the thursday essay: all articles

The murderous impulse to mass violence has deep roots in human experience

Globalisation connects and fragments the world. Its contradictions are inside us - and transforming us

A fashionable case for a post-neocon alliance is flawed

Why is evidence-based, reason-fuelled research the subject of a great refusal?

The Kremlin deploys the young to halt the democracy train

"Everything is broken, and there is total movement." Ivan Briscoe plunges into the maelstrom of the "Bolivarian revolution"

China's purchase of a stake in Barclays bank signals a new phase in its global economic strategy

How can saviours of life become takers? And does the history of Islamic medicine have any place in this grisly story?

Egypt is stuck: its politics blocked, its young frustrated, its future cloudy. Is there a way out?

Ed Husain's entanglement with radical Islam is a lesson in the seductions of dogma

Palestinians' modern experience is defined by exile, remembrance and longing. How can the past give meaning to the present?

Inside Islamabad's Red Mosque, Anatol Lieven reports on a challenge that reaches far beyond Pervez Musharraf's regime

Tony Blair promised to renew a fractious relationship. Did he? Simon Berlaymont takes the measure