In their current condition our banks are an existential threat to British democracy, a more serious one than terrorism, either external or internal.
When the revolt succeeds in its initial goal, we come to realise that what is really bothering us (our lack of freedom, our humiliation, corruption, poor prospects) persists in a new guise, so that we...
Snowden’s profile differed from that of the spy or defector in one conspicuous way: he did not think in secret.
If there hadn’t been so much other lurid wrongdoing in the world of finance, and if mis-sold payment protection insurance had a sexier name, PPI would stand out as the biggest scandal in the history...
A few years ago the garment factories in Bangladesh were mostly small and concentrated in Dhaka itself, where they fought each other for small contracts from obscure European discounters. But then...
The Predator drone began its career as a spy. Its first mission was to fly over the Balkans during the late 1990s and feed live video back to the US. In 2001, it was kitted out with Hellfire...
Not long before last month’s elections, dozens of workers (the youngest was 12) were burned to death in factory fires in Karachi and Lahore. Pakistan’s rulers were unmoved: there were...
On 1 January 2009, around two in the morning, 19 days before the inauguration of Barack Obama, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black man, was shot in the back by a white transit officer in...
In the spring of 2011, a group of oil workers in Western Kazakhstan went on strike. They were working in one of the richest countries in the former Soviet Union, in dangerous conditions, in a...
David Goodhart argues that the major problems with British society are primarily caused by immigration, but his conclusions far outrun the facts.
Murdoch seems driven by insatiable ambition. He is never satisfied. Nothing appears complete, and the old man shows no sign of abandoning the struggle – especially as his heirs (his children) now publicly...
The German public are pissed off with Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, but reluctant to let go of Mutti’s hand.
That Assad’s government is on its last legs has always been something of a myth.
There is no shortage of turning points in Russia’s 20th-century history, from the October Revolution of 1917 to the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, to the overnight...
Many of the sins that Haitian officials are accused of – dishonesty, incompetence, lack of transparency – are manifest in their accusers’ own practices.
Can places, like people, have a personality, a set of things you can love or not love? Do countries speak? Do lakes and mountains offer a guide to living? Could you feel let down by a city? Can...
The rhetorical torrent which began issuing from the state media in late March was unexpected in its intensity, but none of what followed has been inconsistent with past North Korean behaviour.
I was walking down Great Russell Street a few weeks ago when a young man emerged from a house wearing sandals, khaki trousers, a backwards University of Tennessee baseball cap, and a yellow...