Ahmadiyya Muslim Asad Shah was stabbed to death on March 24 outside of his shop on Minard Road, in Shawlands, Glasgow. Tanveer Ahmed, a 32-year-old taxi driver from Bradford, has been arrested for what has been reported as a religiously-motivated killing. (More…)
If you’re tuned into the BBC, you may think the recent elections were a complete disaster for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. The truth is Labour held its own in England, while it lost out in Wales and Scotland. Naturally, the SNP and Plaid Cymru made gains where Blairism was strong. Yet the press has it on record that Labour’s losses confirm the failures of the new leadership. (More…)
It is bad form for commenters on politics to devote column inches to the dissection of the work of other commenters on politics. This is particularly true when one has already done so fairly recently. But the falling away of the last of the Republican challengers to Donald Trump has occasioned such paroxysms of despair among the right-wing commentariat that one simply cannot resist the opportunity to troll. (More…)
“I can’t believe he’s our president!” It was the sort of declaration that millions of people understandably made after Obama’s inauguration back in January, 2009. But that my daughter still felt the need to make it last night, May 4th 2016, speaks volumes about the strangeness of his two terms in the White House. Even now, many of his enemies on the Right still refuse to acknowledge his legitimacy. (More…)
There is no upsurge of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. There is a moral panic being instigated by the media due, to a handful of cases, almost all of which took place before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in the summer of 2015. In fact, the Corbyn leadership has demonstrated it is not afraid to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism against Labour figures, including allies like Ken Livingstone. But this is not all there is to say. (More…)
Independent journalists and volunteer activists have launched an online hunt to track down and expose former militiamen accused of committing crimes during Syria’s war as they head to Europe to seek asylum. (More…)
The $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was finalised during an official visit by Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to Pakistan a year ago. CPEC is arguably the largest infrastructure project in Pakistani history, and includes Eastern and Western Realignment projects that comprise highways, railways, sea-lines, electricity lines, and energy projects. (More…)
Journalist Rahaf Haboub grew up in Daraya, a Damascus suburb besieged by pro-government forces for more than three years. She and her family fled in fall 2012 after the government targeted the area with airstrikes and barrel bombs – these are her recollections of those harrowing times. (More…)
One of the most persistent domestic critiques of Donald Trump is that his proposals are not truly American. From the White House to the protests at his rallies, he has been savaged for promoting the sort of extremism the United States has long ascribed to its enemies, thereby calling into question the self-righteous presumptions that undergird the nation’s foreign policy. (More…)
“So Erdogan, Aliyez, and Nazarbayez are on a boat …” It reads like the set up to a joke, but all three men – the leaders of Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan – did meet on board the Turkish presidential yacht MV Savarona last week. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit as occasion to again show off the luxurious vessel, originally presented to President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1938. (More…)
The last day of the NBA regular season made for remarkable television. While Kobe Bryant, the first superstar to make his mark in the wake of basketball’s massive global expansion, was playing the final game of his illustrious twenty-year career in Los Angeles, the Golden State Warriors, the league’s best team and defending champions, were winning their record-breaking 73rd game. (More…)