Paul Robinson Journalist Profile

Articles

Parallel Realities

Aug 22, 2024 | source.ie | Paul Robinson

Issue 4 Spring 1995View Contents ▸Parallel Realities, published last November by Blackstaff Press with sponsorship from the IDB, ABSA, and Black Bush, has all the ingredients of a nice coffee-table book. It also has all the ingredients of a nice advertising campaign. But if we take the photographs within and mount them on a gallery wall the ingredients lack something; the resulting taste is bland and insipid, the viewer craves something more. It's a matter of context.
Podcast #240: Parsi Bombay, Then and Now

Jun 25, 2024 | quillette.com | Holly Lawford-Smith |Jonathan Kay |John Lloyd |Paul Robinson

Introduction: Hello everyone, welcome to the Quillette podcast. I’m your host this week, Iona Italia, and my guest is Nev March. Nev is a former business analyst turned novelist. Her debut novel, Murder in Old Bombay, was published in 2020, and it’s the first in a series of mysteries featuring the detective James (Jim) Agnihotri. There are two sequels already out: Peril at the Exposition (2022) and The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret (2023). And I believe you’re currently writing book four.
Sin and Social Science

Jun 24, 2024 | quillette.com | John Lloyd |Paul Robinson |Jeffrey Seaman |Pamela Paresky

A review of Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative by Glenn Loury, 448 pages, W.W. Norton and Co. (May 2024)When Sigmund Freud was asked by his friend, German novelist Arnold Zweig, for permission to write Freud’s biography, Freud replied:No, I am far too fond of you to allow such a thing to happen.
Stop Decriminalising Crime

Jun 23, 2024 | quillette.com | Paul Robinson |Pamela Paresky |Leon Hadar |Jeffrey Seaman

In San Francisco, a would-be thief stabs an elderly storeowner. In Philadelphia, a young black man bleeds out on the street. In California, an illegal immigrant released from jail goes on a killing spree. These three snapshots of tragedy share a common, preventable cause—progressive reforms that de facto decriminalised crime. America is increasingly suffering from under-criminalisation—a problem caused by reformers refusing to punish conduct the community views as criminal.
WRITING AND READING

May 23, 2024 | alethonews.com | James Tracy |Paul Robinson

WRITING AND READING BY PAUL ROBINSON | IRRUSSIANALITY | MAY 22, 2024In case anybody is interested in the inputs and outputs of my intellectual life, here is a little update on what I have been writing and reading. ReadingHere are a few things I have read recently that might be of interested to purveyors of this site:Ian Proud is a former British diplomat who served in the UK’s embassy in Moscow and was also responsible for organizing British sanctions against the Russian Federation.
Putin is here to stay, whether the West likes it or not

Mar 19, 2024 | canadiandimension.com | Paul Robinson

As elections go, the presidential contest that took place in Russia last week must rank as among the most unexciting of recent history. Not only was the result never in doubt, but there was not even much by way of campaigning, either by President (and now President-reelect) Vladimir Putin or by those standing against him. The only issues were exactly how many people would turn out and vote and by how much Putin would be said to have won.
Lenin: a centenary reflection

Jan 22, 2024 | canadiandimension.com | Paul Robinson

“Ленин жил. Ленин жив. Ленин будет жить.” “Lenin lived. Lenin lives. Lenin will keep on living.” This popular slogan reflected the central role in Soviet ideology of the Soviet Union’s first leader, Vladimir Lenin, who died one hundred years ago yesterday. As a Marxist, Lenin was committed to a theory that stressed the impersonal forces of history. Yet his own life proved how a single individual can redirect those forces in a new direction. Lenin did not cause the Russian Revolutions of 1917.
A decade after Euromaidan, Ukraine more fractured than ever

Nov 22, 2023 | canadiandimension.com | Paul Robinson

Of all the political events that have rocked Europe in recent years, it is probably fair to say that none have been as important, or as tragic, as the mass protest known as ‘Euromaidan’ that began in Ukraine ten years ago, on November 21, 2013. Euromaidan lasted four months, culminating in the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. One cannot tell what condition Ukraine would have been in today were it not for Euromaidan.
Shock therapy and Russia’s fatal turn

Oct 4, 2023 | canadiandimension.com | Paul Robinson

There are events that at the time seem to portend one thing but years later take on a very different hue. So it is with the dramatic political crisis that erupted in Russia 30 years ago this week, a crisis that ended with tanks of the Russian army blasting the country’s parliament, the Supreme Soviet, into submission. Back then, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was a hero in the West.
Nagorno-Karabakh and the failure of Armenia’s ‘colour revolution’

Sep 22, 2023 | canadiandimension.com | Paul Robinson

Thursday was Armenia’s independence day. This year, however, there was very little for Armenians to celebrate. Just one day earlier, the authorities of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh had in effect capitulated to Azerbaijan following a brief offensive by the Azerbaijani armed forces.