We act like nations are a given – as if there’s no other way to organize our species, no other way to behave except to have your flag’s colors tattooed across your nipples and your national anthem burned into your soft mushy brain matter. But in fact, nations have not always been the way we humans have divided ourselves.
Current efforts by top Sri Lankan politicians to exploit the chaos following the Easter attacks will likely spell disaster for Sri Lanka’s religious minorities who are themselves the most frequent victims of state-sponsored and religiously motivated terrorism in the island nation.
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA -- Still grappling with the fall-out from the deadliest terror attack in its history, Sri Lanka’s already dysfunctional government is struggling to come to terms with how the attack came to pass and who exactly is to blame. Since the attacks, for which Daesh (ISIS) has claimed responsibility, Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala
The recent elections in Ukraine show that voters are rejecting the maidan “revolution” and the growing far-right nationalism that came with it.
On March 31, the International Election Observation Mission released a statement concluding their assessment of Ukraine's 2019 presidential election. In it, they wrote: Most previous ODIHR and Council of Europe’s European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) recommendations that would bring the legal framework further in line
In Ukraine, politics have taken over religion and nationalists are turning WWII Nazi criminals into religious icons.
Let's start at the end. The Patriarchate of Constantinople is creating the 3rd great schism in Christian history by seizing authority resting with the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church) and granting Kyiv independence from Russian Orthodox oversight. The first schism in Christianity happened in 1054 when Orthodox and Catholic churches split. The
Exceptionalism has always been core to American patriotism, and American exceptionalism is no longer tenable.
Patriotism is the organising passion of modern political life in the United States yet its vitality defies obvious explanation. The country has no national education system. There’s neither compulsory military nor civil service. No government agency distributes the ubiquitous US flags, nor enforces observance of the rituals to country performed at
Japan’s citizens are enraged by the nationalism gripping the former imperialist power. Inflammatory public displays by right-wing lawmakers along with a precipitous increase in the purchase of US weaponry have sparked massive protests.
TOKYO -- Massive protests took place across Japan on Thursday to mark 71st Constitution Memorial Day as tens of thousands of people rallied against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s continued attempts to scrap the pacifist aspects of the 1947 U.S.-penned Constitution. The protests drew up to 60,000 participants in Tokyo alone, where Japanese people of
Playing to a base that equates Christianity not with humble morality but with power and cultural purity, Trump performed Mephistophelean maneuvers to harden opposition to abortion and gun control.
Russia has re-elected its self-styled leader and saviour, whatever his weaknesses – even his sins. The revelation that the Russian government may have ordered a former spy’s poisoning should provoke international outrage from Vladimir Putin’s fellow Christians, particularly as
