NB the below is a revised and updated (and occasionally annotated) republication of an article first published in 2013, which itself republishes one written in 2001. Needless to say that if I were ...

PH: Is this about ‘comprehension’? Or is it about self-serving prejudice? What ‘crucial facts’ does the leaked e-mail miss? Let us see. Note that the National Endowment for Democracy is a largely ...

A leaked email last night dramatically indicated that the UN’s poison gas watchdog had butchered and censored a critical report on an alleged chemical attack in Syria. If substantiated, the ...

It is curious what stirs people’s emotions. I would have expected my article on smacking to have attracted the most attention when my column was published yesterday. There were a few remarkably stupid ...

Now we have definitely moved from being a post-war world to being a pre-war world. Madness and folly are loose again. Consider first that early on Friday morning the United States Navy launched 59 ...

Each evening, as night falls on Baghdad, the Middle Ages return. This great modern city has been stripped of almost all the essentials of civilisation. By day it is not quite so obvious. But when the ...

Israel exists only because quite a lot of people hate Jews for being Jews, and sometimes that hate turns into murder. It is a place where Jews can go when other people want to kill them for being what ...

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not ...

At the very height of the Blair regime, the story was told of the New Labour MP who went to get his hair cut. He was wearing headphones, which the barber gently removed before proceeding. As the ...

Can be watched and listened to here: ...

On most Sunday mornings I swim up to consciousness while listening to BBC Radio 4. The thing that forces me into full wakefulness is an almost comically correct programme called, with great wit and ...

This is clearly a weekly segment. Great radio the underlying want from Mike to interrupt is entertaining. He is handling himself admirably. If for the last five weeks people had been paying attention ...