The AI sector’s collective debt, now standing at $1.2tn, is greater than the banking sector’s. It’s the buildup to the 2008 financial crisis all over again, with silicon in the role of subprime mortgages.

Palantir – in which Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, reportedly holds up to $250,000 of stock – has become the de facto operating system of the US government.

For 50 years, the Nobel committee has rejected the candidacies of dissidents from the Western world. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have worked for peace in a different way from Machado. But they possess one flaw: they expose our own dirty secrets.

Our November issue. mondediplo.com/2025/11

The war in Gaza exposes not only the inability of the current international order to bring about peace, but also the extent to which it perpetuates Israeli colonial domination over Palestine. (October in the archive.)

Twin crises hit Haiti in 2021: the assassination of its president and a major earthquake. And once again, Haitians had very little say in how their state is governed and rebuilt. (October in the archive.)

Party bigwigs have not endorsed him and media criticism is intense, but Zohran Mamdani is poised to win New York’s mayoral election next month. His message is cutting through to younger voters.

Since the 1970s, successive governments have tried to redress the injustices suffered by New Zealand’s Māori. But the present administration is rolling back support and even wants to revisit the country’s founding treaty.

Much late modernist architecture in Georgia (from 1960 to 1990) has disappeared, demolished after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a surge in lawless privatisation and corruption. Three women architects are rescuing these achievements from oblivion.

Founded 80 years ago to safeguard international security, the UN now appears powerless in the face of wars and mass crimes. Lofty declarations alone cannot alter the balance of global power.

Since the start of the year, Israeli soldiers and settlers have forced thousands of Palestinians from their land. Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank has devastated Palestinian food sovereignty.

Behind the carnage of Israel’s war on Gaza lies a demographic struggle whose outcome threatens the Zionist project itself.

Last month’s airstrike on Doha showed the Gulf states the US won’t protect them from Israel. They now seek alternatives. @akrambelkaid.bsky.social in our October issue.

The EU, which is about to adopt its 19th package of sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, has not taken a single retaliatory measure against Israel. Benoît Bréville in the October issue.

Are our emotions really our own, or are they products of a sociopolitical context? A free ebook. mondediplo.com/ebooks/emoti...

"Yemen is meant to be kept unsettled — always closer to death than life." Elham al-Oqabi and Elle Kurancid in @mondediplo.com mondediplo.com/outsidein/ye...

"From Algeria to Cameroon, and Senegal to Haiti, the Élysée’s posturing on memory has exhausted the patience of those demanding justice. The time for being fobbed off with words is over." Excellent from Thomas Deltombe in the current issue of @mondediplo.com mondediplo.com/2025/10/09fr...

The US Giant ban is the first of its kind on a Taiwanese manufacturer. However, the risk of debt bondage is the rule, not the exception, for migrants employed in Taiwan’s bicycle industry. mondediplo.com/outside-in/g...

Our October issue is online. mondediplo.com/2025/10

The more the idea of a Palestinian state has gained traction in the international arena, the less its reality has been tangible on the ground. mondediplo.com/outsidein/pa...

The Pentagon and the CIA agree on US supremacy — but clash on how best to achieve it. Their rivalry has ebbed and flowed, but today’s emphasis on technology is giving the CIA the edge.

Washington has failed to create a viable and popular local opposition, but it has worn Cuba down. But its ultimate goal — the ‘overthrow of [the] government’ — remains out of reach for now.

China once championed the anticolonial struggle and was quick to back the Palestinian cause. Today, despite rhetorical support and diplomatic gestures, it’s reluctant to bring its weight to bear on Israel.

For President Erdoğan to seek a record, currently unlawful, fourth term in 2028, he needs parliamentary backing to rewrite the rules — and to confront the Kurdish question at home and in Syria.

Camel racing in its present form took off in the 1970s. The camel market has modernised, with price updates accessible via mobile phone. Under Islamic law betting remains prohibited; this does not diminish the excitement. By @raphaelmago.bsky.social

On Thursday night, Brazil’s supreme court sentenced the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison.

Subscribe to LMD, which has a 70-year history of covering countries other than the US as equal societies, with their own internal politics, culture and social and intellectual movements. mondediplo.com/subscribe/

The EU’s push to curb Mediterranean crossings didn’t create Libya’s extortion economy, but has supercharged it, making migrants pawns in a lucrative game between the country’s rival governments. By @wlacher.bsky.social

Germany’s economy is in crisis and its flagship companies, from Volkswagen to Siemens, are all announcing job cuts. Yet unions are managing to negotiate above-inflation pay rises. How so? By @rachelknaebel.bsky.social mondediplo.com/2025/09/06ge...

Subscribe to LMD, which has a 70-year history of covering countries other than the US as equal societies, with their own internal politics, culture and social and intellectual movements. mondediplo.com/subscribe/

Nigel Farage and Reform offer a false diagnosis of Britain’s social problems. If they were able to impose new immigration controls, it would do nothing to alleviate those problems (indeed, it would make some of them worse). By @daniel-finn.bsky.social

It’s not enough for the Tel Aviv-aligned lobby to shape France’s foreign policy and exert ideological control over most of the media — it also seeks to defame those who report what they see in Gaza, journalists or not. By Serge Halimi and @pierrerimbert.bsky.social

The Arab states will not come to Gaza’s aid. None of them has launched any significant diplomatic initiative to prevent the reoccupation of the enclave or to end the Israeli bombardment it has endured for nearly two years. By @akrambelkaid.bsky.social mondediplo.com/2025/09/01ed...

There was joy in Syria when the Assad regime fell. But new intercommunal violence and fears of creeping authoritarianism reveal a fragile transition. By @emmanuel.haddad.bsky.social

My article published in @mondediplo.com. I explore there part of the geopolitics of camels, with a focus on Abu Dhabi’s use of “camel diplomacy” as a tool of regional power. mondediplo.com/2025/09/12ca...

One of the sharpest critiques I’ve read of the “techno-feudalism” hype is this essay by @evgenymorozov.bsky.social in Le Monde diplomatique. Well worth the read: mondediplo.com/2025/08/02te...

"We don't need your miserable money: Our target is the European Union" Jérôme Tubiana and I on the EU role in shaping the migrant extortion economy in Libya, in the September issue of @mondediplo.com

Our September issue is online. mondediplo.com/2025/09

Map: cruising the world.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been ramping up its use of the Buddhist faith as a tool of international diplomacy, particularly when it comes to the Belt and Road Initiative. mondediplo.com/outside-in/t...

Alexander Orlov was the archetype of the Russian spy; Eva Stricker, a young Hungarian artist drawn to the Soviet experiment. Their encounter in an interrogation room in 1936 marked both their lives.

Russian society is split between those who want to build up the ‘global South’ in opposition to US imperialism, and those who see themselves as defending ‘Christian civilisations’ against globalisation. Both factions want to continue the war in Ukraine.

Our special correspondent @elisaperrigueur.bsky.social boarded a Mediterranean Shipping Company cruise ship travelling between Venice and Mykonos to understand the driving forces behind the industry's commercial success.

Well over a century after France shipped Algerians to its brutal Pacific penal colony, their families are rediscovering their ancestors’ fates and seeking recognition of what they endured.

Mass emigration from Poland reduced unemployment and brought in income from remittances but it weakened the country's social fabric. The right knew how to speak to all those who felt undervalued: moral superiority became a substitute for social mobility.

When Narendra Modi promises cheering crowds that the 21st century will be ‘India’s century’, his vision is unambiguously Hindu. For the last hundred years, the RSS has been promoting just such a vision. By @gdelacroix.bsky.social

In the UK, CEO pay has risen for the fourth year in a row, with the average FTSE 100 chief executive salary set at 122 times that of the average worker.

A new wave of books by revisionist thinkers aims to counter the propaganda surrounding Israeli-Palestinian history and set the record straight.

Japan’s Communist Party is one of the world’s largest, but its ageing activists keep a low profile. Though its politics have shifted to the centre, admitting communist sympathies still invites ostracism.

Across Europe, the correlation between rising migration and the growth of xenophobic parties appears inevitable. Look at the figures a different way and some studies show an even stronger correlation between emigration and the rise of the far right.