March 2010

States rescued the banks in country after country, neither asking nor getting anything in return. The banks are now using their newfound strength against the state, threatening to reveal the accounting tricks the banks themselves had recommended to hide some of the debt. After all, interest rates on loans are higher when the financial reputation of the state is in question.
So Goldman Sachs first helped Greece to borrow billions of euros in secret, and then told it how to get round the (...)

Austerity is not the only way to make up for massive government debt and lack of revenue following self‑induced disasters in private finance. There are fairer ways to balance the books

Dubai didn’t falter in its misplaced self-confidence all the way through the great global financial crash. And then the day of reckoning came for its years of flash and excess. Nobody knows what it really owes

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been sustained in their political and financial ascendancy by their reputed ties to Ahmedinejad since his days as mayor of Tehran. But do they support him – or their own longer-term agenda?

Before US combat troops leave Iraq, the most crucial policy question to be solved is settling the dividing line – and the possibilities for reconciliation – between the Kurds and the Arabs, especially those who have been forced to live together for decades

As Iraqis went to the polls, the results were clear. Sunnis and secular Iraqis are the losers, the US has been both discomfited and superseded as the country’s ultimate power, and the region has been severely destabilised. Was it worth it?

As his trial resumed, Radovan Karadzic denied committing war crimes at Srebenica and Sarajevo. Yet almost 20 years after the war that destroyed former Yugoslavia, those whose lives were wrecked by rape still hope that their rapists will be tried and convicted

Two years ago a socially engaged bishop, Fernando Lugo, upset Paraguay’s long-running dictatorship instituted by Alfredo Stroessner, but with his hands tied by a corrupt judiciary, he has been unable to implement much-needed reform. And already Stroessner’s grandson waits in the wings

Brazil wants to broker international diplomacy, host presidential missions and ignore the US. It now has serious economic sway in South America, and it is aiming for much more and much wider influence

Revenue, jobs, and publications are disappearing annually in the West, and even if Rupert Murdoch manages to charge Google for news content, this trend will not reverse

In the city of Haifa, Zionist plans to create an Arab-free land through the expulsions of 1948 did not entirely succeed; the nature of the city is still ambiguous despite the deaths and destruction

Britain adopted the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917, and this and other, contradictory, promises ensured the start, and continuation, of the Palestinian conflict

Over the past 10 years a new wave of Palestinian filmmakers has constructed a specific national identity on screen. It is more directly political than the earlier film portrayals of Palestinian lives and stories

The golfer was sincere but not authentic as he staged his confessions for the camera – in a tradition that goes right back to Rousseau’s invention of the confessional mode

Although Reunion may look like an island outgrowth of 
Europe in the Indian Ocean, its regional integration 
is a means to sustainable co-development

The debate about Creole as a language still fires up teachers and politicians

Reunion, in the southwest corner of the Indian Ocean, is a French Overseas Department with particular strengths. A rainbow population of 117,000 makes for a harmonious dialogue between cultures and religions. This, together with a well-established sugar industry, can help the island meet new challenges, including a modernised transport system, renewable energy and extending its regional influence