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Our latest openDemocracy Quarterly, 50.50 Women Writers, Politics and Voice, edited by Rosemary Bechler, is out now. You can buy online here. openDemocracy's gender equality initiative, 50.50 is seeking a dedicated volunteer to assist with web publishing. Details Just published The liberty of the networked (part 1), Tony Curzon Price Iran’s Islamic revolution: three paradoxes , Abbas Milani The uses of genocide, Martin Shaw Afghanistan’s critical moment , Paul Rogers Barack Obama: don’t waste the crisis, Godfrey Hodgson Pakistan's failed crackdown , Raja Karthikeya France’s politics of regicide, Patrice de Beer Kyrgyzstan’s default mode is Russia, Sureyya Yigit BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?, Russian eye on the Chinese, Tatiana Shcherbina Advertise here The liberty of the networked (part 1), Tony Curzon Price Does technology liberate or enslave? When Prometheus first started the industrial revolution, Zeus thought he had liberated humanity and should be punished for it. The tension between technology as empowering versus technology as sinister control continues. The web versus the database, liberation or tool of tyranny? The Convention on Modern Liberty of which openDemocracy is a sponsor, asks us to make the question of technology's social role central to our political thought and activity. The... more » Iran’s Islamic revolution: three paradoxes , Abbas Milani The Islamic revolution of 1979 is an event defined as much by its ironies and paradoxes as by its novelties and cruelties. It was, by near-consensus among scholars and experts, the most "popular revolution" in modern times: almost 11% of the population participated in it, compared to the estimated proportionate of citizens who took part in the French (7%) and Russian (9%) revolutions. Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam director of Iranian Studies at Stanford... more » The uses of genocide, Martin Shaw The accusation of "genocide" nowadays seems to accompany almost any episode of political violence and armed conflict around the world. In the last year alone, it has been used in Kenya (where both main parties invoked it during the post-election violence of January 2008); South Ossetia (where both Russia and Georgia hurled it at the other in the war of August 2008); the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where Congolese warlord Laurent Nkunda claimed that he has been protecting... more » Afghanistan’s critical moment , Paul Rogers The difficult global inheritance of the United States administration of Barack Obama is exemplified in the possible loss of the Manas air-base in Kyrgyzstan. This would be a painful event in any circumstance, not least as it may involve the Bishkek government making a deal with Russia that would further signal a changing geopolitical balance in the region. But the troubles the US and its allies are facing in Afghanistan means that this is a particularly bad time to be threatened with a loss of... more » Barack Obama: don’t waste the crisis, Godfrey Hodgson It is just over forty-five years ago that I rode downtown in a cab to cover the epic "March on Washington". At every intersection there were detachments of paratroops in combat-gear. The John F Kennedy administration has somehow accomplished the posthumous public-relations coup of suggesting that it was passionately in favour of the civil-rights movement. That day, 28 August 1963, it did not feel like that: on the contrary, the government seemed afraid that 100,000 black people coming... more » Pakistan's failed crackdown , Raja Karthikeya After the Mumbai attacks in late November 2008, heavy scrutiny fell on their alleged perpetrator, the Pakistan-backed and based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). For all intents and purposes, LeT should be as good as dead. United Nations Resolution 1822 on al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their affiliates ensures that the group is now treated as "hostile" by 192 countries. Most countries in the west, including the United States, United Kingdom, France and Australia have already banned... more » France’s politics of regicide, Patrice de Beer The deepening economic crisis is returning France to the politics it knows best: of anger, polarisation, and carnivals of protest. Nicolas Sarkozy's frenetic activity and bling-bling style was tolerable enough to a people who elected him to the presidency in May 2007, but now seems to have run its course. The numbers interested in the brutal ousting of once popular justice minister Rachida Dati (the pioneering politician once so close to "Sarko") or in gossip about the... more » Kyrgyzstan’s default mode is Russia, Sureyya Yigit The end of the US airbase at Manas airbase  was only one of the decisions announced at the recent meeting in Moscow between Kyrgyz President Bakiev and President Medvedev. Russia announced that they would give Kyrgyzstan  $2 billion in loans and $150 million in aid, as well as writing off debts of $180 million. The background to these developments is not a happy one. The Kyrgyz elite never wanted independence, but ever since the leadership was forced to accept it, there has been a deep... more » BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?, The first stages of our ‘campaign' - which at the beginning we did not even think of as a campaign - were astonishingly easy.  Most British academics, journalists, diplomats and politicians with an interest in Russia have at one time or another contributed to the BBC Russian Service, and they are all concerned about the fate of Russian Features.  Many of them travel regularly to Russia.  Most have received feedback about programmes to which they have contributed, and the value of these... more » Russian eye on the Chinese, Tatiana Shcherbina It's the Chinese and the Russians that take their holidays on the island of Hainan- no one else. The terror of finding yourself in an impenetrable world of characters and language where you can't understand a sound gives way to a terror of foreign Russian things. Everywhere you go the menus are in Russian, shop signs are in Russian, sometimes only in Russian, without a single Chinese sign; the hotels buzz with Russian-speaking guides.  In the city of Sanya, the local centre, if the... more »