revolution

IRAQ: In Iraq, young people trust neither the politicians nor the parties. MODERN TIMES has met the director and producer of the film Baghdad on Fire, which deals with the mobilization of the youth fighting for change in the bad governance of the country's leaders. Karrar Al-Azzawi says the following about the US invasion in 2003: "They brought 'democracy', but we got only chaos and corruption – with politicians who only wanted to steal. The religious leaders were also involved in this."

REFORM AND REVOLUTION: Now, in the era of electoral federation efforts, it is perhaps a worthwhile endeavor to try to think through the concepts of reform and revolution.

DISSIDENT: More and more scientists and artists are arrested, sent to prison or placed in psychiatric clinics as insane, if they have deviated from the "party line". Evensmo takes up Solzhenitsyn here after spending a couple of years reading everything he has written – well over 2000 pages.

CAPTURE: Who has the right to move "freely" on the digital highways, and who is waved to the side by the police or the state intelligence service because their data profile appears on the radar?

Obituary: Uncompromisingly, she spoke out against power. Now she is gone, 89 years old. Author, physician and feminist Nawal El-Saadawi wrote for MODERN TIMES from June 2009.

SICILY: The South Italian family is still a powerful institution. It slides seamlessly into the mafia's power structure, with its familismo amoral. The family is the law – not the social institutions.

ISLAM: In a time when fear of Islam is spreading, Seyran Ates writes that Islam needs a sexual revolution to gain respect from the world community.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Is it possible to get something positive out of a recognition that civilization and the globe are about to go down?

REVOLUTION? Initially, the outcry was, says John Holloway, with ideological stance in Zapatism.

DOTCOM: The first internet revolution is a wild chapter with a strange mix of comedy and disaster. An inside perspective and the wisdom of the future help us to ask again if everything could have gone differently.

IRAN: Solidly argued status of Iranian state 40 years after the fall of the Shah.

#METOO: Good and Mad encourages women to show their minds so that together we can create revolution and rule the patriarchy.

We live in the midst of a world historical drama where revolutionary hope must be kept equal. Only in this way can we build civilization for everyone, claims philosopher Alain Badiou.

ORIENTERING OCTOBER 1968: Hans Skjervheim's new book The Liberal Dilemma and other essays deserves a certain prevalence for obvious political reasons. Some will receive it with insults, accompany it with choirs, and bury it with a parable or a political sketch. Others will declare it well-known, label it as past, passé and thus confirm its criticism. Some will think that it is precisely for this reason that it is a very useful book, writes Øyvind Østerud in his review, among other things.

Red epic is an American poet's unsentimental political remix.

A revolution today must be about the oppressed having to take power in a new way, not about private property rights and national identity.