Flicking through the news this morning I came on this horrific report of the gang rape of a teenage girl by seven teenage boys, mostly known to her, in east London. Staggering. Sickening. I can’t believe this happened close to where I...

Does evil exist? Does it matter? I'm prompted to ask by the front-page headline in my morning metro (in London today): " The 'pure evil' of Shannon mother ". The description comes from the policeman heading up the case into the three...

The closure of Guantánamo Bay will probably come not with a bang, but with a whimper. But come it will (says president-elect Barack Obama), only we don’t know when or how. The Guardian’s G2 today splashed on the “toxic legacy”...

Chinese democracy? Do those two words fit together? It is the title of an album by Guns N Roses . I cannot tell you much about the album but it has been a very long time in the making. A Guardian article says that a Chinese newspaper...

How many ways can torturers find to hurt people? You’d maybe think that there’s a sort of limited number. Half a dozen. A dozen. Whatever. Actually, the more Amnesty stuff I read over the years the more I realise – chillingly enough –...