Pick of the Web
Parmalat: Italian capitalism goes sour
A great financial scandal is taking place. Italy’s food giant, and one of the world’s great companies, has collapsed in a cloud of fraud. An Italian financial journalist assesses the causes and global ramifications of “Enron alla parmigiana”.
The internet's future in an aircraft hangar
The World Summit on the Information Society venue was bland, the rhetoric cloudy, the chocolates consoling – but ideas and energy flowed around the fringes.
After Saddam, no respite
Neither the dictator’s arrest, nor Israel's counter-insurgency advice to the United States, will stem the violence in Iraq.
Return to the dark tunnel: the writing cure
Art and healing are intimately linked in the writing of victims of torture and genocide, says a writer whose practice has been transformed by working with them.
The Genie's Revenge: a response to Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan’s openDemocracy series on peer-to-peer networks raises vital questions about intellectual property in the digital age, but he falls prey to the unsubstantiated revolutionary rhetoric of the copyright-buster. If claims by peer-to-peer distributors that they are supporting free speech and contributing to knowledge want to find a sympathetic ear in the courtroom, then they have to mean it, says this legal expert.
Skellig Michael in the lobster season
“It was an evening to remember, sixty-five years ago.” A 96-year old Irish fisherman and writer recalls an everyday drama at the world’s edge.
The UN in 2003: a year of living dangerously
The crisis over Iraq has brought the United Nations to a crossroads. At the end of a year when diplomacy was felled by force, the institution can regain its influence only by rethinking its core security mandate.
How, then, must we live?
A visit to a young family living from the land in rural England leaves Sara Forsstrom inspired.
In memoriam: Paul Hirst 1946-2003
The full measure of Paul Hirst’s achievement as a public intellectual is still being explored, six months after his tragically premature death. Jonathan Zeitlin, a close collaborator, salutes the ambition and independence of mind of a sorely missed friend.
"We the peoples of Europe..."
Why did the Brussels summit on the European Constitution collapse? Perhaps because it deserved to. The EU must move from government by elites who seek to manage, to one grounded on citizens’ support.
Who did it? Who is responsible for the failure of European heads of states and governments to agree to a proposed new Constitution at their inter-governmental conference (IGC) in Brussels on 12-13 December?
There is a temptingly easy answer.
Saddam and the Fosbury Flop
How high should the bar be set after the fall of Saddam?
The capture of Saddam Hussein
The arrest of the Iraqi dictator presents a huge opportunity to the country’s new political figures. Can they seize it?
Those in government
A defiant response from a young Zimbabwean poet to the officially sanctioned language of violence that grips his country.
2003 Review and Awards
Everything you’d forgotten about 2003 and then some
Inside Saddam's Mouth
What does the stunning image of Saddam’s now empty mouth after his capture reveal of the nature of his regime and its fate?
‘We have got him!’, proclaimed Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq.
But what have they got?
Personally, I had half-expected Saddam Hussein to be found and probably killed in a remote farm. For those of us who recall the 1960s, the vile conditions of the rat-hole he hid in were familiar from the Vietnam war (although the National Liberation Front was always diligent enough to build tunnels with escape routes).
The Return of the King: Tolkien and the new medievalism
The obsession with power, will and hierarchy in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings fuels its dangerous topicality: a vindication and veneration of empire.
The Chaldeans of San Diego
From Baghdad to southern California, the journey of a family from one of the Middle East’s ancient communities is a modern epic of survival.
2003 - What Happened?
Dominic Hilton, rummaging the year’s archive in search of the perfect column, finds that he has written it.
The afterlife of bodies: a reply to Tiffany Jenkins
Respect for the interred human body is shared across human cultures from prehistoric time. It involves not just attachment to the consolations of memory, but responsibility across generations. This, says Ken Worpole is “the ethical politics of ‘the long now’”.
Communication: the missing link in sustainable development
The appropriate use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) could make a vast contribution to solving the problems of development and democracy. But to realise this potential, a global conversation is needed to match the global nature of economic, social and environmental challenges.
This week's guest editors
Our guest editors James Ron, Leslie Vinjamuri, Sophie Arie and Archana Pandya introduce this week's theme of:
Our guest editors James Ron, Leslie Vinjamuri, Sophie Arie and Archana Pandya introduce this week's theme of:
A Turkish Spring?
Woolwich - terror or conflict?
Palestinian borders
Nobel Women's Initiative
Europe from the bottom up
The media in Europe
Mali: the plot thickens
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Remote control war
oDRussia at journalismfestival .com
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Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
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