In Search of Pro-Americanism
There has never been a more popular time to be anti-American. From Beijing to Berlin, from Sydney to São Paulo, America’s detractors have become legion. But not everyone has chosen to get on the...
View ArticleWhat I learned about Condi
Character, not ideology, is the key to understanding this remarkable politician. A long time ago, before George W. Bush was elected, and before ‘Condi’ was an internationally recognised nickname,...
View ArticleShould Putin host the G8?
By allowing Russia to stage the summit we have accepted her as one of us. This G8 will give its tacit approval to the theft of private assets, the destruction of the rule of law and the violation of...
View ArticleStop blaming America for terrorism
‘Poised as I am, halfway between the two cultures, it was a little strange watching British reactions to events in America last week… It was a little strange even being in Britain last week. On Tuesday...
View ArticleWar with Iran is in no one’s interests
‘War in Iraq, war in Iran?” That’s a headline I saw in Britain earlier this week. In Washington, the headlines read more like “Tentative nuclear deal reached with North Korea” and “Obama must show more...
View ArticlePutin will stop at nothing
Dissidents against the authoritarian regime, many of them in London, are raising the stakes. The President’s response is to get even tougher — and to target Britain in his new propaganda war. About two...
View ArticlePutin is playing a dangerous game
Last week, I found myself in Dom Knigi, the very largest of all the very large Moscow bookstores, staring at the history section. Spread out over an entire wall were books of a sort I’ve never seen in...
View ArticleProblems in Poland: In Poland you can’t get hold of a Polish plumber
Where have all the plumbers gone? ‘Hmm, let me see,’ said Tomasz the painter, rubbing his temples. He was trying to think of a plumber who could install a new bathroom shower. ‘Well, there’s Jacek —...
View ArticleBarack Obama’s ‘day that would never come’
On the day when Barack Obama first entered America’s consciousness I was sitting glumly in the audience. It was the summer of 2004, at the Democratic Convention in Boston. For hours I had sat listening...
View ArticlePresidential candidacy: race in the US is never black and white
Forty years after the murder of Martin Luther King, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama has once again led America to search its soul. Is Barack Obama a traitor to white America because the...
View ArticleIrrational ambition is Hillary Clinton’s flaw
Are you tired of the US election campaign? Not really sure what they’re arguing about any more? If you’re feeling as if you’ve lost the plot, don’t worry. It’s not because you’re British, or because...
View ArticleJohn McCain and Barack Obama have much in common in presidential race
And now, at last, we’ve got to the interesting part: the race between two candidates seemingly so different from one another that their opposing presidential campaigns can actually be described in...
View ArticleWhy is Vladimir Putin so scared of Georgia?
‘It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” In recent days, this famous Churchillian pronouncement on Russia has echoed through many an analysis. In particular, Vladimir Putin – former...
View ArticleBarack Obama’s victory was inevitable
The maps on the television screens started turning blue as soon as the polls had closed on the East Coast; by midnight, John McCain had conceded the presidency to Barack Obama. But I had known the...
View ArticleBarack Obama Taps into the Ivy League For His Cabinet
Not long ago, a European professor who often lectures in the US reminisced to me about how American students have changed. when he visited Harvard and Yale in the 1960s, he told me, the students were...
View ArticlePresident Barack Obama reaches out to all nations with vow to ‘remake America’
A friend emailed Tuesday morning from New York: “In tears already and it hasn’t begun.” Another wrote me that her husband, horrified by reports of crowds in Washington, was “afraid there will be a...
View ArticlePolish plane crash: country has shown resilience since President Kaczynski’s...
By the time I met Ryszard Kaczorowski, he was an elegant, elderly man, with no air of tragedy or trauma about him. Yet at the age of 21, he had been arrested by the Soviet secret police – this was...
View ArticlePolish presidential election: a welcome end to a strange campaign
Warsaw - This has been the strangest political campaign anyone can remember, and no one, from any political faction in Poland, will be sorry to see it end. The campaign has been strange because of its...
View ArticleWhy Islam is now America’s burning issue
In lower Manhattan last weekend, an internet evangelist named Bill Keller held a meeting in a makeshift church, not far from what used to be the World Trade Center. He called upon the gathered faithful...
View ArticleThe Sensational Truth
For a man who earns his living by publishing other people’s email, Julian Assange has a high opinion of himself. You can hear that in his rhetoric, which combines the paranoia of the early Bolsheviks...
View Article