Crisis of modernity and secularism: the cases of Egypt, Turkey and Bangladesh
Whenever democratic space has opened up, people have been eager to choose those who not only provide a better solution for their economic and social problems, but who can also offer them a recognition...
View ArticleWitness to the revolution: Bolivarianismo and popular power in Venezuela
For those of us living in a land of economic austerity and political atrophy, seeing a country demonstrate that there is an alternative remains an indispensible component of our long-term struggle to...
View ArticleTen years ago today in Baghdad
Ten years ago today in Baghdad a terror attack blasted apart the UN headquarters in Iraq... At the moment of the explosion Gil Loescher and Arthur Helton were sitting down to interview Sergio Vieira de...
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Authentic Foon
Our Sunday Comics author recalls three experiences of intense culinary and self-transportationWhat we consume consumes us. Yes yes yes, that thought has indeed been expressed many times before, but...
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Enlightenment values and the politics of transformation
Transformation implies renewing the core values of the enlightenment and placing them at the centre of political discourse. William Blake/Wikipedia. The philosopher Tzvetan Todorov argues that,...
View ArticleBeing policed: a UK traveller speaks
A Dale Farm resident speaks of his experience of being policed, in the latest interview in search of security from the 'Whose police?' seriesThe police are tasked with keeping us safe day to day. But...
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The weakness of the Egyptian revolutionary movement
The weaknesses of the revolutionary movement are the main reason for the massacres of August 14. We need to understand these to remedy the dire situation that Egypt is currently facing. Poster of...
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Cities in the future of democracy
Today’s cities perch people far off the ground. They block sight of the stars. So we’re faced with a completely different task: re-embedding our cities into our biosphere. Interview.In the midst of a...
View ArticleKarzai: a legacy of failure on Afghan women's rights?
With more fundamentalists predicted to win seats in the forthcoming election, the future is likely to see once again the use of religion as an instrument of extreme gender based oppression in...
View ArticleThe desperation at the heart of economic theory
Both classical and Marxist economic theories end up positing ideal types who give unrealistic advice on how to run an economy. The first postulates bosses who are always desperate and the second...
View ArticleDemocracy is more than an election
Extremists and extremism, whether they be religious or political, are dangerous! This is Egypt's issue, not whether they identify with a cross, a crescent, a star of david, or some other religious or...
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Making women's rights human rights
The story of how women's rights became part of the international human rights movements shows the influence of local movements on global chance - and that international agendas need to listen to...
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Libya: the long road ahead
Not only has the state so far been unable to bring the militias under control, it has also not managed to repair roads, rebuild buildings, clean the streets or provide power to its citizens. This year,...
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Democracy’s hall of mirrors in the post-Gezi world? A call for global dialogue
With the Ergenekon verdict, Turkey was to put behind it a history of coup d’états, and to open a new page by convicting generals (whose raison d’etre for the past 30 years was to fight terrorism) for...
View ArticleTurkey’s "race codes" and the Ottoman legacy
The revelation that modern Turkey continues secretly to classify its citizens according to religious criteria reflects the weight of the Ottoman past. It also has implications for those in the middle...
View ArticleThe new phase in the Turkish-Iraqi relationship: fluctuating between friendly...
The already strained Baghdad-Ankara relationship has further deteriorated in recent years, due to regional crises, internal political instability, narrow perceptions and regional interests.The...
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Erdoğan and Cameron - shared values?
Despite the widespread violence caused by the state in Turkey, Cameron has alluded his alliance to the Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan stating they have the same values. But just as citizens seek to...
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Is fracking all we have to worry about?
As protests against fracking rage on, are protesters ignoring a much greater industrial threat to the British countryside?Flickr/whiteoutpress. Some rights reserved.As demonstrations grow against...
View ArticleThe International Criminal Court: rhetoric and reality
Can the International Criminal Court deter atrocities and crimes? Using the persistence of conflict as a standard to criticise the ICC is fundamentally problematic and over-exaggerates our expectations...
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The myth of Weimar Europe
Since the start of the Great Recession, it has become received wisdom that the far right is on the rise across Europe. But not often is the 'economic-crisis-breeds-extremism' thesis confronted with...
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