In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both in need of affordable drugs for… Continue reading

In late July, I visited two settlements of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) on the outskirts of São Paulo (Brazil). Both settlements are named for brave women, the Brazilian lawmaker Marielle Franco – who was assassinated in 2018 – and Irmã Alberta – an Italian Catholic nun who died in 2018. The lands where the… Continue reading

Thursday, 25 May 2023 — The Tricontinental Leon Golub (USA), Vietnam II, 1973. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. During the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, near… Continue reading

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has now moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to the symbolic time of the annihilation of humanity and the Earth since 1947. This is alarming, which is why leaders in the Global South have been making the case to halt the warmongering over Ukraine and against China.… Continue reading

Thursday, 23 February 2023 — The Tricontinental Children play in the Rostock housing development, which, like all housing developments in the DDR, was required to include large open spaces for children. Credit: Jürgen Sindermann,Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archive. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. A few years ago, a minor… Continue reading

Thursday, 16 February 2023 — The Tricontinental Kael Abello (Venezuela), 1848, 2023. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the 7th Congress of the Young Communist League in Havana, Cuba, a year after the catastrophic ‘market failure’ in Asia, when global finance exited the region and… Continue reading

On 8 January, large crowds of people dressed in colours of the Brazilian flag descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded federal buildings, including the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, and vandalised public property. The attack, carried out by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came as no surprise, since the rioters had been planning ‘weekend demonstrations’ on social… Continue reading

In 1996, the eight countries on the Arctic rim – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States – formed the Arctic Council, a journey that began in 1989 when Finland approached the other countries to hold a discussion about the Arctic environment. The Finnish initiative led to the Rovaniemi Declaration (1991), which established the… Continue reading

In May 2021, the executive director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and the UN high representative for disarmament affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, wrote an article urging governments to cut excessive military spending in favour of increasing spending on social and economic development. Their wise words were not heard at all. To cut money for war and to increase… Continue reading

The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet. The gaping distance between the incomes and wealth of 99% of the world’s population from the incomes and wealth of the billionaires and near-trillionaires who make up the richest 1% is appalling. During the pandemic,… Continue reading

Thursday, 24 November 2022 — The Tricontinental Chéri Samba (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Reorganisation, 2002. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The dust has settled at the resorts in Sharm el-Shaikh, Egypt, as delegates of countries and corporations leave the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations… Continue reading

In 1845, Karl Marx jotted down some notes for The German Ideology, a book that he wrote with his close friend Friedrich Engels. Engels found these notes in 1888, five years after Marx’s death, and published them under the title Theses on Feuerbach. The eleventh thesis is the most famous: ‘philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways;… Continue reading

In the last week of October, João Pedro Stedile, a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil and the global peasants’ organisation La Via Campesina, went to the Vatican to attend the International Meeting of Prayer for Peace, organised by the Community of Sant’Egídio. On 30 October, Brazil held a presidential election, which was… Continue reading