If an artistic institution connives in injustice, it must be permissible to call it to account without being labelled a Nazi, even if it is Jewish.
Guilty? Not guilty? The verdict handed down this week by an Icelandic court found former Prime Minister Geir H.Haarde to be both. The verdict seems balanced to some, but extremely unsatisfactory to many.
The formation of an official agency charged with helping Washington identify and address threats of atrocity around the world is notable. But the United States's own foreign-policy record raises serious questions over its likely impact, says Martin Shaw.
A new phase of violence in Iraq and the dynamics of the conflict in Syria provide fertile conditions for the re-emergence of the al-Qaida idea.
Serbia has made little progress in its push for European integration in the time available. And whlie Belgrade is complacent about this, Brussels is lenient, knowing that an integrated Serbia is necessary for stability in the region
Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, the 51-year-old co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, reaches his 78th day of a hunger strike today, just as world media attention turns away from the island after the Grand Prix. The Bahraini authorities tell us he is in good health. But what if they act too lat
There will be a very large number of Afghans – primarily, but not only, women – who will be left to pay a heavy price for their “collaboration with the enemy”. This, above all, will be the inevitable legacy left by the hurried, unwise and poorly planned invasion of 2001.
The collapse of budget negotiations and the upcoming elections in Holland provide opportunities for the emergence of better answers to the violence done by nationalist antagonisms, imposed through neo-liberal austerity programmes
The core themes of a new book of Fred Halliday’s openDemocracy columns underline his work's enduring vitality, says David Hayes. [This article was first published on 23 March 2011}
The celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s sixty years on the throne coincides with the best of recent times for the British monarchy. The moment and the mood will pass, but the wider challenge to the institution’s paralysed opponents is enduring, says David Hayes.
The legal procedure in the case of Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the Norwegian massacre of July 2011, is a case-study of democratic values - in particular, that democracy is not a "what" but a "how", says Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
The shared experience of military repression and failure under Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Assad dynasty in Syria is a challenge to the Arab world's political elites, says Hazem Saghieh.
