“What Spring?”: Conversations in a Jordanian public hospital
A dreary winter fog envelopes Jordan’s capital, Amman, throughout December, though slivers of sunlight shed light on the city’s worn and damaged roads. The strain of unrest in the region is discernible to any visitor: heavy traffic, once an enemy to be conquered by Jordanians through strategic t
The White Elephant in the Room: Argentina’s “Hidden City”
For most, the Argentine Spanish word for slum, ‘villa‘, evokes images of white roofs and white sand. The reality is a labyrinthine network of passageways, carpeted by potholes and framed by drooping electrical wires. There are more dogs than adults and more children than dogs. Men peer
Statements following Oswald Mosley’s meeting in Oxford (May 27, 1936)
It is very difficult for the outsider who has not been to a Mosley meeting to realise the menace to democracy and free speech represented by his movement. It is not that the Fascists themselves go about directly causing violence and breaking up meetings: their technique is much more subtle and dange
China’s Empty Metropolis
“It doesn’t if it’s a white cat or a black cat, it’s a good cat if it catches mice.” With these words, in 1962 Deng Xiaoping proclaimed China’s new approach to revamping its feeble economy. Forty years on, this dictum which strikes at the heart of the Chinese property bubble in an econom
Invisible Wounds: The ISIS Undergoes Torture to Investigate ‘Enhanced Interrogation’
Content note: graphic description of torture The noise is unbearable – a red ragged pulse which smothers the skin at every breath, the condensation soaking into the hood until it congeals over my nose and mouth and moulds itself into an oppressive black pall. My inner thighs are burning from the s
Behind Closed Doors: The Truth About Oxfordshire’s Detention Centre
Six miles from Oxford, in Kidlington, a motley band of radicals get together every month to protest outside Campsfield House, an ‘immigration removal centre’. This bland, bureaucratic terminology obscures the building’s malign purpose: keeping detainees against their will. Unlike the inmates o
The Twelve Days of Putinmas
Pale Siberian dawn filters through the window onto a slumbering, slightly-balding head as day breaks on, no – not 25th December, but 7th October 2014. Forget Yuletide revelry, today this slumbering head of state will be celebrating his 62nd birthday. Heaven forbid that celebrations be restricted t
Mostar: A View From The Bridge
Bosnia & Herzegovina has been brought back into the international spotlight after a decade of political and socio-economic inertia. The powder keg of frustration over the unemployment rates of around 43% (63% for youth unemployment, with two in three young people without a job) and political sta
