Hyperbole and inaccuracy notwithstanding, I had some sympathy with the calls to scrap the UK’s Holocaust Memorial Day as reported in the Sunday Times at the weekend

I think I just witnessed a train wreck in slow motion. The Galloway versus Hitchens debate in New York was a traversty that I admit I never foresaw, but which with the benefit of hindsight may have been only too obvious from the start. The debate sold out more than a week ago so I […]

A (London) Times story about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture yesterday The Media: Public Interest and Common Good exposes much that is flawed in daily news reporting.
“Archbishop Hits out at web-based nonsense” screams the headline. Followed by the thrusting:
THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent […]

DARFUR DRAWN :: War through the eyes of a child

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Why does no one care about Darfur? A rally yesterday in London only managed to draw 150 people (chronicled here by blogger Lakshmi). The answer, I suspect, is multi-facteted, and ranges from indifference and impotence to […]

I was a student at London University’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies between 1995 and 1999. The college was based in Senate House opposite the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) –the scene of some recently abhorrent behaviour by anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian activists. I passed SOAS every day during my four years at […]

One of the few nuggets of wisdom which has remained with me since university was drummed into my head by an eminent if slightly boring professor called Geoffrey Hosking. His golden rule for any would-be revolutionary was that without control of the army you have no chance of success.
This gem comes back to me repeatedly […]

An elegantly worded “story” entitled, The Myth of the UN’s Moral Authority, appeared in the New York Sun today courtesy of David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush and co-author with Richard Perle of “An End to Evil: How To Win the War on Terror.” Needless to say, the opinion piece (which curiously appeared […]