Daniel Silva’s series of thriller novels featuring Gabriel Allon, an Israeli spy, are a phenomenon among bestsellers. Millions of English-language copies from this have been sold in the sixteen years this series has been in print, and translations are available in dozens of languages. A new novel appears near-annually, and in a short time, hits the top of the New York Times bestseller lists. (More…)
You can tell Jeremy Corbyn is worth supporting just by looking at his opponents: Owen Smith, Angela Eagle, Lisa Nandy, Hilary Benn, Chuka Umunna et alia. A long list of nobodies and know-nothings, each of them produced by the spawn pool of career politicians. The rise of Corbynism is a great revolt by people who are sick and tired of conventional politics. (More…)
Farah is a young woman living in Syria’s capital city, where she faces the daily struggles of trying to maintain a normal social and professional life in a country being ripped apart by war. (More…)
A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. (More…)
As refugees continue to stream into Europe from Western Asia, fears of terrorist infiltration grow. The problem does not begin, as most persons believe, with Syria, and Iraq. Its origins go back much further, to Afghanistan, and the refugee crisis which began in the country, during the Russian occupation. (More…)
I agree with most of your reflections about the moral justification of war. War is an evil, because it is the product of sin and involves more sin and much suffering. But that does not mean it is necessarily wrong to fight. Once evil is at work, one of its chief results is to leave good people only a choice of evils, wherein the lesser evil becomes a duty. (More…)
ISIS has been increasing its influence on the local population, creating changes in the fabric of society that could outlive the militant group’s existence, Syrian journalist Jalal Zein al-Deen explains. (More…)
Taking journalistic potshots at the Republican National Convention really amounts to the grabbing of low hanging fruit (or perhaps low hanging nuts). The level of self-involved crazy is so great, and so profoundly weird that it’s not difficult to find targets for humorous engagement. (More…)
While it might seem perverse to call someone who is constantly berated for his imprecision a master rhetorician, Donald Trump has demonstrated time and time again that he has the rare gift of being able to cast a spell over the media with his blend of hyberbole, bluster and hearsay. True, it might cost him the presidential election in November. (More…)
For 21 months, from June 25, 1975 to March 21, 1977, India was under a state of emergency. The immediate cause of the Emergency was an Allahabad High Court ruling on June 23 that disqualified Indira Gandhi from parliament as a result of “campaign irregularities” surrounding her re-election, pending a final decision by the Supreme Court, though it occurred in the context of wider turbulence. (More…)
In the wake of Brexit, we were told the vote was a great revolt by the white working-class. We were told it was grounded in racist discontent with an out-of-touch metropolitan elite. The Leave vote was entirely composed of ill-educated, poor racists living anywhere between the progressive bastions of London and Scotland. It’s worth asking what’s wrong with this view. (More…)
Amid the blame game of warring parties in Aleppo, the healthcare system in Syria’s largest city is dying a slow and excruciating death. (More…)