ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Throwing stones in glass houses
GAVIN O’TOOLE observes that the call for a new international framework for conflict mediation is fatally marred by a partisan position on the Isreali-Gazan conflict
PLACE OF DISCORD: The UN General Assembly has adopted, on October 26 2023, a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza and demands a “continuous, sufficient and unhindered” provision of lifesaving supplies and services for civilians trapped inside the enclave
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Negotiating with the Devil: Inside the World of Armed Conflict Mediation
Pierre Hazan
Hurst, £18.99
IN 1929 from his fascist cell, Antonio Gramsci described epochal changes as Europe tore itself apart — an old world was dying and a new one was struggling to be born.
It was “a time of monsters,” the Italian Marxist warned, with chilling prescience.
Pierre Hazan uses this metaphor to situate the key dilemmas facing conflict mediators today in a similarly dark landscape in order to ask how they are to fulfil their role in a deeply divided multipolar world where the very idea of an “international community” is redundant.
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GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds an analysis of culture that explains why political conflicts today are focused more on values and identity than the economy and social questions
The argument that labour parties, supported by conservative trade unions, are instrumental to capitalism has contemporary resonance, suggests GAVIN O’TOOLE
