“I’m very excited and honoured to serve as the editor-in-chief of openDemocracy. I’ve long been a fan of openDemocracy’s global footprint and editorial commitment to rigorous investigations and incisive coverage of the biggest stories of our time. As newsrooms around the world are threatened by censorship, intimidation and economic disruption, the cause of independent media… Read More openDemocracy appoints Aman Sethi as editor-in-chief
Sam Gelder A Romany Gypsy woman will take on the government at the High Court next week over its “discriminatory” Policing Act. Wendy Smith has been granted permission to challenge part of the 2022 Police, Crime and Sentencing Act (PSCS) that introduced powers to fine, arrest, imprison and seize the homes of Gypsies and Travellers… Read More Romany Gypsy woman takes UK government to court over ‘discriminatory’ policing
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, held public hearings on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case South Africa v. Israel on 11 and 12 January 2024, at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the seat of the Court.… Read More South Africa’s case against Israel’s ‘genocidal conduct’ at UN Court of Justice / Worldwide demonstrations in support of Palestine
Bharat Bhushan India-Maldives Row – Coercive diplomacy often backfires The Right-wing ecosystem, created and nurtured by the ruling BJP, has taken over, setting Indian diplomacy on a collision course with that of the tiny island nation Unless there was a deep-rooted controversy which ordinary mortals cannot fathom, it may not have been Prime Minister Modi’s intention to… Read More Old man at sea: The Maldives imbroglio
No one could accuse the U.S. of double standards. What it is vulnerable to is the accusation that it no longer has any standards at all… Modern Germany needs to believe that Israel’s creation was a “happy ending” to the horrors of the gas chambers… For Germany, its commitment to Israel is offered as a… Read More Gaza and the End of Western Fantasy
Greg Conti It has quickly become a commonplace that American elite higher education is in a more perilous position than it has been in recent memory. Long-standing conservative discontent has crystallized as a result of recent events; multiple proposals targeting universities’ pocketbooks have been floated by lawmakers in the past weeks. Republican officials have made… Read More The Rise of the Sectarian University (in the USA)
More than 5% of global emissions are linked to conflict or militaries but countries continue to hide the true scale Doug Weir n early 2022, journalists began to ask us how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was affecting the climate crisis. While we could point to landscape fires, burning oil refineries and the thirst of diesel-hungry military… Read More The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored
Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center In her evocative book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza, the Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes, “To me, Gaza embodies the entire saga of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it represents the central contradiction of the state of Israel—democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve.” The conflict in… Read More The Gaza War and the Rest of the World
Owen Jones Injustice is easy to oppose after it has receded into the past, and there is no cost to imagining yourself as a hero long after the event. Everyone celebrates the suffragettes now, but at the time they were vilified as hateful spinsters and terrorists. McCarthyism is a pejorative political label on right and… Read More 2023: the year governments looked at the climate crisis, and decided to persecute the activists
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these around the world. This is how democracies become new… Read More What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies
After the truth-shower 