Tahrir Square during Egypt's Revolution. Mohamed Mostafa/Demotix. All rights reserved. “Lift your heads up high. You are Egyptians!” This was the demonstrators’ cry in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring. The response from other parts of the square came in repeated bursts of “Allah-hu-Akbar!” (God is great.) Tahrir Square, in…
On Tuesday, I’m Voting For All The Moms Who Take Their Kids To The Polls
Last week, Louis C.K. told Conan O’Brien he was voting for Hillary Clinton mainly because she’s a mom: “A mother’s just got it… She feeds you and teaches you, she protects you, she takes care of sh*t.” While I wouldn’t vote for someone just because she’s a mother, motherhood offers a skillset no American president…
Women's power to stop war: rereading Virginia Woolf
A portrait of Woolf by Roger Fry c.1917 How essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or if we, in the intensity of our private emotions forget…
How Facebook Changed The Way We Empathize
The thing that has become the most clear to us this election year is that we don’t agree on the fundamental truths we thought we did. I went to college in the part of Pennsylvania that definitely flipped the state for Trump. A good number of my friends are still living there and have posted…
Islamic State’s latest victims: poor defenceless Christian Ethiopians
Christian Ethiopians on Good Friday. Gazetegnaw Zega/Demotix. All rights reserved. The killing was horrific for anyone with enough resolve to see the video footage. Killing a defenceless human being with no military training, with no gun or weapon in his hand, for the colour of his skin, his country of origin and/or religious faith has…
Why The Smartest Anti-Trump Protest Strategy Is Solidarity—Not Violence
With the new administration beginning, many people might want to know how to resist it. The inauguration week includes many protests against Donald Trump’s values—from Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington to the #J20 Art Strike. What should we aim for as we head into protests? As a reflective citizen and a practitioner of philosophy, I am…
What kind of peace? The case of the Turkish and Kurdish peace process
Kurds demonstrate in Strasbourg calling for Ocalan's release, February 2015. Demotix/ Jonathan Rae. All rights reserved.Turkey and the Kurds share the aim of ending their long-standing conflict. So what of the so-called peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK, especially their imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan? And what is the potential role of Kurdish…
Obama Signs New Rule Blocking States From Defunding Planned Parenthood
Click:leveling agent President Obama is using his final weeks in office to help ensure that women’s rights stay in place even after he leaves the White House. On Tuesday, Obama signed a new rule into place that effectively bars states from denying funds to health service centers which provide abortions. Over the last several years,…
With A Republican Texas Elector Defecting From Trump, The ‘Hamilton Plan’ Gains Momentum
A group known as the Hamilton Electors—Electoral College members who will cast their electoral votes to help officially decide the president of the United States—has determined the president-elect to be unqualified, adding yet another wrinkle to this historic election. Now, The group has gained a new ally in Republican Texas elector Christopher Suprun, who, in The New York Times,…
What David Cameron could learn from Marx about radicalisation (but probably won't)
Karl Marx. Flickr/Montecruz Foto. Some rights reserved The government is, apparently, concerned about radicalisation. David Cameron told the Globsec conference in Slovakia that the Islamist narrative about the evils of the west is given too much credence. “[It] paves the way” he said, “for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent. To go…