On 21 September, a boat carrying almost 40 Syrian refugees sank off the coast of Lebanon. They’d paid a smuggler to help them reach the European Union through Cyprus. Luckily, they were all saved – that is, almost everyone. A 5-year-old child, Khaled Nijmeh, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. (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…)
Sunday, August 25th, 1968, Lincoln Park, Chicago. The Yippies had set up an event called The Festival of Life as part of the protest activities directed at the Democratic National Convention. They’d sent out invitations to a lot of heavy hitters (Janis Joplin, etc.) but the only band that showed up was the MC5. (More…)
One night on a kibbutz in the early 1970s, a German volunteer named Wolfgang turned up at my door asking for assistance. He’d climbed over a high gate returning from Tel Aviv, fell, and had a nasty cut across his palm. I took him to the clinic while a friend fetched the kibbutz nurse, a concentration camp survivor with a tattoo on her arm. (More…)
The US press does not hesitate to compare Paris to Baghdad and its suburbs to the Gaza Strip. Either the concern is sincere and we should be grateful, or the opportunity was too good to be missed to criticize the country of human rights always eager to give lessons. While there is probably a little bit of both, the second guess is most certainly the right one. (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…)
My father called it “Mini-Paris.” “We lived in Brussels in the 1950s when it was still a wreck from the war,” he told me. “The only people who spoke French were the cops. Everyone in the neighbourhood was a refugee from Italy. Except us, of course.” (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…)
Social media is theirs. Day in, day out, there is not a moment where news media do not remind you of their hegemony. Whether it’s Matteo Salvini or Donald Trump, the extreme right Tweets the hits, and all we can do is wait for them to completely take over. Even though, of course, the far-right is already in charge. It’s as though the press would like them to be more so. (More…)
Populism can make its presence felt among any group of ordinary people in any democratic country which is being subjected to stressful forces. As a result of such stress, this group of people may identify itself with a leader who they believe can provide them with more material support and hope for the future than the elite politicians running the country. (More…)
Even as the 2016 New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants and twin United Nations-led global compact processes seek to improve the global response to people on the move, states are increasingly hostile toward them. Indeed, anti-refugee rhetoric seems to be everywhere these days. (More…)