• Painting is by Hakim al-Hakel, one of Yemen’s most distinguished artists. He is now in exile in Jordan.

    Witnessing the hell that a migrant can face

    The Saudi-UAE war on Yemen has been going on for five years. Despite recent peace talks leading to an improvement in aid distribution, the violence has escalated in certain key districts of Yemen over the past two weeks. Since January, 35,000 Yemenis have been displaced from their homes, an indicator of the dangerous situation in the country.

  • N. Sankaraiah reads the Communist Manifesto in Tamil, Chennai, India, 20 February 2020.

    Show me the words that will reorder the World, or else keep silent

    On the night before Red Books Day, on 21 February 2020, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, N. Sankaraiah–one of the thirty-two founders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)–read from M. Sivalingam’s new translation into Tamil of the Communist Manifesto. Comrade Sankaraiah, age 98, said that he had first read the Manifesto at age 18. Over the years, he returns to the book because each time he reads it the brazing prose teaches him something new. And something that–sadly–seems ageless.

  • Konstantin Yuon, New Planet, 1921.

    You write injustice on the Earth; we will write revolution in the skies

    ‘Scientists are wrong’, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said with a warm smile on his face. ‘Human beings are not made of atoms; they are made of stories’. It is why we want to sing and draw, tell each other about our lives and our hopes, talk about the wonders in our lives and the wonders that we dream about. These dreams–this art–are what make us get up each day, smile, and go forward into the world.

  • Piqsels Page 2 | royalty free spirituality photos free download | Piqsels

    Standing up for Left literature—In India, it can cost you your life

    On February 16, 2015, Govind and Uma Pansare went for a morning walk near their home in Pune (Maharashtra, India). Two men on a motorcycle stopped near them and asked for directions, but the Pansares could not help them; one of the men laughed, removed a gun, and shot the two. Uma survived the attack but Govind died in a hospital on February 20, 2015.

  • Raúl Martínez, Rosas y Estrellas (Roses and Stars), 1972.

    I am tired of holding other worlds in my fist

    In November 2019, the Bolivian army–with a nudge from the shadows–told its President Evo Morales Ayma to resign. Morales would eventually go to Mexico and then seek asylum in Argentina. Jeanine Áñez, a far-right politician who was not in the line of succession, seized power; the military, the fascistic civil society groups, and sections of the evangelical church backed her. Áñez said that she would hold elections soon, but that she would herself not stand in them.

  • Bolivia: An Election in the Midst of an Ongoing Coup. (Photo by: Santiago Sito)

    Bolivia: An election in the midst of an ongoing coup

    On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more. They return there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 2019.

  • Barefoot Doctors.

    This is the time for solidarity, not stigma

    In December 2019, several people began to develop infections in Wuhan (People’s Republic of China); early signs indicated that the virus had emerged out of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but there is no certainty about that verdict.

  • A security officer inspects a damaged car after a bomb explosion which targeted a former Kadhafi regime officer, in Benghazi, on November 7, 2012. A car bomb exploded in Libya's second city of Benghazi late November 7, wounding an officer who had served in the regime of slain leader Moamer Kadhafi, a local security official told AFP. Hussam al-Raaid, a former officer of the toppled regime's reviled internal security services, was wounded when his booby-trapped vehicle exploded outside his house, the official said on condition of anonymity. AFP PHOTO / Abdullah Douma

    Libya is being torn apart by outsiders

    Ghassan Salamé is the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya. He took over this job in 2017, six years after the catastrophic NATO war on Libya. What Salamé inherited was a country torn into shreds, two governments in place—one in Tripoli and one in Tobruk—and one civil war that had too many factions to name.

  • Santu Mofokeng, Eyes Wide Shut, Motouleng Cave, Clarens – Free State, 2004.

    I will hold you in my arms a day after the war

    On Monday, 27 January, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng slipped away. His camera had been a familiar presence in the anti-apartheid struggle; after years of photographing police violence and popular resistance, he tired of making ‘images bespeaking gloom, monotony, anguish, struggle, [and] oppression’, he wrote in 1993.

  • Middle East Institute Is ISIS the real winner of Hifter's Tripoli offensive? | Middle

    The war in Libya will never end

    General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) continue to partly encircle Libya’s capital, Tripoli. Not only does the LNA threaten Tripoli, but it is within striking distance of Libya’s third-largest city, Misrata.

  • Hangameh Golestan, Witness 1979, 1979

    When will the Winter come to an end?

    On 17 January, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the Friday prayers for the first time in eight years. He mocked the ‘American clowns’ who threatened Iran and said that Iran’s response to the U.S. assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani was a ‘slap in the face’ of U.S. power.

  • HUndreds of Mexican journalists silently marched in downtown Mexico City in protest of the kidnappings, murder and violence against their peers throughout the country. The march started at the Angl of Independence monument and proceeded down Reforma Avenue to the Ministry of the Interior headquarters where banners draped on the building demanded justice and protection for journalists against violence perpetrated by drug cartels. Placards with written protests and photos of slain or kidnapped colleagues were left on the steps of the Ministry of the Interior and covered with red paint.

    What the Right Wing in Latin America means by democracy is violence

    It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording.

  • Yu Youhan, We Will Be Better, 1995.

    Your arrow can pierce the sky, but ours has gone into orbit

    On Wednesday, 15 January, China and the United States agreed to suspend their full-scale trade war. From February 2018, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese goods that entered the US market, and then China retaliated. This tit-for-tat game continued for almost two years, causing massive disruption in the global value chain.

  • Aishe Ghosh

    Not an inch: Indian students stand against the far-right

    With her head bandaged and her arm in a sling, university student Aishe Ghosh went before the cameras to say that the students of the university she attends in New Delhi would move “not an inch back.”

  • The Second Newsletter (2020).

    What passes for reality is not worth respecting

    In October of last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its flagship World Economic Outlook. In that report, the IMF said that the global growth rate would stumble at 3% in 2019. A month ago, the IMF’s main economists returned to this theme; ‘Global growth’, they wrote, ‘recorded its weakest pace since the global financial crisis a decade ago’.

  • Quds Force, Elite Operators of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard-An Open Source Intelligence Study - De Faakto

    Is this the end of U.S. interference in West Asia?

    Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reacted strongly to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s suggestion that Iraqis were “dancing in the street” to celebrate the assassination. On Twitter, Zarif posted pictures of the funeral procession for Soleimani and wrote, “End of U.S. malign presence in West Asia has begun.”

  • Gao Liang, The People Who Got Land, June 1948

    How many millions did you make for the pennies you gave to the Coolies

    As we enter the new year, protests across the planet continue unabated; rising levels of discontent are manifest in both progressive and reactionary directions. The political character of the anger might whip across the spectrum of opinion and hope, but the underlying frustrations are similar.

  • Vyshakh T (People’s Dispatch), Aishe Ghosh, Student leader, Delhi December 2019.

    We are the ones who will awaken the dawn

    Millions of people are on the streets, from India to Chile. Democracy is both their promise and it is what has betrayed them. They aspire to the democratic spirit but find that democratic institutions–saturated by money and power–are inadequate. They are on the streets for more democracy, deeper democracy, a different kind of democracy.

  • Roberto Mamani Mamani, Papa Imillas.

    Those who search for dawn don’t fear the night; nor the hand that holds the dagger

    Jeanine Áñez, the ‘president’ of Bolivia, walked into the Burned Palace (Palacio Quemado) with an enormous Bible in her hand. ‘The Bible has returned to the Palace’, she said as she seized power.

  • Indian Flag

    India’s Government is going to war against its own people

    On December 13, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights released a powerful statement that criticized India’s new citizenship law. This “fundamentally discriminatory” Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 would expedite citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from India’s neighboring countries. But in the list of those minorities, it names only Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians.