Month: March 2019

Raad Adayleh/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.In the light of the June attacks in Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom has closed its borders with Syria and continues to imprison its nationals for terrorism-related charges. Jordan has already taken steps to limit the threat from extremists, but without fully understanding the many reasons why these men have…

Still from the film documentary,'Starving Yemen'2016. BBC Arabic/BBC Our World. All rights reserved.Most of us are glued to our visual media watching the nightmare unfolding in Aleppo and the systematic bombing and killing of a besieged population in the city while the world’s politicians are debating allocation of responsibility in New York between meals at…

It’s safe to say that Donald Trump has left many of us speechless. And as our nation and much of the world tuned in Thursday morning to watch former FBI Director James Comey testify about his interactions with the president, the folks at House of Cards found the perfect way to sum up the surreal:…

A secondary school English class – lessons are as much about academic education as about sharing culture and creating a safe space to learn.Refugee Education Chios. All rights reserved. Amid freezing temperatures in Europe’s hotspots, refugees fleeing from some of the most dangerous places on earth still encounter political stagnation and the threat of forcible…

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) dealt her party another punishing blow to its already maligned and delayed health care bill. After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its estimate on Monday that 22 million Americans would lose access to health care coverage under the Senate Republican bill, Collins published a series of tweets explaining why she will vote against…

HMS Victorious. Wikimedia Commons/UK Ministry of Defence. Public Domain.The debate in Britain over the renewal of the Trident nuclear-missile programme continues to develop, despite great efforts to close it down. One issue in particular is of deep concern to the authorities: whether the oceans are in the process of becoming transparent. If the submarines which…

If President Trump won’t delete his Twitter account, Americans should at least be able to send him critical messages through the platform. That’s the argument in a letter sent by lawyers on behalf of individuals whose Twitter accounts have been “blocked” by Trump’s twitter account. A team from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia…

At the corner of Gaziler Caddesi, the kebab seller Emre is listing how to ask for a bottle of water in Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish. Minimal knowledge of these three languages is a sort of passport to enter Basmane, a neighbourhood in Izmir. Away from the large modern avenues of Alsancak, showcase of the secular…

Liberal or conservative, pro-Trump or Antifa, Lea Thau is here to burst your bubble.  The Peabody award-winning producer and storyteller, who is openly critical of Trump, has just wrapped up months of road tripping with his supporters.  “I’m exhausted from having these conversations,” Thau says at the end the first episode Lea in Trumpland” a special three-part miniseries of “Strangers,” her popular radio…

Figueres, Teatre-Museu Dali, Catalonia. Flickr/Ilya Bogin. Some rights reserved.Without claiming to represent anyone but myself, I wish to focus my statement on what, under the present circumstances, I represent here today, namely civil society, as a member of civil society. The expertise I can contribute to the struggle against corruption and for democratic regeneration has…