On Friday 14th of February Lebanon commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the brutal assassination of former prime minister, Rafic Hariri. On the eve of the commemoration, the current prime minister, Hassan Diab, lamented how, in Hariri’s absence, ‘Lebanon lacks the regional and international presence to save us from crisis.’ Diab was brought in to lead … Read more
So the Phony War continues in the Democratic Primaries as Bernie takes the New Hampshire primary by a small margin over Buttigieg, while Klobuchar finished a surprise third. But this month’s column is concerned with the bigger picture, and how the apparently unstoppable Trump procession to the Presidency could be halted by a virus beyond … Read more
Having grown up around favelas in the East Side of São Paulo I was expecting a similar scene of poverty mixed with a strong sense of community. Instead Moria has a post-war feeling, as it is for many people living there, who showed me evidence on their phones of the destruction they were escaping. It’s … Read more
The intellectual decay associated with Jordan Peterson has provided the soil wherein Steve Bannon’s seedlings have germinated.
Five predictions for 2020: The Trump Card, an analysis of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, CES 2020, implications of 5G rollout and a Republican climate change pivot. The Trump Card For all the talk of a fading U.S. Superpower since President Trump came to office, there is one statistic firmly in his favor. … Read more
Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers. Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university … Read more
When truth is the casualty, everyone suffers. For new Americans, spending Thanksgiving in the U.S. comes as a surprise. It’s the busiest travel time of the year, ranking ahead of Christmas and the 4th of July. While some associate Thanksgiving with shopping bonanzas like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for most it’s simply an opportunity … Read more
A national strike was called in Colombia for Thursday, the 21st of November. In Bogotá, it would be the beginning of two weeks of protests, parties, and panics. Iván Duque, Colombia’s right-wing president, was elected in 2018. Since then he has tried to implement the typical Latin American neo-liberal programme: pension privatisation; privatisation of government … Read more
The future of a generation born during over eight years of conflict in Syria is under threat. More than half of all school-aged Syrian children living as refugees in neighbouring countries do not have access to formal education. In this second of a two-part series humanitarian activist and author Bruna Kadletz addresses the educational crisis … Read more
What is the experience of a refugee caught in the crisis on the Mediterranean Sea? Approximately 18,910 lives have been lost or are missing since 2014, including three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi in 2015; so far in 2019 there have been an estimated 1089 deaths.[i] Yesterday in a Dáil Éireann briefing room we heard testimonies … Read more