Days, weeks, months, an indeterminate amount of time as the world seems paralysed by the journey of SARS-CoV-2. The lack of certainty increases the anxiety. This virus, as Arundhati Roy writes, ‘seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow [of capital]. It has mocked immigration controls,… Continue reading

26 March 2020 — Tricontinental Li Zhong (China), Paintings for Wuhan, 2020. Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. It is hard to remember that just a few weeks ago, the planet was in motion. There were protests in Delhi (India) and Quito (Ecuador), eruptions against the old order that ranged… Continue reading

12 March 2020 — Tricontinental Mohammed Issiakhem, Femme et Mur (Woman and Wall), 1970. Dear Friends, Greetings from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. These are miserable times. The statistics of deprivation and death are gruesome. Far too many people struggle with hunger; roughly nine million of them dying each year from complications due to malnutrition (a child… Continue reading

5 March 2020 — Tricontinental Jane Norling, Sistersongs, Berkeley, California, 1975. We Who Were Nothing and Have Become Everything Shall Construct a New and Better World: The Tenth Newsletter (2020). Dear Friends, For Ernesto Cardenal (1925-2020), who has gone to hand out clandestine pamphlets in the sky. Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social… Continue reading

27 February 2020 — Tricontinental N. Sankaraiah reads the Communist Manifesto in Tamil, Chennai, India, 20 February 2020. Keep Silent: The Ninth Newsletter (2020) Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On the night before Red Books Day, on 21 February 2020, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, N. Sankaraiah –… Continue reading

6 February 2020 — Tri-Continental Barefoot Doctors. This Is the Time for Solidarity, Not Stigma: The Sixth Newsletter (2020). Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In December 2019, several people began to develop infections in Wuhan (People’s Republic of China); early signs indicated that the virus had emerged out… Continue reading

30 January 2020 — Tri-Continental Santu Mofokeng, Eyes Wide Shut, Motouleng Cave, Clarens – Free State, 2004. Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On Monday, 27 January, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng slipped away. His camera had been a familiar presence in the anti-apartheid struggle; after years of photographing… Continue reading

23 January 2020 — Tri-Continental When Will The Winter Come to An End?: The Fourth Newsletter (2020) Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 17 January, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the Friday prayers for the first time in eight years. He mocked the ‘American clowns’ who… Continue reading

16 January 2020 — Tri-Continental Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On Wednesday, 15 January, China and the United States agreed to suspend their full-scale trade war. From February 2018, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese goods that entered the US market, and then China retaliated. This tit-for-tat game… Continue reading

10 January 2020 — Tri-Continental Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In October of last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its flagship World Economic Outlook. In that report, the IMF said that the global growth rate would stumble at 3% in 2019. A month ago, the IMF’s main… Continue reading

2 January 2020 — Tri-Continental Gao Liang, The People Who Got Land, June 1948. How Many Millions Did You Make for the Pennies You Gave to the Coolies: The First Newsletter (2020). Continue reading

26 December 2019 — Tri-Continental Dear Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Millions of people are on the streets, from India to Chile. Democracy is both their promise and it is what has betrayed them. They aspire to the democratic spirit but find that democratic institutions – saturated by money… Continue reading

21 November 2019 — Tri-Continental Visualizing Palestine, Gaza Diet, 2018. Continue reading

In 2017, Issa Shivji delivered the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Issa, who taught at the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) for decades, reflected on the idea of revolutionary intellectuals. He remembered a lecture given by Ali Mazrui fifty years previously, where Mazrui defined an intellectual as someone… Continue reading

At the edge of hope lies the gunfire from what Frantz Fanon called ‘the old granite block upon which the nation rests’. At the moment of protest, when the gunfire starts, clarity arrives. One should not be naïve about the character of the elite, whose smiles camouflage the instructions given through clenched teeth to the… Continue reading

Quito’s streets tremble between aspiration and repression; the smell of tear gas and the shouts for freedom reverberating in equal measure from one part of the city to another. President Lenín Moreno’s State of Emergency (October 3) and Curfew (October 12) give the men with guns more authority, but – despite hundreds of injured protestors and… Continue reading