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"One in three people arriving to Greece were children as compared to just one in 10 in September 2015

While more than 80,000 people crossed the Mediterranean safely -- more than 74,000 to Greece alone -- "near daily shipwrecks" had left at least 400 dead so far this yea

Some 36% of the migrants arriving in Greece so far this year have been children, and 21% were women, the U.N. says

“Trump is a fascist,”

“We are here faced by fascists,” Hilary Benn, the Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, declares to the House of Commons,

That was George Orwell, in 1944. He had heard the epithet “fascist” applied, he said, to fox-hunting, Kipling, Gandhi, homosexuality, “astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”

In the year since the Charlie Hebdo terror attack, free speech and political correctness, particularly in the West, have been presented as antithetical.

As a few of the panelists noted, the Constitution enshrined the right to offend as a bedrock of free speech, but in recent years, the right not to be offended has taken precedent.

However, the segregation and self-censorship among liberals, shaped partly by the desire not to offend, has been just as devastating, in part because it has undermined what many progressives have hailed as a pillar of liberalism: the ability to debate ideas and confront difficult issues.

One of the talking points for some who support continued mass immigration is the notion that the places where immigration is least popular are the places with the fewest number of immigrants. That’s how irrational xenophobia is, they suggest

the Migration Policy Institute complicates the picture a bit. While it finds that the number of immigrants increased by 9 percent between 2010 and 2016, it also notes that it had risen by 15 percent or more in 15 states. And among those states, most are red ones: North Dakota, West Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Alaska, Indiana, and Iowa among them.

, the total numbers are nowhere near where they are in, say, California, but the pace of change really has increased in those states where opposition — especially to immigrants who entered the country illegally — is high. I don’t find this surprising.

The point is not that there is a direct line between, say, “The Turner Diaries” and the Oval Office. Rather, it’s that the tropes that define the Trump administration’s rhetoric and policies — apocalyptic xenophobia, anti-Semitic conspiracies, racist fear-mongering — are also the tropes that define white-supremacist literature.

To the hundreds of thousands of fans of Mr. Kendall, Ms. Williams and other writers, Mr. Trump must seem like a character out of racist central casting: a rule-breaking white knight who will stop at nothing to root out the conspiracies and take on their race’s enemies. No wonder the bond between Mr. Trump and the far right is so strong:

Not only is he a hero out of their novels, but in supporting him, they have become heroes themselves.

Far from resembling the sometimes dim but dutiful set depicted by Orwell, today’s political elite are strangers to collective interest or public responsibility

Their conduct serves to undermine both the establishment of which they are part and the country they run.

The failure of our governing elite is technical and political, for sure. But it is also moral. They have short-changed the public for so long that they don’t know any different.

With the benefit of hindsight, impeaching President Clinton was a disaster for the Republicans. Mr. Clinton’s job approval was at a record 73 percent the month he was impeached, Democrats defied the odds and picked up seats in the midterm elections and Mr. Gingrich returned to the private sector.

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation

Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Brexit has revealed an unaddressed xenophobia – and the immigration system that stoked it – on the right and the left

It has laid bare our political class, squirming pathetically and uselessly under the micro-scrutiny of Brexit. To paraphrase Jeff Bezos, Brexit rolled over the log and we saw what crawled ou

The referendum aftermath has exposed an exceptionalism verging on delusion. It is no coincidence that Churchill’s legacy has become a matter of public debate. It is an argument that reflects Britain’s inner turmoil on whether it is uniquely apart from the rest of the world, or cannot thrive on its own. It is a soul-searching, long-overdue questioning of the conventional account of Britain’s history. Is the country especially endowed with that historical grit and determination that helped to vanquish its enemies in two world wars and run an empire; or is it a country that ran that empire by means of brutality, and only won those wars as part of an alliance

I can’t help drawing parallels between what we’re seeing in Democratic Party and the similar far-left wave of enthusiasm in Britain, where a new tide of youthful energy has flooded the British Labour Party and transformed its ambitions almost overnight from ameliorating capitalism to full-on socialism.

There was an infectiousness to the excitement in 2015, in part because full-fledged socialism seemed to be answering a genuine and massive crisis of capitalism.

It spoke to those under 40 whose futures are debt-ridden, who have little hope of property ownership, and struggle to manage with precarious, low wages. It rallied a sense of the common good against the isolation and depression of austerity. It actually took the science of climate catastrophe seriously

Nationalism has a larger meaning than simply the anti-Semitic and racist chants of khaki-clad, Tiki-torch-toting Nazi-wannabes. George Orwell wrote the seminal explanation:

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally

Maybe the question that we should be asking is not what killed liberalism, but rather, what can we learn from liberalism’s long story of persistence—and how can we apply those insights in order to help liberalism write a new story for our own time.

Liberalism is not a doctrine founded on a sacred text, like Communism. It is something more like a set of predispositions—a faith in individuals and their capacity for growth, a tempered optimism that expects progress but recoils before utopian dreams, a belief in open debate and the possibility of persuasion, an insistence upon secularism in the public realm, an orientation towards civil rights and civil liberties.

liberalism has a core, and that is the right of the individual to stand apart

A German court has jailed eight members of the far-right group called Freital, for a number of crimes including attempted murder and terror offences.

Prosecutors said the group's members attempted to create a "climate of fear" with a series of attacks on political opponents and refugees in 2015.

The group were found guilty of two attacks on refugee homes, two on far-left political offices and one on a residential complex.

A controversial new book asserts that the Chinese government is undermining Australia's sovereignty through a network of local agents.

The book is the latest addition to a wide-ranging discussion. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull noted "disturbing reports about Chinese influence" when he unveiled a crackdown on foreign interference last year, although he said the laws were not aimed at one country.

Prof Hamilton argues that Beijing has deliberately targeted its diaspora in Australia to recruit "informers, plants and spies" in business, academic, and other circles. Aspects of society covered by the book include:

Yet, addressing the European Parliament, the French president — barely 40 and not yet a year in office — sounded almost like a biblical prophet, warning of the rising fascination with antidemocratic and “illiberal” ideas, “the deadly tendency which might lead our continent to the abyss, nationalism, giving up of freedom.”

Mr. Macron did not mention anyone by name — not Viktor Orban of Hungary, not Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, not the populists who won in Italy’s national election, not the far-right parties that have spread across Europe on hatred of immigrants, xenophobia, disdain for the rule of law, intolerance of dissent and suspiciousness of international cooperation. Nor did he name Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, though they are clearly an inspiration and model for the European far right.

The struggle between the traditional values of Western liberal democracy and the new forces of authoritarianism, intolerance and nationalism has become a defining challenge of the times.

Smartphones changed the advertising game completely. It took only a few years for billions of people to have an all-purpose content delivery system easily accessible sixteen hours or more a day. This turned media into a battle to hold users’ attention as long as possible.

And it left Facebook and Google with a prohibitive advantage over traditional media: with their vast reservoirs of real-time data on two billion individuals, they could personalize the content seen by every user. That made it much easier to monopolize user attention on smartphones and made the platforms uniquely attractive to advertisers. Why pay a newspaper in the hopes of catching the attention of a certain portion of its audience, when you can pay Facebook to reach exactly those people and no one else?

Wikipedia defines an algorithm as “a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations.” Algorithms appear value neutral, but the platforms’ algorithms are actually designed with a specific value in mind: maximum share of attention, which optimizes profits.

President Trump has denied that he is racist, after a row broke out over his alleged use of the word "shithole" to describe African nations.

The president tweeted on Friday morning that the language he used in the meeting was "tough" but disputed the wording of the reports.

Mr Trump was said to have told them that instead of granting temporary residency to citizens of countries hit by natural disasters, war or epidemics, the US should instead be taking in migrants from countries like Norway.

Through much of the last two years, the populist far-right seemed poised to conquer France. In the surreal aftermath of Trump and Brexit, the prospect of a victory by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front (FN), felt alarmingly possible. After decades of mounting racism and economic insecurity, Western democracies were lashing out at the ballot box.

But today, eight months after the French presidential election, the FN seems flummoxed by Emmanuel Macron, the country’s centrist president, who, with his hefty budget cuts and far-reaching welfare reforms, would seem to be the party’s ideal adversary.

The National Front’s inability to seize the moment stems, in large part, from a raft of internal contradictions.

Josh Kovensky has a fascinating look at how white nationalists are glomming onto and pressing climate change hysteria to advance their goals of a walled-off, whites-only America. This makes me think of a central part of how I see the future of climate change

We are moving toward a future in which massive refugee flows are endemic to global politics

There are already some studies that show that climate change may have played some role in the collapse of the Assad government in Syria and the subsequent refugee flow into Turkey and Europe

In the face of a truly global crisis, the world’s highest deliberative body, the UN security council, has been paralysed by squabbling among the major powers.The 15-member council has not even been able to muster a joint statement on combating the spread of the coronavirus – in part because of US insistence that it should stress the Chinese origins of the pathogen, which was unacceptable to other states, not least China.

The US has also ignored Guterres’ calls for sanctions to be suspended on vulnerable countries. Over the past week, Washington has intensified punitive action against Iran and Venezuela. At the same time, Russia has blocked an attempt to hold virtual security council sessions by video conference.

“In the current circumstances, it is important to show to the rest of the world that UN and its security council are functioning,” the Russian ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, wrote to his Chinese counterpart, who had proposed video conferences.

Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me — and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better.

But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way.

The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party. Here are a few: Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect. And we can go it alone, the world be damned.