Troll Nation
- September 01, 2016
- by
- Matt
Anyone who has published, tweeted or posted anything on the Internet will be aware that the worldwide web can be a dank and hateful environment in which all kinds of wild and extremely poisonous creatures flourish. Whether it’s the anonymity provided by an avatar, or simply the fact that the Internet provides a tool...
Burkini Madness
- August 25, 2016
- by
- Matt
Anyone who has travelled in France this summer will have found it difficult to ignore the the ongoing state of emergency with which the French state has responded to Daesh’s savage provocations. In Banyuls-sur-Mer, we found the main road by the beach guarded by armed soldiers, presumably mindful of a repeat...
Oscar Martinez: A History of Violence
- July 28, 2016
- by
- Matt
Many years ago, in 1993 I visited the bombed out ruins of the town of Aguacayo, the former ‘capital’ of the FMLN-held liberated zone in Guazapa Province during much of El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. It was just only one year after the guerrillas had disarmed in the town as...
The Atrocity Factory
- July 27, 2016
- by
- Matt
At first sight, keep calm and carry on might seem like a rather banal piece of advice, faced with the seemingly endless and unstoppable conveyor belt of atrocities that is unfolding before us on a weekly and almost daily basis.. In Baghdad, Kabul and Istanbul, in Florida, Nice and Germany, the most toxic...
Boris Johnson’s Big Day Out
- July 23, 2016
- by
- Matt
Politically speaking, schadenfreude tends to be a consolatory emotion, whose pleasures are generally ephemeral and often sharpened by defeat. Even so the humiliation of Boris John last week was worth the price of admission. I’m referring, of course, to the car crash press conference in which Johnson appeared alongside...
Nice and the Spectacle of Terror
- July 16, 2016
- by
- Matt
Yesterday evening I was driving to play a game of tennis and listening to the radio, when I heard the sounds of of screaming people being mown down by a truck in Nice. I immediately turned it off. This isn’t because I think I have some privileged right to ignore the escalating procession...
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