A painful lesson from Brexit: Why DiEM25 needs a simpler message

DiEM0216.Session 1. Arno-image. All rights reserved.For years the signs have been on the wall. The Tea Party in the United States. Golden Dawn in Greece. The Alternatif für Deutschland. UKIP’s inexorable rise in the UK. Etc. etc. We saw these signs. We analysed their historic and political causes. We developed a cosmopolitan narrative of how …

DNA Detectives Can Help Track Down The Family You Never Knew You’d Lost

It was no secret that Steve Park was adopted. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know the whole story, which started in 1946 when his adopted parents took him in. Merril and Arthur Park—a big-time Hollywood agent who at one time repped Ronald Reagan—raised him in Brentwood; his sister was presented at cotillion. “It was a formal …

Dangerous journeys: violence against women migrants in Turkey

Syrian refugees' camp in Cappadocia, Turkey. Image: Fabio Sola Penna / Flickr There are three million registered migrants in Turkey, 90% are from Syria of whom one and a half million are women. Interviews with migrant women reveal that many are exposed to sexual harassment and assault during war, migration and resettlement processes, with the …

Claire Eccles Will Be The First Woman To Compete In The West Coast Baseball League

For women who grow up playing baseball, there eventually comes a point in their adolescence when they are nudged away from the sport toward softball. Claire Eccles has nothing against softball, she plays for the University of British Columbia, but she never wanted to leave her favorite sport behind. So she continued doing both, staying with …

The road from democracy to kakistocracy – and back

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 …

Where will we end up? Terrorism, Islamophobia and the logic of fascism

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 …

ISIS after Orlando: a multiform war

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 …

Hockey Scores Big

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 …

Note on Shimon Peres: from domination to hegemony and back again

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 …