Though intended to be temporary in nature, Agamben argues that the ‘state of exception’ has become a permanent fixture of democratic governance. This ‘war’, declared by the US and its allies against a tactic, and therefore unbound by time or space, is ongoing.
A general strike was called yesterday, there are ongoing protests across the country and calls for the military to enter into the political arena in a more robust way.
A defence of the authors’ original claims about how the roots of conflict in Bahrain must be addressed.
Bahrain needs to set about the hard work of healing societal cleavages, to build the truly sovereign and democratic country which the majority of its citizens appear so determined to achieve. If their much-touted ‘democracy promotion’ rhetoric is to have any real significance, western governments
It is Belhadj’s voice more than that of the others that has the greatest potential to disrupt the official 9/11 memorialisation. It threatened to make a mockery of their declared humanitarian intentions, as it exposed these governments’ past complicity in the crimes of the region’s dictators, incl
Often overlooked in the western press have been the collective, or one could say national, grievances of the Tunisian people, expressed as frustration at Tunisia’s lack of real sovereignty in a global order enforced by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank
Despite the best efforts of the US and its European and regional allies to ignore them, international and regional factors that enabled the domestic power structures to remain in place for so long have also been the focus of protesters’ grievances and demands.
The real scandal revealed on closer examination of diplomatic cables from the MENA region, is the gulf that separates what US diplomats acknowledge in private and what US leaders say (and do) in public, vis-a-vis democracy promotion in the Middle East
In addition to the argument for including a democratically elected party in a process initiated by states and institutions claiming to support democratic development in the region, the recent violence is another argument for talking to Hamas
