Christopher Caldwell



Profile:
Full name: Christopher Caldwell

Area of interest: Politics, Culture and International Affairs

Journals/Organisation: Financial Times

Email: [mailto:editor@weeklystandard.com editor@weeklystandard.com]

Personal website:

Website: FT.Com / Christopher Caldwell

Blog:

Representation:

Networks:



Biography:
About:

Education: Harvard College: English Literature

Career:

Current position/role:
 * Financial Times: Commentator
 * Weekly Standard (US): Senior editor
 * New York Times magazine and Slate: contributing writer

Other roles/Main role: Other activities: Author

Disclosures:

Viewpoints/Insight: Regularly writes about what he sees as the increasing Islamification of Europe
 * US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Voices on antisemitism - 1st February 2007

Broadcast media:

Video:

Controversy/Critcism: Considers that Muslim immigration has served to increase antisemitism in Europe

Awards/Honours:

Other: Father-in-law is journalist Robert Novak



Books & Debate:

 * Left hooks, right crosses: a decade of political writing OCLC49903168, (with Christopher Hitchens), 2002

Latest work: Reflections on the revolution in Europe: immigration, Islam and the West OCLC495597742, paperback edition published May 2010

Speaking/Appearances:

Debate:
 * The illusion of Cuba’s caudillo - When Ernest Hemingway survived a plane crash in Uganda in 1954, he was able to read his own obituaries. A similar diversion may await Fidel Castro - Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times, 23rd February 2008
 * US must end its implacable opposition to Cuba - Sir, Christopher Caldwell (“The illusion of Cuba’s caudillo”, February 23/24) should not just listen to Harvard professors... - Ian Taylor MP, 1st March 2008



Financial Times:
Column name:

Remit/Info: Politics, Culture and International Affairs

Section: Comment

Role: Commentator

Pen-name:

Email:

Website: FT.Com / Christopher Caldwell

Commissioning Editor:

Day published: Saturday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length: 1000 words



Articles: 2012

 * Class warfare need not be taxing - The pragmatic case for socking it to the rich is weak - 27th January
 * Inadvertent lesson from a nautical scoundrel - Costa Concordia raises ideas about codes of honour - 21st January
 * Pull the plug on TV’s push to dodge decency standards - Deregulating will only mean more boobs, bums and bullets - 14th January
 * Beware bards bidding to take charge of court - N’Dour’s experience follows the philanthropic model of western ‘activism’ - 7th January



Articles: 2011

 * Go forth, open the mind and just walk - Mothers who praise the benefits of a good brisk walk are right - 31st December
 * We wish you a merry Christmas. . . and a luxury new car - Materialism, once thought a threat to seasonal Christian aspects, is now more a threat to social and family life - 24th December
 * The folly of private space travel - Allowing gazillionaires to experience zero gravity may seem harmless - 17th December
 * An inconvenient truth: the power of moral suasion - What politicians blame the rating agencies for is saying things that governments wish they could conceal - 10th December
 * Not a reward; rather an exercise of power - There are two ways to get people to do something: coercion and persuasion - 3rd December
 * Why climategate is a catastrophe for science - Emails hit support for the fight, but in US they probably killed it - 26th November
 * The protests failed but capitalism is still in the dock - As long as it has no ideology, tent cities are the entire message of Occupy Wall Street - 19th November
 * Raw and silly, but the Pirates may yet draft a new order - Germany’s Pirate party knows that information is power, just as money is power - 12th November
 * New rules for the succession are a right royal mistake - Change makes monarchy look more ridiculous - 5th November
 * Americans, put that in your pipe and smoke it - Christopher Caldwell describes how Herman Cain, who polls show as frontrunner for the Republican nomination, is making waves in Washington - 29th October
 * Piracy is just a part of a capitalist system - Illegal file downloads have aided the move to a bookless, cinema-less world - 24th October
 * Décroissance: how the French counter capitalism - Christopher Caldwell on a coalition of activists who say economic growth has done enough damage to our planet and must be reversed - 15th October
 * France’s battle to understand banks and banlieues - French voters see the world differently to their political leaders - 8th October
 * Putin and his timely lessons for western democrats - Even many of those who dislike Putin believe he saved the country from servility - 1st October
 * The president just does not get the American centre - Barack Obama is a typical American – the more he says, the less you know him - 24th September
 * Coofs, xylocarps and the noble glory of crosswords - At what point does looking for hints in reference books and online become ‘cheating’ - 18th September
 * French lessons in taking on fizzy drinks brigade - Having resisted a US-style tax protest, France will get a US-style tax - 10th September
 * Leaders of today: do crises demand craziness? - If mentally healthy leaders crumble in crises, we are in trouble - 3rd September
 * morals appeal more than French will admit'' - France retains the sexual morality of village and hierarchy, but it is an anachronism - 27th August
 * Buffett is wrong about soaking the rich'' - Berkshire Hathaway chief executive believes tax on the rich should go up - 20th August
 * death knell for the era of the British bobby'' - The urban riots have revealed the British policing system as untenable - 13th August
 * temptation and greatness of skyscraper ambition'' - Feats of engineering are often more symbolic than practical - 6th August
 * no to online lotteries'' - Why selling lottery tickets online is not a good idea - 23rd July
 * Amazon’s tax-free landscape needs bulldozing'' - The tax exemption, not technology, is what distinguishes the company from its rivals - 16th July
 * budget talks are entering their ‘Greek’ phase'' - The deficit may have reached dimensions at which politicians stop trying - 9th July
 * will not be the force to fix western economies'' - The world view of the put-upon taxpayer has won out over that of the fellow toiler - 2nd July
 * ads are more about class than compassion'' - These ads tell the truth on tobacco only in the sense that pornography does about sex - 25th June
 * from Kosovo for Nato in Libya'' - Fear of losing is incentive to escalate conflict - 11th June
 * for the future from China’s bathrooms'' - The big selling point of the US is its taste and sensibility - 4th June
 * not sacrifice still sway US politics'' - The establishment has not changed to reflect the new post-crash mood - 28th May
 * not look for a coherent ideology in violence'' - Terrorists get a hearing; homicidal people running amok do not - 20th May
 * praise of privacy rules'' - Super-injunctions are a sinister instrument - 14th May
 * with the intellectuals'' - Stubbornness, caginess and occasional sycophancy are needed to defend oneself in politics - 7th May
 * up for populism'' - A look at the effect of rising petrol prices on the US president’s popularity - 30th April
 * cups of platitudes'' - Greg Mortenson had difficulty distinguishing his own fortunes from those of his cause, or even humanity - 23rd April
 * is the fate of libraries to die'' - The government must focus on necessities and cut frills - 16th April
 * bankrupt nation wakes up'' - America has lost the plot on confronting its debt - 9th April
 * power will find a third-world backyard'' - Countries have learnt different lessons about energy from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima - 2nd April
 * history warts and all'' - Children cannot build a simple narrative if teachers are running down the credibility of what they impart - 26th March
 * war to die for but not control'' - The problem for US voters is that America provides most of the soldiers - 19th March
 * muckraking does free speech a disservice'' - Political prank ‘stings’ threaten to narrow the scope of the sayable - 12th March
 * fate written in the stores'' - Reflections on the death of Borders books - 5th March
 * America’s unions are not working any more'' - Budget battle in Wisconsin goes to the heart of collective bargaining - 26th February
 * is just the start'' - If you get paid to answer questions in a structured context, it is reasonable to fear the progeny of Watson, IBM’s quiz show-winning computer - 19th February
 * shakes a distant dictator from his dream'' - Hosni Mubarak’s role – that of speaking for Egypt – gradually won out over his person. And that was too bad for him - 12th February
 * principles clash with its interests'' - Anti-US forces in the Arab world have proved stronger than pro-US or neutral ones. Why should they not? - 5th February
 * and roots collide'' - Not knowing whom one’s parents were may gnaw more than it used to at those who were anonymously delivered - 29th January
 * of the Tiger Mothers'' - Amy Chua’s style of child-rearing, where one solution to substandard educational performance is punishment, is spreading anxiety across US - 22nd January
 * pitch perfect again'' - The president has allowed his allies to retreat from an argument they should not have got into in the first place - 15th January
 * Huck Finn tell it as it was'' - Fury tends to be directed at books that merely mention race. These are invariably anti-racist - 8th January



Articles: 2010

 * pardon Billy the Kid would be to deny history'' - US politicians are too often drunk on an idea of themselves as Lone Men of Integrity - 28th December
 * Italy still has Berlusconi'' - No opposition has presented an ideological alternative that voters prefer - 18th December
 * budget anarchism'' - The president is trying to respond to outraged voters without undoing his Democratic agenda - 11th December
 * protects its views on love'' - The Catholic idea of sex has its idiosyncracies, and condoms bring these to the fore - 27th November
 * the benefit of Mr Jobs'' - That The Beatles have put their songs on iTunes is dispiriting - 20th November
 * weak tea for the right'' - The former president misunderstood US conservatives - 13th November
 * limited Tea Party triumph'' - These elections are a clear victory for the Tea Party, but also reveal the movement’s limitations - 3rd November
 * America doesn’t do kings'' - Americans prefer a president who looks right in a dunce cap to a man who looks right in a crown - 30th October
 * tips off the markets'' - His gripe was that all algorithms tended to underestimate the risks of investing - 23rd October
 * by search engine'' - Google’s projects are less eccentric and more hard-headed than they appear - 16th October
 * luck on the train tracks'' - Our politics is too often a discussion between politicians and planners – not with the public - 9th October
 * tribal prosecution'' - Central banking sometimes requires political leaders to mislead - 2nd October
 * takes a comic turn'' - The idea that humour calms down political conflict is a misconception - 25th September
 * anti-Catholicism'' - Britain’s reception of Benedict XVI is the most hostile he has received - 18th September
 * faint recovery hopes'' - The president flaw is that he is not the person he said he was - 11th September
 * and misunderstood'' - The disturbing implications of a Twitter hoax - 4th September
 * reveal a rootless Europe'' - French immigration policy shows an unwillingness to assert national interest - 28th August
 * versus the pixelators'' - Germans are right to be worried about Google’s Streetview - 21st August
 * made beautiful'' - This film is a ravishing indictment of the frenzy of modern life - 14th August
 * mosque that wrecks bridges'' - Building a mega-mosque at Ground Zero is a bad idea - 7th August
 * Turkey sits outside the tent'' - EU members have good reason to be cautious about Turkish accession - 31st July
 * Black profits from a grey law'' - ‘Honest-services fraud’ could apply even to an employee who calls in sick to go to a baseball game - 24th July
 * bearing gifts'' - Bill Gates and Warren Buffett may have misjudged the public mood - 17th July
 * to the Walmart moms'' - While less ideological than Tea Partiers, Walmart moms are more important electorally - 10th July
 * gains from a close call'' - The possibility of a viable leftwing coalition looks more remote than it did a month ago - 3rd July
 * incoherent resignation'' - McChrystal’s comments come when the president is seen as weak - 26th June
 * high on oil to hear Obama'' - President warns of bad results if the US does not moderate its consumption - 19th June
 * feels the ire of a Machiavelli'' - Disasters such as that in the Gulf can be addressed without witch-hunts - 12th June
 * had no other choice'' - When participants in a conflict blur the line between civilians and combatants, good options disappear - 5th June
 * wild in Tivoli Gardens'' - Jamaica’s gangs have mastered globalisation more quickly than its government - 29th May
 * and the primaries'' -Americans must decide whether they are going to reject Obama’s government or pay for it - 22nd May
 * oil outrage will run dry'' - Deepwater makes the transition to alternative fuels less, not more, likely - 8th May
 * moves the boundaries'' - Immigration policy has taken a populist turn - 1st May
 * to discriminate'' - The difference between powerful elites and endangered minorities - 24th April
 * kids are not alright'' - Americans are trying to legislate their way out of the ‘liberation’ they imposed in the 1960s - 10th April
 * flexes its muscles'' - No longer mainly economic ballast, Berlin now speaks for Europe - 3rd April
 * repeal is no lost cause'' - The law rests on the kind of actuarial sleight of hand that repels voters - 31st March
 * sex and the City'' - Erotic capital provides a new framework for thinking about gender issues - 27th March
 * flows in Bangkok'' - When democracy fails the way is open to more visceral appeals - 20th March
 * prey on your mind'' - Video games are increasingly sophisticated, subtle and dangerous - 13th March
 * truths for California'' - Jerry Brown, a former governor of Califormia, wants his old job back - 6th March
 * Google now a monopoly?'' - Brussels faces the task of searching the company’s practices - 27th February
 * much brain on Capitol Hill'' - The politics of Capitol Hill is not, to use Evan Bayh’s word, “brain-dead”. If only it were. Representative bodies should not be brainy places. Democracy means keeping government simple enough so that ordinary citizens can continue to run it - 20th February
 * fat is not a First Lady’s issue'' - American’s are unlikely to put fitness first - 13th February
 * step back for mankind'' - America must not give up on lunar exploration - 6th February
 * in a meritocracy'' - The problem is that the UK's new report on equality takes 'inequality' as a synonym for 'prejudice and discrimination', which it often is not - 30th January
 * ill-health of democracy'' - Republicans are wrong to assume their own economic mismanagement has been forgotten - 23rd January
 * bank on voters forgetting'' - Years from now, as the public comes to realise that it will spend a generation paying for the bail-outs, rage against bankers may be more intense, not less - 16th January
 * freedom and cartoonists'' - Political violence is aimed at promoting a cause – in this case, Islam. But if a country cannot stop the violence directly, the public will demand it is stopped indirectly - 9th January
 * really is speeding up'' - The Beatles’ release of ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 is now closer to the first world war than it is to us - 2nd January



Articles: 2009

 * is no test for Trident'' - Nuclear weapons are not meant to counter terrorism. They are meant to counter nuclear weapons. If Britain is to be something other than a province of Europe, it must have its own nuclear deterrent - 19th December
 * change, the great leveller'' - The concept of victims and perpetrators breaks down when it comes to global warming. Economies collude in pollution. Global warming is not a bilateral problem, it is a global problem - 12th Decermber
 * pious Sabbath decree'' - The driving force behind misgivings about Sunday shopping is worry over globalisation, and the sort of capitalism that has landed us in such a mess over the past year or two - 5th December
 * climate of suspicion'' - On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, the 3,000 e-mails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and published last week are a blow to global-warming activists - 28th November
 * and the culture wars'' - For novelist NDiaye’s defenders, it is not enough that politician Eric Raoult be wrong – he must be Hitler - 21st November
 * need not be insane'' - In Major Hasan’s case, bureaucrats were scared to speak their minds - 14th November
 * in the Age of Obama'' - Democrats must wrap themselves in the mantle of Obama’s programme. But what is that? - 7th November
 * return of rulings on faith'' - on France v the Church of Scientology - 31st October
 * state and journalism'' - The authors of a recent report call upon the government to support journalism, but in that case the taxpayer ought to have a say in what he pays for - 24th October
 * travesty of the commons'' - The winner of this year’s Nobel economics prize may have succeeded in countering the influence of one of the most bizarre – and influential – social science papers of our time - 17th October
 * (and mice) on film'' - Just as pornography used to pass itself off as medical advice, animal violence will pass itself off as art - 10th October
 * and the maiden'' - It has grown harder to feel sympathy for Polanski since the intervention of his Hollywood friends – imagine other industries trying such special pleading - 3rd October
 * age of atonement'' - The president’s UN speech distanced him from Bush but more global co-operation will not sit well with the American people - 26th September
 * suicides complicate corporate life'' - Blaming company culture for workers’ deaths is simplistic but entirely natural – and hard to combat - 19th September
 * writes its own rules'' - If $125m is all it costs to facilitate a hugely beneficial cyber-library, then who needs Google? - 12th September
 * west plays Gaddafi’s game'' - Politicians are not being outsmarted, they are caving in - 5th September
 * opposite of education'' - Stanley Kaplan, the self-taught educator who died at 90 this week, can lay a claim to having reshaped American society - 29th August
 * blind faith in bigness'' - We have lost the sense that big institutions can be a problem - 22nd August
 * cannot be nameless'' - Anonymity for defendants is hard to justify - 15th August
 * the court of King Kim'' - Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea was not a humanitarian effort, as he claims, but a diplomatic one that blurred the lines of state power - 8th August
 * trifles do concern the law'' - How seriously the property rights of employers should be enforced against employees is a fuzzy area - 1st July
 * fiscal charade'' - The state’s problems are those of ‘direct democracy’: the state’s laws are shaped by plebiscites to a degree unmatched outside Venezuela - 25th July
 * unsentimental education'' - Obama is right to focus on community colleges - 18th July
 * morals and money'' - To judge from his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, published this week, Pope Benedict XVI agrees with those who say that something has gone wrong with the way the world does business - 11th July
 * test of legal logic for US civil rights'' - Enforcement is now more pragmatic, less principled, and more corrosive to social ideas of fairness - 4th July
 * has misread Islam'' - Who has the problem with liberty? - 27th June
 * catch in the copyright'' - Unfortunately for J.D. Salinger, you cannot copyright departure, introspection and nostalgia - 20th June
 * have made a choice'' - There are costs and benefits in an addiction – the problem is they are difficult to value. Where they become easily calculable, recovery rates are excellent - 13th June
 * politics of self-abasement'' - Obama’s Middle East trip gave an inkling of what diplomacy is like when someone else has the upper hand - 6th June
 * expenses: a view from the US'' - The outrage is excessive - 30th May
 * Gordian knot'' - If Americans want to reinstate rights, they will probably have to trade some security. That is the bargain - 23rd May
 * war on virtual piracy'' - In regulating the internet, France has been generally courageous and usually correct. The new Hadopi law should help in the fight against illegal downloading - 16th May
 * new hunger for headlines'' - Hunger striking, which was considered rare and radical when Bobby Sands did it 28 years ago, has gone mainstream - 9th May
 * has a weird appeal'' - There is a new fascination for life after people - 2nd May
 * honour among pirates'' - The desire to deck today’s Indian Ocean pirates out with an ethical system is strong in some quarters. But guff about their ‘code of conduct’ will be short-lived - 25th April
 * will not free Cuba'' - If Barack Obama is defending the embargo with his new approach, he is defending it in a way that makes manifest its obsolescence and illogic - 18th April
 * edge and under scrutiny'' - British police are a mirror of the society they control – and they believe they are dealing with a heavily armed and undeferential public - 11th April
 * half remembered'' - The hypocrisy of those who would hang Jacqui Smith out to dry is fully a match for her own - 4th April
 * that fail the test of time'' - It is easy to emerge from a sampling of the volumes of the monumental Dictionary of American Regional English underwhelmed by its subject - 28th March
 * populism but opposition'' - The case for huge executive salaries in the financial sector has crumbled with the finance system - 21st March
 * Madoff’s life of make-believe'' - A key to his infamy lies in the words ‘split-strike conversion strategy’. That is the explanation he gave for his spectacularly consistent returns - 14th March
 * by another name'' - If lax labour standards or minimal welfare states constitute unfair trade practices, then so do subsidies of other kinds - 7th March
 * to hell revisited'' - The 1956 Highway Act exacerbated the very problems President Obama has been most eager to solve - 28th February
 * for the Starbucks'' - The chain will have to serve a different function in the bust economy than in the boom. Maybe espresso bars will thrive as purveyors of ‘cheap luxury’, the way cinemas did in the 1930s - 21st February
 * malevolent but mediocre'' - No individual was capable of predicting the crisis. But the bankers were paid as if they were - 14th February
 * right to jam your phone'' - how technology can corrode order - 7th February
 * the stimulus Obama’s Iraq?'' - About a third of the bill – the welfare and social service parts – will be exceedingly hard to end - 31st January
 * rhyme without reason'' - Evidence mounts that official poetry has no natural place in American life - 24th January
 * who needs them?'' - The Prado has posted 14 paintings on GoogleEarth. The experiment reopens the question of what makes art museums worth visiting - 17th January
 * limits of Senate power'' - If it admits Burris, the Democratic majority will be doing the right thing, but for reasons of expedience - 10th January
 * misunderstood doctrine'' - Western policy towards Islam did considerably more to produce Vladimir Putin than it did to produce Osama bin Laden - 3rd January (Samuel P. Huntington, political scientist)



Articles: 2008

 * smoke without ire'' - The attention paid to Barack Obama’s relationship to cigarettes is evidence of a pathology – and not on the part of the president-elect - 27th December 2008
 * for some morality trades'' - The public is unsure whether the global finance system seized up because it was mismanaged or because it was, in a moral sense, wrong - 20th December 2008
 * and poor English'' - Harvard’s plans to restructure its literature course reveal a confusion about what a college English department is supposed to do - 13th December 2008
 * are good for governance'' - No government ever ought to be leak-proof. The vast majority of stuff that leaks ought to leak - 6th December 2008
 * problem with Hillary'' - Mrs Clinton’s probable nomination as US secretary of state is a worry. She shows a willingness to interfere in the internal workings of sovereign countries, which would require force. It is questionable whether the tools of force she extols are still effective - 29th November 2008
 * ‘right’ to work until 70'' - The same French government policy that a 48-year-old views as a right, a 68-year-old may view as an imposition - 22nd November 2008
 * Peeping Toms'' - tabloids and the basic right to privacy - 15th November 2008
 * radical moderate'' -The new president did not stand up for progressive values or talk about gun control and abortion the way Democrats used to - 8th November 2008
 * hedonists’ reckoning'' - We should worry less about the bigness of our problems than about the smallness of our character - 1st November 2008
 * and history’s true character'' - Oliver Stone’s film fails to capture the reality of the US president and his dime-a-dozen personality - 24th October 2008
 * culture’s existential angst'' - France is coming to see that it is not so much a protector of minority cultures as a minority culture itself - 18th October 2008
 * excesses of pragmatism'' - Sometimes people are forced to choose which they want more – democracy or prosperity. We are picking the latter - 11th October 2008
 * disturbing darn debate'' - It is astonishing what an unsteerable ship an American presidential campaign is - 4th October 2008
 * dawns in real estate'' - Thanks in large part to tax laws, US homeowners saw their houses become investment engines – rickety ones - 27th September 2008
 * no free lunch and no free economy'' - Having discovered there is no such thing as a free lunch, Americans now suspect there is no such thing as a free economy - 20th September 2008
 * only wants to know'' - By midweek, Edvige, the new police database, had few supporters anywhere in French politics - 13 September 2008
 * evolution of creationism'' - The battle over Darwin’s theory is a class conflict disguised as a religious or moral conflict - 6th September 2008
 * error is struck out'' - Whether or not video replay raises the quality of refereeing, it renders US football less gladiatorial and more litigative - 30th August 2008
 * in the human traffic'' - Traffic, by the science journalist Tom Vanderbilt, has become the big succès d’estime of the US summer publishing season - 23rd August 2008
 * of the Obamacans'' - It is neither on foreign policy nor on economics but on religious values that Barack Obama has made his big pitch to party-switchers - 16th August 2008
 * folly of a trans-fat tax'' - In any health-conscious country, consumer knowledge about trans fats will create a stampede away from them - 9th August 2008
 * The price of saying sorry - If slavery has warped US society as the bill claims, Americans of all races are owed an apology - 2nd August 2008
 * Parallel visions of Sarkozy - The president’s peccadilloes are overshadowing his real achievements in modernising reform-resistant France - 26th July 2008
 * Hear the one about Obama? - Comedy has never been more important to American politics, perhaps as a consequence, it has never been less funny - 19th July 2008
 * Communion as discord - The battles within the Anglican Church’s are a symptom of the newfound might of African Christianity - 12th July 2008
 * Philanthropy goes to the dogs - Generosity often means relinquishing power. It does not mean assigning armies of the less wealthy to tasks of one’s own devising - 5th July 2008
 * The ideology of teen pregnancy - Every year at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, three or four girls get pregnant. But not this year. This year 17 did - 28th June 2008
 * Italy is right to curb it's politicised judges - Enduring Silvio Berlusconi’s behaviour last week was like “sitting through a film you’ve seen before”, said Senator Anna Finocchiaro, the parliamentary head of Italy’s Democratic party. Not two months after starting his third stint as prime minister, Mr Berlusconi is in a familiar controversy - 21st June 2008
 * Web gossip is forever - There is, it turns out, something worse than being dragged through a messy divorce in court – being dragged through a messy divorce in cyberspace - 14th June 2008
 * Spying and the abuse of data - Setting up cameras and monitoring employees’ toilet breaks, as the supermarket chain Lidl did; keeping a “black money” fund for kickbacks to officials in developing countries, as Siemens allegedly did; diverting money to pay for call girls for refractory board members, as Volkswagen did ... German executives have not been at their best lately - 7th June 2008
 * Military makes its sacred claim - You can measure the continuing power shift in Washington by looking at the costly package of veterans’ benefits sponsored by James Webb, the Virginia senator elected on an anti-Iraq war platform in 2006 - 1st June 2008
 * Network power that works too well - At the heart of globalisation is a basic, and politically explosive, mystery; globalisation proceeds through the breaking down of boundaries, the unfolding of diversity and freedom of choice – so why is it experienced by so many people as a constriction, an oppression and a loss of freedom? - 24th May 2008
 * Real spies grow harder to find - New details emerged this week of how Syria managed to conceal the secret nuclear plant it was building with North Korean help, and how close to producing plutonium it was before it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike last autumn - 17th May 2008
 * Disasters and dictatorships - About 2,000 square miles of Burma’s Irrawaddy delta are still under water a week after the arrival of cyclone Nargis - 10th May 2008
 * Austria, incest: real news at last - The Austrian incest story – the one about the “devil dungeon” or the “sex-hell pit”, to use The Sun’s descriptions – is the archetypal tabloid story. It is violent, macabre, conducive to easy moral outrage and of no practical interest to anybody - 3rd May 2008
 * More mortal than some - Americans were shocked on Tuesday to read the results of a study by four scientists affiliated to the Initiative for Global Health at Harvard University.* Since 1983 life expectancy has declined for women in hundreds of US counties, most of them in the south, and for men in a dozen counties - 26th April 2008
 * Humility and Harry Potter - “We all know I’ve made enough money,” said J.K. Rowling, the author, in a courtroom in New York City this week. “That’s absolutely not why I’m here.” - 19th April 2008
 * The lazy, crazy middle class - Two years ago, several prominent economists gathered in Italy to debate the wide gap in annual working hours that separates the workaholic US from leisure-obsessed Europe. The conference was called: “Are Europeans Lazy? Or Americans Crazy?” - 12th April 2008
 * The perils of shaping choice - This week’s New York Times/CBS poll, which showed Americans more pessimistic about their country’s prospects than they have been in decades, yielded a puzzling figure. In the midst of a spreading credit crisis, barely a quarter of Americans (28 per cent) blame the banks that made bad loans and even fewer (14 per cent) blame borrowers. A big plurality (40 per cent) blame government - 5th April 2008
 * China will not be cowed - Boycotting the Olympic Games scheduled for Beijing next August is a solution that has long been in search of a problem - 29th March 2008
 * Obama breaks the secret code - Towards the end of his speech about race on Tuesday, Barack Obama made an observation that was raw enough to knock any attentive American listener out of his chair - 22nd March 2008
 * Birth of a ‘creedal’ nation - Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney-general, released a report called “Citizenship: Our Common Bond” this week that seeks to redefine what it means to be a British citizen - 15th March 2008
 * Tall tales of the would-be victim - Love and Consequences – the memoir of a half-American Indian girl adopted into a caring but star-crossed black family in gang-infested Los Angeles – was praised to the skies last week - 8th March 2008
 * What Obama owes to Reagan - There was a curious moment in Tuesday’s televised debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - 1st March 2008
 * The illusion of Cuba’s caudillo - When Ernest Hemingway survived a plane crash in Uganda in 1954, he was able to read his own obituaries. A similar diversion may await Fidel Castro - Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times, 23rd February 2008
 * A-listers at the barricades - When several Hollywood studios reached an agreement with the Writers Guild of America last weekend, ending a strike that had lasted 100 days, the film director, Michael Moore, called it “an historic moment for labour in this country” - 16th February 2008
 * Why Kerviel is so unsettling - “You lose a sense of the amounts when you’re doing this kind of job,” the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel told Agence France-Presse this week. “Everything gets dematerialised. You can get carried away.” - 9th February 2008
 * Bipartisan allegiances - Something bizarre is happening in the minds of American voters. Two US presidential candidates – the Democrat Barack Obama and the Republican John McCain – are attracting supporters who oppose their stances on major issues - 2nd February 2008
 * In defence of the right to offend - The Netherlands has spent the past several weeks in a political crisis out of a novel by Borges. People are worried that a politician might say something he has already said. And they are divided over how to interpret a film that may not exist - 26th January 2008
 * Confusion over Scientology - In a four-year-old video that was much watched on the internet this week, the actor Tom Cruise mentioned various leaders he had met around the world. “They want help,” he said, “and they are depending on people who know, and who can be effective and do it, and that’s us.” - 19th January 2008
 * Politics of the personal - Hillary Clinton used a moment of brilliantly staged emotion to win the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday, which every opinion poll had predicted she would lose - 12th January 2008
 * A question of competition - A business can occasionally bring out products that are too popular for its own good. Such a product is the New England Patriots football team. Such a business is the National Football League and specifically its pay-television spin-off, the NFL Network - 5th January 2008



Links:

 * wikipedia bio
 * Spectator articles