زنان و ستم چند گانه در نظام سرمایه داری

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Women and multiple repressions under the capitalist system Talk by Yassamine mather Talk given to Organisation of Iranian Women in Dallas USA, on the International Day for the…

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Socialism is Dead; Long Live Socialism

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

سوسیا لیسم مرد؛ زنده باد سوسیالیسم Interview with Çiğdem Çidamlı This is an interview by the German group Kollektiv with the Turkish feminist activist and former member of…

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Political Islam and Democracy Crisis in North Africa

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Ramzy Baroud When the news circulated that Morocco’s leading political group, the Development and Justice Party (PJD), has been trounced in the latest elections, held in September, official…

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Reflections on the State of Democracy in Iran after the 2021 Elections: An Elegy for the Voting Non-Voter

Monday, August 2, 2021

Shervin Malekzadeh SpongeBob SquarePants showed up on the boulevard halfway to midnight, almost two hours after state officials confirmed Hassan Rouhani as the seventh President of the Islamic Republic…

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Iran Clears Way for Hard-line Judiciary Chief to Become President

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Farnaz Fassihi Candidates in Iran’s presidential elections have always been strictly vetted, and those deemed insufficiently loyal to the Islamic Revolution were disqualified. Within those limits, contenders held…

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Iran’s Presidential Election: Electioneering without candidates

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Yassamine Mather Iran’s presidential elections will be held on June 18 and so far it is not clear who will be the candidates proposed by the many Islamic…

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‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

Saturday, May 1, 2021

During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even…

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Turkey at the Crossroad

Monday, April 5, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

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Turkey at the Crossroads?

Friday, February 26, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

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Arab Spring: The End of Political Islam as We Know It

Monday, February 15, 2021

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Following a recent string…

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The Hirak: Algerian Uprisings of 2019 – Essential reading

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Muriam Haleh Davis, Thomas Serres, and the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) This collection of texts in English, Arabic and French is a first attempt to gather…

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Can social movements democratise democracy?

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Lessons from the Yellow Vests movement in France Maxime Combes “Democracy is not about Saturday afternoons”, French president Emmanuel Macron said, speaking about the Yellow Vests movement (YVM)…

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Iranian writers Association and PEN protest at imprisonment of writers and repression in Iran.

Friday, November 6, 2020

The protest by the Iranian Writers Association in Exile and Iranian PEN Association in Exile against the arrest and long prison sentence by the Islamic Republic on three…

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What’s Really Driving the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Djene Rhys, BajalanSara Nur Yildiz, Vazken Khatchig Davidian The outbreak of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has thrust the long-running dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh, known to Armenians…

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One year on, has Iraq’s anti-government protest movement changed the country?

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Alex MacDonald In the year since Iraqis took to the streets en masse to protest against unemployment, corruption, foreign interference and a creaking political system, the country has…

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Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

Monday, September 21, 2020

Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman, Geoff Mulgan​ This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place…

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The Coronavirus pandemic, ecological catastrophe and global capitalism: an interlocking phenomenon

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Mehdi Kia The Covid-19 pandemic has unravelled the close structural links between the climate crisis and the global capitalist mode of production.[1] See John Bellamy Foster and Brett…

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Israel’s elections: Decline of secular Zionism

Friday, March 13, 2020

Tony Greenstein Israel’s third general election in a year has shown a decisive shift to the Zionist right, but whether it will be sufficient to enable Binyamin Netanyahu…

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Roundtable: Iran’s Domestic Politics and Political Economy (Part 1)

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Arash Davari, Peyman Jafari, Ali Kadivar, Zep Kalb, Arang Keshavarzian, Azam Khatam, Saira Rafiee, and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi Introduction Much of the discussion about politics in the Islamic Republic…

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Democratic revolution in Lebanon and Iraq

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Phil Hearse The Arab Spring of 2011-13 was drowned in rivers of blood, sometimes after being first diverted by the dead-end of political Islam. But in the last…

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Six Takeaways for the Next Decade of People Power

Friday, December 27, 2019

Shaazka Beyerle 2019 is being called “the year of protest.” A nexus of corruption, inequality, and unaccountable and unresponsive governments has galvanized citizens across the globe. “People are…

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Understanding Socialism by Richard Wolff: Book Review

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Michael Roberts The New York Times magazine has described Richard Wolff as “probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist”.  And that is probably not an exaggeration as a description of this emeritus Professor of…

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Two impossibilities: Neither a one-state or two-state solution is feasible

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Moshé Machover It is generally accepted – except by people who know better – that there are just two possible resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian national/colonial conflict: either a…

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Iran Nationwide Popular Protests Call for Overthrow of Demagogic Regime

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Frieda Afari Police stations, banks, some public buildings,  a few religious seminaries and  many posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been set on fire.  Demonstrators have…

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“Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava”

Sunday, November 17, 2019

An interview with Rosa Burç and Kerem Schamberger The death of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi isn’t the end of the Syrian bloodbath — even in…

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Turkey: Autopsy of Erdoǧan’s Istanbul Defeat

Friday, November 8, 2019

Certainties that had defined Turkish politics for a generation were thrown into doubt by the overwhelming victory Istanbul voters handed the opposition CHP party’s mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoǧlu…

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Protesters In Lebanon Refuse to Compromise, Call Nationwide General Strike

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Madleine Freeman On the fifth day of a series of massive protests in Lebanon, workers from the country’s largest unions have joined over a million protesters in the…

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Will Massive Lebanese Demos end the Country’s Era of Corruption?

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Amira Abo el-Fetouh We may be too optimistic to hope that the massive demonstrations that have spread in all the cities of Lebanon will lead to the collapse…

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Israel’s elections: The three political dimensions

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Moshé Machover I would like to deal with two aspects of Israeli politics: the attitude to Iran and the internal situation. Common to both parts is the intertwining…

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Defend the women’s revolution in northeastern Syria

Friday, October 11, 2019

ROAR collective Since 2012, with the leading role of women, the people in North and East Syria have been building a social system that enables a peaceful, radical-democratic,…

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