In the Negev

Neve Gordon, 22 March 2012

At least seventy thousand Bedouin in the Negev live in villages currently classed as ‘unrecognised’ by the Israeli government. This means that it’s forbidden to connect the...

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There are plenty of reasons for parents to push their children about, or rally them when they seem to slump. But it’s important to listen to them too, unless they’re rehearsing the...

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Taking to the Streets: Greek Democracy

John Markakis, 22 March 2012

‘The state is bankrupt, let’s face it,’ an editorial in the Greek daily Kathimerini concluded the day after a museum in ancient Olympia – left virtually unguarded owing to...

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Habit, Samuel Beckett says in his essay on Proust, substitutes the ‘boredom of living’ for the ‘suffering of being’, and he has a point. Human existence is an acquired...

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Diary: In Syria

Jonathan Steele, 22 March 2012

Jonathan Steele reports from an anti-Assad ‘party’ in Qudsaya, Syria.

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Memories of Amikejo: Europe

Neal Ascherson, 22 March 2012

In the mid-20th century the last airholes in the European pressure-vessel were sealed up, and the heat turned up high. Fortunately the vessel burst before it could reduce everything, all our cities, all...

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Short Cuts: The Falklands

Jenny Diski, 8 March 2012

I can’t say that I’ve ever had a strong opinion – or any opinion – about Sean Penn. I may have watched a film he was in, and I booked but didn’t get as far as the...

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The End of Labour?

Colin Kidd, 8 March 2012

How have the Labour Party’s prospects been changed by Alex Salmond’s dash for independence?

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Syrian Notebooks

Jonathan Littell, 8 March 2012

‘They’ve​ been calling me Al-Ghadab, “Fury”, from the beginning,’ the smuggler said, his big beard split by a mischievous smile, ‘But I laugh all the...

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Drones, baby, drones

Andrew Cockburn, 8 March 2012

Numerous reports attest that the drones have inflamed public opinion across Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. It may be true, as Obama has claimed, that ‘most of al-Qaida’s top lieutenants have been...

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Who’s in, who’s out? The Nonproliferation Complex

Campbell Craig and Jan Ruzicka, 23 February 2012

Nuclear weapons have given rise to a multibillion-pound industry: the nonproliferation complex.

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The Doom Loop: Equity in Banking

Andrew Haldane, 23 February 2012

Putting equity, social and financial, back into banking is essential if the financial system is to be durably repaired.

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Short Cuts: ‘Anyone but Romney’

Christian Lorentzen, 23 February 2012

I don’t bother to vote anymore, but the first vote I ever cast was against Mitt Romney.

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It’s hard to say what’s changed since the 2007 Duma elections, but from November you could sense something happening on the streets of Moscow.

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Altruists at War: Human Reciprocity

W.G. Runciman, 23 February 2012

How is it that the members of a species as greedy, quarrelsome, egoistic and deceitful as ours still manage to live together in sufficiently harmonious societies?

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Protest is becoming a normal feature of the global political landscape, in which the Russian crowds seem like a belated, wintry addition.

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Europe at Bay: The Immigration Battle

Jeremy Harding, 9 February 2012

In this podcast, Jeremy Harding reads extracts from his essay about migration. The full article is below. A young, personable man who speaks fair English, Hamraz had been in Dunkirk for about...

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Short Cuts: Costa Concordia

Thomas Jones, 9 February 2012

Even while the bodies of the drowned were being retrieved from the wreck of the Costa Concordia, the stricken cruise ship was being freighted with allegorical significance by the Italian and...

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