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Image description: portrait of General David Petraeus Content warnings: Discussion of warfare, violence, conflict, and terrorist attacks. Dan Harrison interviews General David H. Petraeus, getting his take on the West’s involvement in Afghanistan and the challenges it poses to the UK’s global role. General Petraeus is an intriguing character. He lives a relentless life, where […]
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Image Description: A group of American soldiers facing a mountain. Proposition – Dan Harrison Withdrawing from Afghanistan feels like a shattering setback, but this should not be confused with defeat. Although the West must reflect on its failings, there has been patient and painful accomplishments. As the NGO, Human Rights Watch has outlined, in 2001 […]
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Image description: Taliban soldiers in a queue behind a table with several automatic weapons Two Oxford postgraduate students are trapped in Afghanistan after being refused access to UK evacuation flights, according to The Times. Fearing for their lives, the students are currently hiding in Kabul despite having documentation that entitles them to come to Britain. […]
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Image description: caricature showing Angela Merkel The current German election campaign is not proceeding in a very Germanic way. There is a fluidity, an unpredictability, a volatility to this election campaign, where neither Armin Laschet (CDU), Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90/The Greens), or Olaf Scholz (SPD) are inspiring much confidence or certainty in Germans. It is […]
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Image description: Ulster Defence Association mural with man wearing balaclava and aiming a gun. “It is the people of Northern Ireland who will suffer” if an agreement is not reached over the Northern Ireland Protocol, stated Lord Jay of Ewelme, the head of a House of Lords committee examining the problem. What’s new? After months […]
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Image description: the Pope, facing away from the camera. ‘Every time there is a single incident of abuse in the Catholic Church it is a scandal. And I’m glad it is a scandal’ – Cardinal Vincent Nichols’ response to questions on the Catholic Church’s continued association with rape and abuse of children was, in many […]
Continue ReadingIn this age of space-ships and nucleotides, it is all too tempting to let scientists go off, do their business and accept whatever conclusions they come back with. However, recent revelations in the lab-leak theory shed light on how even professionals of our most trusted profession are subject to conflicts of interests, necessitating greater transparency […]
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Image Description: a banner reading ‘Refugees Welcome’ with a picture of Paddington Bear, in front of the UK Parliament The 14th of June marks the beginning of ‘Refugee Week,’ a UK-wide event to commemorate the lives and achievements of refugees and asylum seekers. The event has the aim of raising awareness of the challenges faced […]
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Image Description: three bitcoins against a black background. PROPOSITION (Anjali Kawa) For many, the rise of cryptocurrency marks a method of returning financial power and security back to the people. The ability to take advantage of markets – which usually take advantage of us – has convinced at least 2 million British people, including some […]
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Image Description: Spanish flag flying over a blue sea on a sunny day. Juan Francisco Valle, a Spanish diver, was propelled to the front of the news after a picture of him rescuing a baby off the coast of Ceuta caught international attention. Valle works for the Spanish Guardia Civil police force and spent the […]
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Image Description: a pole with a USA flag flying, and a flag below it reading “TRUMP 2020 keep America great!” Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump. What do all these men have in common? They were all Republican US presidents. That is it. Lincoln was the leader who fought against slavery. Roosevelt was […]
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Image Description: outside Kabul, children play atop the carcass of a tank “A war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of easiness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which wages. […]
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Image Description: A white street sign reading ‘Zakaz Tlumoceni Translating Prohibited’ The study of foreign languages is at an all-time low in the UK, with over 50 universities in the UK having scrapped language courses or departments altogether since 2000, and the number of students choosing to take the subject at GCSE and A level […]
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Image description: The White House’s southern façade on a clear day. Few presidents have inherited a national situation as unpredictable as that facing Joe Biden, who marked his first one hundred days in office on 29th April. The divisions and political unpredictability of the Trump era still loom large in the United States’ national consciousness. […]
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Image description: Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu with his bodyguard Frank Senteza aka Frank during campaigning. Frank is wearing a red top with a picture of Robert, they both have a fist raised. Uganda’s January elections saw Bobi Wine, a musician who gained political credibility and a loyal following through his pop career, challenge President Yoweri Museveni, […]
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Image Description: the Reichstag Building on a sunny day. Across a decade which has seen convulsion and upheaval across parts of Europe, one unusual constant on the political landscape has been Angela Merkel. First elected as Chancellor of Germany in 2005, she is one of the longest serving democratically-elected European leaders in history, meaning her […]
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Image description: several small vials labelled ” Coronavirus Vaccine” laid out in a row. Two weeks ago, the UK reached its second vaccination target, with just under 50% of the population having received their first dose. Although this news did not attract much attention – perhaps due to the warm temperatures and open pubs serving […]
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Image description: white façade with the phrase ‘protect women now’ written on it in purple chalk. Everything about the recent case of Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder is horrifying. The fact that she was kidnapped from streets that she should have been able to walk on safely, by a man employed by the state to […]
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Image Description: a wooden desk with a laptop, mug, notebooks, pen and a pencil case on top of it. A fireplace on the left. Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon has this week announced his intentions to bring back the staff who have worked from home over the pandemic, calling the shift to working from home […]
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