The Spectre of Jihad

By John Thorne

Somewhere inside, a young man with explosives strapped around his midriff sat listening. He could hear the wails of sirens, the jeers of the crowd, the thudding of a police battering ram on the door below. He had heard the gunfire that morning, and the two claps of thunder when his friends left him. Now he had a choice to make. [more]

Morocco – a virtual democratisation

By Aboubakr Jamaï

The Moroccan regime of Mohammed VI has fully exploited the Bush administration’s desire to magnify and advertise the faintest sign of liberalisation in the Arab world. [subscribe]

SOUTH AFRICA

Visions of a Liberal Future

By Helen Suzman

Although three of the key components of liberalism – a vigilant opposition in parliament, a pro-active civil society and a watchful press – are evident in South Africa, Professor Milton Shain’s concern that “a liberal consitution does not in itself ensure a democratic future” appears to be justified. [subscribe]

LIBERAL INTERVENTIONALISM

What’s Left to

do for Darfur?

By Stephen Twigg

The way forward is an oil trust fund. This would distribute oil revenues for the provision of education, health and development projects, and to the Government of South Sudan. The only purpose of the initiative would be to keep money away from the Sudanese military and Janjaweed. [subscribe]

CHARITY SPOTLIGHT

Treatment Action Campaign

By Gillian Slovo &

Zackie Achmat

As a charity, a judicial and political pressure group, and a social movement with over 15,000 members, the TAC lobbies for treatment for HIV-positive South Africans; a country where over 5.5 million of the population is infected. [subscribe]

WRITING & SOCIETY

On Myth

By Marina Warner

Writers don’t make up myths; they take them over and recast them. Even Homer was telling stories that his audience already knew. If some individuals present weren’t acquainted with Odysseus’s wanderings or the Trojan War, they were aware that this was a common inheritance that belonged to everyone. [more]

WRITING & SOCIETY

Poetry and the English imagination

By Bryan Appleyard

No nation has produced better essayists than France, none has produced better composers than the Germans, better painters than the Italians, nor better novelists than the Russians. And the English? The English do poetry. [more]

WRITING & SOCIETY

The Public

By William Hazlitt

And what is the public? What is that great leviathan which is greater than kings, and wiser than philosophers, and more just than judges? Hath it any favourite vizier, or prime minister, or confidential valet, or kept mistress, whereby its ear may be slily gained and its favour indirectly purchased? [subscribe]

AMERICAN POLITICS

The Presidential Circus

By Simon Radford

Nothing typifies the Iowa primaries more than an ambitious politician discussing the intricacies of the Central American Free Trade Agreement while munhcing on a deep-fried twinky. [more]

FUTURE OF FEMINISM

Notes on Being a Black Feminist in Englewood, NJ

By Michele Wallace

I have never been an adequately representative voice because I never really bought into the premise of identity politics. [subscribe]

THE MIDDLE EAST

Israel at Middle Age

By Benny Morris

The problem, of course, is that while Israel as a society may have entered middle age, the situation (Jewish) Israelis live in, and, even more so, most likely face, is antediluvian, revolutionary and possibly apocalyptic. [subscribe]

COLUMNS

In Praise of Somaliland

By Peter Tatchell

This year’s civil war in Somalia has killed thousands of people and created over half a million refugees. Somalia is a failed state that has failed its people. In contrast, the north-west breakaway region of the Republic of Somaliland is an oasis of peace, stability and progress in the Horn of Africa. [more]

COLUMNS

The Paradox of Plenty

By Anatole Kaletsky

Why have almost no African countries managed to achieve the sustained economic development which has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty in east Asia? There are three inter-connected explanations: war, corruption, and the curse of natural resources. [more]

COLUMNS

The Islamist as Ironist

By T.F. Lane

Islamism does not, at first glance, seem a fertile ground for irony. Its literalist doctrine and joyless demeanour identify it as an creed of severe sincereity. And the movement is more than ever defined by Ayman al-Zawahiri's monotone earnestness. [more]

THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

Salvation in the Sahara

By John Thorne

In the year that the American navy broke the back of Barbary slave trade and brought low the potentates of Tunis and Algiers, a shipwreck occurred on the coast of the Sahara desert that would contribute to the end of slavery in America. [subscribe]

THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

Selective Rememberance

By James Walston

Parallel to the way in which the British view the trade as a precurser to the colonisation of Africa, the Americans see it, more correctly, as the condition for lynch mobs, Jim Crow laws and black ghettoes. [subscribe]

LETTER FROM ABROAD

Letter from Ghana

By Nana Akua Anyidoho

Ghana celebrated 50 years of independence on March 6th. As a gift to the nation, the state electricity company promised an outage-free anniversary. Immediately after the fireworks, the country was returned to rationed darkness. [subscribe]