The New Dark Age

Thursday, 30 October 2025 — The Tricontinental

Nguyễn Phan Chánh (Vietnam), Market Scene, 1937

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On the last day of October 2025, leaders from the 21 nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will meet in the city of Gyeongju in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for the organisation’s 33rd summit. Since its founding in 1989 in Canberra, Australia, APEC has promoted building a zone of ‘free and open trade’ – a concept outlined by the Bogor Goals, which came out of the summit in Indonesia in 1994.

(more…)

Thursday, 23 October 2025 — The Tricontinental

Gen Z-led uprisings across the Global South point to long-term socioeconomic and environmental crises caused by neoliberalism. Yet they have often been coopted by entrenched social classes. Can their energy be channelled towards progressive ends?

(more…)

Thursday, 9 October 2025 — The Tricontinental

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In February 2025, Senegal’s Court of Auditors released a report that found ‘anomalies’ in the management of public finances between 2019 and 2024, during the presidency of Macky Sall (2012–2024). For instance, the court found that while Sall’s government had suggested that the budget deficit for 2023 was 4.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it was in fact 12.3%. The court went to work on this reconstruction of public finances because of a very significant accusation made by Senegal’s new prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, at a press conference in Dakar in September 2024. What the auditors found, and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) validated, was that the actual debt ratio in 2023 was 99.7% of GDP – not 74.7% – and that the deficit had been underestimated by 5.6% of GDP (in August 2025, the debt ratio was revised to 111% of GDP).

(more…)