It’s not every day you see a demonstration in Parliament Square against Jeremy Corbyn. Let alone a march where you can find Chuka Umunna, Lord Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley, Jr. presenting a united front against the Labour leader. What could possibly bring together Blairites and Ulster unionists? (More…)
Ayad Saryoul has spent most of the past month in an underground shelter that he shares with his family and 40 other people. Sometimes spending 18 hours straight underground, he passes the time by counting the number of rockets and shells that fall on the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus. (More…)
My mother grew up in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo when it was still colonial Rhodesia and I have spent the last decade reporting from the Middle East. (More…)
Watching the pullulating weirdness of the Trump Administration often makes one feel like one of those Kremlin watchers from the 1980s, trying to read the tea leaves to get a picture of what’s going on inside. This may seem a strange comparison, given the fact that the Kremlin of old tended to do a pretty good job of information control, while the Trump team leaks information like a sieve. (More…)
BEIRUT – Situated within mortar-range of the Syrian capital, the Eastern Ghouta region has been the main launch point for rebel attacks targeting Damascus – thus a grave threat to the government’s seat of power – since it fell to opposition forces in 2012. (More…)
BEIRUT – The Syrian war has often been cast as a sectarian conflict between a Sunni majority population and a minority Shiite ruling elite. However, sectarianism is only one component of a multi-faceted conflict that is also partially driven by socio-economic grievances, according to Fabrice Balanche, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. (More…)
Mr. Trump today signed his tariff order today, with much fanfare and a goodly measure of bewilderment among allies of the United States. The devotion to free trade has been talismanic among the political classes in this country for so long that Mr. Trump’s actions seem not just imprudent but heretical. (More…)
If you think the right stands for freedom, you’re wrong. The right stands for misery and oppression. It’s the left that stands for hope. This is true in more than one sense. But it’s also somewhat misleading. (More…)
Our language is insufficient in all kinds of ways. Mental health is one of those areas where we run out of words so quickly. What I find so frustrating is the lack of understanding from others and the barrier it raises to any kind of progress. (More…)
LUBLIN – Poland’s premier makes claims about “Jewish perpetrators” in the Holocaust; my government loses its honour by enforcing a law which bans free speech on Polish involvement in the Shoah; misogyny, homophobia, anti-abortion and anti-refugee sentiment are rampant here. (More…)
ISTANBUL – For two years Alaa* lived in a basement in Istanbul with his mother and sister. As the sole provider for both, Alaa said he had to work as a waiter for 12 hours a day to pay rent and bills. (More…)
If it seems like there is another school shooting every week in the United States, it’s pretty much because there is. It’s a little hard to explain to people who don’t live here the numbed acceptance with which these things are greeted in the American public sphere. (More…)