By all means, debate and disagree with me below the line. But no one should have to put up with vile racism and bigotry, writes Jonathan Freedland.
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/ 12 February 2012
The 2003 invasion has tainted the idea of liberal interventionism. But the people of Homs should not suffer because of that.
Palestinians used the mechanics of diplomacy to grab a rare moment in the international sun, forcing the world to pay attention to their cause.
Its beauty is dazzling by day, but when the sun goes down New Zealand’s seas and glittering skies are
another world.
The judge’s recent remarks about his finding against Israel highlight inherent bias at the UN.
The Arab spring proves that Israel is not even the biggest issue in the Middle East — yet it gets all the attention.
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/ 23 February 2011
Twitter can help bring down Middle Eastern dictators — but being forever online disrupts our lives for the worse.
She didn’t pull the trigger, and she’s not the first to use the language of combat. But the Alaskan’s career will certainly suffer.
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/ 1 November 2010
Two years ago he was hailed as a saviour; now his party is expecting a pasting in the polls. Can Obama win back America?
A chummy meeting with Barack Obama led Benjamin Netanyahu to think he has time on his side. But he’s wrong: the clock is ticking.
TV debates are aimed at the emotional part of the voter’s brain – and the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg understood that perfectly.
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/ 4 December 2009
The glitzy Gulf state is a modern parable for a world living on borrowed funds.
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/ 24 October 2009
Say it’s a tradition. Explain to your children that half-term must, as a matter of faith or ancient custom, include a trip to the cinema.
Once cast as part of the ‘axis of evil’, Iranians have shown they are real people, not collateral damage in waiting.
Britain’s prime minister is pretending the threat to his leadership has gone away, but it clearly hasn’t
Barack Obama was meant to sweep into town looking unassailable. Instead he arrives beleaguered, with an awful lot to prove.
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/ 8 November 2008
The crowd was ecstatic in Grant Park late Tuesday night, mothers hugging sons and students punching the air.
With startling chutzpah, Republicans are again casting the opponent as out of touch. Democrats shouldn’t play the game.
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/ 14 December 2007
Nineteen sixty-eight was a vintage year, as was 1992. And, I confidently predict, 2008 will be one too. I am not speaking of fine bottles of Chateau Lafite but rather United States presidential politics. The campaign that will culminate on November 4 is already shaping up as a classic, replete with the requisite elements of a cracking contest.
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/ 10 December 2007
Think about climate change long enough and you soon realise that it is more than our lightbulbs that we are going to have to change. Colleagues have argued, as delegates gather in Bali to hammer out a global accord to avert this catastrophe, that a more fundamental overhaul will be required. Madeleine Bunting suggested a return to wartime rationing, in order to curb a hyper-consumerism that is unsustainable.
Now the sun has set, my first memories are of the dawn. I was at London’s Royal Festival Hall that bright May morning in 1997 when the news came through of the Labour landslide. When Tony Blair appeared on an outdoor platform, he was greeted like a dragon-slayer. "A new dawn has broken, has it not?" he asked.
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/ 20 January 2006
Steven Spielberg’s most political film yet could compromise his position in the Jewish world, writes Jonathan Freedland.
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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.
They are calling it the war of the colours. On one side, the Jewish settlers facing eviction from Gaza, hoping to stage Israel’s own orange revolution — urging their fellow citizens to wear or wave orange in protest at the upcoming withdrawal. On the other, the settlers’ opponents who, have failed to agree on a colour scheme.
Americans are at last asking whether their government did enough to protect them on September 11. Normal service has resumed. Republicans are once more hurling abuse at Democrats, Democrats are slamming Republicans.
FALLOUT from Pim Fortuyn’s assassination will be felt not just in Holland but across the world. Where there was harmony, now there is discord. Where there was faith, now there is doubt. In Holland, that byword for flat, tedious stability, politics has grown hot and turbulent.