4 ChangeEyewitness Report: Venezuela Up Close
Monday, May 20, 2019
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,…
Women and the War in Yemen: Actors or Victims?
Sunday, May 5, 2019
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…
Adonis, The Man Who Remade Arabic Poetry
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
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…
What Revolutionaries Have Learned Since the Arab Spring
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
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…
Trump’s America, Netanyahu’s Israel
Sunday, April 21, 2019
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: a poem of resistance by Ahmad Shamlou
Friday, April 12, 2019
“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…
Algeria in revolt: “We woke up and you will pay!”
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
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…
Egypt’s brutal crackdown on workers’ rights runs far deeper than the fate of two actors
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
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…
Gaza: Resistance Through Poetry
Saturday, March 30, 2019
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.”…
Uniting Fatah, Not Palestinians: The Dubious Role of Mohammed Shtayyeh
Sunday, March 24, 2019
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…
Hunger striking for peace in Turkey
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
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….
Voices above the chaos: female war poets from the Middle East
Saturday, March 9, 2019
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…
Iran: Women’s right and the class struggle
Friday, March 8, 2019
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…
Can We Imagine a Just Peace for Palestine?
Saturday, March 2, 2019
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…
We Crossed A Bridge and it Trembled: Book Review
Friday, March 1, 2019
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…
The Me Too Movement in the Middle East
Thursday, February 14, 2019
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…
Poems: Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned & [Persian Letters]
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
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…
Chile’s feminists inspire a new era of social struggle
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
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…
Stand with Rojava, oppose Turkey’s war
Saturday, January 26, 2019
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…
Iran’s looming Instagram ban shows hardliner disconnect
Thursday, January 24, 2019
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…
1,200 Palestinian prisoners start hunger strike in Israel prison
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
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…
Iran: workers’ strikes and State Department crocodile tears
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
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…
5.5 Million Women Build Their Wall in Kerala
Monday, January 14, 2019
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…
What does democracy look like?
Friday, January 11, 2019
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…
Tehran’s little secret: Cafe where disability is no barrier to talent – and serving tea
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Sahar Esfandiari. TAs Mehdi Khakyan’s hands move skilfully across the piano keys, the soft chatter in the room subsides to hone in on the melody of a well-loved…
Poems of Resistance: 7 Poems for Palestine
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Salem Jubran: The Exile The sun walks through the borderGuns keep silentA skylark starts its morning songIn TulkaremAnd flies away to supWith the birds of a KibbutzA lonely…
Turkey: “It is still early to write the history of Gezi” An Interview with Mücella Yapıcı
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Mücella Yapıcı is an architect and activist, known for her work against urban renewal projects and environmental destruction in Turkey. She is the secretary and spokesperson of the…
Reflection of a Kurdish feminist
Monday, December 31, 2018
Dr Hawzhin Azeez If you want freedom you have to take it! You cannot appeal to the conscience of the imperialists, the colonialists, the oppressors, and the creators…
“Can the Working Class Change the World?”: Book Review
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Eve Ottenberg. “Can the Working Class Change the World?”, Michael D. Yates Monthly Review Press. If the working class doesn’t save our vastly unequal and dying world, it’s…
Overstating Climate Change in Egypt’s Uprising
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Jessica Barnes. The possible link between climate change and political upheaval in the Middle East has attracted increasing media attention and is generating a new wave of academic…