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IT seems likely at this juncture that the next presidential contest in the United States will once more pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Biden will...
TO paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one recently appointed senior cabinet minister could be construed as a misfortune; losing two seems like...
JUST a few days after the elected president of Chile, his close friend and comrade Salvador Allende, had met a violent death in his workplace, the man...
THE US has never officially been willing to concede that recent history encompasses not one but two 9/11s. There’s the one 22 years ago that...
THE latest chapter in the Taliban’s crusade against women was unveiled this week, when at least 60 potential scholars expecting to be accommodated...
LATE last week, Joe Biden hosted the leaders of South Korea and Japan at Camp David to nudge them towards increased economic and “security”...
MORE than 60 years ago, a British sci-fi movie called The Day the Earth Caught Fire illuminated the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic climate...
WILL the dissolution of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies be accompanied by the announcement of an election date? There has been...
NOT long ago, a writer discussing Churchill’s legacy singled out Britain and Australia as appendages to a rampaging Uncle Sam. The analogy might...
IT did not come as much of a surprise when Pita Limjaroenrat was prevented from becoming the prime minister of Thailand earlier this month. After all,...
THE headlines from the Nato summit that concluded a week ago in the Lithuanian capital mainly reflected the prospect of Swedish membership and, more...
LAST week’s Israeli ‘special military operation’ in the West Bank town of Jenin has been compared, in terms of its intensity, to a 2002 assault...
ALMOST 80 years ago, after the tide had turned against Germany in World War II, the dictator in Berlin wanted the Nazi-occupied capital of France to...
WHEN future historians look back on these times, it is likely that they will pick Feb 24, 2022, rather than June 24, 2023, as the key turning point in...
ON Sunday, June 13, 1971, the New York Times carried a groundbreaking report across three columns at the top of its front page under a rather mundane...
WELL before global politics featured the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Erdogan, Imran Khan, Modi or even Netanyahu, there was Silvio Berlusconi,...
OF late, it has become almost impossible to navigate a Western news outlet without coming across an opinion about the risks posed by generative...
HENRY Kissinger, often viewed as a war criminal, marked his 100th birthday last Saturday amid the usual accolades of the high and mighty, alongside a...
HENRY Kissinger, often viewed as a war criminal, marked his 100th birthday last Saturday amid the usual accolades of the high and mighty, alongside a...
ON the eve of the G7 summit in Japan last week, there was a sudden outburst of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in Australia. Just hours after the...
UNITY, faith, discipline: it would generally be agreed that Pakistan’s motto has broadly been more honoured in the breach than the observance...
PERHAPS the most interesting factor in the run-up to King Charles III’s cumbersome coronation last Saturday was the number of British polls pointing...
HARRY Belafonte was among that rare breed of cultural icons who become more radical as they age. He did not merely capture the zeitgeist of a...
UNTIL a couple of weeks ago, the third largest nation in Africa was supposed to be heading towards a transition to some form of civilian rule. The...
LAST month, Daniel Ellsberg, announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given just a few months to live. At 91, he decided against...
A FEW days ago, Saudi negotiators conceded most of the short-term demands of their Houthi interlocutors in Sana’a, setting the scene for the...
HAD the Trump team been trying to figure out a scenario that would propel their figurehead down the path to second coming, they could hardly have done...
ON the last day of February 20 years ago, 23-year-old American activist Rachel Corrie wrote to her mother from Rafah in the Gaza Strip: “I think I...
IT has been common knowledge for more than 20 years that almost immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration was...
EARLY yesterday, Australian time, three heads of government could be seen on TV screens, lined up behind podiums on the San Diego coastline: the US...
THE time will eventually arrive, if the world survives, when International Women’s Day (IWD) is little more than a historical curiosity — a...
BACK in 1990, when the Soviet Union was on the cusp of disintegration but no one was clear about whether it would happen or the shape it might...
“THE problem we have is that we are headed towards communism. We are beyond socialism.” This warning comes not from 19th-century Europe but from...
ZIA Mohyeddin was horizontal the first time I encountered him, reclining on a couch in his dressing room at the Central TV studios in Birmingham. I...
BACK in 1999, in the aftermath of the coup coordinated from a cockpit, I found myself among a tiny minority of compadres and confrères who were...
GERMAN tanks on the borders of Russia. Why does that ring a distant bell, in fact, an alarm bell? The last time that happened may have been 80 years...
THE gushing panegyrics Jacinda Ardern has attracted from liberal media outlets pretty much (but not only) across the English-speaking world since...
WITHIN a few weeks, a bunch of international geologists are expected to pick a spot to mark the birth of what some scientists are calling the...
THE Jan 1 inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was an orderly affair, even though his predecessor wasn’t there to perform the customary task...
RINGING out the old and ringing in the new at the turn of the year invariably involves wishful thinking. Mostly, the detritus of the recent past flows...
EXACTLY 100 years ago today, representatives from the socialist republics of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia (now Belarus) and Transcaucasia (Azerbaijan,...