Cesar Chelala. Gender violence, manifested essentially as violence against women, is one of the most significant epidemics in the Middle East today. This kind of violence occurs in…
Kourosh Ziabari. Iran is a country in which many aspects of public life: governance, education, foreign relations and even people’s lifestyles are peculiarly determined by ideology. The authorities…
Solmaz Sharif. Suitcases Suitcases of dried limes, dried figs, pomegranate paste, parsley laid in the sun, burnt honey, sugar cubes hardened on a baking sheet. Suitcases of practical…
Podcast by David Harvey. Social media has been a powerful took in organising mass movements. Their use in organising more durable structures such as trade unions, women’s organisation…
Fariba Amini. May this year was a very pleasant time in Tehran when it comes to the weather. The abundant rain had cleared the pollution for a while,…
Hind Khoudary. Abed Nasser, the owner of Cedar restaurant in Gaza City, broke the news to his customers in a Facebook post: the highly-anticipated music night scheduled for…
Omar Hassan speaks to Algerian scholar and activist Hamza Hamouchene, coordinator of Environmental Justice North Africa and co-founder of the Algeria Solidarity Campaign, about the mass movement sweeping Algeria. In…
English Translations of selected Poems and Poetry of the great Iranian Poet Forugh Farrokhzad فروغ فرخزاد Forugh, one of the most famous Persian Women poets died in a…
In most conflicts, women are grouped with children; they are categorized among the most vulnerable groups. This designation erases, in many cases, women who are engaged in the…
Semir Amin. Radical political economist Samir Amin (1931–2018) left behind a cherished oeuvre of Marxist writings. Amin’s intellectual range—from economics to culture—was admirable, and his lessons remain essential….
Ed Vulliamy. The Syrian city of Aleppo crumbles into rubble, assailed by Russian bombs, government artillery and chemical weapons. In the heat of battle, Turkish troops and Kurdish…
Yassamine Mather. Friday March 8 is International Women’s Day, which this year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first major protest by Iranian women against the Islamic…
Wendy Pearlman: We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Custom House, 2017. Everyone talks about Syrians, but very few are actually talk to them. Perhaps that’s…
by Lara al-Kateb and Omar Abbas with contributions from Selin Cagatay, Frieda Afary, Fatemeh Masjedi and socialist feminists inside Iran The Me Too movement against sexual assault and…
Kathy Kelly. On January 27th, 2019, the Taliban and the U.S. government each publicly stated acceptance, in principle, of a draft framework for ongoing negotiations that could culminate…
Bree Busk. It is May 2018 and as winter descends on Santiago, Chile, a new wave of feminist activity is exploding into life. Anti-patriarchal graffiti covers the city…
Vijay Prashad. On Jan. 1, 5.5 million women in the Indian state of Kerala (population 35 million) built a 386-mile wall with their bodies. They stood from one end…
James Miler. “This is what democracy looks like!”—for some of us protesting Trump in New York on January 21, 2017, this was a familiar chant. We’d heard it…
Rushi Kumar. Laila Haidari is considered a criminal, despite never committing a crime. The 40-year-old works with drug addicts in Kabul. “The addicts I work with are considered…
Michael D Yates. [Author’s note: This essay is based upon arguments made in Chapter 2 (“Some Theoretical Considerations”) of my book, Can the Working Class Change the World? Unless…
Hilary Klein Twenty-five years ago today, the Zapatistas rose up in arms. Twenty-five years – it’s hard to believe! It’s been many years since the Zapatistas were the…
Concluding part of dialogue: Political Islamism, women and democracy Ardeshir Mehrdad: As you have probably observed, amongst the authors dealing with feminist-Islamism some place their emphasis on the…
This is the second part of a three-part conversation carried out with the Syrian academic Aziz Al-Azmeh. Here Professor Al-Azmeh addresses the various forms that political islams take…
Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. David Kirkpatrick, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. From 2011 to 2015, David Kirkpatrick was the…
Amnesty International. Several Saudi Arabian activists, including a number of women, who have been arbitrarily detained without charge since May 2018 in Saudi Arabia’s Dhahban Prison, have reportedly…
ENGAGING BOOKS SERIES Pluto Press Selections On Radical Politics Engaging Books is a new series that features books by various publishers on a given theme, along with an…
Ramzy Baroud. When Israeli troops stormed the house of Palestinian parliamentarian and lawyer, Khalida Jarrar, on April 2, 2015, she was engrossed in her research. For months, Jarrar…
David Pratt. A remarkable story is unfolding that defies the usual narrative about Syria. In contrast to the misogyny and anti-democratic values of the jihadists of the Islamic…
Robin Yassin-Kassab. ‘A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution’ by novelist Samar Yazbek is part journalism, part personal memoir, and all literature. It’s literature of…
Nadia Murad. The slave market opened at night. We could hear the commotion downstairs where militants were registering and organising, and when the first man entered the room,…
4 Change