Diary: Life in a Tinderbox

Arianne Shahvisi, 18 March 2021

Many building-owners have already begun the process of retrofitting safety features and billing them to lease-holders. Some will have sophisticated fire alarm systems installed, which isn’t a solution...

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The well-oiled pistons of the market-state are increasingly accompanied by the creaks and squabbles of a Chinese dynasty. The country’s prized state companies are overrun by kinship networks. It is not...

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Short Cuts: Medical Apartheid

Mouin Rabbani, 18 March 2021

As any Palestinian could have predicted, Israel has been the first state to introduce colour-coded identification documents to distinguish between those who have been vaccinated and those who haven’t....

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Short Cuts: Detaining Refugees

Frances Webber, 4 March 2021

If it occurred​ to the home secretary, Priti Patel, or the minister for ‘immigration compliance’, Chris Philp, that an army barracks wasn’t the best place for refugees who...

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On Bill Gates

Thomas Jones, 4 March 2021

Bill Gates didn’t divest from fossil fuels until 2019. Better late than never, I suppose, but it was well known in the 1980s and at times Gates can sound a bit like your most bor­ing uncle telling you,...

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Diary: Pro-­Union Non­-Unionists

Susan McKay, 4 March 2021

Unionists know that if they want their country to survive they need to make it attractive to those beyond their traditional base. Yet the DUP continues to indulge bigots, neglects the needs of working-class...

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Where are the space arks? Space Forces

Tom Stevenson, 4 March 2021

Where are the space arks in orbit? The exploration of exoplanets in the circumstellar habitable zone? Satellite wars over the tiny layer of space immediately above the atmosphere are evidence of a fear...

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New Unions for Old

Colin Kidd, 4 March 2021

The prospectus for Scottish independence has some awkward gaps, not least on the currency question, but it’s still far more comprehensively thought through than Brexit. This is unsurprising, given that...

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Short Cuts: Putin’s Palace

Tony Wood, 18 February 2021

As Navalny points out, Putin’s private domain is more than thirty times the size of Monaco. But unlike Monaco, it is protected by a no-fly zone and a naval security order requiring ships to stay two...

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Reformers said that non-­smokers took fewer sick days, fewer breaks; they rarely referred to smoking as a public health problem that might have something to do with class and racial in­ equality, lack...

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Short Cuts: FOI

Peter Geoghegan, 4 February 2021

Tony Blair​’s long-winded memoir A Journey (2010) is strikingly light on self-recrimination. He regrets ‘with every fibre of my being’ the hundreds of thousands of deaths in...

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Charlie’s War

Jeremy Harding, 4 February 2021

In an email to staff shortly before his murder, Samuel Paty explained that his class was meant to confront students with the following question: should cartoons of the Prophet not be published in order...

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Diary: Ethiopia’s Long War

Maaza Mengiste, 4 February 2021

What do we do with all that history – all that rage, all these memories? A young soldier with a slender face. Bruised and beaten men in the back of a truck. The site of a prison, a plaque on a wall....

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After IS

Patrick Cockburn, 4 February 2021

It’s unlikely that IS will ever be able to resurrect itself as it once was. It is too feared; it made too many enemies. It has lost the advantage of surprise and probably of covert support from foreign...

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New-Found Tribes: In Brexitland

William Davies, 4 February 2021

Why have people’s political identities become so deeply determined by whether they went to university and how they define ‘racism’? Why these markers and not others? This may be a question for political...

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But I wanted a crocodile: Castro in Harlem

Thomas Meaney, 4 February 2021

To cheers of ‘Viva Castro! Viva Cuba!’ the delegation took up position at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, which became a kind of opposition headquarters during the UN session. Malcolm X was the first...

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Short Cuts: The Four-Year Assault

Adam Shatz, 21 January 2021

To call the explosion of the mob that took over the Capitol building an attempted coup, or an insurrection, is unfair to the plotters of coups and insurrections. Like the man who egged them on in a speech...

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The Breakaway: Goodbye Europe

Perry Anderson, 21 January 2021

The European Union, as it has come to take shape, speaks continuously of demo­cracy and the rule of law, even as it negates them. No ill intention need be ascribed to it. What it has become was inscribed...

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