Recent tragic reports of boatloads of African immigrants crossing from Libya to Lampedusa, a 12 square mile island off of the coast of Sicily, have transfixed local, regional and international audiences. (More…)
Europe
In the same period during the 17th century that saw England’s finest hour when the head of Charles I was divorced from his body, it was determined, in the wake of the wars of religion and the English revolution, that politics would take place on the plain of artifice. As a result, political life would progressively be delimited to a specialised and exclusive administrative art. ‘The life questions’, to say nothing of contestation between forms-of-life would come to be banished from the public realm. (More…)
Nowadays we hear it repeated ad nauseam that ours is the post-truth age, the age of alternative facts and fake news. It is similarly repeated that this state of affairs has contributed to some of the more surprising events of recent years, notably Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of so-called populism from Italy to the Philippines. (More…)
They live for crime. Not the refugees accused of committing them, but Germany’s largest opposition party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Repeatedly denigrating refugees as lawbreakers, a cursory reading of the party’s Twitter account reveals a problematic investment in breaking German law. The repetition of the anxiety reads like projection as much as it does fear. (More…)
Not content with his expensive safari Christmas, Sajid Javid came home to bring in the New Year. What could have prompted such good cheer? (More…)
Security wouldn’t let them through. “Please, please,” the mother entreated the officer in Hebrew. “I need to get my daughter to the bathroom.” Her pleas fell on deaf ears. (More…)
The UK is facing the greatest crisis in its post-war history. While the House of Commons is paralysed, the March deadline on Brexit is fast approaching, and no one, in either the UK or the EU, agrees with the government’s plan to leave. All the prime minister can do respond with delays because she’s run out of ideas. If she ever had any to begin with. (More…)
It couldn’t have been more personal. Granted, the topic was European anti-Semitism. I happen to be Jewish and live in Berlin, and I worked for a French news outlet for nearly four of the last five years. (More…)
In the midst of the “Gilets Jaunes” movement these last two weeks, riots erupted, in Paris, but not only, and various acts of sabotage have taken place. Since then, a certain number of anarchists have raised the question of intervention within this movement, in the same way that they have always intervened in other social movements. (More…)
On 11 December, the UK parliament will vote on the EU withdrawal treaty. The May government is at imminent risk of collapse should parliament fail to ratify the Brexit treaty. All of this matters in Arizona and every other US state. (More…)
Immigration has been a wedge issue for nationalists and conservatives to exploit for decades. The left must own this issue and stake its own claim on common sense. (More…)
To deter migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, European authorities have seized upon a seemingly innocuous bit of international maritime law to block NGO-run rescue ships from their lifesaving work: the requirement that every vessel with seaward ambitions – from search-and-rescue vessel to pleasure boat – carry a national flag. (More…)