On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the United States and Russia. According… Continue reading

For over a decade, Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been in and out of Egypt’s prisons, never free of the harassment of the military state apparatus. In 2011, during the high point of the revolution, Alaa emerged as an important voice of his generation and since then has been a steady moral compass despite his country’s… Continue reading

Thursday, 13 January 2022 — Tricontinental Chittaprosad, Indian Workers Read, n.d. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender. ‘Multidimensional poverty’ is… Continue reading

Thursday, 6 January 2022 — Tricontinental Ryuki Yamamoto (Japan), Chaos – Spin, 2019. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. As we enter the new year almost two years after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the official death toll from COVID-19 sits just below 5.5 million people.… Continue reading

30 December 2021 — Tricontinental P.S. Jalaja (India), We Surely Can Change the World, 2021. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Bittersweet is the passage of this year. There have been some immense victories and some catastrophic defeats, the most terrible being the failure of the Global North countries to… Continue reading

23 December 2021 — Tricontinental Latif al-Ani (Iraq), Eid festivities in Baghdad, 1959. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 12 July 2007, two US AH-64 Apache helicopters fired 30-millimetre cannon rounds at a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad. These US Army gunners murdered at least a dozen people,… Continue reading

At the US State Department’s Summit for Democracy (9–10 December), US President Joe Biden announced a range of initiatives to ‘bolster democracy and defend human rights globally’. These measures are to be funded by $424.4 million from the United States. This money will go towards the same institutions that have – for the past sixty years – intervened to… Continue reading

9 December 2021 — Tricontinental Mwamba Chikwemba (Zambia), Power, 2019. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research. United States President Joe Biden has suborned 111 countries to attend his Summit for Democracy on December 9–10, ending on Human Rights Day. ‘We welcome all countries, organisations, and individuals to support the goals of the… Continue reading

2 December 2021 — Tricontinental Likbez (USSR), Tatar Literacy Club, 1935. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Almost every single child on the planet (over 80% of them) had their education disrupted by the pandemic, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO) agency. Though this finding is startling, it… Continue reading

As the last private plane takes off from the Glasgow airport and the dust settles, the detritus of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, remains. The final communiqués are slowly being digested, their limited scope inevitable. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, closedthe proceedings by painting two dire images: ‘Our fragile planet is… Continue reading

It is perhaps fitting that United States President Joe Biden arrived in Glasgow for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) on the climate catastrophe with eighty-five cars in tow months after declaring ‘I’m a car guy’ (for details on the climate catastrophe, see our Red Alert no. 11, ‘Only One Earth’). Only three countries in… Continue reading

28 October 2021 — Tricontinental Murad Subay (Yemen), Fuck War, 2018. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – along with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – began to bomb Yemen. These countries entered a conflict that had… Continue reading

21 October 2021 — Tricontinental Jaime de Guzman (Philippines), Metamorphosis II, 1970. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 5 October, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a historic, non-legally binding resolution that ‘recognises the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human… Continue reading

14 October 2021 — Tricontinental Junaina Muhammed (India) / Young Socialist Artists, A woman working in the korai fields, where women often work from a young age to earn a living. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Reminder: Indian peasants and agricultural workers remain in the midst of a… Continue reading

7 October 2021 — Tricontinental Ang Kiukok (Philippines), Harvest, 2004. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 1 October, the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), a network of over 200 social and political movements, had its public launch. The IPA owes its origin to a meeting held in Brazil in 2015 where movement… Continue reading

30 September 2021 — Tricontinental Rafael Tufiño Figueroa (Puerto Rico), La plena, 1952-54. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Each year in September, the heads of governments come to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City to inaugurate a new session of the General Assembly. The area surrounding the… Continue reading