Le Monde Diplomatique

France: behind the expulsion of the Roma
by Olivia Miljanic and Robert Zaretsky
3 Sep 2010 at 3:50pm
On both sides of the Atlantic, commentators and activists have reacted with growing fury to the French government's expulsion of hundreds of Roma, or Gypsies, to Bulgaria and Romania. Many critics liken these expulsions — as well as the threat to strip lawbreakers of their French citizenship — to the deportations of Jews organised by France's Vichy regime during the second world war. It's hard to know what is more outrageous: the policies practiced by President Sarkozy or the analogies proffered (...) - Blog posts / Exclusive

Three digital myths
by Christian Christensen
9 Aug 2010 at 12:36pm
The release of the Afghan War Diaries on Wikileaks, with stories published in The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel by agreement with Wikileaks, has made news around the world. Le Monde Diplomatique, in conjunction with Owni and Slate.fr, have also made the documents available online via a dedicated website. The security implications of the leaked material will be discussed for years to come. Meanwhile the release of over 90,000 documents has generated debate on the rising power (...) - Blog posts

Afghanistan's own national army
by Chris Sands
3 Aug 2010 at 3:36pm
As the sun set over the graves of a murdered president and his family in Kabul, two Afghan soldiers made a home video on their mobile phones.
With a Taliban song for the soundtrack, one of them wandered among the headstones while the other filmed. No music accompanied the beautiful rhythm of the words.
In July 2011, US troops will start to withdraw from a country they have been occupying for longer than they were in Vietnam. Then, by the end of 2014, Nato is due to have transferred (...) - Photo essays from around the world / Images

Another fine mess in the Elysée
by Serge Halimi
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
France has been stunned by revelations about political leaders on permanently friendly terms with businessmen and women, who fund the leaders and their election campaigns in return for substantial tax concessions. Even more astounding, apparently, is the idea that reducing tax on high incomes (down by almost ?100bn in 10 years) turns out to be particularly good for high incomes, protected since 2006 by a specially devised “shield”. And more members of the government, and their families, are (...) - 2010/08 / Open access

The Arab world's cultural challenge
by Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
To many, the Arab world is just a place of conflict and lack of democracy. But what is really at play are ever-changing, tacit alliances between three unequal forces: Islamists, secular intellectuals and the regimes themselves
For the last two centuries, the ulema (Islamic scholars) have always been suspicious of modern forms of cultural production and expression, which carve out spaces that engage social subjects in ways of understanding their lives and their world that are implicitly (...) - 2010/08 / Password, 2010/08 - Arab world

Arab showtime
by Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
The segmentation of Arab culture culminates in its festivals. These are a commercialised, middlebrow corollary to elite cultural projects. They focus on Arab identity and the Arab world, and promote secular, modern, western-friendly sentiments. A proliferation of commercialised, Arab-themed cultural celebrations and festivals – both traditional and contemporary – provide new outlets for artists and new vehicles for satisfying, and selling to, the cultural tastes of modernised Arab middle (...) - 2010/08 / Password, 2010/08 - Arab world

The state versus a boy soldier
by Chase Madar
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
Omar Khadr, 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and imprisoned first in Bagram, then in Guantánamo, will at last face trial this month on charges never before brought in the history of war
Barack Obama may not be as audacious as his supporters had hoped, but his government will soon be the first since the second world war to prosecute a child solder. The trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian national captured at the age of 15 outside Kabul in 2002, should begin this August at (...) - 2010/08 / Password, 2010/08 - Guantanamo

The time of triumphalism
by Cédric Gouverneur
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
Mahinda Rajapaksa, strengthened by military victory over the Tamil Tigers, easily won the 2010 Sri Lanka elections. But his government's authoritarianism is frightening the Sinhalese – and the Tamils are afraid of colonisation by the Sinhalese majority
The last bastions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) began falling one by one from March 2008. The Sri Lankan army imprisoned in camps almost 300,000 Tamil civilians who had been living under the guerrillas' strict authority. The (...) - 2010/08 / Password

Nepal's reform stalls
by Rajeshree Sisodia
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
Nepal is waiting for a constitution and a proper democratic election. But the country's squabbling political parties have been blocking progress, allowing human rights abuses to continue
Early on the morning of 17 February 2004, plain-clothed security officials and uniformed soldiers came to the Sunawar family home in the village of Pokharichauri, 25 kilometres from Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, and arrested 15-year-old Maina Sunawar. For a month, she disappeared. Her mother, Devi, now 43, (...) - 2010/08 / Open access

Venezuela murder mystery
by Maurice Lemoine
2 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm
The scarily high murder rate in Venezuela could reflect social breakdown, imported narcowar or a ‘foreign conspiracy'. President Chávez has accused Bogota of trying to foment war by moving against Colombian rebels allegedly seeking refuge in Venezuela
The Spanish newspaper El País rarely understates its criticism of Hugo Chávez's “Bolivarian” Venezuela. But on 18 April it said: “Caracas is a bloody city. Rivers of blood flow from its buildings; rivers of blood flow from its mountains; rivers of (...) - 2010/08 / Open access