Firebrands
Commentators with a fire in their belly.
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The West Can’t Engage China on the Climate, While Also Demonising…
As Britain prepares to host the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow next month, it is pursuing two contradictory policies that…
CIA Plot to Kidnap Assange in London Is Being Mistakenly Ignored, by…
Three years ago, on 2 October 2018, a team of Saudi officials murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in…
Britain Will Never be Taken Seriously with a Genuine Charlatan as PM,…
Isaiah Berlin once denounced somebody for being “that rare thing – a genuine charlatan”. He pointed out that few people, even…
Trump and Biden Have Much in Common When It Comes to Deserting…
Trumpism was never quite what it seemed to the rest of the world when it came to America’s actions as opposed to his words. The…
By Letting Saudi Arabia Off the Hook Over 9/11, US Encouraged…
Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi…
Twentieth Anniversary of 9/11: Lessons of the War on Terror, by…
Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi…
US Has Devised a Way of Waging War That Inevitably Leads to Failure,…
An ill-judged attempt to find out who is to blame for failing to predict the swift victory of the Taliban and the disintegration…
The Taliban Will Escape Pariah Status by Posing as the Enemy of Isis,…
The slaughter of at least 79 Afghan civilians and 13 American servicemen at Kabul airport has propelled the Afghan offshoot of…
The Taliban May Feign Moderation – But the Murderous Reality Is…
In 2001 the Taliban blew up the giant 1,500-year-old Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan to show their defiance of…
The US and UK Have Failed to Grasp Something Key About Afghanistan,…
The American way of dealing with a lost war is to withdraw its forces. The Afghan way of dealing with it is to change sides as…
Do a Deal with the Taliban or Flee – That Is the Choice Facing…
As Taliban fighters enter Kabul, everybody from the US government to local policemen seeks to reach a deal with the new rulers of…
The Last Survivor of the Arab Spring Nations Has Fallen, by Patrick…
“Do you remember the tomorrow that never came?” asked a sad piece of street graffiti in Cairo, referring to the fate of the Arab…
Johnson Is a Comic Opera PM – His Mistakes Killed Tens of Thousands,…
Boris Johnson turns out to have privately yearned to adopt the same approach as Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro who publicly…
The Forever War in Afghanistan Is Far from Over, by Patrick Cockburn
Over the last week, I have been watching the Taliban sweep across the map of northern Afghanistan, capturing places that I first…
The Government Is Launching an Attack on Freedom of Expression, by…
Matt Hancock’s bungling effort to conceal his affair with Gina Coladangelo may give hope to some that all government attempts to…
Rumsfeld Was the Living Symbol of America’s Plunge Into the Quagmire,…
“A ruthless little b******,” was President Richard Nixon’s verdict on Donald Rumsfeld as recorded by the Watergate tapes – and…
The Republican Party Has Turned Fascist – It Is a Threat to the…
The G7 meeting focused attention on many challenges facing the world, but it did not address the most dangerous threat of them…
Gaza Conflict Has Shown That Trump-Netanyahu Policy Has Utterly…
Israel and Hamas have ended their 11-day “war”, but even before the shooting stopped it had transformed the political landscape.…
Israel Is Making the Same Errors as Britain Did 50 Years Ago, by…
When I first visited Israel in 1976 after spending three years in Northern Ireland working on my second degree, I was struck by…
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