From the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last night, it’s now clear that the contest between the candidates has effectively come down to two key characteristics which, in 2008 will matter the most to voters. These are experience and change. The third, electability, is an equally important issue likely to be on the minds of [...]
Benizir Bhutto’s assassination this week rightly sparked widespread revulsion and protests across the globe, from ordinary people and politicians alike. Love her or loathe her, the murder of a political figure by their opponents (whoever, in this case, they turn out to be) flies in the face of everything the words ‘democracy’ and ‘liberalism’ are [...]
Is ‘greenness’ simply a lifestyle choice? A lot of us, this blog’s readership included, might be perfectly comfortable with that assertion. Thanks to events over the past decade or so, the ‘green’ lifestyle has become an option for the West’s middle classes, but it is by no means the only one. The suburban ideal, like [...]
When Oscar, a furry emerald Muppet living in a trash can down Sesame Street coined the phrase ‘it’s not easy being green’, it was a fair description of the environmentalist’s dilemma. A relatively short time ago (by some of your standards anyway!), I grew up with Bert and Ernie’s bathtub exhortations to save water, [...]
In response to:
Madeleine Bunting, June 4, 2007 The Guardian
While, on the whole you make some pretty good points, it does concern me that you seem to regard Bob Geldof as synonymous with the Make Poverty History Campaign, when, in reality, the two were, to a large extent seperate.
The Make Poverty History campaign was led [...]
On Thursday I was in London at the Trade Justice Movement’s rally outside the Embassy of Germany (who currently hold the European Unions’s rotating presidency), followed by visits to each EU embassy, in my case Cyprus. The issue at hand was these fairly obscure, and, you would think, relatively mundane things called Economic Parnership Agreements [...]
A few days ago The Guardian newspaper reported on an MOD study looking at the strategic situation for Britain’s armed forces 30 years down the line. One of its main assumptions, with good reason, is that by then, it will be China and India, rather than the so-called transatlantic ‘anglosphere’ which set the global agenda. [...]
If various reports are to be believed, by the time you’ve read this I will have scrawled graffiti over your walls, stolen your car’s right wing mirror and shouted expletives at your elderly mother, all whilst kidnapping your cat. In fact, given all the wonderful press coverage our hooded recalcitrant ‘yoof’ receive, it’s a wonder [...]
No issue exposes the deep divisions in the American political landscape like that of abortion. Ever since the handing down of Roe vs. Wade by the US Supreme Court in 1973, enshrining a woman’s right to abortion, the defence or assault of this historic decision has been cast as a major goal of both sides [...]
What do you think of when you think of Africa? Starving little children, rib cages and swollen bellies horrifically prominent in desolate, dusty villages, surrounded by flies? Or maybe corrupt military leaders living on a diet of conflict diamonds and caviar while their citizens starve? What about nations in a perpetual [...]
