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 of the attack on Tunisia last year. In Chartres, we watched a band whose members were mostly in their 60s or 70s joyously celebrating the city’s summer fete in glorious French style, while a detachment of soldiers,...
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...
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...
Freaky Friday
- June 25, 2016
- by
- Matt
In the Jamie Lee Curtis comedy Freaky Friday, a mother and teenage daughter wake up to find themselves trapped in each other’s bodies as a result of a magic spell. Yesterday I underwent a similar but even more disturbing transformation. On Thursday night I dreamt that Remain had won the referendum....
Interview for In These Times
- June 16, 2016
- by
- Matt
The Left Must Put Refugees and Migration at the Heart of Its Politics
Mathew Carr rebukes Europe”s inhumane and fear-fueled response to the refugee crisis.
Tom Ladendorf
The current refugee crisis is the worst that Europe has seen since World War II, and in many countries, it remains in the political center stage. As Syrian and other refugees...
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