House keys are prosaic objects that carry extraordinary significance as symbols of home, security, place. Think for a moment: what do your house keys unlock? Do you always carry your house keys with you when you leave the house, or...
One of the most important stories of the last decade is the influence of identity politics on the Western world. This form of politics exists at the theoretical level, as well as in public policy, but also less subtly in...
LEBANON 2011. I’d moved to Lebanon to study, after the Israelis had banned me from re-entering Palestine. A friend had already arrived a few weeks before me. Hearing of an apartment for rent in Ashrafiyyeh, she went to check it...
Let us all unite and toil together To give the best we have to Africa The cradle of mankind and fount of culture Our pride and hope at break of dawn (From the African Union anthem) Consider this scenario, courtesy...
Ana Teixeira Pinto: I feel like everybody is writing the same article these days. The argument goes like this: the Left has lost the plot by choosing to fight cultural wars instead of economic ones. ‘Divisive issues’ alienated the working...
In the age of mature Putinism, violence and control, accompanied by a new morality based on so-called ‘traditional values’, have become crucial instruments for managing Russian society. The use of the education system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population...
Over the past few weeks, Israel marked twenty years since the “Gaza Disengagement”: the 2005 operation that uprooted 8,500 settlers and pulled out its troops. Presented as a way to ease Israel’s military burden and redraw its borders, the move...
Writer, journalist and trained sociologist Marcin Ogdowski speaks from in-depth experience as a war correspondent to Michał Sutowski from Krytyka Polityczna on the Polish perspective to Russian aggression. Michał Sutowski: In the morning, after the drones entered Poland, the prime...
‘Will the Slavic streams flow into the Russian sea? Or will it dry out? This is the question,’ wrote Alexander Pushkin in 1831. The line is from ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’, a triumphal ‘ode’ to Russia’s crushing of the...
In the far reaches of our solar system, over 10 billion miles from the small blue dot we call home, the Pioneer probes are soaring into the oblivion of deep space. However, these cosmic messages in a bottle carry with...
