Luke Harding Quotes & Sayings

Two decades after communism and the alleged end of the Cold War, Russia is still a cash economy. The preferred currency is dollars, though euros are also acceptable. — Luke Harding

I left Kurdistan in April 2003 with the peshmerga, following their excited advance as Saddam's forces crumbled. First Kirkuk, then Mosul - where looters broke into the city museum and seized its Parthian sculptures - then Tikrit. I reported from Baghdad in month-long stints until the end of 2004. — Luke Harding

Snowden's itinerary does, however, seem to bear the fingerprints of Julian Assange. Assange was often quick to criticise the US and other western nations when they abused human rights. But he was reluctant to speak out against governments that supported his personal efforts to avoid extradition. — Luke Harding

I first visited Kurdistan in 2003. I arrived in the town of Sulaimaniyah, courtesy of smugglers who drove me across the border from Iran. Sulaimaniyah was a small, charming provincial Kurdish town. — Luke Harding

By the time of the GDR's demise, two in every 13 citizens were informers. — Luke Harding

Snowden was extremely good at digital self-defense. When he was employed by the C.I.A. and N.S.A., one of his jobs was to teach U.S. national security officials and C.I.A. employees how to protect their data in high-threat digital environments. — Luke Harding

As much as 25 per cent of the world's current internet traffic crosses British territory via the cables, en route between the US, Europe, Africa and all points east. Much of the remaining traffic has landing or departure points in the US. So between them Britain and the US play host to most of the planet's burgeoning data flows. — Luke Harding

Notionally a left-wing movement, the Anti-Germans were born after the collapse of the Berlin wall. While most Germans rejoiced at the end of the Cold War, the Anti-Germans feared that a united Germany might lead to a fourth Reich - and a return of anti-Semitism. — Luke Harding

My journalistic mission was straightforward: to await the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nobody knew quite when this would be. But the diplomacy - the meetings in the U.N. security council, the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the martial language of Tony Blair and George W. Bush - all suggested a war was brewing. — Luke Harding

Snowden was horrified to discover that behind bars he would have no access to a computer. — Luke Harding

Germany's hierarchical reverence for seniority may have something to do with the fact that everything here happens relatively late. Germans start school at six, graduate in their late 20s, and get their first proper jobs in their 30s. Adolescence can go on a long time. It is rare for anyone to achieve responsibility before their 50s. — Luke Harding

Taking your clothes off in front of strangers is something of a hobby in Germany, among both men and women, especially in the former communist East, where it was one of the few freedoms allowed. — Luke Harding

On 30 June 2010, the FSB broke into my office again. They unplugged the Internet, opened the window and left the phone off the hook, placing it next to my laptop. The message was clear: we are still here. — Luke Harding

There is a long dishonourable tradition of western intellectuals who have been duped by Moscow. The list includes Bernard Shaw, the Webbs, H. G. Wells, and Andre Gide. — Luke Harding

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland observes that Britain 'has a fundamentally different conception of power to, say, the United States'. It doesn't have a Bill of Rights or a written constitution, or the American idea that 'we the people' are sovereign. Rather, the British system still bears the 'imprint of its origins in monarchy', with power emanating from the top and flowing downwards. Britons remain subjects rather than citizens. Hence their lack of response towards government intrusion. — Luke Harding

My four years in Russia end, then, in dramatic fashion: with a textbook Soviet-style expulsion. I am the first western staff correspondent to suffer this fate since the end of the Cold War. I'm stunned. But my expulsion is not, I reflect, a surprise. It's something I have always accepted as a real, if far-fetched, possibility. — Luke Harding

By August 2008, we had left Voikovskaya and moved into a wooden dacha in the artists' colony of Sokol in north-west Moscow. The house was a haven amid the madness of the city: lily of the valley grew near our front gate, Virginia creeper decked the green picket fence. — Luke Harding

Strict shopping laws mean that most German shops close on Saturday afternoons, reopening only on Monday when everybody is back at work. — Luke Harding

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain. — Luke Harding

Under the Assads, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language at school, or even from speaking it in the military. The result is a generation of Syrian Kurds, many now in late middle age, who can't write their own language. — Luke Harding

The common theme here was contempt: a poisonous disregard for human life. For Vladimir Putin's critics have an uncanny habit of turning up dead. — Luke Harding

Paradoxically, in its quest to make Americans more secure, the NSA has made American communications less secure; it has undermined the safety of the entire internet. — Luke Harding

The FSB's invisible presence continued; the agency became an intangible part of my Moscow life - sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, with someone in a back room clearly turning the volume of minor persecution up and down. — Luke Harding

Snowden evidently knew of WikiLeaks, a niche transparency website — Luke Harding