Image via Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research via Facebook By Harleen Kaur Four years ago, Colombo was the world’s cautionary tale. A sovereign default, fuel queues that stretched for kilometres, a presidential palace occupied by its own citizens. This week, the same city is hosting trade unionists, party cadre, scholars, and ministers from across Asia, from Nepal to the Philippines and from Iran to Indonesia. They have gathered under a banner that would have sounde

Image via Facebook By Balram Banskota and Jeongeun Hwang On 4 March 2026, a US military vessel torpedoed and sunk the unarmed Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The illegal strike killed over 80 and injured over 30 Iranian sailors, who were returning home after participating in the Indian Navy’s flagship biennial multilateral naval drill, Exercise MILAN, and the International Fleet Review, in Visakhapatnam. The Sri Lankan authorities mobilised to r

2026 Ankara summit -- Estonian Foreign Ministry, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Biljana Vankovska ‘I think when it comes to nuclear, we are really in a good place.’ With these words, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the state of the Alliance’s nuclear strategy at the pre-Summit press conference in Ankara on 6 July 2026. The phrase was intended to project stability, confidence, and reassurance. Yet, to anyone familiar with the history of the nuclear age, it rev

By Biljana Vankovska The New Year did not begin with hope or joy, except for the arms dealers. More precisely, for the military-industrial-media-academic-NGO complex that feeds on permanent war. Orders are flowing, profits are booming, and blood has once again become a growth sector. For any normal society, pirates belong in adventure films, not in the civilian power corridor. Yet Venezuela, more precisely, its legally elected president Nicolás Maduro, became the first trophy