Articles

24.06.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun

Nowadays, we all think that the planet needs to be saved and we all want to do our bit to save it. That, at least, is what a visitor from outer space might...

16.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

There is nothing good to be said about it. The takeover of the Gaza Strip by fighters from Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian organisation that rejects the right...

02.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

One of the Bush administration’s favourite put-downs, used generally to dismiss opponents of its efforts to export democracy, is the idea that someone is...

01.06.07 Publication: Exame

We are in a post-ideological age. Unlike during the Cold War, there are no longer any easy labels to attach to ourselves, or with which to describe other...

01.06.07 Publication: Ushio

Everyone who visits China comes back impressed: all the smart new buildings, the wide new roads, the sparkling and efficient airports. They invite a question...

28.05.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

A few years ago, the thuggish behaviour of Moscow police towards gay-rights activists might have been dismissed merely as signs of Russia’s backwardness. It...

21.05.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

In this sophisticated era, with high technology and globalisation and extraordinarily complex financial transactions, few would have predicted that the fate of...

21.05.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun

What is a bubble? No one really knows: people tend to agree on what bubbles are only after they have burst. But a pretty fair indicator is when a stockmarket...

11.05.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Britain is about to experience a very strange political transition. It is going to have an utterly predictable change of prime ministers. It is a change of...

01.05.07 Publication: Ushio

In democracies, it is said, politicians running for election try to bribe us with our own money. In other words, they make promises that will cost taxpayers a...

01.05.07 Publication: Exame

At every stage during China’s remarkable three decades of economic growth, as the country shook off the dead hand of Maoist central planning, outsiders have...

30.04.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

The second-round vote in France’s presidential elections will, in effect, be a referendum on Nicolas Sarkozy. But surely that was also true of the first...

21.04.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

A huge crowd of at least 300,000 people gathered on Saturday April 14th in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, to protest against the idea that Turkey’s prime...

15.04.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

It is as if nothing ever happened. China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has this week made the first visit to Tokyo by a Chinese leader for more than six...

04.04.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

A famous English saying, by our 18th century literary genius and curmudgeon, Samuel Johnson, states that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”....

01.04.07 Publication: Ushio

In India, this year has been officially designated as “the year of Japan”. Thanks in part to an extremely energetic Japanese embassy in the Indian capital,...

01.04.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun

The European Union has just celebrated its 50th birthday, or rather the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome which established the first,...

01.04.07 Publication: Exame

So far, it has been the scary monster that has stayed in the forest. Economists have been worrying for at least two years, in some cases more, about the...

24.03.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

The European Union is 50 years old and has been celebrating its birthday this week in Berlin. That is what the citizenry of Europe have been told, at least...

12.03.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

It seems to happen every time. The American presidential election campaign begins, and I start to protest. Why should an election campaign start so early?...

07.03.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

The idea to buy up Afghanistan’s opium crop and use it to increase production of morphine, being promoted by Italy’s Refounded Communists and by a former...

01.03.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

I suppose I should ask myself, with a weary sigh: why should I be surprised at Italy´s political crisis? These things used to be so commonplace, before...

01.03.07 Publication: Exame

What is the secret of economic development? Many of those who studied the success of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and who now study...

09.02.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Ever since Italian football entered its crisis of violence, my Italian friends have been asking me questions: how did Britain solve its problems of football...