JAMES BRYAN wonders how the Turkish government’s humourless approach to public art fits with its supposed commitment to secularism.
Though his pronouncements insist that Turkey’s Kemalist secularism remains undiluted, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t seem to shake off innuendos about his past and that of his party. He and the Justice and Development party (AK) [...]

JAMES BRYAN asks why it took so long for the Socialist International to expel Mubarak’s party.
When faced with adversity we often find out who our real friends are. Despite being deserted by his own people, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak can for now put his trust in the police and the top-tier of the military. In [...]

We must reject the lies and misrepresentations in this phoniest of elections, says HUGO RADICE
This week’s major intervention in the election campaign has surely been the call by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the major parties to ‘come clean’ about their strategies for reducing the public sector debt, if elected. The IFS report has chimed [...]

Iraq could work if the steady success of its Kurdistan Region is supported and spreads throughout the country. GARY KENT reports from a fact-finding mission
The Kurdistan region of Iraq enjoyed a head start over the rest of the country. Its 1991 uprising ousted Saddam’s genocidal forces which had murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds at Halabja and [...]

WILL BROWN reflects on the disappointing outcome to the climate change talks in Copenhagen
The USA can’t commit to meaningful cuts in carbon emissions; China and other developing countries refuse to budge before industrialised countries have addressed their historic legacy of pollution; the small island, least developed and African nations insist on the need to do [...]

Last year’s financial crisis presented an opportunity for fundamental reform, argues Will Brown. It’s one that’s already gone to waste.
It’s now over a year since the world’s financial system went into meltdown in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. At the time, there was much talk of a transformation of [...]

Will Brown looks at the foreign policy agenda facing the Obama administration.
The vitriolic healthcare debate in the US and ongoing economic problems may dominate President Obama’s current agenda but the first nine months of this administration have also put into sharp focus an exceptionally difficult range of US foreign policy problems.
The inauguration of Barack Obama [...]

PHIL DORÉ recounts his personal and painful journey from the Stop the War Coalition to Labour Friends of Iraq
In March 2003, as the war began in Iraq, I found myself sitting in the middle of a road in Cardiff alongside hundreds of anti-war protestors. I was one of what the media had dubbed ‘protest virgins’: [...]

SARAH BRACKING unpicks the liberal agenda behind Live8 and the G8 summit.
The majority of the people attending Live8, and the demonstrations surrounding the G8, wanted no more nor less than to reduce poverty. But helping poor people in other countries raises problems, particularly when the language of benevolence doesn’t explain the structural issues involved.
What emerged [...]

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS explains why the latest pronouncements from Francis Fukuyama miss the mark
I have a feeling that it must have been a disappointing week for Francis Fukuyama, whose essay ‘After Neoconservatism’ (adapted from his upcoming book America at the Crossroads) was awarded seven pages in the 19 February 2006 New York Times Magazine. The anti-Danish mayhem [...]