Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons. All rights reserved. “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” ― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968 As morning unfolded on this side of the Atlantic on November 9, Donald Trump addressed …
Read More “The road from democracy to kakistocracy – and back”
Rally for 'Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West' (PEGIDA) hold German flags during a demonstration in Dresden, Germany, Jan. 5, 2015. Jens Meyer /Press Association. All rights reserved.What is fascism? Perhaps one way to answer this question is to say that fascism is a political logic that assumes that there is an easy …
Read More “Where will we end up? Terrorism, Islamophobia and the logic of fascism”
Photo of Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and partner Jessica Schneider. Kamil Zihnioglu/AP/Press Association. All rights reserved.The carnage in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on 12 June 2016 is one of the very worst of the so-called 'lone wolf' assaults. Though it was certainly an anti-LGBT attack, it is still not clear how much it was inspired …
Read More “ISIS after Orlando: a multiform war”
Earlier this year, the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres hit the ice sporting a little more color than usual. Their signature blue and gold uniforms were well represented, of course, but their sticks (and the sticks of their opponents) now had dashes of orange, yellow, green, purple, and red courtesy of rainbow-colored tape. The message was simple …
Read More “Hockey Scores Big”
Former US President Bill Clinton walks from the stage past the casket of former Israeli President Shimon Peres at the memorial service at Mount Herzl national cemetery, Jerusalem, Sept. 30, 2016. Carolyn Kaster/Press Association. All rights reserved. From a historical and analytical perspective, it may not be very useful to engage the question of whether …
Read More “Note on Shimon Peres: from domination to hegemony and back again”
There is a popular genre of journalism I call “costume journalism.” Instead of pursuing a story mainly through the traditional forms of reporting — research and interviews — a reporter might instead put on the “costume” of the people they’re reporting on for a day to report on what the experience is like. Last year, …
Read More “If You Want To Know What Life Is Like For Dishwashers, Ask Them “
Funding for arts education is once again on the chopping block, but that doesn’t mean teachers have stopped encouraging students to develop their creativity. Some of the most expressive work produced this school year by the nation’s middle and high school students was recently recognized at the 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards—the nation’s longest-running and most prestigious recognition …
Read More “Creative Teachers Help Teens Thrive, But We Keep Cutting Arts Classes Anyway”
James Stavridis, NATO supreme allied commander, testifying on Capitol Hill, 2013. Now retired, calls on Obama Administration in Foreign Policy magazine, to be 'nice to Erdogan'.Molly Riley/ Press Association. All rights reserved.Western interpretations of the botched coup in Turkey and its aftermath are varied. Nevertheless, if one draws a vector that represents the divergent arguments …
Read More “A botched coup and Turkey’s future in western institutions”
Discussing open source tecnology in Damascus on Arduino Day 2015. Flickr/Wikilogia. Some rights reserved.Conflict zones were once considered ‘information-scarce environments’. Wars effectively cut off large slices of territory and populations from the rest of the world. No longer. As vicious conflicts from Darfur and South Sudan to Syria amply show, new technologies have changed all …
Read More “War, peace and the technological revolution”
The current flare-up over North Korea’s missile tests and Donald Trump’s belligerent response is frightening for many, but anyone worried that Pyongyang wants to start a war is – fortunately – mistaken. For all its fighting talk, missile tests, and mooted plans for an attack on the U.S.’s Pacific territory of Guam, North Korea is …
Read More “The Case For Staying Calm About North Korea”