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“... On a cold evening​ in early February 2011, a small group of activists spilled out of a squat in a Georgian townhouse on Bloomsbury Square. The building – recently purchased by a presenter on Antiques Roadshow – was then home to a loose collective running the Really Free School (RFS), a ramshackle series of political talks, film screenings and discussions ...”

“... the attacks, sucking blood from its people in payment for the food aid currently being supplied by international donors. This is a theory which can only have been made more credible by the World Food Programme’s use of the word ‘pipeline’ in relation to its food distribution system. ‘Our pipeline to Malawi is currently full,’ one spokesperson was ...”

“... One might think that Kennedy was right. The war in the former Yugoslavia; the slaughter of one group by another in Shaba – the old Katanga – in southern Zaire, and in neighbouring Burundi also, both on a similar scale to that in Bosnia and just as horrible; the collapse of Somalia; the revival of the war in Angola; the fragility of South ...”

“... The financial crisis – or, as we like to call it here, ‘the effects of the American and European financial crisis on Russia’ – has taken a little while to get going, but it’s going now. Yesterday my grandmother sat me down for a serious conversation: she wanted to know if she should take her rouble-denominated life savings out of the Sberbank and put them into dollars ...”

“... news is of nowhere, and you can savour the illusion of being somewhere that a global ecological crisis hasn’t yet set down under the same dire sky as everywhere else. One long weekend in mid-August, my partner and I, with the aid of a local guide and in the company of a dozen others, set out to hike up the steep, sodden slopes of Colombia’s Sierra ...”

“... he created an image of the German Reich as a militaristic, feudal and irresponsible actor in international affairs. The most modern and technologically advanced state in the world, with the most productive industries, the finest engineers and scientists, the highest standards of craftsmanship and production, had at its head a reactionary representative ...”

“... journalism are long gone. When the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster discussed ‘the crisis in the Scottish press industry’ in 2009, the Herald was selling just under 60,000 copies a day; now that figure is less than 35,000. Of course, Scottish newspapers aren’t the only ones in trouble. The Independent and the Independent on Sunday ceased ...”

“... the US in Vietnam, and would disgrace friends and colleagues who had eagerly taken over new international responsibilities from the exhausted European empires after the Second World War. Kennan lost his influence inside the Beltway in the mid-1950s, after he began exhorting Americans to pursue ‘self-perfection’ and ‘spiritual ...”

“... seer whose theories help us understand the predicament we are in, especially in times of economic crisis, an inspiration to everyone who wishes to see state and society emancipated and transformed. Or, alternatively, he was a misguided and misguiding ideologue whose theories have been responsible for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. This book ...”

“... the latest eruption of the culture wars. And yet we also live in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, of accelerating climate breakdown and a pandemic. At the very least, these events render unsustainable any terminological equivalence between ‘society’ and ‘nation-state’. In subtle ways, they have also contributed to a new type of sociological ...”

“... 1990s, these two books nevertheless make important contributions to our understanding of today’s international turbulence and uncertainty. Taken together, they help unravel one of the deepest mysteries of American policy towards Iraq: namely, why dissent inside the US has been so tame and equivocal. Why have the keenest protests against Bush’s ...”

“... save the Syrian people from many other horrors,’ Slaughter conceded, and ‘it is illegal under international law.’ But ‘it at least draws a line somewhere & says enough.’ ‘The deterioration of the intelligentsia,’ Arthur Koestler wrote, ‘is as much a symptom of disease as the corruption of the ruling class or the sleeping sickness of the ...”

“... in the street. Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, a people smuggler originally from Eritrea, was on an international wanted list, accused of holding thousands of people from various African countries captive in a ‘safe house’ in Libya, where they were starved, beaten and raped while Kidane and his fellow smugglers extorted money from their relatives. Fuad’s ...”

“... a Burundian President. Among many barbarities, kinsmen of the dead President, a Hutu, assembled a group of schoolchildren at a petrol station in the central highlands of Burundi. The Tutsi scholars were separated from their classmates, corralled in the building, and burnt to death. Among the perpetrators was their headmaster, a Hutu. With the demise of ...”

“... the gay men I know have similar stories (recently, at the cinema watching 120 BPM, about the Aids crisis in Paris, my friend booked an HIV test halfway through). But what was I – what are we – panicking about, exactly? No one wants an avoidable chronic illness, but everyone knows that, in the West at least, HIV is now a manageable disease, making almost ...”