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/ 31 December 2006
Someone thought they saw fear in his eyes, but it was hard to be sure. Saddam Hussein went quietly to the gallows. Given the momentous nature of the execution, the event was almost an anticlimax. If the great tyrant and mass murderer seemed diminished in the moment of his death, then so were the first architects of his demise.
This week, barring a last-minute climb-down, Iran may get back to building a nuclear bomb. It is a small moment, and a big one. Small because the threat has lingered for years; big because the consequences could convulse the region and the world.
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/ 4 November 2005
Football follows the Lazarus principle. One-nil down and we Arsenal fans start to despair in the North Bank at Highbury. But it’s never over until it’s over and salvation can arrive seconds before the final whistle. George Best, not for the first time, has tested resurrection theory to its limits.
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K. For, without doing anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning. So begins The Trial, whose lonely protagonist stumbles into a judicial nightmare orchestrated by a malign society. On United States campuses, thousands of freshmen read Kafka’s novel every year.