Syrian family displaced to Qaa in Lebanon. Credit: Freedom House via FlickrIt is the discursive construction of the situation as 'crisis' that bestows justification to such cruel quick fixes as the EU-Turkey accord that was adopted on Friday. We should refuse to call it a 'crisis'. The situation is grave, but hardly a crisis. There is an increased inflow of asylum seekers and a number of European countries are refusing to process asylum claims, although the EU has capacity, know-how, and funds (how about that 6 billion given to Turkey to manage its asylum facilities?) to accommodate everyone.  This is not a masterful policy response to a crisis, as the EU institutions’…

We could not be more excited heading toward this weekend’s nationwide March for Science, as it combines all the best things: science, social activism, and creative sign art. Whether you’re a scientist yourself or you casually appreciate the art of systematically studying our surroundings, we could all benefit from expanding our perspectives. For most of us, scientific education ends the moment we graduate high school or finish that required lab course in college. But there’s a lot more to science than measuring mold growth and building model volcanoes. You’d be hard-pressed to find one aspect of your life untouched by science—from the food you eat to the clothes you wear…

Carl Hart, a Columbia University professor, unpicks the myth of a drug-free world. In this video, he discusses the sensationalism around drug use, who benefits from these exaggerations and misrepresentations, and how drug policy is used to persecute men of colour in the United States. How has Black Lives Matter changed the conversation around the war on drugs? And where should drug reformers turn to? Watch the video and let us know what you think in our comments space, below the line. This video is published as part of an editorial partnership between openDemocracy and CELS, an Argentine human rights organisation with a broad agenda that includes advocating for drug…

The following is an excerpt from the book “Power Play: How Video Games Can Save the World,” by Asi Burak and Laura Parker.  In February 2013, a pale-skinned, shaggy-haired graduate of the DigiPen Institute of Technology launched a Kickstarter campaign that sounded too good to be true: For $40,000, he would create a video game that would allow players to control objects with their mind. “‘Throw Trucks With Your Mind’ is a multiplayer-focused game where you … wait for it … throw trucks with your mind!” The device that would allow players to do this was an EEG headset: an electrophysiological monitoring headset made up of tiny electrode sensors that, when placed…

Luxury yachts, The Pearl, Doha. Demotix/Tom Morgan. All rights reserved.A recurring theme in these columns for the past fourteen years has been the steadily widening wealth-poverty divide whose leading dimension is now less a rich-country-vs-poor country one than that of a transnational elite presiding over a relatively sidelined majority.  This analysis itself must keep pace with the speed of change. Even a decade and more ago, the notion of a 'double elite' was useful. A fifth of the world’s population was drawing away from the remaining four-fifths, whether in terms of income or wealth; in both cases the rich minority had at a minimum an 80%-plus share. Beyond that, the…

Chambers Street, New York, 11 September 2001. David Farquhar/Flickr. Some rights reserved.These weekly analyses started immediately after the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, and as this is the seven-hundred-and-fiftieth column it is perhaps appropriate to reflect on developments in what was soon called the 'war on terror'.  In the wake of 9/11 there was widespread support across western governments for strong military action against al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan, although from the start there were  voices expressing another view. The first column in this series warned that the atrocities should be seen as a provocation by al-Qaida to drag the west into a…

Earth is in need of a little love and attention and there’s no better way to show you care than by adopting a piece of our home planet.  To help celebrate Earth Day, NASA has sectioned off 64,000 individual pieces of Earth to be adopted by individuals around the globe.  Each piece is about 55 miles wide and was assigned at random, according to CNN. The program works in the same way as adopting a highway, or a manatee: Participants pay to support a piece of the Earth, however they do not receive legal or property rights in return. However, instead of a brand new 55-mile property, what you do get…

Colombia Peace Talks. Ramon Espinosa / AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. In the first agreements reached in Havana, the Colombian government and the FARC have openly expressed their intention to promote citizen participation in the process of peace building. The issues on which agreement was reached – comprehensive rural reform, political participation, illegal drug trafficking, and the victims – highlighted the importance of citizen involvement. The agreements recognized that the “construction of peace is a matter for society as a whole that requires the participation of all, without distinction, including other guerrilla forces which we are inviting to join in” (General Agreement, 2012, page 1). The agreements consider the…

F/A-18F Super Hornet. Flickr/Gonzalo Alonso. Some rights reserved.Suddenly, and without almost anyone noticing, the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is developing and growing rapidly. Some elements are already clear enough: they include the expansion of ISIS-controlled territory in Libya, the attacks in Paris and California, the increasing involvement of Russia, and the decision of the British parliament to authorise UK air-attacks in Syria. Those are all significant changes. But they are decidedly less important than another development, one that resonates with the experience in the early days of the Iraq war in April 2003. That war had started on 20-21 March. Within three weeks, United States marines and…

Women from nations from all over the world gathered over the weekend for the 2018 Women’s March. This demonstration of female solidarity is the next promising phase of social change with marches held in multiple cities across the United States under the rallying cry that was the Women’s March — originally organized in direct response to the new administration’s attacks on reproductive rights and general disregard for the sovereignty of women’s bodies. As long-time activists know, taking to the streets, while effective, is just a jumping-off point for both small and large actions that need to be taken every day to ensure that human rights are respected here and abroad. GOOD spoke with community organizers,…