There is a story about an enthusiastic American who took a phlegmatic English friend to see the Niagara Falls. “Isn’t that amazing?” exclaimed the American. “Look at that vast mass of water dashing over that enormous cliff!” “But what,” asked the Englishman, “is to stop it?” My father, Claud Cockburn, used to tell this fable…
The best thing that can be said about outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May is that she did not cause irreparable harm to her country or the world. The worst that can be said is that she stubbornly sat by and passively facilitated a phenomenon which caused millions of people to lose faith in a…
Mrs Thatcher’s great sell-off of publicly owned services and assets, continued by successive governments, started exactly forty years ago to a fanfare of positive publicity. Small shareholders own only a tiny proportion of the billion of pounds worth of assets that were sold off. Many of these assets are now owned by hedge funds. A large number are in foreign ownership,…
At the “end of the world,” spanning the southernmost regions of Argentina and Chile, lies the land of Patagonia, much of which remains a pristine wilderness that has inspired countless naturalists and would-be adventurers with its dramatic landscapes and natural beauty. For many, it is a place that still feels remarkably untouched and removed from…
On Tuesday in the British parliament, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry asked an urgent question relating to allegations that British troops have been covertly fighting in Yemen and supporting the Saudi-led coalition. As reported in the Mail on Sunday, five British special forces troops from the elite Special Boat Service (SBS) were injured while “advising” Saudi Arabia on…
Today marks the start of the fifth year of the Anglo-American bombing campaign against Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. Since then, the war has been as devastating as it has been futile. While it was supposed to defeat the rebel Houthi movement, today most of the major population centres remain under Houthi control,…
