From Ethics & International Affairs, Yvonne Terlingen (AI): The Human Rights Council: A New Era in UN Human Rights Work? A review of Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights by Carol C. Gould. Attacks on Amnesty International and politicians show the Vatican is forcing the issue of abortion firmly back on to the agenda. For a Radical Ethics of Equality: What does it mean today to be anticapitalist? Today, left identity is an identity in crisis. The middle classes have discovered they've been duped by the super-rich: Never have so many of us appeared so well-off yet felt so poor - and we used to believe obscene wealth was victimless. The rich must be penalised: Politicians who run away from this basic principle will never have the nerve to achieve true equality. Jeffrey Owens warns of the threat that offshore tax evasion poses to sovereign governments.
From American Heritage, forgotten but true: Japan attacks the American mainland. Joseph Nye on the rise of Liberal Japan. Japan as a Global Contributor: An essay on envisioning an expanded role in a world of militarism, global warming and multipolarity. Japan has rechristened the island of Iwo Jima, site of one of World War II’s most horrific battles, with its prewar name in an attempt to rectify a misnomer proliferated for a half-century.
From TLS, Putin's list: A review of Tony Wood's Chechnya: The case for independence; Gordon M. Hahn's Russia's Islamic Threat; Timothy Phillips' Beslan: The tragedy of school no. 1; and Anna Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary. After Turkmenbashi, Tajikmanbashi: Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov died in December, but Tajikistan's president is continuing the tradition of bizarre despotism in post-Soviet Central Asia.
From Eurozine, ultra-nationalism is on the rise in Turkey. However, following the wave of protest at the murder of Hrant Dink, observers hoped prime minister Tayyip Erdogan would be forced to take action. Instead: nothing. That ought to be no surprise. After all, it is the State and not the government that runs Turkey. And what the State wants, the State gets. In Turkey, the military and the government are engaged in an all-out struggle for power. The country is deeply divided, and decidedly unstable. Turkish writer Ahmet Altan describes his country's paradoxes and warns of the potentially dire consequences. The "deprivatization" of religion has caused strains in Turkey, the most resolutely secular of nations.
All for one and one for all? Europe is divided on how to unite. In Brussels there is irritation that Poland is playing the "history card" once again. But Germans in particular should be wary of being too quick to judge. An article on France's new foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, a French doctor to cure Trans-Atlantic ills. The French may love their bicycles, but in Paris, only a courageous minority braves traffic on two wheels. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe wants Parisians to consider looking backward. Tidal wave: A look at how Malta fears it may be swamped by migrants. A map of New Switzerland, finally in need of a Navy!
