I once spoke to a journalist who had covered the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. He said that he and his colleagues kept heading into harm’s way, because they believed that once the world knew of the horrors they had witnessed, the world would be stirred to act. They filed their reports and waited.
”I once spoke to a journalist who had covered the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. He said that he and his colleagues kept heading into harm’s way, because they believed that once the world knew of the horrors they had witnessed, the world would be stirred to act,” writes Jonathan Freedland.
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/ 6 November 2006
First, let’s lay down the mother of all caveats. The conventional wisdom says Democrats are about to win control of the House of Representatives and could well take the Senate too. But, and here’s the mega-caveat, the conventional wisdom in Washington is often very wrong. Cast your mind back to election night 2004, when the media anointed President John Kerry, writes Jonathan Freedland.
”My Life is not a great book, in places it’s not even that good — but when you read it, you can’t help but feel you’re in the company, one on one, of the man himself. It’s his voice you hear on the page, for good and sometimes ill.” Jonathan Freedland reviews Bill Cinton’s autobiography.
Artists were swift to explore the horror of 9/11. But narratives likely to endure are only now emerging, argues Jonathan Freedland. And while today’s artists need to tell us about our world, they often need to do it in camouflage.
It was meant to be over by now. This time last week Israeli military planners were demanding another 72 hours to finish the job: that’s all they needed, they promised, to clear southern Lebanon of Hezbollah. Yet the enemy has proved stubborn. Despite two weeks of bombardment, Hezbollah’s formidable arsenal remains in place.
Israelis convinced themselves this was to be the dull election, the one marked by a record low turnout and apathy. A people who complain they live in a land with too much history seemed in no mood to make some more. But make it they have. Last Tuesday they voted to reject once and for all the ideology that had dominated the state for more than three decades.
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/ 3 February 2006
In this new landscape, everyone is in the dark. After Hamas won an enormous victory that shocked even them, all the players in the Middle East conflict are stumbling around, unsure how to negotiate the new terrain. No one knows quite what to do.
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/ 13 January 2006
With death at least, there are rules. All campaigning has to be suspended, journalists wear black ties, and politicians pretend to come together in a spirit of national unity. But with a medical situation that hovers close to death without ever quite touching it — a prime minister struck down but still alive — the rules are less clear.
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/ 13 December 2005
If you want to enter terrain so wildly out of date that mere mention of it has become taboo, then you’ve come to the right place. Brace yourself. In October, two bankers strode into Umbaba, one of London’s most modish watering holes and asked the bartender to fix them a drink. Not any drink, you understand, but the most expensive cocktail he could concoct.