The role of al-Qaeda and the foreign mujahedin in the wars in the former Yugoslavia of the 1990s remains controversial, but the controversy is not over whether the phenomenon was a positive one or not. Reading some of the coverage …
In the propagandist’s kitchen, an ideological heritage is like a cupboard full of ingredients. The chef selects a different combination of ingredients from his or her cupboard, depending on what kind of dish he or she is preparing. Similarly, a …
‘The perfect is the enemy of the good’ – this is a proverb that applies to the seductive but bankrupt ideology of ‘anti-imperialism,’ which presents itself as opposition to the most powerful form of oppression but which in practice is …
‘Welcome to regime change, European style.’ So wrote Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian (26 September) on the impending signing of the accession process for Turkey’s membership of the European Union. Bunting argues that the pressure for reform exercised by the …
The so-called ‘anti-war movement’ against the intervention of the US and its allies in Iraq has involved the forging of some peculiar new alliances, none of which is more incongruous than the alliance of radical Islamists, right-wing libertarians and radical …
