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…
Multiple Crises, Multiple Obstacles Mel Gurtov COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice have drawn attention away from the mostly bad news about the environment. Yes, the skies…
Arundhati Roy India’s coronavirus lockdown, which began in March, has been one of largest and strictest in the world. It has left tens of millions without work prompting…
Marco Carnelos The impacts of coronavirus have been tremendous everywhere, but in the Middle East, the situation seems to be assuming the features of a perfect storm. In…
Anya Briy The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly known as Rojava, has illuminated the plight of the stateless—even though statelessness in the AANES’s case…
Louis Proyect Ever since the civil war began in Syria in early 2011, the left has largely ignored the social and economic circumstances that led to a conflict…
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…
S.C. Molavi and Eyal Weizman Over a dozen states, including Hungary, Ethiopia, Japan, Canada, and Botswana, have recently declared a “state of emergency” giving governments sweeping powers to…
Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag…
The Coronavirus and the Conditions of Palestinian Workers G.N. Nithya “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its…
Emile Badarin The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has obstructed the education of students globally. But this is hardly new to Palestinian students and academics, whose educational life…
Golnar Nikpour In late February, amid the catastrophic spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, relatives of several of Iran’s prisoners of conscience…
Ramzy Baroud The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for…
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…
Kai Kupferschmidt, Jon Cohen Chinese hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now have empty beds. Trials of experimental drugs can’t find enough eligible patients. And…
Robert Fisk The freezing Mediterranean squalls that slash across downtown Beirut and the seafront to the west may give the impression this week that Lebanon is lapsing back into its…
Arash Davari, Peyman Jafari, Ali Kadivar, Zep Kalb, Arang Keshavarzian, Azam Khatam, Saira Rafiee, and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi It should be noted that this virtual roundtable took place in…
I WAS PAYING my bill at the hotel when they came. There were seven of them, stiff and formal in plain-clothes. “Mr Pelham?” asked the shortest one and…
Mark Curtis and Phil Miller The UK’s secret intelligence service, MI6, worked with the CIA to provide a list of alleged Soviet agents in Iran to Ayatollah Khomeini’s…
Patrick Cockburn Mass expulsion or the physical extermination of an entire ethnic or religious community – ethnic cleansing – is usually treated by the media in one of…
Kaveh Madani A group of Iranian conservationists, working for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF) and known for their exemplary efforts in preserving the endangered Asiatic (Iranian) cheetahs,…
Patrick Cockburn Iraqi security and pro-Iranian paramilitary forces are shooting into crowds of protesters in a bid to drive them from the centre of Baghdad and end six…
Robert Fisk Those tens of thousands of largely young protesters demanding a non-sectarian Lebanon were joyful, filled with happiness, determined that this time they would change the wretched…
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…
Zêdan Xelef, translated by David Shook and Bryar Bajalan Non-Broadcast News Today a fire broke out in two tents The families shouted, the children cried and ran bare-assed…
Kathy Kelly Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area…
Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Immanuel Wallerstein, a giant of the critical social sciences and a steadfast ally of contemporary social movements, passed away at the age of 88…
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…
Richard Falk. Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. By Noura Erakat. Stanford University Press, 2019. I make no claim to approach this book with an…
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…