Tricontinental
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War Is Not the Answer to Deep Planetary Insecurity: The Thirty-Seventh Newsletter (2022)
Grave news comes to us from the United Nations (UN). The latest Human Development Report (2021–22) records that for the first time in thirty-two years, the Human Development Index has registered a second consecutive year of decline. The previous five years of gains in areas such as health and education have been negated by this reversal. ‘Billions… Continue reading
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We Will March, Even If We Have to Wade through the Pakistani Floodwaters: The Thirty-Sixth Newsletter (2022)
Calamities are familiar to the people of Pakistan who have struggled through several catastrophic earthquakes, including those in 2005, 2013, and 2015 (to name the most damaging), as well as the horrendous floods of 2010. However, nothing could prepare the fifth most populated country in the world for this summer’s devastating events, which began with… Continue reading
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Indian Workers Defend Their Steel with Their Lives: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter (2022)
The long and distant epoch of pre-history, dated to the time before the start of the Common Era, is conventionally divided into three periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Subsequently, in the era of written history, we generally have not relied upon specific metals or minerals to define our periods.… Continue reading
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When People Want Housing in India, They Build It: The Thirty-Third Newsletter (2022)
It all started with a survey. In April 2022, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), went door to door in the town of Warangal in Telangana state. The party was already aware of challenges in the community but wanted to collect data before working on a plan of action. Thirty-five teams… Continue reading
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Can We Please Have an Adult Conversation about China?: The Thirty-Second Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 11 August 2022 — The Tricontinental Wang Bingxiu of the Shuanglang Farmer Painting Club (Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, China), Untitled, 2018. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. As the US legislative leader Nancy Pelosi swept into Taipei, people around the world held their breath. Her visit was an act of provocation. In… Continue reading
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Sri Lankans Seek a World in Which They Can Find Laughter Together: The Thirty-First Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 4 August 2022 — The Tricontinental Anoli Perera (Sri Lanka), Dream 1, 2017 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 9 July 2022, remarkable images floated across social media from Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. Thousands of people rushed into the presidential palace and chased out former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa,… Continue reading
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All That I Ask Is That You Fight for Peace Today: The Thirtieth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 28 July 2022 — The Tricontinental Fuyuko Matsui (Japan), Becoming Friends with All the Children of the World, 2004. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The fragility of Europe’s energy supply has once again been on display in recent months. Gas shipments through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline,… Continue reading
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It Is Dark, but I Sing Because the Morning Will Come: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 22 July 2022 — The Tricontinental Photograph by Wellington Lenon / MST-PR Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In the chilly Brazilian winter of 2019, Renata Porto Bugni (deputy director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), André Cardoso (coordinator of our office in Brazil), and I went to the Lula… Continue reading
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Will Our Children Be Literate? Will They Look Forward to the Future with Dignity?: The Twenty-Eighth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 14 July 2022 — The Tricontinental Nú Barreto (Guinea-Bissau), A Esperar (‘Waiting’), 2019. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The world is adrift in the tides of hunger and desolation. It is difficult to think about education, or anything else, when your children are not able to eat. And… Continue reading
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The United States Wants to Prevent a Historical Fact – Eurasian Integration: The Twenty-Seventh Newsletter (2022)
Over the course of the past fifteen years, European countries have found themselves with both great opportunities to seize and complex choices to make. Unsustainable reliance on the United States for trade and investment, as well as the curious distraction of Brexit, led to the steady integration of European countries with Russian energy markets and… Continue reading
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There are Hungry People. There are Hungry People: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 30 June 2022 — The Tricontinental Saloua Raouda Choucair (Lebanon), Chores, 1948. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that, every minute, a child is pushed into hunger in fifteen countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. Twelve of these fifteen countries… Continue reading
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We Need to Build the Architecture of Our Future: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 23 June 2022 — The Tricontinental Diego Rivera (Mexico), Frozen Assets, 1931. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In April 2022, the United Nations established the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy, and Finance. This group is tracking the three major crises of food inflation, fuel inflation, and financial distress.… Continue reading
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The Lethality of Washington’s Global Monroe Doctrine: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter (2022)
This past week, as part of its policy to dominate the American hemisphere, the United States government organised the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. US President Joe Biden made it clear early on that three countries in the hemisphere (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) would not be invited to the event, claiming that they are… Continue reading
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Land in South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2022)
In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine export 33%… Continue reading
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Africa, the Collateral Victim of a Distant Conflict: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2022)
On 25 May 2022, Africa Day, Moussa Faki Mahamat – the chairperson of the African Union (AU) – commemorated the establishment of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963, which was later reshaped as the AU in 2002, with a foreboding speech. Africa, he said, has become ‘the collateral victim of a distant conflict, that… Continue reading
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And Then There Was No More Empire All of a Sudden: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 26 May 2022 — The Tricontinental Bisa Butler (USA), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 2019. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Empire denies its own existence. It does not exist as an empire but only as benevolence, with its mission to spread human rights and sustainable development across… Continue reading
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Art Is a Dream in Which We Imagine Our Future: The Twentieth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 19 May 2022 — The Tricontinental Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 11 May 2022, an Israeli sniper fired at the head of the veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh as she reported on an Israeli military raid on a refugee settlement in Jenin (part of the Occupied Palestine Territories).… Continue reading
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In a World of Great Disorder and Extravagant Lies, We Look for Compassion: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 12 May 2022 — The Tricontinental Francisca Lita Sáez (Spain), An Unequal Fight, 2020. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. These are deeply upsetting times. The COVID-19 global pandemic had the potential to bring people together, to strengthen global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and to galvanise… Continue reading
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With Clenched Fists, They Spend Money on Weapons as the Planet Burns: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2022)
Thursday, 5 May 2022 — The Tricontinental Dia Al-Azzawi (Iraq), Sabra and Shatila Massacre, 1982– 83. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Two important reports were released last month, neither getting the kind of attention they deserve. On 4 April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group III report was published,… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 