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Friday December 06, 2024
Patrick Cockburn

  • September 27, 2022

    Poker with nukes

    On 2 December 1943, 105 German bombers made a surprise air raid on Bari in southern Italy, where they sank 27 Allied cargo and transport ships. One...

  • March 11, 2022

    Punishing populations

    Economic sanctions are like the siege of a medieval city. Siege engines batter at the walls and hurl missiles over them, but it is all a slow...

  • December 23, 2020

    Tax the rich

    In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed...

  • October 14, 2020

    Wars and pandemics

    Watching the antics of Trump and the blunders of Boris Johnson in failing to cope with the virus, I have the same feeling I had repeatedly over the...

  • October 09, 2020

    The Assange case

    Allegations against Assange put forward by the lawyers for the US government are flimsy or demonstrably false, yet he is still in real danger of...

  • September 16, 2020

    Refugee crisis

    Desperate refugees crammed into cockle-shell boats landing on the shingle beaches of the south Kent coast are easily portrayed as invaders....

  • July 02, 2020

    The original sin

    The government’s controversial Prevent programme aims to stop individuals becoming terrorists, but it would be much more effective if it taught...

  • June 11, 2020

    Incompetent leaders

    Britain is failing to cope with the Covid-19 epidemic as well as other countries in Europe and East Asia have. Out of 62,000 excess deaths in the...

  • February 27, 2020

    Demonizing Assange

    I was in Kabul in 2010 when Julian Assange and WikiLeaks first released a vast archive of classified US government documents, revealing what...

  • February 12, 2020

    Epidemic of fear

    If I was sitting in a restaurant and said in a loud voice that I had probably contracted coronavirus, many other customers might get up and leave....

  • January 01, 2020

    Nationalist politics

    Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the...

  • November 08, 2019

    Nationalism over economy

    Britain is becoming more and more like Northern Ireland. This should be a comfort to Arlene Foster and the DUP as they rue their betrayal by Boris...

  • November 01, 2019

    Lost territory

    The death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis and the self-declared caliph of Islamic State, will be a serious, though not terminal, blow to...

  • August 01, 2019

    What happens after a ‘no deal’ Brexit?

    Bluff was a central feature of British power even when the British empire covered a large part of the globe. A story illustrating this tells of a...

  • June 20, 2019

    The dark side of Brexit

    Pictures of Daniel Ezzedine show him to be a fresh-faced 17-year-old with a warm cheerful smile. His parents are Lebanese but he was brought up in...

  • May 16, 2019

    Powerless Europe

    Brexiteers in Britain are denouncing the EU as an all-powerful behemoth from whose clutches Britain must escape, just as the organisation is...

  • April 18, 2019

    Bibi’s victory

    Benjamin Netanyahu is an early version of the nationalist populist leaders that have come to power in country after country in recent decades. He...

  • April 11, 2019

    Britain in the age of Brexit

    Future historians will look back at Britain in the age of Brexit and seek to explain why its people reduced their power and influence in the world...

  • February 07, 2019

    Brexit and the past

    How should Brexit be seen against the broad backdrop of British history? Analogies multiply, with the crudest coming from prominent Brexiteer MP...

  • December 11, 2018

    The Brexit crisis

    The UK has long been divided by class, region and race, but these divisions have been masked by political and economic success. This has meant the...

  • November 28, 2018

    Fate of Brexiteers

    When a majority of the British people voted to leave the EU in 2016, I was struck by the similarity between the Brexiteers’ plans for their...

  • November 01, 2018

    War in Yemen

    One reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able to avoid a public outcry over their intervention in the war in Yemen, is that the number of people...

  • May 02, 2018

    De-escalation and escalation

    As a journalist, I have always dreaded reporting on meetings between world leaders billed as ‘historic’ or ‘momentous’ or just plain...

  • April 19, 2017

    Trumps’ policies

    There was something comical about the outrage expressed by self-declared experts at Trump’s new departures. Anti-Trump forces interpreted any...

  • April 10, 2017

    Stranded in a city

    Isolated in their houses and short of food and water, people besieged in the Isis-held Old City of Mosul say it is like being held in an underground...

  • April 04, 2017

    Trapped in Mosul

    People trapped in the Old City of Mosul are dying of hunger because they have not received any food for almost three weeks according to a...

  • March 27, 2017

    From Paris to London

    In the immediate aftermath of what police are describing as a terrorist incident in and around Parliament, at least three facts stand out suggesting...

  • March 22, 2017

    The damage done

    Brexit  is English nationalism made flesh, but the English underrate its destructive potential as a form of communal identity. Concepts like...

  • February 21, 2017

    Trump and the media

    Self-absorbed and irrational Donald Trump may well be, but on Thursday he held what was probably the most interesting and entertaining White House...

  • September 21, 2016

    Disastrous error

    At about 5pm on Saturday, two US F-16 fighter bombers and two A-10 specialised ground attack aircraft bombed what they believed was a concentration...

  • June 24, 2016

    An Isis defeat

    Iraqi security forces are driving out Isis fighters from the government compound in the centre of Fallujah, the city 40 miles west of Baghdad which...

  • May 04, 2016

    Into the Green Zone

    The storming of the parliament building in Baghdad by protesters chanting the name of populist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is a sign that the...

  • January 14, 2016

    Turkey’s security predicament

    Turkey is becoming a more dangerous place, but then so is the Middle East and North Africa and anywhere Isis can send its suicide squads. The...

  • November 11, 2015

    Isis and the Sinai plan

    Once again the world has underestimated the strength and viciousness of Isis. The group has always retaliated against any attack by targeting...

  • October 28, 2015

    The paralysed mind

    What is striking about Tony Blair’s latest comments about his role in the Iraq War is how little he had learnt about the country in the 12 years...

  • October 06, 2015

    Russia enters the war

    Russia’s military intervention in Syria, although further internationalising the conflict, does however present opportunities, as well as...