Diary: Ebola

Paul Farmer, 23 October 2014

The Ebola virus is terrifying because it infects most of those who care for the afflicted and kills most of those who fall ill: at least, that’s the received wisdom.

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Who will stop them? The Neo-Elite

Owen Hatherley, 23 October 2014

As a media personality, Owen Jones is unusual and interesting. As a writer, however, he can be frustratingly unreflective.

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The Four Degrees: Climate Change

Paul Kingsnorth, 23 October 2014

It was​ at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that governments first agreed to do something about climate change. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed at the summit,...

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Tower of Skulls: Baghdad

Malise Ruthven, 23 October 2014

In​ 2006, when Baghdad was mired in sectarian killings and the murder rate was more than a thousand a month, Justin Marozzi spoke to Donny George, the director of the National Museum of Iraq,...

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Short Cuts: Human Rights à la Carte

Francis FitzGibbon, 23 October 2014

Things​ aren’t going well for Chris Grayling, the secretary of state for justice. His ‘Spartan’ prisons policy and sacking of hundreds of warders coincided with a rise in...

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The Amazon basin​ is roughly the size of the continental United States and contains more than a thousand shifting tributaries. If it had been found at the edge of human settlement, it would...

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On Hunger Strike: On Hunger Strike

Omar Robert Hamilton, 9 October 2014

After​ the shock and awe tactics of the Rabaa massacre last summer, when Egypt’s military regime murdered around a thousand supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, the rolling...

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In Farageland

James Meek, 9 October 2014

There’s plenty of evidence in Thanet to support Ukip’s general proposition that local power is being diminished while the power of remote, faceless authorities is growing.

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Short Cuts: In Symi

Caroline Phillips, 9 October 2014

As we stepped off​ the ferry onto the Aegean island of Symi in late August, our thoughts were on sunbathing and sailing. But the first thing we saw was a group of what we soon discovered were...

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Many American Jews dislike the suggestion that there is any tension between their commitment to liberalism and their Zionism.

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LRB contributors

LRB Contributors, 9 October 2014

Polling day​, which we’d waited for in a fervour, was odd and quiet. Mist pressed at the windows. I felt convalescent and washed out, and fair enough, for the last ten days I’d...

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Across the Durand Line: The Durand Line

Owen Bennett-Jones, 25 September 2014

It was said that al-Qaida must not be allowed to hold territory in Syria, but both an al-Qaida affiliate and Isis have been doing just that, and it wasn’t until earlier this month that Obama announced...

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Degrade and Destroy

David Bromwich, 25 September 2014

America​ has now officially embarked on a long war in the Middle East, a war so taxing that officials judge it ill-advised to predict a termination in fifteen years or fifty. If one regards the...

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Short Cuts: La Grande Hollandaise

Jeremy Harding, 25 September 2014

Valérie Trierweiler​’s book about her life as a grande Hollandaise and France’s first lady, and then – abruptly – neither of those, is more hair-raising than the...

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Text-Inspectors: The Good Traitor

Andrew O’Hagan, 25 September 2014

Mostly he remained inconceivably calm. Even now, with the clock winding down on his freedom, Snowden still went to bed at 10.30, as he had every night during my time in Hong Kong. While I could...

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The Writer and the Valet

Frances Stonor Saunders, 25 September 2014

The story of Dr Zhivago’s publication is, like the novel itself, a cat’s cradle, an eternal zigzag of plotlines, coincidences, inconsistencies and maddening disappearances.

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Diary: In the Wrong Crowd

Melanie McFadyean, 25 September 2014

Under joint enterprise there is no need to prove that you intended to commit the crime, and you don’t have to be the person who plunged the knife or pulled the trigger. You can be convicted on what’s...

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Tear Gas

Yiannis Baboulias, 11 September 2014

As part of​ their training, American soldiers are taught not to be afraid of tear gas (or lachrymatory agent, as it’s formally known). A friend of a friend of mine was stationed in the...

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