Short Cuts: Julian Assange

Daniel Soar, 18 February 2016

This is​ a story about two bad boys. One, Julian Assange, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than three years. The other, the artist Ai Weiwei, has done his time in...

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At the Movies: ‘The Big Short’

Michael Wood, 18 February 2016

Hindsight​ is a fine thing, and hindsight about a bit of foresight is even better when it comes to storytelling. There was a time when nobody knew anything about what was happening, whatever it...

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Enemy Citizens

Amjad Iraqi, 4 February 2016

Two Arab teenagers​ who had been arrested at an anti-government protest were waiting to see a lawyer at a police station in Nazareth, the largest Arab city in Israel. Their shirts were torn and...

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Short Cuts: In Cologne

Thomas Meaney, 4 February 2016

It takes​ a moment to get your bearings at anti-asylum demonstrations in Germany these days. It still seems strange to see neo-Nazis and Pegida protesters waving French flags. The other day I...

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The Inequality Problem

Ed Miliband, 4 February 2016

What we need to do is clear: avert the possibility of greater inequality that technological revolution carries with it, and instead share out the benefits of the higher productivity it will bring.

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Who are the spongers now?

Stefan Collini, 21 January 2016

If students will set aside vague, old-fashioned notions of getting an education, and focus instead on finding the least expensive course that will get them the highest-paying job, then the government...

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I am French

Jeremy Harding, 21 January 2016

In January 2012 François Hollande, socialist candidate for the presidency, announced on the campaign trail that his ‘true’ enemy was finance capitalism.

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Be Spartans! Thucydides

James Romm, 21 January 2016

Thucydides​ may well have been the first Western author to address himself to posterity. His forerunners – Homer and Herodotus, principally – show no awareness of a readership...

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Diary: In Brussels

Lee Gillette, 7 January 2016

It seems​ long ago. The city on lockdown, the raids, the cat tweets. Vestiges remain, some of them new. A green army lorry was parked at the weekly market across the street. It hadn’t...

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Military to Military

Seymour M. Hersh, 7 January 2016

Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet...

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Miracle on Fleet Street: Operation Elveden

Martin Hickman, 7 January 2016

On​ 11 December, the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, announced that all outstanding cases against Mirror Group journalists for phone hacking would be dropped, and that no...

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They were all foreigners: ‘SPQR’

Michael Kulikowski, 7 January 2016

Neil Tennant​ described his run of hits between ‘It’s a Sin’ and ‘Heart’ as the Pet Shop Boys’ imperial phase, when they owned the charts and charmed the...

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Phantom Gold: Victorian Capitalism

John Pemble, 7 January 2016

An MP and financier​ dead from poison on Hampstead Heath; the secretary of a life insurance company in his office with his brains blown out; a stockbroker with his throat cut in a railway...

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Diary: Modi’s Hinduism

Amit Chaudhuri, 17 December 2015

In November​ I had to cancel the teaching I was doing in Norwich to return to Calcutta to visit my mother, who is elderly and ailing. On the 8th, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact...

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Can they? Podemos

Dan Hancox, 17 December 2015

‘I have defeat​ tattooed in my DNA,’ Pablo Iglesias said in a debate on television last year, a month after announcing the formation of a new political entity called Podemos....

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After the Vote

James Meek, 17 December 2015

British air attacks on Syria, before they are an attack on Islamic State, are an attack on Syria, a foreign country, whose citizens have no say in our affairs, and which has not attacked us, or our allies.

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Bombing Our Way to Vienna

Jonathan Shaw, 17 December 2015

The​ government got the majority that allows it to bomb Islamic State (or Daesh as we are now enjoined to call it) in Syria, but I have rarely listened to a debate in which there was such lack...

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Short Cuts: On the Night Bus to Idomeni

Daniel Trilling, 17 December 2015

Nothing much​ happened on the night bus from Athens to Idomeni. A baby cried, people shuffled in their seats, the driver switched the lights on and told whoever was eating sunflower seeds not...

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