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The Ice Age 2014
As New Orleans freezes over our Sunday Comics author reflects upon his personal, ambiguous relationship with iceIt is cold here. In New Orleans. This is the result of the 2014 winter’s ridiculously...
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Turkey: trade unionism on trial
As the Erdogan government in Turkey takes an increasingly authoritarian turn, trade unionists have been in the firing line. But a mass trial in Istanbul, little noticed by the international media, has...
View ArticleGovernment in the dock: destitution and asylum in the UK
In a landmark legal case, Refugee Action is taking the British government to court next week to challenge policies which leave thousands of asylum seekers hungry and destitute.Imagine you are a single...
View ArticleRethinking nuclear catastrophe
The increasing discussion of the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons may be able to move disarmament talks beyond the political disparities between the weapons haves and have-nots – and shift our...
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Memo to Brazil: in the post-2015 development agenda, advocate for peace
Brazil should consider brokering a broader conversation on development that includes peacebuilding at its heart. At the same time, its diplomats can constructively challenge the creeping securitization...
View ArticleA rising authoritarian wave
The de-regulation of financial capital threatens to bring us back to capitalist authoritarianism that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. But this time it gathers strength with no strong popular...
View ArticleA French style “Tea Party”?
Dieudonné has just been banned from entering the UK by the Home Secretary Theresa May. Every conceivable attempt to mobilise all the extremes has been used to beef up these demos, with some...
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Sochi Olympics – the dangers of rebranding
What does President Putin hope to gain from hosting the Winter Olympics? There is a grave danger that the messages behind the Kremlin’s rebranding exercise could boomerang against the government.With...
View ArticleMiddle east peace: it’s not the economy, stupid
Corruption and inequality in the Palestinian territories are a significant factor behind public scepticism and cynicism about economic plans. Palestinians are well aware of corruption in business, and...
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Securitizing the Hizmet/Gulen movement
Turkey’s most influential and widely respected civil society organisation, the Hizmet movement, is under continual attack by PM Erdoğan who accuses it of seeking to establish a “parallel state”. Such...
View ArticleMaking UK citizens non-persons
Last week at Westminster, the home secretary introduced a late amendment to an immigration-control bill which would allow her to make UK citizens stateless—without first requiring recourse to the...
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‘Do as I say, not as I do!’: Why radicalism requires self-awareness
Organisations which claim to challenge or seek to change the power structures of society too often mimic those power structures in their own organisations.A Swiss bank board room c 1920 - wikimedia‘Do...
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We need to talk about the UK media war on women
While Dylan Farrow's child abuse allegations against Woody Allen hold the headlines, it is time for journalists to realise that sexual violence is not about evil individuals, Asian grooming gangs, or...
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"Rehearsing the revolution": theatre in Israel-Palestine
In Israel/Palestine, former combatants are using the Theatre of the Oppressed to move towards an end to the occupation. Recently London theatre group Cardboard Citizens invited a former Israeli officer...
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Who is fighting whom in Ukraine – and why
The Maidan protests, which started over two months ago, have drawn a very clear line between the political parties. At future elections, voters will ask their candidates, ‘What did you do during...
View ArticleSyria: from corridor diplomacy to humanitarian corridors
With the larger substantive issues of ceasefires and political transition at an impasse, the ground broken over humanitarian access has suddenly become a metric for whether the first phase of Geneva II...
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Sweden's super election year
Sweden will hold crucial national elections in September. Does that leave any political space for the European elections in May? Euro elections landscape, 2014.Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt....
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What Romania can teach the western world
Unlike France, Italy or the Netherlands, the crisis of Romania’s elites has not led to a rise in xenophobic politics but to a digital revolution that challenges traditional assumptions about democratic...
View ArticleAmeera: the day-to-day life of a tea lady in Sudan
A story of a tea-lady in Sudan, the injustice she has endured in the face of police brutality and repression.Ameera is not used to being idle, for years she has worked a few jobs at a time. Working as...
View ArticleBulgaria's 'chilly welcome' to Syrian refugees
As the civil war in Syria continues, refugees are desperately seeking refuge. It seems that Bulgaria has consistently preferred to engage in exacerbating the situation. Bulgarians have built a wall and...
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