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It will be interesting to see exactly which customs the Vatican is going to allow from the past rich five centuries of Anglican worship, life and thought.

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editor's note

openDemocracy hosts debates. We do not advocate an editorial line. Editor’s notes are light, brief comments on aspects of the current edition - and how it relates to current events.

We published 750 articles this year. Here are fifty of the best!
openDemocracy asked its editor to choose his three favourite texts from 2004.
George Papandreou outlines his approach to a new way of doing politics
Why is an argument between two optimists worth time and attention in a dark world? openDemocracy editor Anthony Barnett defends the publication of Tom Nairn’s long and challenging response to Timothy Garton Ash
The lesson of Tom Nairn’s post–imperial critique of Timothy Garton Ash’s “Free World” is that nation–states and their peoples, not Anglospheric empires, will shape the 21st century. But this process needs a politics. Where is it?
Bush’s re–election has opened a new historical period. Tough, clear thought on a global scale is needed to understand and democratically shape it, says Anthony Barnett.
John Kerry’s supporters must now avoid finger-pointing and self-flagellation, says Anthony Barnett in New York – and instead build a new, international politics of globalisation to replace Bush’s politics of fear.
The most important campaign of all, for democratic legitimacy and moral respect, has found the United States president wanting.
The American election debate has ignored Israel and Palestine. All the more reason for openDemocracy to pose the issue in a responsible, serious way, says Anthony Barnett.
Anthony Barnett remembers Gerhard Schröder’s speechwriter and a formative influence on openDemocracy for whom “nothing was foreign except the second rate", followed by the eulogy Anthony gave at the memorial meeting in front of the Chancellor and Foreign Minister Joskar Fischer.
The choices the United States made after 11 September 2001 raise fundamental questions of political judgment. Anthony Barnett outlines how openDemocracy seeks to answer them.
The United Nations is seeking to reinvent itself. The Iraq disaster should make sure the world listens, says Anthony Barnett.
Several openDemocracy readers felt that our presentation of the Iraqi roundtable was biased. The editor responds.
We publish, you pay. The deal? Quality. The price? Modest. The reward? Your money funds Iraqis too. The catch? You have to read articles like this from the editor.
As the United States abandons a key Iraqi ally, is its intention to focus on a new military target: Iran?
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison poses the most severe question for the United States: can it consider non-Americans as moral equals?
The recent experience of Spain, India and Turkey highlight a profound trend in international affairs: the globalisation of democracy.
One year on from Saddam’s fall, Iraq’s people need more help, interest and attention from the international community.
openDemocracy’s aim in publishing three new columnists covering America’s election is not neutrality but a well-argued partiality that will engage and include people from around the world.
The attack in Madrid should not be looked at as only European, or even only political, but in the context of a human chain of being and responsibility.
The shared character of Britain’s prime minister and the ‘whistleblower’ who exposed the workings of his intelligence agencies before the Iraq war illuminates a desperate truth: this is a national political culture at the end of its tether.
After Hutton, Butler. The successive British inquiries into the fallout of the Iraq war, led from the heart of the political elite, are designed to protect the people from knowledge of their government’s misdeeds.
The Hutton report on the death of a British scientist blames the BBC and clears Tony Blair, but misses the larger truth of the Iraq weapons affair: the British government’s system of command and control.
The American presidential election belongs to the global community as well as the United States. openDemocracy intends to facilitate a dialogue between them.
What does the stunning image of Saddam’s now empty mouth after his capture reveal of the nature of his regime and its fate?
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, gives new light to openDemocracy’s classic question: who rules the world and how?
openDemocracy is proud that columnist Gil Loescher, badly wounded in the bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, returns to write for us.
openDemocracy’s interview with weapons inspector has a profound lesson for Britain’s hyper-centralised political culture.
In advance of a global summit of centre-left leaders in London, Geoff Mulgan has mapped a vital cultural shift in the inner life of British governance – from ‘we know best’ to ‘we learn best’. The openness and practicality of his argument make it both welcome and deceptively radical, says Anthony Barnett; but does it, like Tony Blair's 'Third Way' itself, also carry some Old Britain paternalism into the new media age?
Nomads, immigrants, migrants, refugees – People Flow, the concept pioneered in a new openDemocracy debate, offers imaginative ways for the movement of people to be understood.
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