Blog posts tagged "jonathan rugman"

May 23, 2012 4:00 pm 2 Comments

Jonathan Rugman finds in Greece that the people prefer to believe they can keep the way of life they have grown accustomed to and have it financed with other people's money.

May 6, 2012 11:59 am No Comments

Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, France's two presidential candidates, both talk of change - but what they are actually engaged in, blogs Jonathan Rugman, is the business of preservation.

February 2, 2012 1:20 pm 1 Comment

If it wasn't for a hard core of violent youths, many of them football fans, manning the barricades and taking on the police a year ago, would Egypt's revolution have gone as far as it has?

January 25, 2012 9:41 pm No Comments

The British Museum director - Britain's foremost cultural ambassador - has nimbly walked through another political minefield to bring Islam's holiest site to this revered corner of Bloomsbury in London.

December 16, 2011 1:33 pm 4 Comments

I first met Christopher Hitchens when he was driving a jeep across northern Iraq 20 years ago and stopped to offer me a lift. He talked for hours, about anything and everything, and the time whizzed by as we negotiated precarious mountain passes.

November 18, 2011 7:48 pm No Comments

The problem with brokering a resolution to the situation in Syria is that there are just too many regional actors with different agendas.

November 17, 2011 5:26 pm 1 Comment

Behind the scenes, the diplomatic momentum on Syria is growing. We are not just talking about the Arab League giving President Assad three days to halt the violence. I understand that senior American diplomats are travelling to Paris today to meet Syrian opposition figures, as well as a conclave of the British, French, Turks, Saudis [...]

November 16, 2011 8:05 pm 2 Comments

MI6 had struck up such a budding relationship with Libyan Intelligence in the preceding years that when they wanted to kill our people earlier this year, we seem to have known about it. Which illustrates a point the spooks often like to make: that it is in Britain's national interests to do business with people we don't like.

1:08 pm No Comments

MI6 in particular has suffered some hard reputational knocks and doesn't like it. Mr Hague is trying to shape the debate about it in the media, by giving those who write and comment on it a better idea of how it works, as Jonathan Rugman reports.

November 11, 2011 1:14 pm 1 Comment

That civil war many predict if President Bashar al-Assad is deposed.... well it may have already started.