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Peter Bach

Peter Bach

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As Though It Mattered: Hollywood, AI and the End of Original Ideas

The film operated according to a different logic altogether. Not frivolous, exactly, but curiously unanchored. It was as though the relationship...

friday 10

CounterPunch

Peter Bach

Only Four Weeks to Go

Diego Maradona took the ball near halfway, skipped past five England players, rounded the goalkeeper, and calmly scored what is still regarded as the...

12.05.2026 10

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Peter Bach

Picnic on a Receding Glacier

Instrument records and long-term observations show that Alpine glaciers have been retreating and thinning significantly since the end of the Little...

08.05.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Between Order and Upheaval

“In my beginning is my end,” wrote T. S. Eliot. Every so often—after writing nearly a dozen articles on this subject—I return to the same...

05.05.2026 4

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Peter Bach

Buckingham Palace’s Draft Folder (Do Not Send)

I managed to get my hands on a copy of His Majesty’s forthcoming planned Banquet speech during the State Visit to the United States: My dear Mr...

28.04.2026 10

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Peter Bach

A Single Field of Grief: American and Iranian Anti-War Voices

I have sought out the following to show that peace can be mutual across warring sides. The key is not to drift into maudlinness or sentimentality....

22.04.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Twilight of the Strongmen

Orbán is not yesterday’s story so much as a figure already ripe for perspective. A proper valediction might do more than mark the end of one...

17.04.2026 10

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Peter Bach

The Ballroom and the Brink

A lot of people argue that we Brits should stop obsessing over the United States. After all, we have enough on our plate, not least energy bills set...

14.04.2026 9

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Peter Bach

Don’t Forget Ukraine

Was it just me or was there nothing more weird than when the US over a year ago opened up direct US-Russian talks on Ukraine without even having...

12.04.2026 10

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Peter Bach

When America Becomes Its President

Since the latest tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has pointed out that US...

08.04.2026 10

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Peter Bach

The UK, Repackaged for US Culture Wars

An odd patchwork of British figures—among them Liz Truss, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage, continue, in varying forms, to present the United...

02.04.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Where the Horses Are Still Running

I hadn’t expected to go to Greece. Least of all to be invited to meet a man whose life seemed to belong to another era—a life that moved so easily...

25.03.2026 30

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Peter Bach

Kerouac Reconsidered

I came across Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums in a chain bookshop at King’s Cross station. I was on my way to interview a radical publisher and...

14.03.2026 20

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Peter Bach

The Long War: Iran’s Oldest Strategy

Most discussions of Iran revolve around oil, escalation, and regime change. Yet Iran today feels easier to understand as part of a much older pattern....

13.03.2026 30

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Peter Bach

The Dubai Decompression Loop

The mountains always felt close when the aircraft lifted out of Kabul. During the Afghanistan war, Dubai became a strange airlock between two...

10.03.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Escalation on the Durand Line

On Iran’s eastern flank, far from the Gulf states now in the crosshairs, another conflict continues to grow. Pakistan has declared what it now calls...

02.03.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Iran and Ukraine: Narrow World

If you think about it, the world’s not that wide. It only feels that way on maps. It gets pretty narrow at key pressure points like the thin ribbon...

25.02.2026 10

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Peter Bach

People Turn to Poison Quick

As the Buzzcocks sang in Ever Fallen in Love, “You spurn my natural emotions…” But I’m not talking romance here. I’m talking the spurning of...

18.02.2026 30

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Peter Bach

Megaphones Made of Silence: Ai Weiwei at Odds With Power

In response to Ai Weiwei’s art, the Chinese authorities censored his exhibitions, erased his online presence, demolished his studio, confiscated his...

11.02.2026 10

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Peter Bach

A Wave of Defections

On Thursday 26 February 2026, the Gorton and Denton by-election could introduce to UK politics a register of despair not heard in Manchester since Joy...

04.02.2026 20

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Peter Bach

Diary of Mechanical Benediction

When I was a child, the world felt vast enough to resist you. Things didn’t always work because you needed them to, and sometimes they refused. I...

02.02.2026 30

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Peter Bach

Britain’s Unions Are Back, Just Not the Way You Expected

The scale of industrial disputes currently taking place across the UK suggests a trade-union landscape in motion. Unions are depicted as more...

29.01.2026 10

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Peter Bach

Diary of Conversations at Altitude

I have a friend drawn to mountains. When he isn’t in the UK, he’s usually somewhere in the Nordic region or the Himalayas, where he is now. It’s...

23.01.2026 20

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Peter Bach

South Sudan After the Pilgrimage: When Moral Attention Isn’t Enough

Nearly two years after Pope Francis’s unprecedented ecumenical pilgrimage to South Sudan, the country is once again sliding towards violence,...

21.01.2026 30

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Peter Bach

Protest, Pressure, and the Risk of Misreading Iran  

Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of Iran, released a video in Farsi last week calling on Iranians to go outside on Thursday and Friday evenings at 8pm....

14.01.2026 30

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Peter Bach

Is Greenland Next?

In the recent Atlantic interview, Donald Trump reiterated that the United States “absolutely needs Greenland,” effectively renewing his push for...

07.01.2026 30

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Peter Bach

War and Peace in a Post-European America

The strained smiles and fixed expressions of European and Ukrainian leaders in London recently told their own story. President Zelenskyy met with Keir...

21.12.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Melancholia in the Bloodstream: Europe, America, and the Weight of Misunderstanding

I have been thinking about what non-sensational facts about Europe may be overlooked in Washington—particularly as recent reporting suggests that...

17.12.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Khan in the Dark

The persistent rumours that imprisoned Pakistani politician Imran Khan is dead have been crackling away like Lahore firecrackers these past few weeks....

12.12.2025 20

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Peter Bach

What I Don’t Know About Politics (And Why It Might Not Matter)

As scribes over here in the UK suddenly ask if the right-wing populist Reform party has peaked, I realise I know almost nothing about politics. Even...

10.12.2025 20

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Peter Bach

The Crack in the Sky

Most of the creative people I know in the UK are resigned to an uphill struggle. Many work in a vacuum. The city is pocked with such voids. Sisyphus...

04.12.2025 10

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Peter Bach

You Do It to Yourself

So Thom Yorke has just insisted Radiohead will “absolutely not” perform in Israel under Netanyahu. This marks a clear departure from their...

19.11.2025 10

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Peter Bach

A Small Kingdom at the Top of the World

Nor is it helped by Trump’s habit of treating allies as optional accessories. We saw this last week with the favoritism shown to Hungary in the form...

14.11.2025 10

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Peter Bach

A Small Kingdom at the Top of the World

Nor is it helped by Trump’s habit of treating allies as optional accessories. We saw this last week with the favoritism shown to Hungary in the form...

14.11.2025 10

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Peter Bach

Why I’d Still Trust a BBC Producer Over the President

Brits often wrestle with their annual BBC licence fee. At £174.50 a year, it is no small cost in the current economic climate. Every payment creates...

13.11.2025 10

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Peter Bach

Starmerama: When Governance is Not Enough

‘When do you think Starmer goes?’ asked a friend last week, irate about the high arrest rate among non-UK nationals. In a Focaldata poll, at the...

06.11.2025 10

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Peter Bach

Das Crazy

Joseph Beuys on his lecture “Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler – Auf dem Weg zur Freiheitsgestalt des sozialen Organismus” photographed by Rainer...

29.10.2025 30

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Peter Bach

The Artist and the Eye

I saw a man crouched by the side of the road close to the railway station last week. I thought he’d dropped something. Then I saw he was holding a...

23.10.2025 20

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Peter Bach

The Price of Peace

When the first Trump years ended, Jared Kushner did what many former officials only dream of—he turned his address book into a balance sheet. In...

13.10.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Between Myth and Muzzle: Press Freedom in the US and UK

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” wrote Oscar Wilde. That observation holds true for press freedom on both sides of the Atlantic. The...

07.10.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Smoke and Light in Soho

Paul Donnellon, a BAFTA-nominated animator and director, invited me to two private feature film screenings in London’s Soho last week. He is the...

01.10.2025 20

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Peter Bach

The Long Road Beyond War

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” wrote George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Looking at just eight conflicts today, the...

24.09.2025 20

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Peter Bach

King on King: A Masque in Fog

Most Londoners had half-forgotten about Trump’s state visit until Air Force One touched down. The capital was that distracted by the Mandelson...

19.09.2025 30

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Peter Bach

Ghana: Echoes of Tomorrow

It’s been thirty-three years since I walked the streets of Takoradi—over three decades that feel less like time passed than the tide gone out. And...

10.09.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Autocracy, Apocalypse and the Blue Glow: The State of America in Film

An American friend visiting London last week asked me to recommend some “movies” to him. Only later did I realise how loaded a question it was....

01.09.2025 10

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Peter Bach

Fear at the Gate

Immigration today provokes some of the fiercest political passions in the UK. It changes the shape of communities, stretches housing and public...

31.08.2025 30

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Peter Bach

Summer Report Card

Much judgement of the UK drifts steadily westwards, crossing the Atlantic in fleets of think-tank reports, news magazine features, breathless cable...

28.08.2025 20

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Peter Bach

The Hook Was Already In

You are seated at your cramped desk, eyes half-closed against the glare, coffee gone cold two hours ago. You have an idea. Not just any idea. A story...

13.08.2025 10

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Peter Bach

The Afghan Kill List

In February 2022, a British Royal Marine officer—often among the brightest—made a mistake while seconded to a UK Special Forces base at Regent’s...

25.07.2025 20

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Peter Bach

Sudan: A War of Attrition, a War on Civilians

On July 11, the US-derided International Criminal Court (ICC) told the UN Security Council that war crimes and crimes against humanity are being...

17.07.2025 20

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Peter Bach