Pick of the Web
Christopher Columbus has words from the other side of death for Captain John Whyte...
...who rebaptised Saddam International Airport as his troops rolled into it. The peremptory renaming of the main airport in Iraq’s capital city by its occupier from across the ocean stirs a centuries-old adventurer from his restless tomb.
Life after Saddam
The toxic shadow of the dictator has fallen across all twenty-five years of this young Iraqi exile’s life. From sinister visits to his nursery school to everyday chit chat, fear and paranoia infused his family’s life; now return and freedom beckon, but can the occupying forces deliver the democracy they have promised?
Saad Eddin Ibrahim: through the Arab looking glass
A democratic scholar-activist in Egypt is now free after a three-year ordeal of trial and imprisonment on hollow charges. But the individual story of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a naturalised American citizen, is less one of law and human rights than of an Egyptian state caught between authoritarian rule and strategic and financial dependence on the United States.
Aftermath: Afghan lessons, Iraqi futures
The American occupation of Baghdad’s centre was won at a terrible cost in civilian casualties. The experience of Afghanistan, seventeen months after ‘regime change’ there, shows that even vastly superior US firepower is not enough to secure a stable peace. Will Iraq be different?
Europe, Hungary is coming!
As Hungarians vote on whether to join the EU, we dive into their imaginations. What does enlargement mean at ground level? From a German factory in the north-east to the bustle of Budapest’s entrepreneurs, from hopes and fears to past terrors, Hungarian voices and stories jostle. In the corners of Europe, its futures can be glimpsed.
Stories from the fringe: hair in a West Indian style and fashion
With the scent of soup and Blue Magic, memories of hairstyles, tears and Saturday afternoons at Doris’ salon come flooding back. A veteran of black hair fashion remembers.
Masters of the universe?
What are the boundaries of corporate power and responsibility in the 21st century? In this key note roundtable discussion, leading activists, analysts and practitioners talk to Iain Ferguson and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy.
Internally displaced persons in Iraq: a potential crisis?
The aftermath of war in Iraq is likely to intensify the problem of internal displacement that has already affected thousands of Kurds in the north and Shi’a and Marsh Arabs in the south. Two relatively untested agencies – the UN Office for Project Services and the International Organisation for Migration – will be responsible for aiding the huge flows of displaced people expected. Can they cope? International experts have grave doubts.
'Why this debate matters to me'
Participants in openDemocracy’s roundtable on corporate power and responsibility introduce themselves.
American occupational hazards
Current plans for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq under the authority of an American military commander would bypass the UN and relegate Nato further to the margins. The recent experience of the UN in the Balkans, East Timor, and Afghanistan has demonstrated the UN’s competence in democratisation. In partnership with a Nato-led peacekeeping force, a joint UN-Nato operation would provide a more legitimate guarantee of long-term stability.
In Mogadishu objectivity is a luxury most journalists cannot afford
Somali journalist Harun Hassan found himself at the heart of a fatal information war when he worked for the BBC in Mogadishu. His experiences cast a frightening new light on the debate about journalistic objectivity, balance and ‘involvement’ in times of war.
Atonement
After destroying the Saddam regime, the US faces an even bigger task – winning the trust of Iraq’s people. It is time for a historic act of symbolic atonement.
A time for pride: in defence of British patriotism
The fundamental sense of loyalty and belonging to one’s own country is heightened in time of war. This is patriotism itself, an affirmation of pride and love – not the aggressive display of superiority that is nationalism. The problem in Britain is that minorities reject this patriotism, and the majority is too embarrassed to express it.
The stone bomb
In response to the horrors of imperial air warfare in Ethiopia, Burma, and India in the 1930s, the sculptor Eric Benfield and the socialist-feminist Sylvia Pankhurst turned political passion into art with a unique Anti-Air War Memorial.
Poetry amidst war
War annihilates, politics aggresses – but poetry voices. The vitality of poetry in the anti-war movement reveals people’s need in critical times to make the inner, creative voice part of a shared, public presence. Its impulse is not the anchoring of art to a didactic message, but rather the return of politics to its true origin in the lived experience of humanity.
Another day in the last superpower
Down and around Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, the protest march gently swells around the slogan – ‘war is expensive, peace is priceless’. There is life-affirming energy as well as righteous anger. For one citizen who remembers the Vietnam era, this is the moment to carry an American flag. War is no time for shyness.
Before the fall
Ambitious survivalists are peeling off from Saddam’s crumbling regime and taking the freedom road from Baghdad to Kurdistan. Three conceal their faces yet offer their secrets of the last days to our intrigued Tehran correspondent.
Broken lives, bitter hearts
The Iraqi regime is under sustained US assault. Its public voice is being silenced. For Iraq’s soldiers and civilians alike, the cost of almost three weeks of war is already enormous. America is close to victory in the field, but the convulsive reaction across the Middle East will make it a hollow one.
Another casualty of war: proliferation controls and verification protocols
International efforts to limit the proliferation of dangerous weapons have focused recently on questions of verification. But there may be a deeper problem in the way that the spread of destructive power across the world is fuelled by the subjection of science and technology to political ambition.
Clear thinking
The trouble with close-knit groups, according to psychiatrist Arthur Deikman, is that they stop thinking realistically. Is this true of the Bush team? Could this Iraq war be Bush’s Bay of Pigs, rather than his Cuban missile crisis?
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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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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Dan Hancox Revel, Riot and Rebellion
Martin Rose Bliss Was It in that Dawn to Be Next Door
Vron Ware Up in Arms
Jim Gabour Sunday Comics
James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do
Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
Paul Rogers on Global security
Mary Kaldor on Human security
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