Beware the age of the Political Fool
Illustration by Hannah Robinson It is fashionable to label political eras. The last 60 years of American Presidency, for instance, is normally divided into imperial, imperilled and post-imperial segments. David Runciman,…
COVID-19: The End of the American Century
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Donald Trump’s petulance on the global stage during this crisis has provided an open door for others to take control of global hegemony. The 45th President of…
Ahmaud Arbery’s story is more sombre proof of the reality of rights before lives
Illustration by Hannah Robinson On April 22nd, 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by white supremacists whilst waiting at a bus stop in South-East London. On the 28th April…
I Would’ve Voted for Trump in 2016 – But I Have Since Changed My Mind
To understand why the majority of America voted Trump, you need to understand the climate of 2016. Obama, the man that promised ‘Yes, we can!’ had broken a string of…
Trump’s handling of this crisis exposes his shocking campaign tactics
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson President Trump’s daily press conferences are incomparable to anything politics has seen before. Topics range from him being number one on Facebook (for what nobody knows) anti-malarial…
Fake news hysteria can only lead to fake solutions
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Fake news has become an omnipresent aspect of politics around the globe. It appears that no election, referendum, or debate can happen without this ubiquitous term being…
Even in Black History Month black voices are marginalised
Scott Allen, Republican state senator for Wisconsin, ushered in the new year with a revised list for celebrating this Black History Month in America. The catch is that it consists,…
Iran vows “severe revenge”; but who will actually suffer?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Following the death of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani the world has, quite frankly, gone into a spin. Three days into the new year and Trump is tweeting…
Unpredictable politics: Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie on Brexit, Trump and turmoil
You might not think that the concerns of a former Prime Minister and a literary giant would have any notable similarities. But Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie addressed themes with…
Alabama, Georgia, I refuse not to be heard
Many platforms, including the Broad, have published articles in the wake of the abortion laws passed in Alabama and Georgia. When deciding whether to write my own article on the…
We cannot ignore America’s war on the female body
Every single time abortion laws are tightened, women suffer. The lives of unborn bundles of cells are being put above the lives of living, breathing, human women, so we need…
Is a US-Russian alliance on the cards?
And no, I am not talking about the clientelist relationship between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin. I am talking about an overt geostrategic alliance between the two largest countries…
The Columbine shootings marked a new kind of terror
20 April 1999. A pair of students, armed with semi-automatic rifles and homemade pipe bombs, walked into their high school in Littleton, Colorado and introduced the world to a new…
AUMF is America’s blank cheque for war
Since 2001, the United States has been engaged in the nebulous War on Terror, a war with no clarity nor end in sight. The legal justification for this forever-war is…
Boeing is going under and it’s taking Washington too
Boeing has been dealt a blow it will be recoiling from for some time. In just six months, its new 737 Max 8 model, the latest instalment to Boeing’s narrow-body…
What links Robin Williams and a Ukrainian presidential campaign?
Just over a decade ago, the late Robin Williams starred in a comedy called ‘Man of the Year’. In the movie, Wiliams plays a satirical talk show host who claims…
White people need re-educating about racism
There is this great fear over the word ‘racist’. Calling someone a racist – now that is just too far. It is often presented as over-dramatic name-calling, a means to…
North Korea needs to reform, but how?
Regime changes, from communism to capitalism, can take many shapes. In the best cases, we might see a peaceful transition into democracy in a way akin to the Velvet Revolution…
Trump’s shutdown is unnecessary and cruel
I found peace following a semester at war with homesickness. Once again able to drive around aimlessly, eat endless pits of Mexican food, catch up with family and friends, remind…
America has lost its grip on morality
I’ve had quite a few drawing room debates recently about whether Trump can reasonably be compared to Hitler. The more relaxed amongst us constantly reassure me that I’m overreacting to…
Microanalysing Ocasio-Cortez is judgemental and reductive
The US Midterms results a couple weeks back have ushered in a younger, more diverse demographic of congresspeople that will be descending on the House of Representatives come January. The…
The US can’t ignore the caravan, they helped cause it
On October 13th, in the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras – the crime capital of the world for two years running – a caravan full of people desperate…
You can agree with a movement and disagree with its leaders
From Time’s Up, Black Lives Matter and March For Our Lives, this moment, dictated by dramatic political and social changes, is a crucial time for activism and represents a changing…
The Midterms’ firsts were inspirational and disappointing
After a long night anxiously watching midterms and aggressively drinking iced coffee from a massive reusable bottle that has a sticker with the fitting phrase “A woman’s place is in…
Trump must be held responsible for his fear mongering
When living abroad, news from home doesn’t seem to travel so fast. It may take days to hear of what the States’ administration is up to now, and it can…
Voter suppression shows how vital your vote is
The midterms are coming, and I’m preparing myself. While I refuse to become a pessimist, the memories of the 2016 election continuously force a heavy dose of reality down my…
Fighting fire with fire is the wrong reaction to Pittsburgh
In the aftermath of the cowardly, anti-Semitic attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue, there has been an outpouring of support for the Jewish community. A dark day in Pittsburgh history and…
If you feel like surrendering, vote instead
My frustration began as a sixteen-year-old girl. Enraged with the rise of Donald Trump and new conservative ideals, disappointed in emerging political polarization, and concerned with the future of my…
Conservative no more: Texas and Bavaria?
In the twenty-two years that I have lived on this planet, change has not been difficult to come across, bar a few notable exceptions. Yet in 2018, two everlasting political…
City of Stars: the road from Skid Row to Bel Air… and back again
I was lucky enough to spend last year living in the sunny and sophisticated city of Santa Barbara. California’s very own American Riviera. Just two hours north of Los Angeles’…
The Kavanaugh hearings upset victims and viewers alike
The coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford hearings are yet to near their end. I watched the hearings, from my computer in the living room to…
Kaepernick and the demographic weight of the ‘Nike Democrats’
Colin Kaepernick should not be in the news. According to most advanced metrics, he is an above-average quarterback, who should be employed by an NFL team wanting to make a…
Kavanaugh, and men like him, must be stopped
Men go on a date hoping to get laid, women go on a date hoping to not get killed. To some, that sentiment may seem excessive or exaggerated. And maybe…
Did the US Open treat Serena Williams fairly?
Since the conclusion of the US Open last Saturday, it’s been difficult to avoid the news surrounding Serena Williams and her apparent meltdown during her loss to Naomi Osaka. From…
Safe injection sites are short sighted and racially charged
In light of America’s current opioid epidemic, the US government has fallen under immense pressure to come up with a solution. With more than two million Americans suffering from addiction…
Mexico’s president is a ruthlessly pragmatic Messiah
On July 1 2018, Mexico’s streets witnessed a large wave of jubilation as Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to as AMLO), became the first president-elect in thirty years to…
3D guns aren’t bulletproof yet and nor is gun law
After I first read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I first played Deus Ex, and the first time I watched Robocop (the original one, obviously), I wondered just how…
Money maketh man: the cash dictating Trumps policies
With the press recoiling from, and rightly hammering, Trump’s most recent shambles in Helsinki, the rest of us are just confused. The sit-com, that is contemporary US politics, is as…
Why won’t Trump stand up for the West?
‘They say they think it’s Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia’. That was Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, standing next to Vladimir…
Protesting Trump’s state-visit is expensive and ignorant
The 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, has arrived for his ceremonious ‘state visit’ to the UK. An event so highly anticipated, it is being met with its…
Trump and his associates don’t deserve civility
This coming Thursday, President Trump will be making his first official state visit to the UK. A series of demonstrations and protests are scheduled to take place during his four-day…
There is no line between corporate and government power
Bechtel, a corporate dynasty that recently celebrated its 120th anniversary, has delivered some of the worlds most renowned and celebrated construction projects. Bechtel’s reach spans all five continents, including ninety-five…
Trump be warned: tariff hikes are a historically bad idea
This week Donald Trump criticised well-known US motorcycle firm Harley-Davidson over its proposed plans to shift production away from the US. Such a move was proposed to avoid the recent…
We can lose everything else, but we can’t lose hope
This month has been particularly tough for those of us who want to believe the world isn’t going to shit. With the seemingly never-ending series of hopeless Brexit negotiations taking…
Ignore the nationalists at your own peril
It reads like something out of a 19th century European history book. Steve Bannon, former Breitbart editor, Trump strategist and leading light of the American alt-right, recently hosted a Congress…
Trump’s immigration U-turn highlights his hypocrisy
Donald Trump, a man who really likes to say he got the job done, has seemingly taken a U-turn in immigration policy this week. Congratulations are in order for the…
Trump’s progress with North Korea ought to be welcomed
Few can deny that negotiation is better than nuclear war, that friendly words are better than harsh ones, and that commitments to denuclearisation, whether holding water or not, cultivate a…
Realpolitik: Iran, Iraq, and the Petrodollar
Following the announcement of US ‘snap-back sanctions’ on Iran, the European Union quickly pledged to mitigate the economic shortfall from frozen deals with Boeing, Airbus, Total and the like. Part…
Hats off to Melania Trump for her efforts to tackle cyberbullying
With controversy following Donald Trump around like a bad smell, it is no surprise that much of the political media currently focuses on him. However, while his provocative behaviour is…
Let’s hope Kanye’s attention seeking is (eventually) a good thing
In a now infamous TMZ interview, Kanye West shocked his fans by arguing that ‘slavery was a choice’. Following multiple pro-Trump tweets by the rapper, it seems like he has…
Yeezus or Judas? Liberal elite wants Kanye to repent for his tweets
Kanye West is a maverick in an otherwise monolithic world of pop stars. He has courted controversy his entire life within the public sphere, and where others have an entire…
US withdrawal on Iranian sanction program fosters international instability
In January 2018, Trump reluctantly signed the waivers which maintained the suspension of sanctions on Iran. This signature has not allowed for much time to relax as the waiver has…
Why Kim Jong Un won’t give up The Bomb
The world sure does turn quickly. One minute people are digging up Cold War-era bomb shelters in anticipation of WW3, the next Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, and his South…
Shoot first think later: The Trump administration
There’s a fascinating passage in Martin Wolff’s Fire and Fury that details the steps Trump’s aides had to go to in order to convince the President to give approval for…
Zuckerberg’s interrogation was too bad to be true
I sent an email yesterday to James Patterson (best selling crime and thriller writer) with a great new idea for a novel that I think he could work wonders with….