“... of the time that the legendary former chief of the OSS (the CIA’s precursor), ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan was sent by Eisenhower to be Ambassador in Bangkok. American domination increased further under the regime of strongman Sarit Thanarat and his lieutenants (1958-73). At the height of the Vietnam War, nearly fifty thousand American servicemen were ...”

“... after his Christmas break, Brzezinski ‘reportedly clenched his fist’ as he told his aide Bill Odom: ‘They have taken the bait!’ The Soviets quickly installed a new president, Babrak Karmal, who requested Soviet support against Mujahedin insurgents. By the end of January 1980, 80,000 Soviet troops had entered Afghanistan. Détente was ...”

“... in their costs, and relative to national income can exceed them by a wide margin. In 1996, Clinton spent $43 million to take the White House; in 1994 Cardoso laid out $41 million to secure the Palácio do Planalto, in a country with a per capita GDP less than a sixth that of the US. Unlike Cardoso, who twice sailed to victory on the first ballot as the ...”

“... Escobar. Ten days later he was shot dead in a car park outside Medellín. In these contexts, Bill Shankly’s already tired aphorism about the relative importance of life, death and football feels wretchedly provincial. There have​ of course been many moments when something like innocent joy breaks out. Italia 90 is perhaps the best example of the ...”

“... was not satisfied with the upshot, and as minister for law introduced in 1951 a Hindu Code Bill striking down the grosser forms of marital inequality it had sanctioned. Faced with uproar from the benches of Congress (he had the temerity to tell its MPs that the cherished legend of Krishna and Radha was an emblem of Hindu degradation of women), he was ...”

“... assertion was that women politicians aren’t interested in ‘big issues’ (Thatcher? Merkel? Clinton?), it was less significant than the joking style of the article and the fact he felt it was a good idea to write it. It was written in the style and the spirit of the movement against political correctness, in resistance to a perceived overarching ...”

“... as much abused as ‘fascism’, but there is little question that the MHP of these years met the bill. Therein, however, lay its limitation. Classically, fascism – in Germany as in Italy or Spain – was a response to the threat of a mass revolutionary movement that the possessing classes feared they could not contain within the established constitutional ...”