As ISIS swept over large swathes of the eastern province, former FSA fighter Abu Khadija pledged his allegiance, believing the extremists were his best bet to topple the Assad government. Now, after escaping, he wishes he could take it all back. (More…)
If you have a lot of friends who teach university courses, as I do, your social media feed at this time of year is probably filled with complaints. Instructors keep being asked to do more for less pay. The higher-ups who shape their conditions of employment treat them with blatant disrespect. Most of their students show little interest in working hard. And they’re getting worse, too. (More…)
Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which elevates it into a formula of truth in the history of thought. (More…)
Ahmadiyya Muslim Asad Shah was stabbed to death on March 24 outside of his shop on Minard Road, in Shawlands, Glasgow. Tanveer Ahmed, a 32-year-old taxi driver from Bradford, has been arrested for what has been reported as a religiously-motivated killing. (More…)
If you’re tuned into the BBC, you may think the recent elections were a complete disaster for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. The truth is Labour held its own in England, while it lost out in Wales and Scotland. Naturally, the SNP and Plaid Cymru made gains where Blairism was strong. Yet the press has it on record that Labour’s losses confirm the failures of the new leadership. (More…)
It is bad form for commenters on politics to devote column inches to the dissection of the work of other commenters on politics. This is particularly true when one has already done so fairly recently. But the falling away of the last of the Republican challengers to Donald Trump has occasioned such paroxysms of despair among the right-wing commentariat that one simply cannot resist the opportunity to troll. (More…)
“I can’t believe he’s our president!” It was the sort of declaration that millions of people understandably made after Obama’s inauguration back in January, 2009. But that my daughter still felt the need to make it last night, May 4th 2016, speaks volumes about the strangeness of his two terms in the White House. Even now, many of his enemies on the Right still refuse to acknowledge his legitimacy. (More…)
There is no upsurge of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. There is a moral panic being instigated by the media due, to a handful of cases, almost all of which took place before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in the summer of 2015. In fact, the Corbyn leadership has demonstrated it is not afraid to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism against Labour figures, including allies like Ken Livingstone. But this is not all there is to say. (More…)
Independent journalists and volunteer activists have launched an online hunt to track down and expose former militiamen accused of committing crimes during Syria’s war as they head to Europe to seek asylum. (More…)
In Paris, its fullness of brilliant life so dominates that all shadows seem to fly before it and poverty and pain to have no place, and the same feeling holds for the chief cities of the continent. It is Paris that is the keynote of social life, and in less degree its influence makes itself felt, even at remote distances, governing production and fixing the rate of wages paid. (More…)
When the surprising news of Prince’s death was announced last week, I reflexively moved to post something to social media. And so did a great many of my friends. But we were immediately reminded of just how little material was available for free online. His insistence on being properly compensated for his work had made it hard to mourn him collectively through social media. (More…)