The sun sets on another low, ineffectual day, Over which its tired arc all but cleared the treetops. Here, in the twilight of the century’s sixteenth year, It seems one awakes to the dying of the light. In the early gloom of every evening, Christmas decorations shimmer listlessly, Alone in a sad crowd of…
Comment
Corbyn’s Labour cannot cope in this political climate
‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ So wrote WB Yeats nearly a century ago. If you believe in reincarnation, you could be forgiven for thinking that Yeats’ falcon did something awful, and was reborn…
Global
Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws Continue to Kill
Born an Islamic republic out of the 1949 partition with India, Pakistan and particularly its religious laws are taken for granted by some. As in many Muslim majority countries, Islam is not just the state religion but the state law. Much of this stems from the Hadith, and whilst Pakistan’s laws are not based directly…
Comment
Do abhorrent views justify violence?
We all saw the video, and I dare say, some of us quite enjoyed watching a Nazi getting punched in the street. Undeniably, the past year has been unpleasant for those of us who align ourselves in opposition to racism, sexism and fascism. Watching the enemy get laid out has been claimed as catharsis by…
Travel
Sarajevo: city of scars
It is said of many cities that history lies around every corner. In Sarajevo, what lies around every corner is not yet history. 25 years since the siege that left the city with its wounded skyline and limbless beggars, Sarajevo has not shrugged off the pounding it received during the 1990s. Yet, even with the…
Global
ISIS’ status in 2017
ISIS is retreating. According to Coalition figures, it has lost 27 percent of its Syrian territory, and 61 percent of its territory in Iraq. Airstrikes have decimated the leadership, but the resurgence of the Iraqi Army, coupled with Kurdish military prowess have proved decisive in rolling back the caliphate. Since Sinjar fell to the Kurds…
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Time is running out for South Sudan
Men forced to carve and eat human flesh. Women gang raped by soldiers. Government-allied forces paid in women. Children abused and enslaved. These are just a few of the accounts flooding out of South Sudan. Despite reports from the United Nations on the ethnic slaughter that has engulfed the world’s youngest country, the world is…
Global
Concrete on 2017
Emily Hawkins, Tony Allen, Adam Robertson Charlton, Orla Knox-Macaulay, James Chesson and Angel Loeraís predictions for the year ahead. 2017: ten years since the first iPhone and Windows Vista were released; 20 years since the UK governed Hong Kong, and the death of Princess Diana in Paris. While events like the latter will always come…
Creative Writing, Venue
London skies alight
London skies burn ambient tonight, a St Helens’ horizon Eclipsing the pilot stars. Twitching beneath its orange lens the city expands black and glassy – Dilated like an eye. Veiled in a permanent dawn, charcoal streets crisscross like scars on a slave’s back below. The cities’ sirens seduce, entice, Untie you from your mast and…
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