On 7 June, the UK Supreme Court will issue a ruling on Northern Ireland's restrictive abortion laws. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) has argued that the law criminalises 'exceptionally vulnerable women.' Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland except where the woman's life is at risk or there is...
What did Trump do right? That's the only question that matters for progressives and liberals now. Donald Trump doesn't care what any of his opponents think. He doesn't use sanitised politispeak to discuss simple issues that affect real people. If he thinks someone is an idiot or an idea is...
There's an episode of Futurama called 'Proposition Infinity'. It parodies the debates about gay and lesbian marriage in America by presenting a contentious referendum on the rights of robots to marry humans. Obviously, the idea of walking down the aisle with artificial intelligence isn't on the public agenda. But we...
When the astronomer Percival Lowell claimed he had found canals on Mars, that might have been the first truly scientific attempt to prove alien life exists. Today, Lowell's Martian canals are an embarrassment to the Arizona observatory that bares his name. But if Lowell was wrong about the specifics, he...
The author Lionel Shriver gave a speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival recently outlining how the culture of hypersensitivity was a threat to fiction writing. How, she asked, could authors create fictional worlds and characters if every word they wrote was policed and every plot scrutinised for bias and –...
The US president is the most powerful person on Earth. Only America has a military capable of launching an invasion anywhere in the world. America's economic power lets it put huge pressure on countries that act against its interests. And the cluster of alliances with the US at the centre...
The Corbynistas have tried to paint Owen Smith as a villain. He worked for Pfizer (that well-known evil corporation), he wants to privatise the NHS (the evidence for this is startling in its flimsiness) and he's tearing the Labour Party apart (unlike the Trots who've culled the shadow cabinet). The...
When he called Mexicans rapists, the Hitler comparisons were hyperbolic. When he said he'd ban Muslim immigrants, 'bigot' was closer the mark. When the wall got ten feet higher, he was just a nativist. But Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican national convention pushed him beyond typical right-wing populism....
It took no time at all for the authoritarian Turkish government to turn the failed coup into a PR victory for the regime. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's unbelievable claim that Turkey's 'democracy' has won the day is as grounded in reality as Donald Trump's ideas about Mexicans. The crackdown has already...