Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image Description: Dramatic depiction of the Eiffel Tower and the Seine in an overcast day. In 2017, France defied the populist wave by choosing centrist banker Emmanuel Macron instead of the far-Right’s Marine Le Pen by a significant margin. Pundits in the English-speaking world lauded the French for their prudence. After Brexit and Trump, the […]
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Image description: K.K. Shailaja, Kerala’s health minister, smiling Kerala is a small state on India’s Malabar Coast – home to 35 million people and renowned for its peaceful backwaters and the tea-covered mountains of the Western Ghats. Despite being over 5,000 miles away from the UK, Kerala’s careful yet unrelenting response to the COVID-19 pandemic […]
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Image description: The Statue of Liberty in fog. Fourth of July for my family is usually a sizable affair, as for most. We have potlucks and barbecues with our friends, go to festivals and watch the annual fireworks in our city. Events are always highly attended and for everyone it is a way to put […]
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Image description: a women and boy walking along a dirt road Shamima Begum – the girl who left the UK to join ISIS aged 15 – was told this month that she can return to the UK in order to fight for her citizenship. The reasoning behind the ruling is that she was denied a […]
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Image description: A close-up shot of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. In the latest installment of this year’s biblical succession of bad news, July began with an ‘all Russia vote’ (lacking the legal status of a referendum) on a bleak new package of constitutional amendments: a mishmash of national populism, cultural conservatism and centralist authoritarianism. Those who […]
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Image Description: Removal of a statue of the Shah in Tehran University during the revolution in 1978 Recent successes for the #RhodesMustFall movement has left many Oxford students with a sense of frustration. Of course, it’s good to see progress finally being made on this issue. What’s disappointing is the length of time it’s taken […]
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As Black Lives Matter protests continue to rock the foundations of racist institutions all over the world, protestors are following in the footsteps of Civil Rights activists by once again using the music of black artists as their rallying cry. From copies of Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ being mailed to senators in advance of an […]
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Image description: protestor speaking into megaphone “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” (Howard Beale, Network, 1975) Do not underestimate the power of events. What might look like a mere swell, may suddenly turn into a crashing wave. The protests in the United States are worse than any seen since […]
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Image description: A Canadian anti-lockdown protest The right to protest is a fundamental right which should not be stopped if one does not infringe upon the law. This principle should apply in all circumstances, including that regarding coronavirus. Europe, and the UK in particular, have taken a massive toll from the Covid-19 emergency, and the […]
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I’ve always found the left-wing/right-wing distinction overly reductive. It seems absurd to me to map out an outstandingly wide-ranging set of policies across a one-dimensional axis. How can my views on education, health, foreign policy, ontology and ethics be captured in one category? The corona crisis has made this all the more evident. The unprecedented […]
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Image Description: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and officials descending stairs. It’s easy to see a turning point in the coronavirus pandemic. We clap for our carers every week, upbraiding neighbours who fail to appear on their doorsteps at the required hour on a Thursday evening. The government is paying 80 percent of laid-off workers’ […]
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Image description: Burning 5G towers in the UK. I have no flat-earth content on my Twitter feed. I have no anti-vac (anti-vaccination) content on my Twitter feed. But I do have a disturbing amount of 5G conspiracy content on my Twitter feed. Now, the majority of this article is in response to people who believe […]
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Image description: an activist holding an LGBT rights placard at a rally in the US In February, Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay man to win a delegate at a US presidential caucus, with the former mayor for South Bend, Indiana polling ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders by two percent. It seems a simple […]
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Image description: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Doha, Qatar, cite of US-Taliban peace talks In an historic moment, the United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban. The move ends a conflict that had raged bitterly for the better part of two decades. Nearly five thousand troops are set to exit […]
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Image Description: Senator Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally. The race for the Democratic Presidential primaries is still wide open, yet until last week there seemed to be a frontrunner for the nomination, certainly in terms of delegate count. Firstly Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then Nevada had fallen under this wave of support for […]
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Image description: Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio A senior cabinet member of a government calls on citizens to protest against his own government. It seems fictional, yet it is unfortunately the most recent episode of the Sitcom of Italian politics, with Luigi Di Maio, the resigning leader of the Five Star Movement, and Minister […]
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Image description: Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Fein A Prime Minister calls a snap election, taking a tough line on Britain’s exit from the European Union, thinking voters will coalesce around him, yet majestically fails. This time it is not the dismal decline of Theresa May in 2017, but that of the Irish Taoiseach, […]
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Image description: French President Macron The recent killing of Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by US airstrikes sent shockwaves throughout the world. By the time European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued her delayed appeal for calm, most European leaders had already reacted to the crisis. The UK’s condemnation of the “aggressive threat” […]
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Image description: Mother and child smiling at each other With Veganuary only barely over and Donald Trump’s attack on Greta ‘prophet-of-doom’ Thunberg in Davos still ringing in our ears, it is impossible to forget our duty to treat the environment with respect. This is all the truer for those who have passed St. John’s […]
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