Come on let’s kick the poor (like we did last summer)
- June 02, 2015
- by
- Matt
The Bible tells us that the poor will always be with us, and as long as they are around there will always be politicians willing to punish them for their poverty. It might be the Wisconsin State Assembly, which has just approved legislation banning food stamp recipients from eating junk food and also ‘luxury foods’ such as ‘crab, lobster, shrimp, or any other shellfish.’ Or Hackney Council, which has just launched a ‘Public Space Protection Order’ (PSPO), which will enable police to impose £100 on-the-spot fines for homeless people...
The ISIS Caliphate: Salafism as a strategic asset?
- May 22, 2015
- by
- Matt
I have yet to see any reference in the mainstream media to Monday’s publication by the conservative foundation Judicial Watch of previously classified US intelligence documents obtained as the result of a freedom of information lawsuit This inattention is alarming, because one of these documents provides some disturbing background behind the nightmarish...
Pamela Geller’s free speech bloodfest
- May 05, 2015
- by
- Matt
The aborted assault by two would-be jihadists on the ‘Muhammad art contest’ at the Curtis Culand Center in Garland, Texas on Sunday has added another grim chapter to a screechingly dishonest ‘free speech versus Islam’ debate that continues to gain deadly traction from one country to the next. First things first: there is no...
One Nation Under a Cop
- April 28, 2015
- by
- Matt
Riots are not generally much good for the people on the receiving end of them, and the people who are on the receiving end of them are often the same people who are rioting in the first place. But moralising about their futility and destructiveness is not much use in societies that aren’t...
Killing the Messenger
- March 29, 2015
- by
- Matt
I first came across the name Gary Webb some years ago, when I was researching a section about the Reagan administration’s first ‘war on terror’ in the 1980s for my book on terrorism. Webb was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, who stumbled on a story that the CIA-supported Contras were...
Joshua Muravchik: War Zombie
- March 16, 2015
- by
- Matt
You have to admire the neoconservative imagination. Alright, maybe not admire exactly. But in any case you have to acknowledge that these guys are in it for the long haul. Neither age nor failure can wither them. No amount of death and destruction can ever dampen their ardor...
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