Category From the JI

Concerns about the alt-right

There used to be just conservatives. Then there came the neo-conservatives, a largely American variation on the theme that venerates free markets, but marries it with an interventionist foreign policy. Neo-conservativism got a black eye after the interventionism its proponents…

Will state be free?

Binyamin Netanyahu may not have expected the international reaction he received when he accused opponents of Jewish settlements in the West Bank of supporting the ethnic cleansing of Jews. While he went too far, there is some truth to be…

We have our own issues

American politics, these days, attracts global disbelief and revulsion. The contest pits against each other two of the most unpopular candidates since polling began. One of them, the Republican nominee Donald Trump, is endorsed by the country’s leading white supremacists.…

Beneath burkini

photo - burkini

The burkini fiasco, if it has had any positive effects, should have opened some eyes to how silly human beings can behave when we become enmeshed in a fabricated social panic. The issue, for those who have not seen the…

Tempest in coffee pot

The BDS movement – which seeks to boycott, divest from and sanction the state of Israel – is having an impact. Though maybe not exactly as they’d hoped. There was a tempest in a coffee pot recently when an East…

BDS infiltrates Greens

In a turn of events that party regulars and, really, no Canadians anticipated, Elizabeth May is spending her vacation this week considering whether to resign as leader of the Green Party of Canada. The impetus, apparently, is her party’s decision…

A chance to educate

screenshot - Monika Schaefer YouTube

Monika Schaefer is a violin instructor in the Alberta mountain town of Jasper. She was also a candidate for the Green Party of Canada in the federal elections of 2006, 2008 and 2011. Last week, a video went viral of…

Reacting to others’ suffering

Gun violence in America is an intractable, apparently unsolvable crisis. This month, it has intersected catastrophically with other tenacious American ailments: race and police violence. These issues have been inextricable in many ways for decades, of course, but the pervasiveness…

We must keep trying

book cover - Night by Elie Wiesel

No reasonable people contend that the Holocaust did not occur. However, a great many assert that it has been considered enough, that it is time to put the past behind and effectively close the book on that era. Similarly, discussion…

Greens’ true colors?

Voters in the United Kingdom – well, in England and Wales, at least – have decided to quit the European Union. The referendum last week turned British politics, and world economic markets, upside down. The potential for a Scottish withdrawal…