2013 Articles

If the deconstruction of the political frame, based on that of the Roman Republic, that is to say, the reduction of an elite Senate to one reduced to a second chamber of the common people, marks one crucial fault line in the collapse of America, then the crisis in the military system is of equal…

On Day One the U.S. Secretary of State, a man who never uses ten words if a hundred will do, announces before the world the decision of his Commander-in-Chief – for this is the correct name of an American President, chosen by universal franchise – to bomb Syria for its use of chemical weapons on…

Cicero wrote: ‘People think I have lost my senses if I speak on politics as I ought, and a powerless prisoner if I say nothing.’ Nicolas Werth, the great chronicler of Stalin’s murdered millions, achieved by the silent approval of the masses, defined the authorising system of the genocide as being possible due to ‘the…

Helpless, though we certainly are as individuals before the sordid slaughter of the Shi’a family dictator’s fight for survival in Syria – it does not mean that we can not learn from it about the current state of world power. It gives us a reading on the condition of Russia, of China, of Britain and…

Of course we are appalled at the massacre of a country’s citizens by its own military. We must step back from the frenzied scene of ‘breaking news’ and its dismal commentators. These events are profound in effect and by their nature will reconstruct political discourse as a result. In these final days of the American…

A few years ago I was asked to give the Keynote Address at the Second Islamic Countries Conference on Statistical Sciences held in Malaysia. On receiving my text the Saudis at the Conference, clearly newcomers to open discourse, categorically forbade the text from being read out. To the credit of the Conference Secretary he had…

Luciano Canfora, the great Italian political philosopher and classicist, has given us an important definition: “What one calls a dictator is never one who rules alone, (Alleinherrscher), he is at the centre of a system of power and of consensus. To eliminate him does not necessarily imply a breaking of this system, and on the…

‘It may be that the leading characteristic of barbarism is not violence or insecurity but historical amnesia, the imprisonment of mankind’s ancient self within a two-dimensional present, the invention of a world without legacy and without foresight… To forget our history is not to be free, but to be mad. Far from making us free,…

The Catholic Church since its inception has functioned as an after-life. Crudely constructed of old Roman myths it claimed the birth of the Saviour as a winter festival, and his death and rising as a spring festival. The consumption of his flesh resulted in being ‘saved’ in the next world. The ancient Romans ate the…

As the Assad regime goes into terminal rictus one is still reluctant to make a move, however, a matter of grave importance demands our attention. Syria has become a lake of blood, but only the childrenʼs blood is innocent for deep down below lie the unmeasured depths of the historic swamp. Assad, squalid though his…

The blessed relief of Timbuktu and the tragedy of the destruction of its great library faces us with the issue of the abysmal failure of the pseudo-salafi monotheist and anti-Islamic movement of ibn Abdalwahhab which began in the desert of Arabia and ended in ignominy in the desert of the Sahel. It was from its…

This is a journey to begin the New Year. Our journey begins with Schiller’s Ode to Joy, which became the lyric of Beethoven’s sublime Ninth Symphony. It opens with the famous lines: Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium! Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen…