Tricolor: The Flag That Conquered the World, One Stripe at a Time By Dave’s International Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Bastille and the rise of Instagram filters, humanity discovered a delightful shortcut to nation-branding: three horizontal stripes. The tricolor—those gloriously symmetrical bands of red, white, and occasionally regrettable green—has become the IKEA flat-pack…
The Curious Persistence of Lord Mandelson’s Bedroom: A Geopolitical Fable By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk The question ricochets across encrypted WhatsApp groups from Brussels to Buenos Aires: “Is Peter Mandelson gay?” It is whispered in the corridors of Davos like a hedge-fund haiku, and it trends on Seoul subway screens between K-pop ads for collagen…
If you squint past the glare of the Zamboni’s headlights and the polite Scandinavian hush of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center, you’ll spot the same phenomenon that’s unfolding in Singaporean data centers, Congolese cobalt pits, and every Swiss banker’s encrypted inbox: raw, uncut Russian talent being vacuumed westward before the motherland figures out how to bolt…
Steve Evans, the Man Who Accidentally Became a Global Metaphor By Our Correspondent in the Departures Lounge, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic DATELINE—Somewhere between Brexit and BRICS, a 42-year-old civil servant named Steve Evans missed his flight to Frankfurt. By the time he reached the gate, the Airbus had already taxied away, carrying the last hopes…
Dwayne Johnson and the Globalization of Biceps: How One Man’s Pectorals Became a Soft-Power Asset By the time the sun rose over the Sea of Marmara last week, a Turkish meme account had already Photoshopped Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s face onto the body of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, captioning it “The Father of All Nations—Now With…
Clarence House: A 200-Year-Old London Address the Whole Planet Still Uses as a Mood Ring By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Geneva Bureau LONDON—On any given Tuesday, you can watch the global economy twitch by simply loitering outside Clarence House with a decent Wi-Fi signal and a stiff upper lip. The cream-brick pile at…
Tuvalu is the geopolitical equivalent of a canary in a coal mine, except the canary is nine coral atolls, the coal mine is the Pacific Ocean, and the miners are too busy arguing over the thermostat to notice the bird has already started packing its bags. On most world maps the country is cropped out…
**The Hawaiian Pivot: How Tulsi Gabbard Became Moscow’s Favorite Democrat** In the grand theater of American politics, where yesterday’s progressive darling can become today’s Kremlin-curious commentator, Tulsi Gabbard has executed perhaps the most elegant ideological pirouette since Mussolini started as a socialist. The Hawaiian congresswoman’s transformation from Bernie Sanders’ protégé to Fox News’ favorite “former…
Kamala Harris, Booked and Cross-Examined: The World Watches America Write Its Own Footnotes By the time Vice President Kamala Harris announced her memoir-slash-policy-prospectus, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey” (paperback re-release alert: now with 17 % more hindsight), the planet had already digested three servings of American self-regard this week and was loosening its…
**The Accidental Everyman: Why Abhishek Sharma Matters More Than Your Portfolio** *From our Bureau of Universally Generic Names with Uniquely Specific Consequences* NEW DELHI—In a world where 47% of global GDP depends on men named Abhishek Sharma making decisions they’ll regret by Tuesday, it’s remarkable how few people outside the Indian subcontinent can distinguish one…
**The Global IPO Pattern: How the World’s Favorite Wealth-Generating Ritual Keeps Proving We’re All Suckers** In the grand casino of global capitalism, where the house always wins and the players convince themselves they’re investors, the Initial Public Offering remains our most beloved financial ritual. From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, London to Lagos, the pattern repeats…
Billy Lange, an American basketball coach from the Philadelphia suburbs, woke up last Tuesday to discover he had become a geopolitical Rorschach test. Overnight, a grainy clip of Lange’s sideline gesticulations—equal parts interpretive dance and mild seizure—was looped on every continent except Antarctica, which still only streams penguins. In Nairobi sports bars, patrons now toast…
