The notorious Megiddo Prison -- image via Middle East Monitor / Twitter By Vijay Prashad and Ubai al-Aboudi In January 2026, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a grim update to its earlier work, titled Living Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps . This report documents the horrific conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and detention facilities, revealing structural brutality that must be understood not as is

Mamdani speaking on January 5, 2026 -- Metropolitan Transportation Authority, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Sonali Kolhatkar As part of his proposed city budget for 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani just canceled the NYPD’s plan to hire 5,000 more police officers, undoing a key component of his predecessor Eric Adams’s initiatives. The move aligns with Mamdani’s campaign promise to keep police budgets and hiring in check. The young mayor also promised to creat

Cuban and Palestinian flags outside the University of Havana, May 2024 By Biljana Vankovska Últimamente, me encuentro pensando en una personaje de la antigua película partisana yugoslava La batalla de Sutjeska . La película está dedicada a la heroica batalla y a la brillante maniobra táctica de Tito para liberar a las unidades partisanas rodeadas. Sin embargo, ese no es mi tema aquí, aunque ahora estemos hablando de un cerco mucho mayor que se cierne sobre la humanidad. En un

Cubans march in solidarity with Gaza in Havana, October 2024 By Biljana Vankovska These days, I find myself thinking of a character from the old Yugoslav partisan film Battle of Sutjeska . The film is dedicated to the heroic battle and Tito’s brilliant tactical maneuver to extricate the surrounded partisan units. However, that is not my subject here, even if we are now speaking of a far greater encirclement tightening around humanity. In one scene, the young nurse Dana tries

Banner and flag in Cuba -- Taymaz Valley from Ottawa, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tig

BNP leader Tarique Rahman -- Image cropped via X By Vijay Prashad and Atul Chandra The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won a sweeping victory in the 12 February 2026 elections, securing 212 of 300 parliamentary seats. This victory represents not merely a change of government. It is the culmination of a political process that began not with the spontaneous anger of students on the streets of Dhaka in 2024, but much earlier, in the strategic calculations of sections of the B

Representational image By Laura Capote The constant insistence of the US discourse on the war on drugs seems to reflect a moral crusade by successive US administrations to rid their country of drug use. However, the truth is far removed from this simplistic idea that is often perpetuated by the mass media. In reality, what the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ seeks to achieve, as demonstrated by our region’s history, is a facade for the development of various mechanisms of imperialis

Anutin Charnvirakul arrives at the Bhumjaithai Party headquarters on election night in Thailand -- image via news video screenshot By Kay Young The march of the Ultra-Right in the Global South continues on, but unlike their Global North counterparts like Trump, Le Penn & Farage, as bleak as the future may seem, there are green shoots amongst the concrete. On 8 February 2026 following the Thai general election , there was a paradigm shift ushering in a new era of Southeast Asi

Venezuela's legislature advancing an amnesty bill proposed by acting President Delcy Rodríguez -- image via news video screenshot By Guillermo Barreto On 20 May 2017, during a violent protest planned by sectors of the Venezuelan opposition, 21-year-old Orlando Figuera was attacked by a mob that accused him of being a Chavista. After being stabbed, he was doused with gasoline and set on fire in front of everyone present. Young Orlando was admitted to a hospital with multiple

The arrest of a drug kingpin in Mexico has reignited debate over how active U.S. military and intelligence forces are in Mexico and where they might be headed. Marco Rubio meets with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City, Mexico, September 3, 2025 -- public domain image By John P. Ruehl FBI Director Kash Patel’s announcement on January 23 regarding the arrest of Canadian drug trafficker Ryan Wedding in Mexico led to immediate diplomatic tension between Washingto

“Every day, there’s yet another abuse.” The wanton attack on public schools is one of America’s biggest tragedies. Image via video screenshot By Jeff Bryant Chicago schoolteacher Claudia Morales may have been reflecting the feelings of most Americans about life under the Trump presidential administration when she told Our Schools, “Every day, there’s yet another abuse. It’s scary. And it’s coming from our own government.” In her work as a bilingual program teacher and bilingu

Portraits of Chavez, Bolivar and Maduro in Venezuela -- Guaiquerí, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Celina della Croce U.S. President Donald Trump has not shied away from admitting his thirst for Venezuelan oil. On 16 December 2025, in the leadup to the 3 January bombing of Caracas and kidnapping of the country’s president and first lady, Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, he claimed ownership over Venezuela resources, stating that “America will not… allow a hostile regime to tak

The bar at The Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok, 2019 -- image via X By Kay Young Since the American War on Vietnam, Bangkok has been a key hub for international journalists and academics in Southeast Asia. It offers modern infrastructure, easy travel, and a high quality of life, allowing them to chopper into the periphery and return home for drinks. These advantages foster a professional environment removed from the region it purports to cover. Western expatriates oper

The global energy map is being redefined and brings Tehran and Caracas together: gaining control of their oil wells requires military power. January 2026 marks a turning point: Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and President Donald Trump both held key meetings with the hydrocarbon business sectors, confirming what had been hinted at for some time in analyses: the US needs to take control, by any means possible, of Venezuela and Iran’s oil resources. In Venezuela, a

An election campaign poster of Pheu Thai Party on the Charot Withi Thong Road in Sawankhalok district, Sukhothai province, January 2026 -- image via Chainwit, Wikimedia Commons By Kay Young As Thailand goes to the polls, three visions compete: one which experiments in strange new populist economics, one which critiques from the seminar room, and one paying to keep the countryside quiet. In the Thai election, scheduled for 8 February, we can see the Global South’s political la

Not only are Californians struggling to make ends meet, they also have to contend with a governor who cares more about billionaires and his own presidential aspirations. Newsom at a press conference in May, 2025 -- Office of the Governor of California, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Sonali Kolhatkar California Governor Gavin Newsom has spent 2025 setting himself up as Donald Trump’s leading opponent and the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nominee . While the Tru

Mark Carney speaks at Davos -- video screenshot By Raïs Neza Boneza Western Power and the Persistence of Colonial Structures There are moments in global politics when the mask slips—not because power suddenly discovers morality, but because maintaining the performance becomes too expensive. Recently in Davos , the Canadian Prime minister Mark Carney did something unusual. He admitted—almost casually—that the so-called  rules-based international order  has never quite been wha

Board of Peace signing ceremony -- public domain image By Milkaela Nhondo Erskog Khaled Abu Jarrar, a 58-year-old Palestinian from Beit Hanoon, now shelters in Gaza City’s former Legislative Council building—one of thousands of structures repurposed as displacement camps after Israel’s genocidal assault reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. His wife was recently diagnosed with liver cancer. She needs urgent treatment abroad, but the Rafah crossing remains sealed.  As intern

Pinarayi Vijayan speaks at an LDF rally in Kerala in January, 2026 -- image via Facebook By Nabil Abdul Majeed and Nitheesh Narayanan In 1945, two years prior to India’s independence, the current Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, was born into a working-class family in northern Kerala. He was his mother’s fourteenth child; of the thirteen siblings born before him, only two survived. His mother was an agricultural labourer and his father a toddy tapper. They belonged

Mass rally in Tehran condemning US and Israeli threats and intervention in Iran, January 12, 2026 -- Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Biljana Vankovska Anyone from the former Yugoslavia will immediately understand the title. Mujo is a legendary (though fictional) Bosnian character, the protagonist (together with his inseparable friend Haso) of countless jokes that generations of Yugoslavs grew up with. Wars took many lives, erased towns, and destroyed f