The west must prioritise civilian wellbeing in any intervention. What might help?
One effective way for western governments to keep their people safe is to press for fundamental reforms in countries where armed extremists thrive, rather than subverting democracy at home.
Want to avoid the cannibalisation of British and European politics from below and a state of exception from above? First, ponder the global power-shift from NATO-lands to China and Russia.
The state of emergency is being used to harass ecological activists and to block demonstrations denouncing the irresponsibility of governments in facing up to climate change, during the COP21 meeting.
The few politicians in Europe resisting the pull of air strikes, such as Jeremy Corbyn and Matteo Renzi, appear intimidated. They should be strongly supported with activism and intellectual argument.
Undeterred by the disastrous results of ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya, western powers have for four years been determinedly trying to help regime change in Syria along.
'Every time the western media decides what to air, and who to call a terrorist, they generate a lot of debate in our country.' A leading Pakistani digital rights activist on the politics of counter-terror and surveillance.
Is the new constitution an attempt by Armenian capital and oligarchs to signal to EU elites and European capital that they are determined to fulfil transnational capital’s wildest dreams? A conversation.
In 2006, a conversation before a large audience in Rotterdam on the role that Muslims should play in European societies took place, between Dyab Abou Jahjah, then president of the Arab European League with its Antwerp headquarters, and Tariq Ramadan. openDemocracy’s Editor was there. Archive.
What control does Facebook have over our experience of tragedy?
"It is a France made up of diversity, plurality, of people coming together and mixing, that the terror wants to shut down, to silence through fear, to make disappear through horror. And it is this open society that we must defend because it is our most secure and lasting protection against terrori
