By Toby Luckhurst
- Scottish Nationalists seek to emulate Nordic social democracies.
- The Sochi Winter Olympics is inspiring a resurgence of Circassian nationalism.
- The lionisation of the Egyptian military creates the myth of an all-powerful institution capable of bringing the country under control.
- Hindsight does not always provide the clearest picture and the way we view the revolutionaries who toppled Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is an example of skewed perspective.
- US Secretary of State John Kerry is attempting the improbable with an Israel-Palestine peace deal that is already being slammed by far right Israeli politicians who refuse to discuss a withdrawal from the occupied territories.
- A New York Times profile of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who yesterday was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, aged 46.
- Janet Yellen, new chief of the US Federal Reserve, lets her work speak for itself in a male-dominated field.
- Foreign Policy looks at the Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure – a Pentagon compilation of Department of Defence overspending, dishonesty, and immoral conduct.