Politics
Features, Politics, Profiles - Monday, August 9, 2010 17:46 - 4 Comments
Remembering Mahmoud Darwish – How the revolution was written
Two years ago today Palestine’s National Poet, Mahmoud Darwish passed away after a 6-month battle with cancer. He was 67. The ensuing reverberations, of loss and mourning and a sense of things left unsaid continue to resonate to this day. On this second anniversary, Ahmed Masoud, Palestinian academic, writer and theatre director, revisits the astonishing achievements of a literary giant. In particular, he guides us through a crucial period in Darwish’s intellectual journey, namely the years 1950-1971 when he was still living in Israel. It's a fitting homage, celebrating the life of a true humanist and the fighting conscience of a nation.
Columns, Devil's Advocate, Ideas, Politics - Thursday, August 5, 2010 14:02 - 9 Comments
Devil’s Advocate: Is Democracy overrated?
Everyone knows -or at least pays lip-service to- Democracy as an exalted ideal. Is everyone wrong? Is this a concept we have been too lazy, or too blind, to fully examine? what is so special about a system that is aimed at creating a good society yet rarely delivers on that promise? In a controversial piece, the first of his 'Devil's Advocate' columns, Omer Ali examines the impact of democracy as well as its theoretical underpinnings. In the process, he draws on examples from politics and economics and takes aim at a few sacred truths.
Columns, Modern Times, Politics, Profiles - Tuesday, August 3, 2010 10:57 - 6 Comments
Modern Times: Osman Rasul – In Memory
On Sunday, Osman Rasul, a 27-year old Iraqi Kurd who had spent nine years in the inhumane limbo of the asylum bureaucracy leaped to his death from the seventh floor of a Nottingham tower block. Ceasefire Columnist Corin Faife, a friend of Osman's, pays tribute to a "warm, kind, respectful man", crushed by the injustice and cruelty of the Home Office's asylum policy.
