From the conclusion of the Aden Emergency in 1967, to the end of the Cold War, southern Yemen was known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and ruled by a Stalinist Politburo in Aden. Its ambitious domestic experiments, and Trotskyist foreign policies, were a constant headache for both its monarchical neighbours, and the nascent dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh. (More…)
On our first trip to Forest Haven Asylum, the trail dumped us in front of an imposing brick and cement block building. Ugly. Institutional. Lacking the gothic mystery of early 20th century asylum architecture. We decided to pass it by. Later, though, I discovered that the vast cement monstrosity epitomizes the systematic warehousing of humans in the United States. (More…)
The Germans, I am apt to believe, derive their original from no other people; and are now way mixed with different nations arriving amongst them: since anciently those who went in search of new dwellings, travelled not by land, but were carried in fleets; and into that mighty ocean so boundless, and, as I may call it, so repugnant and forbidding, ships from our world rarely enter. (More…)
Malala Yousafzai is making news again, after urging world leaders to cut “eight days of military spending” in order to fund education. On Tuesday, the Malala Fund announced an estimate that $39 billion would be needed yearly to fund primary and secondary education for children worldwide. (More…)
Until Bernie Sanders decided to run for President, Democrats in the United States were resigned to an exceedingly dreary campaign. Without being pressed to articulate a vision for people already inclined to vote for her party, Hillary Clinton would have moved farther and farther to the Right, hoping to win over that small but crucial portion of the electorate classified as “undecided”. (More…)
America is not post-racial. Events in Charleston and Ferguson prove that. Events in Charleston and Ferguson scream “We need a new revolution.” And while that total overhaul—which must be social and cultural and educational and financial and political—must address race, it cannot be focused exclusively on race. (More…)
Ingenious scholars, surveying life from afar, are apt to interpret historical events as the outcome of impersonal forces which shape the course of nations unknown to themselves. This is an impressive theory, but it will not bear close scrutiny. Human nature everywhere responds to the influence of personality. In Greece, this response is more marked than anywhere else. (More…)
“Let me tell you this,” former Greek Minister of Public Order and Citizen protection Nikos Dendias told Skai Radio in January 2014. “There’s a difference between Sweden facing immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union, who have a certain level of education, who are Europeans in the broad sense of the word, and Greece, which is facing immigration from Bangladesh and Pakistan.” (More…)
I’m not sure why I kept watching after Bill Clinton had finished his victory speech back in November, 1992. People don’t usually care what the future Vice President has to say. But something in Al Gore’s manner compelled me. Six minutes in I found out why: “It is, symbolically, an expression of the reality that sectional wounds of the past are finally and irrevocably healed.” (More…)
I don’t pretend to have answers. Not a single one. All I can do is offer some snapshots from my own life, moments that have made me question my whiteness, moments that have led me to check the “other” box. (More…)
Although some may say I am too young to remember Pride in its original glory, apart from my drunken teenage years, when anything would do, it has never quite hit the spot for me. Many say Pride died a long time ago, and I think they’re right. (More…)
At first glance, the idea of England as an arena where two great religious forces meet seems rather far-fetched, but there is more Moslem activity in some of our English towns than people imagine. Turning over some files of the Kibla (a Meccan newspaper), one comes across passages like the following: (More…)