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Uncommon Decency

Jun 30, 2021

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”. Writing over 24 centuries ago about the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides’ timeless commentary speaks to the tension arising when an emerging power threatens to overtake an established one, raising the odds of open conflict. Just...


Jun 23, 2021

Across most of Europe, Green parties are middling political forces, periodic junior partners in coalitions or the occasion to cast a protest vote for disgruntled left-wingers. And yet in prosperous Germany, Annalena Baerbock could well be Angela Merkel’s successor at the chancellorship. Formed at the dawn of...


Jun 16, 2021

Listeners may recall Peter Mandelson, the veteran UK Cabinet Secretary appointed EU Commissioner for Trade in the late 2000s upon helping orchestrate Labour’s social-liberal pivot as one of Tony Blair’s “spin doctors”. Mandelson’s incarnation of the party’s notorious “Third Way” didn’t just owe to his...


Jun 9, 2021

January 2013. Making its way through the dunes of the Sahel desert, a column of pick-up trucks is spotted approaching Mali’s capital city of Bamako. The jihadists at the wheel, some of the region’s most dangerous, have sensed an opportunity amidst the country’s civil war. At the demand of its government,...


Jun 2, 2021

On May 23rd, a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius is instructed by a military jet to land in Minsk as it enters Belarusian airspace, on account that Hamas has a bomb planted on board. One passenger in particular couldn’t be fooled. Blogger Roman Protasevich, now jailed in his home country, is one of many...