The sudden collapse of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, which put an end to the mukhabarat (secret police) state-dynasty that had ruled Syria for the past 54 years, was unforeseen by international observers and even surprised most Syrians....
The Trump presidency is in the process of taking full political control in the United States. This is something which the framers of the American constitution very much wished to avoid. Institutional checks were written in. The houses of congress...
The events of 1989-91 became coded in the world’s imaginary as the ‘collapse’ of communism after the sudden demise of Eastern European and Soviet regimes. Like the Berlin Wall, communism broke down from one day to the next – and...
Russia committed the first crime of aggression against Ukraine back in 2014 by occupying Crimea, but holding Russia’s high-ranking officials accountable became one of the major priorities for Ukraine’s international policy after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Russia can veto resolutions in...
Why is a diehard climate-crisis sceptic like Trump forcing Zelensky’s hand on a peace agreement seemingly focused on green-transition raw materials? If we temporarily set aside the highly problematic issue of bartering security with a third-party business transaction, what might...
All people are intellectuals but not everyone in society is given the role of intellectual Antonio Gramsci Chaussée Ménilmontant barricade, Paris Commune, 18 March 1871. Image via Wikimedia Commons J.L. J.L. is a poet and lives in a house owned...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgQqevIgnzI Birth rates are steadily decreasing worldwide for the first time since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Russia and China have been struggling with its effects for decades; Europe, India and South Korea have recently started to contend with...
It was about 20 minutes past midnight in the early hours of 25 April 1974, when ‘Grândola, Vila Morena’, the song that would become the anthem of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, was broadcast by Rádio Renascença on its Limite programme, heard...
Germany has voted, the CDU has returned as the strongest force, and Friedrich Merz will most likely be the next chancellor. But the massive gains for the AfD, which doubled its vote to over 20%, mean that for the first...
A deceptively simple question animates Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press, 2024), a short new book by writer and art critic Aruna D’Souza: ‘What would it mean if our politics were based not on our ability to empathize with people whose experiences are...
