Pick of the Web
Russia's future in balance: Putin versus Khodorkovsky?
The unofficial pact between Russia’s parliament and its business ‘oligarchs’ has been an important element in the country’s recent political stability and economic progress. Now, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is targeting executives of the giant Yukos oil corporation – including its ambitious head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, interviewed here. Are both pact and progress now at risk?
Bush is Superman
He was born rich, raised hell, and found the Lord. Now, between endless vacations, he saves the world. An awestruck tribute from the other side of the tracks.
Marketing GM: the making of poverty
Marginal farmers in India find it difficult enough to ensure a modestly sustainable life on existing patterns of land ownership and seed availability. But when manipulative marketing strategies introduce GM seeds, cash dependency and debt, their poverty becomes a cruel trap.
The Japanese decision
Why has the Japanese government decided to send armed forces to Iraq to assist in its economic recovery? A leading scholar of Japanese politics places the decision within the context of the country’s search for a self-defined global role over the past generation.
Two nations, one project: keeping the Palestine-Israel Journal alive
The “Palestine-Israel Journal” is a remarkable experiment in cooperation across the bitter divides of the Middle East conflict. In the face of financial pressures, a Kafkaesque transport system, and the reality of two distinct national narratives, its Israeli co-editor describes his colleagues’ efforts to remain true to their core purpose: good professional work.
East is West: the German experience of people flow
The end of the cold war made a unified Germany the favoured destination for large numbers of migrants from farther east – including ethnic Germans from Romania and the former Soviet Union. How has the country managed these huge inflows, and what lessons does German experience offer to a possible Europe-wide migration model?
The Pentagon: the force is with us
United States planners are undeterred by the casualties and setbacks of their Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Indeed, with proposed new ‘global reach’ and nuclear weapons systems the Pentagon is sending a clear message to the world: business as usual.
Botswana, the Bushmen/San, and HIV/Aids
The catastrophic HIV/Aids pandemic in southern Africa threatens even its most vigorous economy, Botswana. But it is displacement and dispossession that create the greatest vulnerability to HIV. And it may be that rights to land and a people's level of confidence in their own identity are a central means of protection against ravaging illness. Is this what we can learn from the Botswana margins?
China's split personality
Chinese changes, North Korean democracy, Silvio’s latest
The Clinton legacy and America
The fiercely partisan memoirs of the Clinton presidency by Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, and their public reception, illuminate the passionate contest over the meaning of these years of trial and bile in American life. In a major review, openDemocracy’s North America editor examines how the destructive impulses of American journalism and politics corrupt historical memory and the rational interrogation of power.
Perspectives on Iranian Theatre
Two award-winning Iranian directors met up with Tony Fegan of Lift and Rosemary Bechler of openDemocracy a couple of days after the International debate: The Rights and Roles of Young People as Artsmakers to discuss making theatre in Iran and what should be cherished from the exchange between young artsmakers.
Living on the edge: a Roma clan in Ostrava, Czech Republic
Roma in the Czech Republic have been hit hard by post-communist industrial decline and social prejudice. In the eastern city of Ostrava, they display a survivalist spirit amidst grinding poverty. But how can Roma children succeed in an educational system based on institutional exclusion and contempt?
The art of the possible: an interview with Florin Botonogu
The search for equality and respect by Roma people in Romania has produced a new generation of activists using creative, confident methods of expressing their identity. The leader of a Bucharest-based NGO, Florin Botonogu, talks to Julian Kramer of openDemocracy about the impact of social activism on Roma’s sense of their direction in modern Romania.
The perils of professionalism: the BBC in the Middle East
The BBC, under intense pressure in Britain itself over its coverage of the Iraq war, faces challenges to its professionalism and impartiality in an equally controversial political arena: Israel and Palestine. Sarah McGregor-Wood and Hillel Schenker of the Palestine-Israel Journal interview the BBC’s Middle East bureau chief, Andrew Steele, about the dangers and satisfactions of getting the story, telling the truth – and taking the rap from both sides.
Authoritarian Man: the Axis of Good
The cold war, neo-liberal triumph and 9/11 have ushered in the assertive global hegemony of the United States and its British and Australian satraps. But the millennial project of imperial nationalism conceals a labyrinth of fear – of ordinariness, lost greatness, multiculturalism, globalisation itself.
DeLaying Tactics?
America and the world, God and man, Quotes and campaign of the week
Where are the weapons?
The issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was crucial in the justification for war offered by the United States and its British ally. Their subsequent failure to find evidence of an active WMD programme is now raising serious questions of trust for governments in Washington and London.
Art as refuge
What happens if a child or a teenager suddenly loses home, family, schoolmates – everything that he or she is about? A multi-faceted identity is replaced by one word: refugee. Here, two young journalists from Children’s Express report on how art can help people to see past the word to the rich human reality beyond.
Animadversions on translation
It is rare to find the latest Latvian, Chilean or Vietnamese novels made into English. As the translation of foreign novels withers into decorative star-gazing or random exoticism, a translator of Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth registers the intimate bond between a healthy writing culture and the enlarging experience of literary otherness. What happens when it is lost?
Beyond the zero sum: from Chávez to Lula
If the nature of a revolution can be established by the manner of its dress, then the one led by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela must rate as one of history’s more ambiguous upheavals. Chávez has had three standard outfits during his five-year presidency – baseball kit, military fatigues, Italian suit and silk tie – and he has generated an ideological froth to match. On returning from the Middle East, he proclaimed that his country should turn to Islam; when back from Cuba, his preferences turned to the rigours of communism. Like a compass surrounded by attractions, his heroes and sacred texts pull the president in as many different directions as there are forms of punishing the rich.
This week's editor
Europe from the bottom up
European debate
Democratic Wealth
Nuclear non-proliferation
oDRussia at journalismfestival .com
Mali - the plot thickens
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Remote control war
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Conference coverage from 50.50
Articles exploring the themes of the fourth international Nobel Women's Initiative conference May 28-31. Jennifer Allsopp and Heather McRobie will be reporting for 5050
Articles exploring the themes of the fourth international Nobel Women's Initiative conference May 28-31. Jennifer Allsopp and Heather McRobie will be reporting for 5050
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Martin Rose Bliss Was It in that Dawn to Be Next Door
Vron Ware Up in Arms
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Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
Paul Rogers on Global security
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