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“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”

- Walter Benjamin, 1936

Anti-deportation campaigns: ‘What kind of country do you want this to be?’

Jennifer Allsopp 25 March 2013

A new musical, Glasgow Girls, showcases the power of anti-deportation campaigns as both an expression of human solidarity and an essential device for holding states to account. But their key role, argues Jennifer Allsopp, is to build support for an asylum system that upholds the rights of all.

Togo: a country of strangers?

Mawusse Domefaa Atimasso 18 February 2013

Making peace in Togo is not a numbers game. Nor is it about searching to find out who was wrong in the past. As the next election approaches it is time to recreate our country’s history and invest in unity and peace, says Mawusse Domefaa Atimasso.

Togo : un pays d’étrangers?

Mawusse Domefaa Atimasso 18 February 2013

Pour établir la paix au Togo, il ne faut pas faire de bilan ni chercher à savoir qui a eu tort dans le passé. A l’approche des élections il convient de réécrire l’histoire de notre pays et d’investir dans l’unité et dans la paix, dit Mawusse Domefaa Atimasso.

In memoriam Valery Abramkin, Russia's prison reformer

Valery Abramkin and Mary McAuley 6 February 2013

Celebrated Russian activist Valery Abramkin has died aged 66. Here we republish extracts from a lecture delivered in 2006, which contains many fascinating insights into the rules of behaviour, hierarchies and relationships within Soviet and Russian prisons. (With a foreword by Mary
McAuley.)

To live so as not to feel ashamed: remembering lawyer Yury Schmidt

Kristina Gorelik 18 January 2013

Tributes are flooding in to the renowned Russian human rights lawyer Yury Schmidt, who has died aged 75. Schmidt devoted much of his career to defending critics of the Russian government and others accused of political crimes, from environmental whistleblowers to oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Kristina Gorelik celebrates his life.

Stateless in Burma: Rohingya word wars

Amal de Chickera 12 October 2012

In order to understand how the ‘Rohingya crisis’ has come to pass we need to consider the narrative built by three groupings of international actors - the Burmese government, host countries for Rohingya who have fled and the international community at large.

Edwin Ardener: the life-force of ideas

Malcolm Chapman

The work of the social anthropologist Edwin Ardener (1927-87) remains a fertile source of insight and influence, says his former student and editor of a collection of his essays, Malcolm Chapman.

(This article was first published on 21 September 2007)

Britain and the problem of living in the past

Gerry Hassan 10 June 2012

As Jubilee celebrations die down in the short period of calm before the Olympics, questions arise about what all this means, what Britain and Britishness is, and what the future might be for both.

Bob Dylan at 70: revolution in the head, revisited

David Hayes 24 May 2012

The most influential and original musician of the 1960s generation remains a figure of protean creativity half a century on. The wealth of attention devoted to Bob Dylan as he reaches his 70th birthday is testament to a career of astonishing range. It also reflects the complex legacy of a formative decade which Dylan’s songs and persona helped to define, says David Hayes.

(This article was first published on 24 May 2011)

Bob Dylan: a conversation

David Hayes 24 May 2012

The celebrations of the 70th birthday of the great American musician Bob Dylan include many personal journeys through the archives of memory. Here, David Hayes recalls a thrilling series of concerts Dylan performed in 1981...and a late-night encounter.

(This article was first published on 24 May 2011)

A tableau for Václav Havel

Tjebbe van Tijen 20 December 2011

Vaclav Havel

Tjebbe van Tijen presents a montage of graffiti and photographs in honour of Václav Havel

Ronald Reagan and America: the real legacy

Godfrey Hodgson

If you are a subscriber, and want to download the complete Reagan package, click here.

“I am a shining city on a hill.
You are an American exceptionalist.

People power and the new global ferment

Stellan Vinthagen 15 November 2010

People power does not lend itself to the geo-strategic interests of empires or warlords, since it is based on collective action and civic unity, as well as the refusal to comply with existing power-holders. Any movement that opts for civil resistance has to encompass and attempt to represent diverse social groups.

Charles de Gaulle remembered

Neal Ascherson 18 June 2010

A London radio broadcast on 18 June 1940 by an unknown French officer altered history’s course. It was also the first act in Charles de Gaulle’s extraordinary thirty-year role as national-political leader and embodiment of “a certain idea of France”. Neal Ascherson traverses a landscape of memory - from Greenock to Paris, Algiers to Warsaw - to recall his encounters with a colossus of French and European history.

Cambodia: surviving the Khmer Rouge

Var Hong Ashe

I was born and raised in the small south-east Asian country of Cambodia, and brought up in the town of Takeo, south of the capital Phnom Penh. Cambodia was then ruled by King Norodom Sihanouk, and in its first years of independence from French colonial rule. In March 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup led by General Lon Nol, who declared the country a republic seven months later.

This week's editor

Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

A republican call for a basic income
Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark

Nuclear non-proliferation

oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

Mali - the plot thickens

Remote control war

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