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Recent Articles
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Britain resisting a genocide is now treated as terrorism
At a moment when Israel and its leaders stand accused before international courts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, Britain has chosen to direct some of its most powerful legal tools not at those enabling the destruction of Gaza, but at activists protesting against it. The sentencing of the Filton 4, therefore, raises questions that extend far beyond the fate of four individuals. Whatever one’s view of their actions, the case forces Britain to confront an uncomfortable contradiction: why does opposition to Israel’s actions increasingly attract the language of extremism and terrorism, while support for those actions remains firmly within the bounds of respectable politics? … |
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Smile for the Camera because Immigration Enforcement Gets a Makeover
Guest Editorial I'm writing this from Saigon, where traffic confidently ignores rules, and no one pretends that chaos is order. The atmosphere is refreshing. Handguns are not allowed in Vietnam, and I haven't seen a police officer in over a year—not even any traffic accidents. It's amazing. There's no road rage here. I've been away long enough to witness Trump veering toward obscurity or damnation. Not sure which, but it will be exciting. I admit I’m biased. Can you tell? Distance sharpens perspective. There's no violent crime here, and the people are friendly. You can see American politics more clearly when you’re far enough away to stop smelling the perfume it sprays on itself. So, I felt … |
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Students killed in mass attack the second school shooting in 2 days
On Wednesday, a student at a middle school in southeast Turkey opened fire on two classes, killing four people and injuring 20 others, according to an official. This was the second shooting in the nation in two days. Kahramanmaras province Gov. Mukerrem Unluer added that the gunman, who was also murdered, came to the school with firearms that are thought to have belonged to their father, who was a former police officer. The assailant had five guns and seven magazines with him. Unluer reported that the victims were a teacher and three pupils. At least four of the injured were in bad shape. It wasn't clear right away what the attack was about. The attack happened the day after a former student… |
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UFC fighting cage rises on White House lawn for US and Trump celebrations
Yet another White House construction project is under way in the United States, though this one is meant to be only temporary. Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn that will host next month’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout, marking the nation’s 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like before the June 14 event. It will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars-and-stripes patterns and two large screens showing the action live. The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporar… |
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Daughter and son-in-law charged with killing four family members in 2015
Shocking new charges have been brought in the case of a family that was brutally murdered in their homes on Halloween night in 2015. Cathy Scott, her husband Michael Scott, Mr Scott's mother, Barbara, and Ms Scott's mother, Violet Taylor, were murdered on Halloween night in 2015. Now, the couple’s daughter, Amy Vilardi, and her husband, Rosmore "Ross" Vilardi, have been arrested and charged in their deaths. Ms Vilardi and her husband were featured in tearful television interviews following the murders, but are now considered the prime suspects in the slayings, according to The Daily Beast. The four adults were found shot and killed in their homes in Pendleton, South Carolina, on 2 November 2… |
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Abortion is When the State Claims Your Body
Editorial There is a particular cruelty to laws that pretend to be principled while operating as punishment. They arrive draped in solemn language—“life,” “values,” “tradition”—but what they deliver is not morality. It is power, exercised downward, toward the people least able to absorb it. When courts reinstate abortion bans, as they have again, they are not adjudicating an abstract ethical puzzle. They are making a decision about whose pain counts, whose future is disposable, and whose body the state is entitled to commandeer. Abortion is not a thought experiment. It is not a philosophy seminar. It is a medical reality that intersects with rape, poverty, disability, illness, coercion, and … |
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AI companies accused of copyrighted infringement
Opinion | Editorial The open letter signed by Scarlett Johansson and hundreds of other creatives didn’t land because it was polite. It landed because it said the quiet part out loud: training commercial AI systems on copyrighted work without permission is theft dressed up as inevitability. The industry has spent years insisting this was a philosophical debate about progress. It isn’t. It’s a business choice—and a corrosive one. The letter, organized through the Human Artistry Campaign, rejects the soothing language that has insulated AI companies from accountability. “Learning,” “absorption,” “transformation.” These words are doing legal work, not descriptive work. They exist to blur a simpl… |
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Why Brad Pitt and Jude Law are not as cool as they think they are
The two actors and Oasis man Noel Gallagher have far younger partners and bask in it, thinking that it’s somehow avant-garde. But it’s not, says Charlotte Cripps. It’s just what older men have been doing since the dawn of time In case you’ve been living under a rock, Brad Pitt, 62, has a Swiss jewellery executive girlfriend, who is half his age – Ines de Ramon, 33. The couple graced social media in early July after four years together – on her hairstylist’s Instagram page – looking glamorous in matching black outfits ahead of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding ceremony at Madison Square Garden in NYC. They have since been spotted looking loved-up at the quarter-final World Cup match bet… |
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Kids Used To Walk Home Alone
It was late afternoon when the school doors opened and the children spilled into the street like a sudden bright tide. Their uniforms flashed white and blue in the sun, their voices rose and fell in quick laughter, and in a moment the quiet pavement was alive with movement. Some mounted bicycles that seemed almost too large for them; others set off on foot in loose wandering groups, swinging their schoolbags as though the weight of the day had already been forgotten. My daughter stood beside me watching them. She is seven years old, an age at which the world is still full of small astonishments. A stray cat slipping beneath a plastic chair can hold her attention as firmly as any grand specta… |
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The war on Iran will likely end in American retreat
Iran can credibly impose costs that the United States cannot bear and that the world should not suffer. The US – Israel war plan was a decapitation strike, sold to President Donald Trump by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of the Mossad. The premise was that an aggressive joint US–Israeli bombing campaign would so degrade the Iranian regime’s command structure, nuclear programme, and IRGC senior leadership that the regime would fracture. The United States and Israel would then impose a pliable government in Tehran. Trump seems to have been convinced that Iran would follow the same course as had occurred in Venezuela. The US operation in Venezuela in January 20… |
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Defending your life against ICE in Minnesota
Editorial If a masked man points a gun at your chest on a Minnesota street, or anywhere, it doesn't matter if he has a badge hidden under his tactical vest or a ICI patch Velcroed to his sleeve—you have a God-given and legal right to defend your life with equal, deadly force. The moment a federal agent prioritizes escalation over identification, they cease to be a "peace officer" and become a common predator. We are living in an era where the "Metro Surge" has turned our neighborhoods into hunting grounds, and the murder of Alex Pretti is the final, bloody proof that if you don't fight back, you'll be the next name etched into a headstone while the Department of Justice mops up the brass. Th… |
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Iran Prepares for US Attack as It Rejects Negotiations
Iran is not dancing toward the negotiating table out of fear; it is bracing for war while refusing to yield. Reports that Tehran is preparing for a possible U.S.–Israeli missile assault, even as it dismisses offers to talk, underscore a new kind of tension: fear without capitulation. That is not weakness, and it is not readiness in the traditional sense. It is a regime calculating its own survival amid an increasingly hostile international environment. This moment looks nothing like the hope-tinged diplomacy of past nuclear talks. Then, there were back channels, envoys meeting in hotel suites, whispered negotiations and, at times, fragile progress. Now the language is public posturing, threa… |
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The World Is Burning Quietly While We Argue About Nothing
Letters To Editor By Alan Fitpatrik It has become strangely normal to live in a moment where the planet is warming, wars drag on without clear ends, and scientific breakthroughs quietly move forward while political arguments stay stuck in place. We are surrounded by evidence of what humans can do at their best, yet governed too often by systems that reward delay, fear, or brute control. This contrast is not abstract. It shows up in flooded neighborhoods, in families displaced by conflict, and in the widening gap between those who can afford to adapt and those who cannot. When leaders cling to power through force or deception, it is rarely the powerful who suffer first. It is the poor, the yo… |
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The Iran strikes could become a midterm reckoning for Trump and Israel
It is clear that the latest United States-Israel-Iran war stands to fundamentally reshape the politics of the Middle East. Less obvious is its immediate impact on US politics, especially the 2026 midterm elections and the durability of US support for Israel. While the core of US President Donald Trump’s base has come out in support of the joint US-Israel strikes, some influential figures on the American right have denounced them. These condemnations have heightened tensions already at play within the MAGA (Make America Great Again) base, and dovetail with conservative concerns about Israel’s influence over US foreign policy. With the midterm elections approaching, this is not a good time for… |
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US Secret Service opens fire on shooter near White House
The US Secret Service fired fire at a shooter near the White House, injuring him and causing a short lockdown. The incident occurred on Monday and the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department has initiated an investigation. The incident follows an alleged attempt to assassinate United States President Donald Trump at the White House journalists' luncheon last month. Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn said the incident happened after plainclothes officers recognized a “suspicious individual” they suspected was armed. Agents chased the man a short distance and asked for assistance. When uniformed Secret Service personnel showed up there, the suspect tried to run, and they shot. A… |
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A Big Win For A Lonely Woman
Human Interest Opinion / Perspective For forty years, a stoneware crock sat on a porch in New York, a silent sentry against the biting winters and the humid, heavy summers of the Northeast. It was, for all intents and purposes, a piece of lawn debris. It held no flowers; it served no function. To the woman who lived behind the screen door, it was simply "there"—a familiar shape in a life that had slowly become a series of familiar, quiet shapes. When her birthday approached, she looked at the heavy salt-glazed vessel and allowed herself a modest, almost apologetic hope: perhaps it was worth a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars for a birthday treat, or perhaps a utility bill, or just the smal… |
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Attack on Downtown Lviv Ukraine by Russian Drones in Broad Daylight
During the middle of the day on Tuesday, Russian soldiers attacked the center of Lviv, a historic city in western Ukraine that had been mostly untouched by the devastating conflict in other regions of the nation, using drones. Authorities issued a warning that the number of casualties from the unexpected attack, which left more than a dozen people injured, may increase. "Lviv hospitals are already treating thirteen injured people," Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said in an online post. More and more people are falling prey to this epidemic.The regional governor issued a shelter-in-place alert to the people. How did Ukraine defeat Iran's Shahed drones? What can the United States take out from this? The… |
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Humans are on the way out and there may be no way to stop
Extinction Isn’t a Metaphor I walk through this world like a man pacing a burning house. The walls are cracking, the air is poison, and everyone else is sipping cocktails as if the smoke is just weather. Extinction isn’t a metaphor—it’s the goddamn bill collector at the door, pounding, and we keep turning up the music to drown him out. I see forests gutted like carcasses, oceans foaming like rabid dogs, skies thick with the exhaust of our arrogance. We’re clever enough to split atoms, to stitch genes, to whisper to satellites—but too stupid to stop sawing through the floor we stand on. I want to grab humanity by the collar, slam it against the wall, and snarl: Are you aware of the implicatio… |
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US judge blocks Trumps 2bn anti weaponization fund
A United States federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation fund” to compensate victims of alleged government “lawfare”. On Friday, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia blocked the Trump administration from “taking any further action” to set up or operate the fund while she hears legal arguments. The judge, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, scheduled a June 12 hearing about whether to extend the order blocking payouts. The Department of Justice announced the fund last week as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of Donald Trump, in his personal capacity, against… |
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Dangerous Emergency Powers Are Addictive
Editorial | Feature Democracies borrow power in crises but rarely return it. Without safeguards, emergencies become permanent, eroding freedom. The Siren and the Decree It begins with a siren. A coastal city braces for a storm surge, and within hours the government issues a decree: curfews, restricted movement, suspension of normal legislative debate. Citizens line up for aid, but they also face checkpoints. The justification is clear — safety demands speed. Yet beneath the urgency lies a deeper question: when power is borrowed in the name of emergency, will it ever be returned? Part I: The Logic of Emergency Democracies are designed for deliberation. They thrive on debate, compromise, and p… |