It was a dark year, 2009, sealing a dark decade. It began with the world in economic free-fall and the Gaza Strip being bombed to pieces (again). We watched the vicious crushing of a democratic uprising in Iran, a successful far-right coup in Honduras, and the intensification of the disastrous...

Buried deep in our subconscious, there still lays the belief that our political leaders are collective Daddies and Mummies who will -- in the last instance -- guarantee our safety. Sure, they might screw us over when it comes to hospital waiting lists, or public transport, or taxing the...

So that's it. The world's worst polluters - the people who are drastically altering the climate - gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific warnings. They didn't seal the deal; they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying...

At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group...

Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city's central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos - the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald's announces "I'm loving it!"...

On the first day of the Noughties, I sent my first email. I sent it from a different world - one in which spam was something my nan ate from a can, blackberries were a fruit you picked from a tree, and where if you told somebody you wanted to...

Every day, I pine for the global warming deniers to be proved right. I loved the old world – of flying to beaches wherever we want, growing to the skies, and burning whatever source of energy came our way. I hate the world to come that I've seen in my...

Mohammed Nasheed knows what global warming means, because he sees it every day. He survived years of imprisonment and torture to lead his country – the Maldives – to democracy. But now, as its president, he is being forced to watch as his homeland is wiped from the map. With...

Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time. Yes, it has Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath these...

Over the past few years, there has been a drip-drip of artists defending old men who abuse their power over young boys and girls for sexual pleasure. It ranges from Alan Bennett's claim that a teacher who gropes his pupils can be the real child or true innocent, to the...

Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His health care bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes...

Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live....

The proponents of the ‘war on drugs’ are well-intentioned people who believe they are saving people from the nightmare of drug addiction and making the world safer. But this self-image has turned into a faith – and like all faiths, it can only be maintained by cultivating a deliberate blindness...

The fight to win legal equality for gay people is almost won in Britain – yet the taste of champagne has been tainted by an unexpected dash of blood. In the past few years, gay people have finally begun to exercise the same rights as their straight siblings, yet there...

The great cliché of our age is that we are sinking into a lobotomized celebrity culture where we worship the worthless. We jabber on about Balloon Boy while carbon emissions soar; we yammer about American Idol while Afghanistan burns. The a new headline-snatching documentary Starsuckers, released today, expresses this...

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer...

Britain is facing the real risk today of a bombing campaign that targets random civilians for death - but it is being virtually ignored. When its supporters step closer every day to mass murder, nobody notices. When its perpetrators are caught, there is (at best) a little flick of information...

Imagine it. A network of violent radicals is picking off the world's leaders one by one. They have killed the American president, the Russian head of state, the French president, the Austrian head of state, and the Spanish prime minister.

Bomb attacks are ripping through the world's richest cities: explosions...

In Russian, the phrase 'gore vidal' means "he has seen grief." As Gore Vidal is wheeled towards me across an empty London hotel lobby, it seems for the first time like an apt translation. In the eight years since I saw him last, he has lost his partner of fifty...

When does planting a tree become a revolutionary act -- and unleash an army of gunmen who want to shoot you dead? The answer to this question lies in the unlikely story of Wangari Maathai.

She was born on the floor of a mud hut with no water or...