{"quotes":[{"text":"Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.","author":"Alex Morritt","tags":["aggression","armageddon","armies","army","caucasus","caucasus-region","checkmate","checks-and-balances","cold-war","conflict-management","conflict-resolution","conflicts","cool-response","crimea","defence","defences","destruction-of-us","diplomacy","eastern-europe","eastern-european","end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it","error","errors","escalation","fear-of-unknown","fear","fears","fears-and-doubts","force","forces","forces-of-darkness","geopolitical-forces","geopolitical-tension","geopolitics","historical-perspective","history-repeating-itself","impasse","inexorably","international-community","international-relations","international-relationships","lack-of-judgement","learning-from-mistakes","lessons-learned","lessons-learned-in-life","lessons-of-life","live-and-learn","mexican-standoff","military","military-history","military","military-theory","moscow","moscow-rules","nato","nuclear-power","nuclear-proliferation","nuclear-threat","nuclear-weapons","one-upmanship","peace-on-earth","peace","peacemaker","political-commentary","political-quandary","political","politics-observation","poor-judgement","poor-leadership","power-struggle","power-struggles","quandary","red-army","regressing","regression","repeat-mistakes","repeated-mistake","repeating-the-past","rules-of-engagement","russia","russian-federation","sabre-rattling","shiver","shivers","sliding","soviet-occupation","soviet-russia","soviet-union","sphere-of-influence","spine-chilling","stalemate","standoff","struggles","super-powers","tension","treaty","troops","ukraine","warfare","warmonger","wars","weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"id":105706,"author_id":"Alex+Morritt"},{"text":"Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their mee.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["19th-century","ancestry","antisemitism","arabs","armageddon","arthur-balfour","bedouin","bolshevism","britain","christianity","colonialism","crimea","crimean-war","democracy","diplomacy","ethnic-cleansing","fanaticism","france","free-speech","history","house-arrest","israel","jerusalem","jews","leftism","london","oppression","palestine","palestinians","persecution","philip-roth","raimonda-tawil","ramallah","religious-extremism","russia","secularism","territory","torture","war","world-war-i","zealotry"],"id":427141,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":2,"pages":1}}