The last time Barack Obama intervened in European politics was during the Brexit referendum campaign. Coming out for the Remain camp, Obama backed the UK’s membership of the EU on the grounds of economic stability. (More…)
Politics
Last year saw more refugees displaced and more people dying at sea than ever before. We look back at the major milestones and significant policy shifts of 2016. (More…)
I am wont, in these days of political turmoil, to find myself lying awake in the empty hours of the night. At such times I often read and reread the columns of Lewis Lapham. This is not only because of his consummate skill as a writer of short essays, but also because his writing from the 1980s, through the early noughties, functions like a sort of core sample of American culture. (More…)
As 2016 comes to an end, we’re hearing a lot of talk about the end of liberal politics, and even democracy itself, after the UK voted for Brexit and Donald Trump won the US election. These two events seem to capture the year. (More…)
At the first glance, and even when longer survey has been made, both Paris and Berlin — and these may stand as the representative Continental cities — seem to offer every possible facility for the work of women. (More…)
Rebel-held Aleppo was the first casualty of President-elect Donald Trump’s emerging world order. Annia Ciezadlo explains what to expect next in Syria. (More…)
The 2016 presidential race left America more polarized than ever. Also affected were US Jews, not least by an unnerving resurgence of anti-Semitism in the wake of the Trump campaign, which was stoked, many claim, by senior advisor Steve Bannon and the extremist right-wing ideologues of his alt-right base. (More…)
For moderate, unarmed rebels, as well as anyone wanted by the government, the rapid and brutal offensive to retake east Aleppo is a sign of what’s to come elsewhere in Syria. (More…)
The Russian government may or may not have been the source of the Wikileaks revelations that hurt Clinton electorally to an unknown degree. Some sources in the CIA think so, or want us to think so. The Obama Administration, Clinton’s supporters, and large parts of the press concur. Other sources disagree in varying ways. (More…)
The humanitarian crisis in eastern Aleppo is tragic but not unimaginable or surprising – it is the result of years of inaction by the international community, writes Physicians for Human Rights researcher Elise Baker. (More…)
The world is becoming hostage to fascism. Those who – in word and deed – destroy democracy are gaining ground in the U.S., France, Russia, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary. They desire to have our desire in thrall. Not just economy, but libidinal economy, rules supreme. (More…)
I remember when I was on Any Questions. Of course, I was just another civilian in the audience, not actually on the panel – which included Sadiq Khan and UKIP’s Patrick O’Flynn. My own contribution to the programme was shouting “Liar!” at Chris Grayling as he held forth on privatisation. This was 2013. (More…)