Imad Sabi and Tamar Pelleg-Sryck in London. IMAGE/Courtesy of the author
Although she became a lawyer late in life, Tamar Pelleg-Sryck worked tirelessly to defend Palestinian detainees like me in a profoundly unjust system.
To the Palestinians she defended in
military courts, she was known simply as Tamar. Often dressed in black,
she was instantly recognizable by her short-cropped white hair, glasses,
and her ever-ready smile that would often give way to a chuckle. Tamar
Pelleg-Sryck was a lawyer, a fierce human rights defender, a principled
opponent of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and a
wonderful human being whose drive, intellect, and youthfulness never
strayed, even in old age. On March 11, Tamar passed away at the age of
97.
I deeply mourn her passing, as I am
sure do hundreds of Palestinians who have experienced the injustices and
indignities of incarceration, interrogation, torture, and
administrative detention, but who had Tamar defend them, as best she
could, against the court system that is integral to the occupation.
I first met Tamar in the Megiddo
Military Prison, where I was sent after receiving an administrative
detention order in December 1995. In those early days after the signing
of the Oslo Accords, the newly-installed Palestinian Authority was
beginning to take control of the larger Palestinian cities in the West
Bank. Before ceding that control, Israel started detaining outspoken
opponents of the accords without any charges, branding them “enemies of
peace.” As the number of these administrative detainees surged, Tamar
started taking on some of their cases, including mine.
I cannot recall the precise details
of our first meeting. In my hazy memory, it was a brief encounter on a
cold, gray day, with the usual exchanges that take place at such
meetings: news about family, initial thoughts about appealing the
detention order, and questions about prison conditions. Tamar had
initially hesitated to take my case, and so — not yet knowing her — I
wasn’t sure I wanted her to be my lawyer.
But the more Tamar visited, the more
we talked and got to know one other. The cold of that first day
transformed into interpersonal warmth, grounded in mutual respect and
genuine human connection. The visits grew longer as time went on. Tamar
started bringing me books from her personal library. Both the long
conversations and the books transported me out of the prison
environment, with its brutal and degrading routines. Writers like Nadine
Gordimer, Hanna Lévy-Hass (the mother of Haaretz journalist Amira
Hass), Paul Auster, Jacobo Timmerman, William Styron, William Trevor,
and many others kept me company, all of them brought to me by Tamar.
“Deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Anna Sebastian Perayil. A thorough investigation into the allegations of an unsafe and exploitative work environment is underway. We are committed to ensuring justice & @LabourMinistry has officially taken up the complaint.”
EY India chairman Rajiv Memani denied company’s responsibilty:
“We have around one lakh [100,000] employees. There is no doubt each one has to work hard.”
has Memani ever asked how those 100,000 are faring with the workload?
what state are they mentally and physically?
by his stance from his statement, he seems obviously not interested…
how much “hard work” should employees put in?
one of Anna Sebastian’s co-worker puts it like this:
“We average 16 hours a day in the busy season, and 12 hours a day in non-busy seasons. No weekends or public holidays are off. Annually EY voluntarily announces a day off to rejuvenate their employees. And yes, you guessed it right! Even that is not off. We work on that day as well – from office! Overwork is the only way to get promoted, do and make others do it.”
Scorsese’s list of handpicked foreign films that will take your film education to the next level
Martin Scorsese is the kind of filmmaker whose deep understanding of
cinema is woven into every frame of his movies. The legendary director’s
work is a testament to his film school education, where he was exposed
to techniques from iconic auteurs like Truffaut, Renoir, and Kurosawa,
blending their styles into something wholly his own. Few filmmakers have
shown a better example of how absorbing different influences can fuel a
filmmaker’s creative imagination.
While Scorsese had film school to thank for being introduced to such
rich influences, many of us don’t have the same opportunity. For those
without a formal film education, there’s another route: self-education.
Next to picking up a camera and experimenting, the best way to learn
about filmmaking is to watch the films that shaped the directors who
inspire us today. A perfect example of this journey came from a young
filmmaker named Colin Levy.
Several years ago, Levy found himself spending countless hours in his
high school’s editing room, meticulously crafting a five-minute short
film. That short would go on to win him the national Young Arts award. The prize? A one-on-one meeting with none other than Scorsese himself, the visionary behind Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
Reflecting on the experience, Levy shared his thoughts in a blog post: “It was a defining moment in my path as a filmmaker.” He detailed the awe-inspiring opportunity to visit Scorsese’s office and editing rooms, describing the moment as surreal. “Martin
Scorsese was intimidating, to say the least. But very jovial, very
talkative, and he took me seriously. (Or convinced me, at least.) I
pretty much kept my mouth shut,” Levy wrote.
The meeting was an overwhelming experience, with Scorsese mentioning various actors, producers, directors, and films every few seconds—many of which Levy had never heard of. He found himself captivated by Scorsese’s vast knowledge. “I was stunned just to be in his presence,” he said. Even more astonishing was Scorsese’s compliment about his short film: “He liked my film, he said. ‘How did you do the little creatures?’” Levy tried his best to explain how he taught himself 3D animation basics, to which Scorsese responded enthusiastically, shifting the conversation to the digital effects used in The Aviator. Levy recalled, “The juxtaposition of scales was overpowering.”
The young filmmaker felt like he was living in a dream. “I felt like I was in a movie. Why he spent so much time with me I do not know, but it was amazing just to be in his presence,” he wrote. A few weeks later, feeling deeply grateful, Levy carefully crafted a thank-you note in which he expressed how the meeting had left him with a strong realisation: “I don’t know enough about anything. I especially don’t know enough about film history and foreign cinema.” Levy asked Scorsese if he had any recommendations for where to start.
Shortly after, Levy received an unexpected message from Scorsese’s assistant. In it was something that would jumpstart his education in cinema: “Mr. Scorsese asked that I send this your way,” the assistant wrote. “This should be a jump start to your film education!” Attached was a list of 39 foreign films and several recommended books that Scorsese had personally compiled for him.
The list was as broad as it was inspiring, including legendary classics like Metropolis and Bicycle Thief. It spanned decades and cultures, offering a treasure trove of cinematic masterpieces for Levy to study. Interestingly, Scorsese omitted some of the more famous names in world cinema, like Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, choosing instead to spotlight lesser-known gems and significant post-war Japanese films. The list even included three films by the great Akira Kurosawa, a filmmaker Scorsese has long admired.
It was clear that this was not just a random collection of movies but a
carefully curated list meant to guide and inspire a budding filmmaker’s
journey into the world of cinema. For those who haven’t had the
privilege of studying these films in an academic setting, this list
serves as a priceless resource, one that reflects Scorsese’s deep
appreciation for film history and his desire to pass that knowledge on
to future generations of filmmakers.
Below is the full list of the 39 foreign films Martin Scorsese believes everyone should watch – especially filmmakers.
Business leaders are using AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the sector booms.
Some have tried AI on the job, while others have played with it to write raps and translate poetry.
Here’s how nine executives from companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft deploy the technology.
Ever since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2023, everyone’s been talking about — and trying out — the hot new tech in their personal and professional lives.
That includes some of the world’s most influential business leaders.
Many
companies aside from OpenAI have released generative AI products with
human-like capabilities to cash in on the hype. Users have been turning
to the technology to save time and reach their goals.
Some workers have used ChatGPT to generate lesson plans, produce marketing materials, and write legal briefs. Others have turned to chatbots to help them lose weight, do homework, and plan vacations. Some even claimed they made money with AI.
And
interest has also permeated the C-suite, with leaders just as keen to
make the technology work for them. From translating poetry to creating
rap songs, here’s how executives from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and other
major companies have personally used AI.
A teacher’s students ChatGPT for a simple introductory assignment in an ethics and technology class.
Professor Megan Fritts shared her concerns on X, sparking debate on AI’s role in education.
Educators are divided on AI’s impact, with some feeling it undermines critical thinking skills.
Professor
Megan Fritts’ first assignment to her students was what she considered
an easy A: “Briefly introduce yourself and say what you’re hoping to get
out of this class.”
Yet many of the students enrolled in her Ethics and Technology course decided to introduce themselves with ChatGPT.
“They
all owned up to it, to their credit,” Fritts told Business Insider.
“But it was just really surprising to me that — what was supposed to be a
kind of freebie in terms of assignments — even that they felt compelled
to generate with an LLM.”
When
Fritts, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of
Arkansas at Little Rock, took her concern to X, formerly Twitter, in a tweet that has now garnered 3.5 million views, some replies argued that students would obviously combat “busywork” assignments with similarly low-effort AI-generated answers.
However, Fritts said that the assignment was not only to help students get acquainted with using the online Blackboard discussion board feature, but she was also “genuinely curious” about the introductory question.
“A
lot of students who take philosophy classes, especially if they’re not
majors, don’t really know what philosophy is,” she said. “So I like to
get an idea of what their expectations are so I can know how to respond
to them.”
“Cahaya, 28, was first married at age 13 to a boy from her village. When he divorced her four years later, she turned to temporary contract marriages with Arab tourists to make money.” IMAGE/Kaleb Sitompul/Los Angeles Times.“Cahaya said she tried to commit suicide while captive in Saudi Arabia during her last contract marriage. She returned in March, and is working with an agent to secure her next marriage.” IMAGE/Kaleb Sitompul/Los Angeles Times
Her first contract marriage was to a tourist from Saudi Arabia. He was in his 50s, and she was 17. They wed in a small ceremony in a guest room at a threestar hotel in Jakarta under a controversial provision of Islamic law.
An older sister came as her guardian, and the agent who brokered the deal served as the witness.
The man paid a dowry of about $850, and after the agent and the officiant took their cuts, she was left with about half that.
The newlyweds decamped to the man’s vacation villa
in the mountain resort of Kota Bunga, a two-hour drive south. When they
weren’t having sex, she mopped the floors and cooked, watched TV or
chatted with the Indonesian maid. But mostly she just waited for it to
end.
That took five days. The man got on a plane back to Saudi Arabia, where he unilaterally ended the marriageby saying the Arabic word for divorce: “talaq.”
She
had never even told him her real name, instead calling herself Cahaya,
an alias she has used ever since in a decade’s worth of contract marriages. She lost track of the exact number long ago, but believes it is at least 15 — all tourists from the Middle East.
“It’s all torture,” she said. “All I had in mind, every time, was I wanted to go home.”
Nikah mut’ah — or “pleasure marriage,” as the temporary arrangement is known — has become an economic lifelinein
the mountainous region of Indonesia called Puncak. The practice is so
common that the area has become closely associated with what Indonesians
often refer to as “divorcee villages.”
Cahaya said she knows seven other women from her 1,000-person village who make their living this way.
Like
prostitution, contract marriages are illegal under Indonesian law. But
the law has rarely been enforced. Instead, nikah mut’ah has grown into
an industry, with an extensive network of brokers, officiants and
recruiters that thrives in the gray zone between church and state.
For many years, Thailand was one of the most popular destinations in Southeast Asia for Middle Eastern tourists — including sex tourists. That began to change in the 1980s, after a bizarre scandal involving a diamond heistand a string of murders created a diplomatic riftbetween Saudi Arabia and Thailand.
Indonesia
was an obvious substitute: a nation that was 87% Muslim and whose
people were already familiar to many in Saudi Arabia as immigrants who had come to work as maids or drivers.
Saudis and other Middle Easterners have flocked to the lush mountains
of Puncak. In one town colloquially known as the “Arab Village,”
restaurant menus and storefronts often feature Arabic translations. For
those tourists seeking temporary marriages, experts say Kota Bunga is
the top destination.
In
the early days, girls and young women were offered up to tourists by
family members or acquaintances. Today, brokers are in charge.
Yayan
Sopyan, a professor in Islamic family law at Syarif Hidayatullah
Islamic State University in Jakarta, said many of the Indonesian towns
where the practice has become popular lack other economic prospects. The
pandemic made things even worse.
“We see now this practice is expanding,” he said. “Tourism meets this economic need.”
Budi
Priana, a small-time Indonesian entrepreneur who spent part of his 20s
as a cook in Saudi Arabia, where he learned Arabic, said he first heard
of contract marriages three decades ago when Middle Eastern tourists he
was showing around asked him for help finding temporary wives.
He eventually started making extra money connecting tourists
and potential brides with marriage brokers, augmenting his income from
driving, interpreting, running an internet cafe and selling frozen
meatballs.
He
said the agents he knows have seen their business boom in recent years,
with some arranging as many as 25 marriages a month. Budi, 55,
sometimes receives 10% of the dowry for driving and interpreting. But he
insisted that he is helping women find work, and protecting them as best he can.
“There
are always new girls contacting me looking for contract marriages, but I
tell them I’m not an agent,” he said. “The economy is getting worse,
and they are so desperate to get jobs.”
When
Cahaya learned about nikah mut’ah, she had already been married once —
at 13 to a classmate from her village. Her grandparents pushed her into it. Her husband divorced her after four years, leaving her with a young daughter to raise and no financial support.
She considered jobs making shoes in a factory or working in a general store, but the pay was too low to make it worth her while.
Listening
to her fret over money, her older sister confided that she had been a
contract bride and introduced her to Budi, who connected Cahaya to a
broker.
Each short-lived union earned Cahaya between $300 and $500, which has gone to rent, food and taking care of her ailinggrandparents. It has never been enough.
“I wanted so badly to help my mother and my family financially,” she said.
Ashamed
of the truth, Cahaya, now 28, has always explained her long absences by
telling friends and relatives that she bounces between housekeeping
jobs in different locations.
“They have no idea about this,” she said. “I would die if they knew.”
Three
years ago, when a friend turned into a boyfriend, she decided to lie to
him as well, going so far as to delete incriminating messages from her
phone.
Contract
marriages fall into the broader and ill-defined category of
unregistered religious unions, which are widespread in many Muslim-majority nationsand pose a conundrum to governments — especially when it comes to protecting young girls.
In
Indonesian law, the legal minimum age for marriage is 19 — but many
religious unions escape government scrutiny and involve underage brides.
“People
think the government shouldn’t intervene in religious affairs,” said
Yayan, the Islamic family law expert. “The state law doesn’t define the
legitimacy of the marriage, because it is stipulated by religion. That
is the problem.”
Even within Islam, contract marriage is hotly debated. It is generally more accepted among Shiites, who say the prophet Muhammad condoned the practice, which originated in the days before Islam as a way for male travelers who were already married to have sex without committing adultery. Sunnis believe Muhammad initially allowed it before changing his mind. Nevertheless, many on both sides consider it little more than prostitution.
The Indonesian Ulema Council, the nation’s preeminent organization of Islamic leaders, has declared temporary contract marriages unlawful.
But attempts to crack down on the practice have been hindered by a reluctance among women to report their experiences as contract brides and by collusion among marriage brokers, religious leaders and corrupt officials.
There is no legal protection whatsoever,” said Anindya Restuviani, program director for the activist organization Jakarta Feminist. “We have the law, but the implementation itself is very, very challenging.”
Feelings of love are
among the most significant human phenomena. Love informs the formation
and maintenance of pair bonds, parent-offspring attachments, and
influences relationships with others and even nature. However, little is
known about the neural mechanisms of love beyond romantic and maternal
types. Here, we characterize the brain areas involved in love for six
different objects: romantic partner, one’s children, friends, strangers,
pets, and nature. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
to measure brain activity, while we induced feelings of love using short
stories. Our results show that neural activity during a feeling of love
depends on its object. Interpersonal love recruited social cognition
brain areas in the temporoparietal junction and midline structures
significantly more than love for pets or nature. In pet owners, love for
pets activated these same regions significantly more than in
participants without pets. Love in closer affiliative bonds was
associated with significantly stronger and more widespread activation in
the brain’s reward system than love for strangers, pets, or nature. We
suggest that the experience of love is shaped by both biological and
cultural factors, originating from fundamental neurobiological
mechanisms of attachment.
Even
though romantic and parental love form the prototypical and biological
core of love, the human phenomenon of love is much more. Psychological,
philosophical, and theological conceptualizations of love abound with
various taxonomies, often offering rich vocabularies that permit love to
be felt for people beyond one’s immediate family—think of love for
one’s friends and love for strangers (or “neighbors,” as strangers are
often called in Christian parlance). Complex, historically resilient
social and cultural institutions concerning billions of people are built
on notions involving transcendent entities that allegedly feel love for
the whole of humankind—or at least for a particular ethnic or
sociocultural subgroup. Human love may transcend boundaries between
species, as pet owners feel and express love for their pets, and mutual
gazing between dogs and their owners has been found to engage oxytocin
pathways similarly to mother–infant bonding (Nagasawa et al. 2015, see also Applebaum et al. 2021).
Feelings of love may not even require individual organisms or beings as
their counterparts, as a recent study found that love of nature is
among the most often experienced types of love (Rinne et al. 2023). Objects of love are socially, culturally, and subjectively variable (see Fehr and Russell 1991; Fehr 1994; Shpall 2016; cf. Rinne et al. 2023). Subjective feelings of love for various objects form a continuum from strongly to weakly felt loves (Rinne et al. 2023).
Love
is closely linked to feelings and behaviors related to attachment. Even
though the concept of attachment is often associated mainly with pair
bonding and/or parental care, the human phenomenon of attachment covers a
wider array of relations and objects. In her recent theorization of the
neurobiology of human attachments, Feldman treats the neurobiology of
attachment bonds as synonymous with that of love (Feldman 2017).
With respect to mammals, she classifies these bonds into parent–infant,
pair bond, peer (friend), and conspecific (unknown member of the same
species) relations according to degrees of social proximity and
biobehavioral intimacy. In this conceptualization, the term “attachment”
cannot be reduced to pair bonding or parent-offspring relations but is a
generic term informing various gradients of affiliation such that
affiliations with conspecifics (strangers) represent the weakest degree
of affiliation. In their state-of-the-art meta-analysis of
neuroscientific research on human affiliation, Bortolini et al. (2024,
2) adopt the view that the terms “affiliation,” “bonding,” and
“attachment” may be treated synonymously because of conceptual overlap.
These authors define “affiliation” as “one’s disposition to enjoy, seek,
and sustain close interpersonal bonds. On a subjective level, it
involves feelings of warmth and affection for significant others.” Here,
we adopt the gradient typology of Feldman (2017), according to which affiliation comes in degrees according to social closeness.
André Weil (left, in 1956) and Simone Weil (in 1922) were siblings who became prominent in mathematics and philosophy, respectively. IMAGE/Konrad Jacobs (right) and Anonymous (left) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Like most mathematicians,
I hear confessions from complete strangers: the inevitable “I was
always bad at math.” I suppress the response, “You are forgiven, my
child.”
Why does it feel like a sin to struggle in math? Why are so many
traumatized by their mathematics education? Is learning math worthwhile?
Sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing, André and Simone Weil
were the sort of siblings who would argue about such questions. André
achieved renown as a mathematician; Simone was a formidable philosopher
and mystic. André focused on applying algebra and geometry to deep
questions about the structures of whole numbers, while Simone was
concerned with how the world can be soul-crushing.
Both wrestled with the best way to teach math. Their insights and
contradictions point to the fundamental role that mathematics and
mathematics education play in human life and culture.
André Weil’s rigorous mathematics
Unlike the prominent French mathematicians of previous generations,
André, who was born in 1906 and died in 1998, spent little time
philosophizing. For him, mathematics was a living subject endowed with a
long and substantial history, but as he remarked, he saw “no need to defend (it).”
Nicolas Bourbaki’s commitment to proceeding from first principles,
however, did not completely encapsulate his conception of what
constituted worthwhile mathematics. André was attuned to how math should be taught differently to different audiences.
Tempering the Bourbaki spirit, he defined rigor as “(not) proving
everything, but … endeavoring to assume as little as possible at every
stage.”
When he was a witch doctor, Moussa Diallo would regularly smear himself in a lotion made from a clitoris cut from a girl subjected to female genital mutilation.
“I wanted to be a big chief, I wanted to dominate,” said the small but charismatic fiftysomething from northwest Ivory Coast.
“I
put it on my face and body” every three months or so “for about three
years”, said Diallo, who asked AFP not to use his real name.
Genitalia
cut from girls in illegal “circumcision” ceremonies is used in several
regions of the West African country to “make love potions” or magic
ointments that some believe will help them “make money or reach high
political office”, said Labe Gneble, head of the National Organisation
for Women, Children and the Family (ONEF).
A ground down clitoris can sell for up to around $170 (152 euros), the equivalent of what many in Ivory Coast earn in a month.
Diallo
stopped using the unctions a decade ago, but regional police chief
Lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso confirmed to AFP that dried clitorises are
still “very sought after for mystical practices”.
And it is clear from extensive interviews AFP conducted with former
faith healers, circumcisers, social workers, researchers and NGOs, that
there is a thriving traffic in female genitalia for the powers they
supposedly impart.
Many are convinced the trade is hampering the
fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), which has been banned in
the religiously diverse nation for more than a quarter of a century.
Despite
that, one in five Ivorian women are still being cut, according to the
OECD, with one in two being mutilated in parts of the north.
Cut and mixed with plants
Before
he had a crisis of conscience and decided to campaign against FGM,
Diallo said he was often asked by the women who performed excisions
around the small town of Touba to use his powers to protect them from
evil spells.
Female circumcision has been practised by different
religions in West Africa for centuries, with most girls cut between
childhood and adolescence. Many families consider it a rite of passage
or a way to control and repress female sexuality, according to UN
children’s agency UNICEF, which condemns cutting as a dangerous
violation of girls’ fundamental rights.
Beyond the physical and
psychological pain, cutting can be fatal, lead to sterility, birth
complications, chronic infections and bleeding, not to mention the loss
of sexual pleasure.
What just happened? For almost a week, towns and cities across
England and Northern Ireland were in the grip of pogromist reaction. In
Hull, Sunderland, Rotherham, Liverpool, Aldershot, Leeds,
Middlesborough, Tamworth, Belfast, Bolton, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster and
Manchester, networked mobs of fascoid agitators and disorganized
racists were thrilled by their own exuberant violence. In Rotherham,
they set fire to a Holiday Inn hotel housing asylum seekers. In
Middlesborough, they blocked roads and only let traffic through if
drivers were verified as ‘white’ and ‘English’, momentarily enjoying the
arbitrary power of both the traffic warden and the border official.
In Tamworth, where the recently elected Labour MP had inveighed
against spending on asylum hotels (incorrectly claiming that they cost
the area £8m a day), they rampaged through the Holiday Inn Express and,
in the ruins, left graffiti reading: ‘England’, ‘Fuck Pakis’ and ‘Get
Out’. In Hull, as crowds dragged a man out of his car for a beating,
participants shouted ‘kill them!’ In Belfast, where a hijabi was
reportedly punched in the face while holding her baby, they destroyed
Muslim shops and tried to march on the local mosque, chanting ‘get ’em
out’. In Newtownards, a mosque was attacked with a petrol bomb. In
Crosby, a Muslim man was stabbed.
Worryingly, while far-right activists played a role, it was probably
secondary. The riots, rather than being caused by handfuls of organized
fascists, provided them with their best recruiting grounds in years.
Many people who had never been ‘political’ before, and perhaps never
even voted, turned out to burn asylum seekers or assault Muslims.
The occasion for this carnival of racist inebriation was a terrifying
mass stabbing in Southport on 29 July. The alleged attacker, for
reasons not yet discernible, descended upon a Taylor Swift dance class,
attacking eleven children and two adults. Three of the children were
killed. Because the suspect was under eighteen, his identity was
initially protected. It took only a few hours for the stabbings to
become a rallying point for the far right, thanks initially to
coalescing waves of online agitation. The suspect, according to rightist
disinfotainment accounts, was a migrant on an ‘MI6 watch list’ who had
arrived on a ‘small boat’: ‘Ali al-Shakati’. ‘Uncontrolled mass
migration’ was to blame for the stabbings.
This fantasy, which came just days after a large rally in support of
Tommy Robinson in Trafalgar Square, was signal-boosted by the usual
reactionary grifters, Robinson and Andrew Tate among them. The rumour
was further infused with vitality thanks to a swarm of reactionary
social industry accounts based in the US. A Telegram account, set up
either by fascists or the fash-curious, gained 14,000 members and played
a direct role in incitement. Like sparks flying from a furnace, the
agitation spread from social media into meatspace. On 30 July, a loose
collection of racist vigilantes and neo-Nazis gathered on St Luke’s Road
in Southport and attacked the mosque with bricks and bottles. Although
residents participated in the clean-up and repairs the next day, the
furies were only beginning. From the end of July, the cycle of riots
swept the UK for over a week. They slowly petered out when, following
the announcement of dozens of intended far-right protests across the UK
on the evening of 7 August, tens of thousands of anti-racists turned out
in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Brighton, Hastings, Southend,
Northampton, Southampton, Blackpool, Derby, Swindon and Sheffield. Most
of the racist gatherings failed to materialize, and those that did were
outnumbered.
