A Pillar Built on Sand

John Mearsheimer, 8 November 2012

In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military...

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Burning Up the World: ExxonMobil

Luke Mitchell, 8 November 2012

Forecasters in ExxonMobil’s strategic planning department predicted in 2005 that the only thing that would prevent growing demand for oil (and, not incidentally, growing profits for ExxonMobil) would...

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Stiffed: Occupy

David Runciman, 25 October 2012

‘We are the 99 per cent’ is a brilliant slogan and an increasingly successful brand, but it’s a half-baked idea.

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On Wall Street

Astra Taylor, 25 October 2012

On 14 September, students, faculty and staff at Pace University received the following email: Monday, 17 September is the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. As a precautionary measure,...

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Heathrow to Canary Wharf: Crossrail

Nick Richardson, 11 October 2012

It took sixty years for the supporters of Crossrail, the new railway being built under London, to convince Parliament it was worth the investment. Recession scuppered the project twice, in the...

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Western Recklessness

Hugh Roberts, 11 October 2012

Libya no longer has – or is – a state. The political field throughout most of the Middle East and North Africa is dominated by the various fiercely competing brands of Islamism, while...

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During the first 19 years of Israel’s statehood, its leaders gave little thought to the Palestinian question. Two-thirds of the Palestinians were driven out in 1948; those who remained were...

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Short Cuts: A Night in the Tombs

Michael Friedman, 27 September 2012

When they take my shoelaces and belt, I realise that this is more serious than I had thought. I am in a Manhattan precinct cell, early on a Sunday morning in August, having been stopped for...

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Forever on the Wrong Side: Jean Suret-Canale

R.W. Johnson, 27 September 2012

Jean Suret-Canale, or Suret as everyone called him, was one of the finest Marxist historians and geographers of the last century. A pioneering Africanist, his books on Francophone Africa were...

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Diary: At the Conventions

Christian Lorentzen, 27 September 2012

Last month Mitt Romney arrived in Tampa persecuted for being a millionaire 250 times over, his status as a human the subject of national doubt.

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Among the Alawites

Nir Rosen, 27 September 2012

The Alawites are one of several minorities in Syria, but they have always been seen as a special case.

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Lukashenko’s Way

Jonathan Steele, 27 September 2012

The one thing most Europeans know about Belarus is that it has the most repressive political system and the most authoritarian ruler in Europe. The country’s parliamentary elections on 23...

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Does it matter that the power Britain relies on to make the country glow and hum no longer belongs to Britain?

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The Uses of al-Qaida

Richard Seymour, 13 September 2012

President Obama has waged war on al-Qaida by drone and by ‘kill list’. Vladimir Putin has hunted al-Qaida in the North Caucasus. The late Colonel Gaddafi, and now Bashar al-Assad,...

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Mouse Mouth Mitt

Eliot Weinberger, 13 September 2012

The one interesting thing about Mitt Romney is his nearly pathological absence of political savvy. Has there ever been a national candidate who has managed to alienate or outright insult so many...

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Short Cuts: Who is François Hollande?

Jeremy Harding, 13 September 2012

Before he ran for the Socialist Party nomination in 2011 François Hollande was an identikit politician: son of a left-wing Catholic mother and avidly right-wing father, degree from...

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Short Cuts: Romney-Ryan

David Bromwich, 30 August 2012

On 11 August, Mitt Romney stirred excitement in a dull election by announcing that he would share the Republican ticket with Paul Ryan: a seven-term congressman, chairman of the House Budget...

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Construct or Construe: Living Originalism

Stephen Sedley, 30 August 2012

Living originalism? The heart sinks. Is this going to resemble a treatise on secular spirituality or tabloid ethics or some other well-meant oxymoron? To a degree, the despondency is justified....

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