Global Left Midweek — May 20, 2026
- Cuba’s Economy
- How to Build a Just Green Future
- How Goes Putin’s War?
- All Hell Breaks Loose in Bolivia
- Hungary in Transition
- Bangladeshi Left Up Against It
- Belgium: Militarism and Protest
- Making Energy in Puerto Rico
- India Issues
- Saving Walter Benjamin
Jim Stanford / rabble.ca (Toronto)
Apart from the self-fulfilling arrogance of Rubio’s claim, his claim that Cuba’s economy “doesn’t work” deserves further investigation. Obviously, the latest U.S. actions have deeply disrupted everything in the Cuban economy. From a longer-term perspective, however, Rubio’s judgment is invalid – because an economy’s success must be judged by more than the value of its GDP.
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How to Build a Just Green Future
Thea Riofrancos and Boima Tucker / Africa is a Country (New York)
People are living with intensified extraction and not getting access to the technologies themselves. When you electrify transportation, you reduce pollution, which is a huge killer in the Global South. It’s not fair or just that the Global North is the main place where these technologies are produced and consumed while everyone else serves as an extractive frontier.
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Lena Surzhko Harned / The Conversation (Melbourne)
As the Trump administration embraces the Russian “land for security” plan, Russia and its allies are likely to continue to put pressure on Zelenskyy. But especially given Moscow’s recent woes, from losing a reliable ally in Hungary to the related EU loan guarantee, it’s unlikely that a continued grinding war will convince Ukrainians to abandon their sovereignty – or serve Russia’s own security.
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All Hell Breaks Loose in Bolivia
Al Jazeera (Doha)
Marching for over twenty days from the tropics into freezing high-altitude terrain, many wearing nothing more substantial on their feet than plastic sandals, land workers and indigenous representatives arrived in the capital of La Paz this week to defend their territories. They were met by the miners’ union and highland representatives from the peasant union, in a loud welcome rally of solidarity.
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Ashifa Kassam / The Guardian (London)
More than three-quarters of Hungarians who voted for Péter Magyar in last month’s election want his government to do more to address the climate crisis, and more than 70% want him to protect LGBTQ+ rights, a poll has found. Magyar’s opposition Tisza party won a supermajority in the vote, bringing an end to Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power.
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Bangladeshi Left Up Against It
Faisal Mahmud / Jacobin (Brooklyn)
The Left helped shape the founding vision of Bangladesh as it became an independent state. But the country’s left parties now exist on the margins of a political landscape dominated by competing forms of nationalism and pragmatic power blocs.
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Belgium: Militarism and Protest
Peter Martens / GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY (Aachen, Germany)
Between 40,000 and 70,000 people marched through the streets of Brussels on May 12. The demonstrators gathered at the call of the country’s three main trade unions to denounce the federal government’s reforms, which the trade unions consider to be “anti-social”. The General Secretary of the Workers’ Party (PVDA-PTB) discusses the background to the current upsurge.
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Cathy Kunkel / Convergence (Oakland)
In Puerto Rico, AMANESER works with local groups to install and maintain their own rooftop solar systems to meet critical household needs. In doing so, AMANESER aims to empower communities impacted by centuries of colonialism to confront a worsening climate and ecological crisis.
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India Issues
The Anti-Modi Electoral Alliance Radha Kumar / The Wire (New Delhi)
Class Solidarity Abdul Rahman / Peoples Dispatch (New York)
The Left Against Neo-Fascism Shirin Akhter and C. Saratchand / NewsClick (New Delhi)
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Eli Zaretsky / London Review of Books
Benjamin understood our times in terms of ruins, remnants, still-warm embers, not in the terms dictated by the victors. ‘Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past,’ he once wrote, ‘who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And the enemy has not ceased to be victorious.’ Perhaps we can fan the sparks he left behind.