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…
Dr Hakim Young. Dear fellow human beings, Some of us have wondered, “Are people today too disconnected and frantic to calm down, in order to solve global challenges…
Evgeny Morozov. More than a decade after the onset of the financial crisis, capitalist ideologues are eager for good publicity. Once-alluring promises of meritocracy and social mobility ring…
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…
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 Dahi. The question of donor conditionality and how it could be used to influence behavior and promote respect for human rights and political inclusion has increasingly gained…
As the Sudanese uprising enters its most critical conjuncture, with negotiations between the military council and the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change collapsing, and the…
Ariel Rodriguez. Sometimes, the best way to understand the complexity of a conflict is through art. Words can echo in people’s hearts as much as images can inspire…
Pat Fry. It was 7 AM April 30th in Caracas when I awoke to hear gun shots outside my hotel. Our group, seven US citizens and one Canadian,…
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…
Robyn Creswell. In March, 2011, when civil protests broke out in cities and towns across Syria, the country’s most famous poet, Adonis—who is in his eighties and has…
Patrick Cockburn. Two very different political waves are sweeping through the Middle East and north Africa. Popular protests are overthrowing the leaders of military regimes for the first…
Adam Shatz. Israel’s legislative elections on 9 April were a tribute to Binyamin Netanyahu’s transformation of the political landscape. At no point were they discussed in terms of…
“Vartan didn’t Say a Word” is a political poem by Ahmad Shamlou that underwent censorship because of being addressed to a political prisoner who was tortured to death…
Hamza Hamouchene. What is happening in Algeria is truly historic. The people won the first battle in their struggle to radically overhaul the system. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president for…
Robert Fisk. Khaled Abol Naga – an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government – stands accused of treason ( AFP )It was comical, farcical, droll. An actor’s dream if…
Ramzy Baroud. “(At dawn) … I will resist … (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my fingers are yet to (completely) dissolve.”…
Ramzy Baroud. Political commentators sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Movement, in particular, fanned out as soon as the news was announced of Mohammad Shtayyeh’s…
Dougie Gerrard. By any measure, Leyla Güven is in a bad way. She is assailed by painful cramps, the result of a protein breakdown in her muscular tissue….
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…
Richard Falk. While waiting without even a glimmer of hope for the Trump ‘deal of the century’ the Palestinian ordeal unfolds day by day. Many Israelis would like…
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…
Two poems by Solmaz Sharif Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned By Solmaz Sharif this mangy plot where by nowonly mothers still come, only mothers guard…
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…
Internationalist Commune of Rojava. The threat of yet another war looms over northern Syria once again. Turkish troops and their Islamist mercenaries are massing on the borders of…
Kourosh Ziabari. Instagram, widely used in Iran among small business owners, students, influencers and even senior officials, is the latest social media application to come under scrutiny and…
Posted on Middle East Monitor. More than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Ofer Prison yesterday launched an open-ended hunger strike, in protest against the occupation’s continuous violations against…
Yassamine Mather. Iranian workers have been staging large protests since early November in two major industrial complexes: the Haft Tapeh sugar plant and the Foulad steel factory in…
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