Coup-Contrecoup

Rahmane Idrissa, 24 February 2022

The struggle for sovereignty against shape-shifting imperialisms naturally takes many forms. What Malians want is ‘libération’ – a popular word among supporters of Assimi Goïta’s junta – not...

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Éric Zemmour’s obsessions are those of the French political class, as well as many public intellectuals and media pundits. He is aware that he is offering a heightened version of what much of France...

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A Tiny Sun: Getting the Bomb

Tom Stevenson, 24 February 2022

Intentional use is not the only danger. Nuclear strategists systematically underestimate the chances of nuclear accident: it has no place in the logic of strategy. But there have been too many close calls...

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Bad Judgment: How many people died?

Paul Taylor, 10 February 2022

Estimated weekly excess deaths in England and Wales in 2021. One of the tactics​ used over the past few weeks by Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions, and by loyal MPs and...

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Machu​ Picchu is not very old. Despite giving the impression of great and mysterious antiquity, the construction of the site was roughly contemporary with Brunelleschi’s completion of the...

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To Own Whiteness

Musab Younis, 10 February 2022

Any psychological approach to racism ‘entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities’, Frantz Fanon argued, because ‘the black man’s alienation is not an individual question.’...

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Tazmamart was a place of darkness and banishment: not only were inmates cut off from their families and lovers; they were exiles from history. Aziz BineBine recalls a couplet from ‘Recueillement’ in...

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In the face of climate change, the long run – which remains the sacred temporality of economics – is a misleading guide not only to current affairs, but to the long run itself. There is no reason to...

Read more about Check Your Spillover: The Climate Colossus

To Serve My Friends

Jonathan Parry, 27 January 2022

A lot may depend on who succeeds Johnson as party leader. In any case, it’s a fair bet that ‘Boris’, the beneficiaries of his patronage and his media cheerleaders will come to be seen as symbolic...

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Fishing for Potatoes: Nissan Rogue

James Lasdun, 27 January 2022

Carlos Ghosn’s story might not offer quite the deranged immediacy of watching John DeLorean agree on camera to transport $24 million worth of cocaine in order to get his beleaguered factory out of a...

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In the Superstate: What is technopopulism?

Wolfgang Streeck, 27 January 2022

For the new conservatism, crises arise from disorder, not from a wrong order, and their handling should be entrusted to technicians in command of special knowledge, whether scientific or magical, or both...

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So what’s it like in there, the drum-bearer asked me when we reached the gates of the delegates-only COP26 Blue Zone, thickly fenced behind rows of anti-ram-raid bollards, with the nearby drains and...

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Along with Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger and the never-Trumpers of the Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney is one of the last standard-bearers of a Republican conservatism grounded in some version of rationality....

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The Family Biden

Christian Lorentzen, 6 January 2022

There are a lot of apparently bullshit things in The Bidens, but it’s hard to see them as actually criminal or even especially outrageous once you accept that a politician’s family will trade on his...

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Short Cuts: Nigerian Oil

Adewale Maja-Pearce, 6 January 2022

Nigeria pumps out​ 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, making it the biggest producer on the continent. The multinationals – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell et al – in partnership with local firms and the...

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Did I invade? Do you exist?

James Meek, 6 January 2022

It’s striking how many times, in the past few months, Putin has been accused of being behind the transport of migrants from the Middle East to the borders of the EU through Belarus, and, separately,...

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Short Cuts: State Capture

Abby Innes, 16 December 2021

The UK has the third largest lobbying industry in the world. When ministers and prime ministers with no experience in corporate governance retire into jobs in sectors they were once supposed to regulate,...

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In Chile

Michael Chessum, 16 December 2021

A successful candidate will need to offer stability after years of upheaval and division, but there is an obvious tension between stability and the politics of radical change. It remains to be seen how...

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