URL: Latest posts
The Utopian ...
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... has launched!Please do take a minute to look at this very exciting magazine, which I have founded together with Alex Lee.---The Utopian is devoted to seeking out the most original and challenging ideas in contemporary politics, art and culture. T...
A European View is Excited about.. * The Utopian *
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An exciting magazine, founded by Alex Lee and me. It will be published this Wednesday. Watch this space for the link, which will appear here very soon...Do read it (and excuse my related and very long blogging-absence)!
Another Round in Italy's Tragedy
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In many ways, it is part of Italy's charm that things there don't work quite as smoothly as perhaps they should in a First World country. But even my unbounded love of the place does not allow me to see everything through rose-tinted spectacles. Toda...
Cole, not the Dole
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I'm stealing the following anecdote, which is priceless, from a comment by Kieran Healey on the Crooked Timber blog:In his Diaries, Alan Bennett tells a story about an Oxford Don conducting Margaret Thatcher on a tour of (I suppose) All Souls in the...
Sarkozy proves his bad taste - on many, many levels...
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The real reason why the French call Sarkozy l'americain is style, not substance. They are deeply skeptical of a President who prefers yachts to country estates; jogging to promenading; and Hollywood blockbusters to philosophy books. I wasn't. Well -...
Overheard in New York - Germanophobes
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Thought I'd share this little gem from www.overheardinnewyork.com :Girl #1: When I first met my boyfriend, I wasn't that into him.Girl #2: Yeah, but there wasn't an 11-year age difference between you two!Girl #1: But he was German! That's comparable!
On Criticism, Rhetoric and - Outbursts
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Britain is a country of genteel humour - and yet the UK parliamentary system allows for the most vicious theatricals of any Western democracy. Americans, by contrast, are generally proud to be more brash than their stiff-upper-lipped cousins - and ye...
Mafia Morals - not so Tarantino after all...
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Warning: Troubled teenagers with an overactive imagination awakened by the Godfather or Pulp Fiction will be as saddened as I was to read the ten commandments of Mafia morality, discovered after big-boss Lo Piccolo's recent arrest. If you ever needed...
A not so ironic Joseph Beuys sings for "Sonne statt Reagan"
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One of Germany's most tragicomic TV moments, this 1983 campaign spot for the Green Party not only features artist Joseph Beuys in a sadly serious attempt at rock-stardom. It also, to use a Germanic expression, is the ideal-type of German humour's tal...
Fearing Fear Itself
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In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman writes:In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.Today, many of the men who hope to be the next...
Republican Ron Paul on 9/11 & Giuliani's Bulldozing Answer...
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As any historian or social scientist will know, it is extremely difficult to determine what the main cause of an event is. Ron Paul makes a few good points in drawing attention to the unintended effects of the US' interventionist foreign policy in th...
The School of Tall Studies and Sarkozy's virtu...
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Pierre Manent, the eminent French political philosopher who teaches at the École des Hautes Études in Paris, is giving a talk at Harvard this Friday.Check out the beautiful translation of his university which Google - or, perchance, a surprisingly...
Polish relief as the Duck Brothers are clobbered by Donald
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Below is a re-print from my third entry on the Harvard International Review's blog...---Poland has not yet perishedSo long as we live.What foreign violence has taken from us,We will reclaim, sword in hand.Poland’s history of suffering at the hands...
Why Sarkozy Breaks Taboos, Or: How to Understand Bush
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Below is my second post on the Harvard International Review's blog...---Politicians are painfully – some even paranoically – aware that one wrong move, however small, can lastingly impact on their careers. Just think of George Bush Sr., who glanc...
Stay Away From my DNA
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The French government plans to require foreigners who qualify to immigrate into France because of family ties to prove by a DNA test that they really are related. In all likelihood, the measure will pass its last parliamentary hurdle today. Last Sund...
Swiss Sheep II
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And it just got worse: on the SNP's homepage you can now play a game which involves stopping black sheep from transgressing the Swiss border; and catching Swiss passports before they are blindly distributed (by Greens and a dorky judge) to a clamouri...
Swiss Sheep
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We Europeans have many prejudices about Americans; not all of them entirely unfounded. But one of the American prejudices about Europe that I often have to argue against is that racism is a lot more widespread in our beloved Old World. Mostly, people...
Harvard International Review
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Hi all,I've just posted my first post on the Harvard International Review's blog. I promised them to post an entry every week, so be sure to check over there regularly for updates. I'll also post links on here every time...Obviously, also continue to...
Putin - Democracy's Man in Moscow
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No, I obviously don't think Putin is a good democrat. But his recent manoeuvering might just help Russia return to a modicum of democracy. Why? Check out my post over at the Harvard International Review Blog:Here's the first two paras:It’s been a l...
