- Pan American Congress
- World Social Forum
- Mothers vs Warmakers in Puerto Rico
- South Africa’s Council of the Left
- Albania: The Flamingo is Still Flying
- Elections All Over
- The Gaza World Order
- Iran Debate
- More on India’s Cockroach Uprising
- Revisiting the Soviet Experiment
Broadbent Institute (Ottawa)
The Pan American Congress, this year held in Montevideo, is the only permanent parliamentary forum where democratic and progressive forces from across the hemisphere come together to develop common positions on the shared challenges facing their people.
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International Peace Bureau (Berlin)
The World Social Forum serves as a global platform for civil society groups, to build international solidarity and challenge traditional globalization. This year the Benin government’s decision to block the event at the last minute—including denying entry to participants and caravans—raised serious global concerns about the protection of civil society space.
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Mothers vs Warmakers in Puerto Rico
Beth Geglia / Truthout (Sacramento)
Madres Contra la Guerra educates high school and university-age youth about their options regarding military service before they sign a military contract, and to support military personnel who file as conscientious objectors. The organization has called public attention to the psychological and health impacts of the military.
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South Africa’s Council of the Left
South African Communist Party (Johannesburg)
The inaugural meeting of the Council of the Left brought together representatives of political organisations, trade unions, social movements, community organisations and other progressive formations that participated in the Conference of the Left held in May this year. The meeting began the important task of organisation, campaigning and collective action.
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Albania: The Flamingo is Still Flying
Gerhard Klaas / International Viewpoint (Paris)
Sometimes, tens of thousands of people take to the streets – in a country with only 2.5 million people. What began as a mobilization against environmental degradation has become a questioning of the system. The Albanian national flag and KLA symbols fluttered in the wind alongside American flags and flamingos. What we are talking about here is nature, corruption, capitalism.
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Elections All Over
Brazil Tom Phillips / The Guardian
Canada Deena Newaz and David Bush / Spring (Toronto)
Russia Kirill Goncharov / Meduza (Riga)
Armenia Mikayel Zolyan / Posle (Berlin)
Israel Samah Watad / +972 (Tel Aviv)
Palestine Yosra Aklouk / Al Jazeera (Doha)
Berlin Alexander Görlach / Jacobin (Brooklyn)
South Africa Kabous Le Roux / Eyewitness News (Johannesburg)
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Nashwa Lina Khan / The Monitor (Ottawa)
Gaza has long been a warning of a new world order, now it is a blueprint—a testing ground, genocide laboratory, space of exception. The smaller of the two Palestinian territories has exposed how the limits of permissible bloodshed are tested, refined, and exported into broader global practice.
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Mina Khanlarzadeh / Mina’s Substack (Deep Springs CA)
A recent Guardian open letter addressed Iran’s political prisoners directly, linking their struggle to US immigration detention and Israeli prisons holding Palestinians. It made two demands: that the Islamic Republic end executions and free political prisoners, and that the US and Israel end their wars and sanctions against Iran.
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More on India’s Cockroach Uprising
A New Kind of Politics Anand Teltumbde / Frontline (Mumbai)
The Persistence of Caste Ankit Prakash / The Wire (New Delhi)
From Memes to a Progressive Movement to a Political Force Danielle Lee / Better Future (Los Angeles)
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Revisiting the Soviet Experiment
C.P. Chandrasekhar / International Development Economics Associates Ltd (Oxford)
Key elements of the Soviet experience go beyond the Soviet experiment. The Soviet Union did manage to replace the market mechanism with the ‘planning principle’. The Soviet Union also ensured rather early in its development path that the unemployed and underemployed in its largely rural labour force were absorbed into a more productive non-agricultural sector.
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