Desistance from violence can be to withdraw from a stance of violence through an act of violence, to leave off one form of violence by taking on another. Each Israeli attack on Gaza is simultaneously and implicitly recast by state subtext as a desistance from genocide.
Inspired by the 1960s Russell tribunal on Vietnam the ITC aims to document, clarify and publicise the treatment of political dissenters and members of religious and ethnic minorities by the Iranian government between 1981 and 1989.
US strikes against Islamic State fighters heading towards Erbil will not make a significant impact against a group that can fight across multiple fronts in multiple countries.
These options distract people from the real priority: to find (or strengthen) practical forms of pressure in support of international consensus.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won the country’s first direct presidential election. But behind his vision of a ‘new Turkey’ lies a dangerous politics of scapegoating.
The most prominent case is the extreme right political party Golden Dawn in Greece. While all cases are different, they all address exactly the same fundamental question: what are the limits of political activism within a liberal democracy?
Hong Kong’s deep reservoir of discontent is not, as Beijing contends, the result of efforts by “anti-China” forces. They are the local reactions of people who have no influence over policies that are rapidly changing their home.
Political actors must address the place of religion and ethnicity, as defining identity markers, in the post-Arab Spring countries. The Arab Spring, after all, may have signaled the beginning of the end of exclusionary models of nationalism, and all the other isms that eventually lead to genocidal
Why should we return to the now 100-year-old genocide of the Ottoman Armenian population? The study and acknowledgement of this genocide, and what it symbolises, is critical to the practice of an emancipatory politics today.
In 2013, openDemocracy published Pradeep Baisakh’s interview with Arvind Kejriwal, charting his transition from Gandhian social activist to politician. One year on, Baisakh writes an open letter to the leader of the Aam Admi party, urging him to once again take up Gandhian principles.
