School interior. Wikicommons/Chris Dixon. Some rights reserved. The UK’s New Labour government abandoned the ‘war on terror’ discourse under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, yet its anti-democratic aims have been extended through a ‘counter-extremism’ agenda. The government programme ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ was established a decade ago to identify individuals vulnerable to extremist ideas, ostensibly to prevent ‘violent extremism’, i.e. terrorism.  The programme has had mounting criticism and widespread opposition, especially in the run-up to becoming a statutory duty for public-sector institutions in 2015. Amongst other objections, the key term ‘extremist’, triggered by an ever-widening range of indicators, e.g. modest dress, religious observance and political statements, especially by Muslims, has been queried.…

The thought of making a living just from freelancing can be daunting. There’​s not the certainty of that paycheck landing arriving every 15th and 30th ​of each month; there’​s the hassle of getting clients to pay on time; and, of course, you have to buy your own coffee. And yet, a survey of freelancers shows that the freedom they get from employing themselves outweighs those downsides. The company And Co surveyed 300 independent workers to reveal the challenges freelancers face in the new economy, how much money they make, and why they plan to continue freelancing. TIME IS (BETTER THAN) MONEY​ While 77 percent of the freelancers feel less financially stable, 68…

Gina Miller’s latest act of sabotage on the British government is, she admits with a grim laugh, a case of the last chance saloon. It started when Miller watched conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May announce a surprise election. May has chosen to hold it at a time of soaring popularity for her party: According to pollsters, the vote on June 8 will decimate the opposition. If May’s government wins the predicted landslide number of seats, Miller fears the resulting “elected dictatorship and one-party state” will obliterate any meaningful debate on Britain’s departure from the European Union. “Democracy only functions if we have different voices and a functioning opposition, and we…

Ninth-grade algebra teacher Shawn Sheehan was such a star in the classroom that his work in the Oklahoma City suburb of Norman attracted national recognition, earning him a post as one of four finalists for the country’s 2016 Teacher of the Year award. Just over a year later, Sheehan announced last week in a post on his blog that he and his wife are quitting their jobs in Oklahoma and moving with their 7-month-old daughter to Texas. But why the Lone Star State? Well, they say everything is bigger there—including teacher paychecks. For Sheehan, the prospect of not having to struggle and scrape to make ends meet has lured one of Oklahoma’s…

Indigenous woman at a Peace March in Bogotá, Colombia.Fernando Vergara AP/Press Association Images. On July, 24, 2016, the negotiating table between the government of Colombia and the FARC announced in Havana, Cuba, that the gender approach was to be included in the peace agreement. That day, the head of the government delegation, Humberto de La Calle, delivered a speech that included some typical gender-studies concepts: "Sex is a given condition, whereas the gender approach touches on cultural conceptions that have generated structures in social behaviour that are historical, in the sense that they are non-deterministic social products. They are constructions covering patterns of behaviour and valuation assigned to each gender.…

Jeremy Lin is now 28 years old and a solid NBA player for the Brooklyn Nets, but since his hyped debut five years ago, he’s enjoyed one of the most extraordinary rises to success of any athlete in the modern era. Amid “Linsanity,” as Jeremy made the leap from the NBA’s D-League to an overnight star for the New York Knicks, he quickly became the most iconic Asian-American athlete in the country—and with it came the struggle to drown out the taunts of the racist agenda. Speaking on his teammate Randy Foye’s podcast, Lin recalls that despite the added attention and pressure, the adversity he faced in the NBA paled in…

People carry the coffin of slain Lesbia Janeth Urquia, an environmentalist and indigenous rights activist, outside a church in Marcala, Honduras, Friday, July 8, 2016. AP Photo/Fernando Antonio. All rights reserved. Civicus, the non-profit organisation ‘dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world’, has released its annual Civil Society Watch Report. The report documents serious violations of the freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly in 109 countries over the course of 2015, 14 of which are in Latin America. It presents a worrying trend. Despite calls to reverse the widespread closing in on the civil society space, it observes ‘more and more states are failing their…

As the cost of living in large cities continues to rise, more and more people are realizing that the value of a dollar in the United States is a very relative concept. For decades, cost of living indices have sought to address and benchmark the inconsistencies in what money will buy, but they are often so specific as to prevent a holistic picture or the ability to “browse” the data based on geographic location.  The Tax Foundation addressed many of these shortcomings using the most recent (2015) Bureau of Economic Analysis data to provide a familiar map of the United States overlaid with the relative value of what $100 is…

'Peace' in Arabic and English, by Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout. Flickr/Al Jazeera English. Some rights reserved. Bahrain's uprising on 14 February 2011 introduced radical changes among both the political classes and the public at large. From the beginning and increasingly over time, high levels of participation from both Bahraini youth and women were noticeable on many different planes. The role of Bahrain’s youth The youth of Bahrain are routinely regarded by political institutions as well as social organisations as ingénues: they are seen as needing custodians, and  not trusted to make important decisions or undertake sensitive tasks. Despite rhetoric about the future promise of Bahrain’s youth, little action has been taken…

While playing a show at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on Tuesday night, singer-songwriter Norah Jones took a moment to a pay a hauntingly beautiful tribute to the late Chris Cornell. The tribute comes less than a week after Cornell’s death following Soundgarden’s last performance, which also happened to take place at the Fox Theatre. For her tribute, Jones chose to cover Soundgarden’s iconic 1994 hit, “Black Hole Sun.” Stripped of every instrument except the piano, Jones’ solo rendition managed to highlight both her velvety vocals and Cornell’s legendary songwriting skills. In her cover, Jones provided an intimate moment for her fans to reflect, and luckily for us, one fan caught the whole…