As everyone knows, the only way to stop the slaughter in Syria is for the US to work with Assad – and to stop worrying about what looks good.
Policing cities will always be tough, but that merely increases the need for clear political control.
Defiant crowds may destroy an old regime, but seldom do they build a new one that endures.
While Rome burned, Nero put on fancy dress, stood on a tower and played his lyre, writes Simon Jenkins.
Cellphones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, but this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact.
The Norwegian tragedy is just that, a tragedy. It does not signify anything and should not be forced to do so.
What would you do this morning if you were a Greek? Would you agree to your government cutting public-sector jobs, pay and pensions?
It’s for governments, not journalists, to guard public secrets and there’s no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks’ revelations, argues <b>Simon Jenkins</b>
Mission accomplished? The Iraq war did more than anything to alienate the Atlantic powers from the rest of the world.
Our way of life is threatened not by an al-Qaeda nutcase, but politicians like former US vice-president Dick Cheney in thrall to a fantasy war.
The reason for invading Afghanistan seemed like a good idea at the time. Simon Jenkins reports.
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/ 5 December 2008
America seems much in need of Roosevelt’s maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11.
Moscow has to take some of the blame. But it is the West’s policy of liberal interventionism that has fuelled war in Georgia.
Economic sanctions are a coward’s war. They do not work but are a way in which rich elites feel they are "committed" to some distant struggle.
Two dictators face two disasters, one is in China, the other in Burma. One is an earthquake, the other a flood. Tens of thousands are dead and millions at risk. Being dictatorial, both regimes responded in a manner heavy with the politics of sovereignty. In one case that helps people, in the other it kills them.
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/ 7 December 2007
Hugh Masekela’s gig tore apart the staid decorum of London’s classical scene, writes Simon Jenkins.
Will history tell us we were fools? We worried about the wrong war and made the wrong enemies. In the first decade of the 21st century the leaders of the United States and Britain allowed themselves to be distracted by a few Islamist bombers and took easy refuge in the politics of fear. They concocted a "war on terror" and went off to fight little nations that offered quick wins, writes Simon Jenkins.