A Little Green Scarves rally in Argentina -- image via X By Maisa Bascuas On 20 August, during the 23rd edition of the Council of the Americas in Buenos Aires, Javier Milei concluded his speech to the business elite by blaming the ‘little green scarves’ and voluntary termination of pregnancy (VTP) for the declining birth rate, the slowdown in economic growth, and the crisis in the pension system. The tactic is politically effective: it reduces a global demographic trend to a

Massive state and federal lawsuits take Meta to task over widespread harm to children. sharpemtbr, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Sonali Kolhatkar As a mother of two children who has often been on the losing side of family battles against screen time, I’ve been closely monitoring New Mexico’s landmark lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez took the company to task to protect children “from sexual abuse, online sol

Iranian missile display at the Holy Defense Museum in Tehran -- Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad The gravest danger in the present war is not that Iran has already decided to manufacture a nuclear weapon. There is no verified evidence of such a decision. The danger is that another major US escalation could convince Tehran that remaining a non-nuclear state inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) no longer provides protection, recogni

Axadem, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad Dear friends and colleagues, The United States and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran in February of this year. For six months, US missiles and bombs have fallen upon civilian and military targets inside the country. Hospitals, schools, energy facilities, and neighbourhoods have been struck. The 168 schoolgirls killed in Minab have become the terrible symbol of this war. Iranians have been forced to live

Trump on August 14, 2026 -- public domain image By Dae-Han Song Trump offered to scale down the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise (carried out annually by the US Forces in Korea (USFK) and Republic of Korea (ROK) military). In Trumpian style, the decision was framed as everything all at once: punishment against South Korea for its tepid response on Iran; and as a conciliatory gesture to North Korea. And, the decision, in Trumpian fashion, fell flat on its face. Rather than feelin

Crop from The sleep of reason produces monsters (No. 43), from Los Caprichos -- public domain image By Jorge Coulon In 1799, Francisco de Goya published Los Caprichos. Among his engravings was one destined to stand the test of time: a man sleeps, leaning over a table, whilst owls, bats and creatures of the night emerge from behind him. At the bottom, a phrase: ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. More than a century later, from a fascist prison, Antonio Gramsci wrote abou

Abelardo de la Espriella being interviewed while campaigning for the Colombian presidential elections May, 2026 -- public domain image By Vijay Prashad In August, right-wing billionaire Abelardo de la Espriella took office as Colombia’s president and vowed to move an agenda of the far right even though he won by less than a percentage point over the left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. It is characteristic of the far right of a special type to adopt any mandate and pretend that t

Fidel Castro speaks to a crowd of over 100,000 people at the Plaza de la Revolucion, Havana, January 2, 1969, for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution By Dayan Jayatilleka The month he turned 50, my father, Mervyn de Silva, and my mother, Lakshmi, were in Havana watching Fidel Castro take over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement at its 6th Summit. After my father died, I discovered in his briefcase the embossed invitation on stiff parchment. He had treasured it fo

Public domain image By Shiran Illanperuma On 16 August 1976, representatives from eighty-six countries met in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for the Fifth Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries. This was the first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to be held in Asia and perhaps the largest international conference ever held in Sri Lanka. In her inaugural address to the summit, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike – the world’s first woman p

Mass protest in Argentina against the land bill on August 7 -- image via news video screenshot By Julian Bokser Javier Milei’s government recently suffered a double defeat. The first occurred in the streets, with massive protests against his plan to liberalize land purchases by foreigners. The second took place in the halls of the Argentine Congress, where he failed to secure enough votes to pass the bill as presented. Both defeats point to the same thing: a power project tha

Cuban assemble in Havana for the 2026 May 1 march -- image via the Communist Party of Cuba By Vijay Prashad For more than six decades, the United States has attempted to make the Cuban people pay for their decision to pursue an independent, socialist path. The latest phase of this economic war has targeted the island’s most vulnerable artery: its energy supply. Six months after Washington intensified pressure on countries and companies supplying oil to Cuba, the policy has no

Public domain image By Guillermo R. Barreto It happened on 25 May 2020, in Minneapolis, USA. George Floyd (a Black man) was arrested on suspicion of attempting to pay for a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Police officer Derek Chauvin (a white man) pinned him to the ground and pressed down on his neck for more than 9 minutes. It was to no avail that George Floyd repeated ‘I can’t breathe’ more than 20 times. He lost consciousness and died of asphyxiation. In ot

Vessels in the Staright of Hormuz -- image via news video screenshot By Vijay Prashad For more than three decades, the United States has treated Middle Eastern diplomacy as an exercise in writing the terms for others. Iran’s emerging regional strategy is challenging that privilege. The immediate evidence is emerging in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman are negotiating an arrangement under which Tehran could oversee vessels entering the Gulf while Muscat manages outbound tra

In Bolivar Square, Caracas -- J.A. Vergara, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Guillermo R. Barreto We are living in complex times in which U.S. imperialism is manifesting itself in an extremely aggressive manner, with greater violence and disregard for international law and the sovereignty of peoples, but with a desperation that translates into increasingly irrational decisions that openly threaten not only world peace but the future of all humanity. What we are witnessi

President Droupadi Murmu of India and President Gordana Siljanovska Davkova of Macedonia -- image via X By Biljana Vankovska This may seem like a slightly belated reaction to India’s President’s visit to Macedonia 20-23 July. Yet the event deserves a brief reflection through a gender lens. The real inspiration comes from my engagement in a two-year project aimed at encouraging greater participation of women in politics — Gender Equality Mobilization (GEM), implemented togethe

A nascent movement of young people, angry over a broken educational system, took on the ruling BJP government and forced the education minister to resign. Image from the protests - via news video screenshot By Sonali Kolhatkar Young people across India recently made international headlines for mass protests over the recurring leaks of entrance exams that help students qualify for medical schools and highly coveted government jobs. The Gen Z protesters won a major victory with

Arkaio Nomisma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Gary M. Feinman As democracies around the world face mounting challenges and pressures, discussions about autocracy often focus on personalities and ideologies or tend to link governance practices to differences among specific cultural traditions. Yet a growing body of comparative historical research has provided evidence that a more fundamental question deserves attention: How was and how are governments funded? Across t

Public domain image By Carlos Ron On 14 July, at a summit in Orlando, the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Terrance Cole, declared that Mexico’s cartels and Mexico’s government are ‘one and the same.’ He offered no evidence. President Claudia Sheinbaum demanded some; none came. Mexico’s Security Cabinet answered with figures—tens of thousands of arrests, hundreds of tons of narcotics seized—while Cole’s office remained silent. The accusation was never meant to

From the Civil War and World War I to the ongoing conflict in Iran, America’s and other nations’ expectations of war have repeatedly been challenged by the realities that emerge once fighting begins. U.S. Marines in their gas masks during a gas mask drill, France, WWI, 1917 By John P. Ruehl A nominal ceasefire reached in April 2026 has done little to halt the escalation in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s “attempted surprise attack” against US forces on July 28, the US retaliat

Daniel Noboa, March 2026 -- public domain image By Pilar Troya Fernández President Daniel Noboa governs Ecuador with increasingly authoritarian methods. Elected in 2023 and reelected in 2025, he has concentrated power in the executive branch, clashed with the Constitutional Court, abused states of emergency, and turned the justice system into a tool against his opponents. Analysts and human rights organizations describe a drift toward a dictatorial edge: a leader who preserve