US election. These two events seem to capture the year. (More…)
At the first glance, and even when longer survey has been made, both Paris and Berlin — and these may stand as the representative Continental cities — seem to offer every possible facility for the work of women. (More…)
France is lost. Or so it would appear if you read the country’s newspapers regularly. Marine Le Pen will be the next president. The Socialists can only give in to the banks. Racism is the new norm. Emergency powers have become permanent. The only alternative is fascism. (More…)