GORDON PARSONS is bowled over by a skilfully stripped down and powerfully relevant production of Hamlet
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
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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.
More from this author
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GAVIN O’TOOLE explores the resistance expressed by central American artists to their own erasure by US imperialist policies
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Here’s an antidote to the Venezuela election-induced tantrums of Western elites. GAVIN O’TOOLE reviews it
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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
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The argument that labour parties, supported by conservative trade unions, are instrumental to capitalism has contemporary resonance, suggests GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Meanwhile, Hamas names masterminded behind the October 7 attacks as its new leader
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World calls on Israel to halt its slaughter of helpless refugees trapped in Rafah