Change continues to be worked out on the bodies of women. Hamid Dabashi makes the long-term test of the Arab Awakening the creation of institutions that protect women’s civil liberties, while Tom Dale disagrees that misogyny in the Middle East is as simple as Mona Eltahaway in Foreign Policy thinks – and George Lawson warns against any grand, radical concept: in the tradition of 1989, the Arab uprisings are ‘negotiated revolutions’.
A new approach to economic thinking is essential, Will Davies argues very carefully, and demonstrates that wisdom now demands throwing caution to the air; while Aaron Peters mocks the Economist. There is a ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ but people are going to need the money to live!
Across the old continent Europe hovers at the precipice. Philippe Marlière has started a wonderful rolling diary of a French election that will shake the Euro. Serbia is struggling with ‘Europeanisation’, Bosnia-Herzegovina even more so and now Holland finds it hard to hold the line. By the time you read this we should also have launched a diary on Greece as it too faces historic elections, while our brilliant oDRussia section exposes the Kremlin and the hackers as partners in crime.
Unsurprisingly the old order lives on. Murder and mourning sweep Mexico, London enjoys hosting the arms trade to die for and following Tim Otty’s powerful critique of British steps to introduce ‘secret justice’, as the latest step in a decade of complicity in torture and deceit, Anthony Barnett gets very cross indeed when he learns that Tony Blair’s secret services helped Gaddafi to crush his Libyan dissidents.
But the greatest media mogul of the old epoch, Rupert Murdoch, is being humbled. Des Freedman reports, Bruce Page, an old opponent, delights in his fall and welcomes an amazing exposé of his criminal empire even as his fingers chill the Scottish spirit.
There will be more on this historic confrontation over our media this coming week, as well as the announcement of change in openDemocracy.
Elsewhere on the web don’t miss:
An honest economist tortured by the Euro
Colin Waugh on the Charles Taylor trial and the long wait for justice in Liberia
The details of Murdoch's grilling this week from the official Leveson Inquiry website
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