Publication: Corriere della Sera

02.07.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

What do we want from our political leaders? Wisdom, experience, steadiness under pressure, clarity of thought: those were once what most European voters seemed...

28.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

The essence of science is uncertainty, or so we non-scientists believe. I grew up being taught the principles of Karl Popper, the great Austrian philosopher,...

24.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Russia’s rejection of the latest American and European proposal at the UN Security Council on helping Kosovo to become independent of Serbia looks like the...

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...

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...

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...

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”....

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...

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...

07.02.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

This week, China’s President Hu Jintao has set off on a 12-day tour of African and Indian Ocean countries. Why? Because he is touring China’s new foreign...

25.01.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Every year at this time, the gathering that is the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, generates contradictory emotions. One set of emotions make me...

09.01.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Europe tends to view Asia as if through one eye at a time. In the 1980s, it consisted of the Japanese threat to European industry. In the 1990s and for much of...

02.01.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera

It is common for prime ministers to end their time in office by being disliked at home, but admired abroad. It has something to do with the fruits of excessive...

16.12.06 Publication: Corriere della Sera

New Year’s Day is supposed to be a happy occasion, on which the troubles of last year can be forgotten, and when the new year is too young for troubles to...

06.12.06 Publication: Corriere della Sera

The atmosphere in London is creative, excited and a little bit scared. For almost the only theory that has not been circulated seriously about the...

23.11.06 Publication: Corriere della Sera

Ever since Russia temporarily shut off gas supplies to Ukraine in January, "energy security" has been the hottest topic, if you will forgive such a...