“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,” Lindsey Graham, May 3, 2016 With the world looking on, on Wednesday January 6th President Trump incited his followers to storm the U.S. Congress in order to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. An election which he lost by millions … Read more
The idea that our society might be moving in a fundamentally bad direction is an extremely difficult one to grapple with. We are aware that society is deeply flawed, sometimes even to the point of cynicism; and yet there is a certain basic soundness in the orientation of our society which we assume as a … Read more
As Lebanon marked the centenary of its creation last week, it was not state-orchestrated ceremonies or mass demonstrations that marked the occasion, but rather the media circus surrounding the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s visit came with Lebanon mired in an unprecedented crisis that has plunged to new depths following last month’s devastating … Read more
The jailing in June of thirteen rappers for ‘glorifying terrorism’ in their lyrics has once again thrown the spotlight on Spain’s use of draconian legislation to stifle free speech and dissent. But the sentences of up to nine months meted out to Pablo Hasel and twelve members of La Insurgencia collective pale in comparison with … Read more
Photographer Daniele Idini travelled from North to South of Italy and discovered a country in severe economic crisis desperate to resume the good life. On July 8th I landed in Malpensa (Milan) on a half-empty Ryanair flight from Dublin. It is the largest airport in Italy, located about forty kilometres from the city of Milan. … Read more
The grip of the pandemic having loosened, Frank Armstrong travelled over land and sea from Rome to Athens, and on to the Dodecanese Islands. Although Greece’s Covid-19 death toll has been among the lowest per capita in Europe, it now contends with severely diminished tourist earnings, and the worrying prospect of another war with Turkey. … Read more
I feel that Europe, in its state of degeneracy has passed its own death sentence. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, (1942) The Best Lose All Conviction… This piece revisits aspects of The Limits of Multiculturalism – a piece I wrote last year warning of a reversion to the 1930s in terms of austerity, extremism … Read more
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States has inflicted various forms of punishment upon the island nation in order to affect regime change. Policies have included a devastating economic embargo, attempts at international isolation, military invasion and a little-known history of terrorism, which has claimed thousands of Cuban civilian lives. … Read more
The long march of the locked-down migrants[i] (Aadesh Ravi – composer, lyric writer and singer) Lyrics How are the little ones holding up at home? I wonder how and with what my old mother feeds them? We toil daily to subsist Forced to migrate to make ends meet The nation may be great But our … Read more
The pandemic of the new coronavirus Covid-19 is forcing indigenous populations of the Amazon to self-isolate to prevent its spread within villages. In doing so they are fortified by traditional customs and the ancestral relationship with the forest. This occurs both in reverting to traditional food sources, and adopting behaviours that ensure the safety of … Read more