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/2024/07/07afghanistan
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<h3>Taliban struggle to meet Afghans’ needs</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Monday</span><br> 17 August 2026</strong>
Five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, women’s lives are ever more restricted. As the UN wrote on 12 August, ‘de facto authorities have issued more than 100 decrees curbing education, work and freedom of movement – restrictions now compounded by deep cuts to aid on the ground.’ After withdrawing from the country, Washington isolated it and imposed sanctions. ‘With little prospect of international recognition, the Taliban have refocused on their base – young, diehard fighters who are calling for the implementation of the radical Islamist programme for which they went to war,’ Adam Baczko wrote in 2024. The result of this has been ‘continued sanctions, of which ordinary people will bear the brunt, and a still harder line from the Taliban, whose only way of staying in power is repression.’
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/2005/10/06israelisarabs
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<h3>Israel’s Palestinian citizens</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Tuesday</span><br> 28 July 2026</strong>
The Israeli historian and journalist Joseph Algazy died on 18 July. Born in Egypt in 1938, Algazy was committed leftist and, from the late 1980s, an advocate of dialogue with the Palestinians. He published several works, including Le péché originel d’Israël (Israel’s original sin) with Dominique Vidal (Paris, Éditions de l’Atelier, 1998) and La Tentation néofasciste en France. 1944-1965 (The neofascist temptation in France: 1944-1965, Paris, Fayard, 1984). He was a regular contributor to Le Monde diplomatique.
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/1999/12/11habel
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<h3>The line that divides Mexico and the US</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Tuesday</span><br> 21 July 2026</strong>
The World Cup hosted by the three North American nations concluded on 19 July. For weeks, football players, journalists, fans and officials crossed borders with no constraint other than the next fixture.
By 20 July, those borders had resumed their usual function. Capital continues to flow freely; goods pass through, too — though yesterday Donald Trump imposed tariffs on those from Canada. Migrants, however, will face checks and, at times, arrest or expulsion. Ultimately, the North American border remains a primary instrument through which Washington regulates trade, mobility and security across the entire continent.
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/2025/05/02turkey
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<h3>Turkey: wanting to have it both ways on Israel</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Tuesday</span><br> 21 July 2026</strong>
Curiously, as the NATO summit in Ankara drew to a close earlier this month, heads of state and government were each given a Turkish revolver engraved with their name, complete with six cartridges and a cleaning kit. This gesture highlighted a new reality: Ankara is now as much in the business of exporting weapons as in that of leveraging its strategic position.
Washington is actively revisiting the F-35 issue. Turkey was excluded from the programme in 2019 after purchasing Russian S-400 missile systems, but it is now back in the US’s good graces. This diplomatic rehabilitation is occurring despite Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continuing to pursue a familiar playbook: power struggles with allies, dialogue with Moscow, regional interventions and support for Syria’s new leadership.
Yet if Ankara’s course has not changed, its strategic value has. The war in Ukraine, European rearmament and the war with Iran have boosted its standing. It controls the straits in the Black Sea, its drones operate on multiple battlefields and its factories are attracting interest from a rearming Europe.
This rehabilitation has alarmed Israel, which heavily relies on US support. US public opinion is already turning against Tel Aviv’s policies; now, according to Binyamin Netanyahu, the White House is glorifying ‘a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood’, just as Turkey emerges as a serious contender for regional hegemony.
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/2026/06/02uk
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<h3>UK: end of the road for two-party politics</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Monday</span><br> 20 July 2026</strong>
On Monday Andy Burnham will become the UK’s seventh prime minister in ten years, following Keir Starmer’s resignation. While little is known about Burnham’s plans for government, early signals suggest that under his premiership the government will scrap digital ID cards, allow companies to drill for oil in the North Sea and put Thames Water into special administration.
Starmer’s tenure in power was marked by his vocal disdain for the left of the Labour Party; an unwillingness to break with the Thatcherite economic policy continued by Tony Blair; a failure to lower the cost of living; inaction on the Israeli genocide in Gaza; and the shutting down of dissent.
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/2026/06/08colombia
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<h3>Colombia’s incomplete transformation</h3> <span class="apercu"> </span>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Thursday</span><br> 25 June 2026</strong>
Iván Cepeda, the candidate for Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact coalition, has conceded the presidential election to Abelardo de la Espriella (Defenders of the Homeland). Preliminary results indicated that there was less than a percentage point between the two rivals. Colombia’s first leftist president will be replaced by an anti-establishment right-winger close to the Trump administration. Will Colombia re-emerge as the United States’ primary strategic and security ally in Latin America?
Since the launch of Plan Colombia in 2000, the country has occupied a singular position in the region. An unwavering ally of Washington, it allowed itself to become consumed by the ‘war on drugs’ and guerrilla conflicts. It also established itself as a counterweight to the left-wing governments that emerged in the region in the early 21st century.
Petro’s rise to power in 2022 marked a turning point. His administration restored diplomatic relations with Venezuela, distanced itself from US anti-drug initiatives, severed ties with Israel, pursued ‘total peace’ with armed groups (from guerrilla forces to narco-paramilitary organisations), challenged the country’s reliance on extractive industries and increasingly aligned itself with Beijing and the BRICS bloc. Stopping short of a confrontation with the US, Petro sought to loosen Washington’s grip — work that is now under threat.
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/2026/01/05uk
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<h3>The banning of Palestine Action </h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Friday</span><br> 19 June 2026</strong>
This month, the Court of Appeal upheld the home secretary’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terror organisation, and four of its activists were sentenced on the basis of a ‘terrorist connection’.
For a time, the acquittals of some juries and the doubts of certain judges prevented the government’s will from becoming doctrine. That time is over. In the UK, the use of exceptional powers devised during the ‘war on terror’ is now the norm in the political handling of the Palestinian question. The National Security (State Threats) bill, which is currently being debated in Parliament, already intends to extend this logic to the right to protest and civil liberties.
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/2026/03/02cuba
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<h3>Cuba, out in the cold</h3>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Thursday</span><br> 21 May 2026</strong>
On Wednesday the US issued a criminal indictment against Cuba’s former president Raúl Castro, accusing him of conspiracy to kill US nationals, murder and destruction of aircraft. This relates to an incident in 1996 in which two US aircraft were shot down by the Cuban military over the Florida strait. The indictment followed a speech to the Cuban people by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, delivered in Spanish. ‘President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba,’ he said, blaming blackouts and food shortages on the island on the Cuban authorities. As Christophe Ventura wrote in our March edition, Rubio’s political career ‘has been largely driven by the desire for regime change in the country his parents left before the revolution’.
Ventura detailed how the US under Trump (and Biden) has choked off Cuba’s access to energy, revealing its external dependence. On our blog, Joy Gordon wrote about the punishing nature and reach of US sanctions on Cuba.
What is the US’s aim, Ventura asks? ‘Is the objective to remove President Díaz-Canel, place Cuba under US tutelage, as has happened in Venezuela with the government of Delcy Rodríguez, and then transform the island into a new Florida, with rivieras, luxury hotels and golf courses?’
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/2026/05/07lebanon
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<h3>Is Lebanon at risk of tearing itself apart?</h3> <span class="apercu"> </span>
<div class="intro"><strong><span>Tuesday</span><br> 19 May 2026</strong>
According to the Financial Times, Israel has occupied 1,000 square kilometres of its neighbours’ territory since 7 October 2023. This amounts to 5% of the country’s size within its 1949 borders. Roughly half of the land seized is in southern Lebanon.
As well as bombing campaigns and ground incursions into parts of Lebanon, Israel is also working to fracture neighbouring societies and weaken its Arab adversaries through strategic alliances. This is in accordance with the old doctrine known as the ‘periphery doctrine’, which Karim Émile Bitar wrote about in our May edition.
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/2026/08/01zlongerview
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August 2026
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/2021/12/06france-national-preference
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
‘France first’: a far-right nostrum
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable"><abbr title='Benoît Bréville'>B. B.</abbr></span>
<span class="apercu">Preview</span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>December 2021</span>
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/2015/02/06charlie
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
Where do you come from?
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable"><abbr title='Benoît Bréville'>B. B.</abbr></span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>February 2015</span>
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/2018/09/05israel-law
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
Some Israelis will be more equal than others
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable">Charles Enderlin</span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>September 2018</span>
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/2004/06/13cuba
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
Cuba: what will happen after Castro?
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable">Janette Habel</span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>June 2004</span>
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</div>
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/2017/11/03Cuba
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
Cuba on the verge of inequality
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable">Renaud Lambert</span>
<span class="apercu">Preview</span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>November 2017</span>
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/2026/03/02cuba
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<div class="puce">→</div>
<div class="titraille">
<h4>
Cuba, out in the cold
</h4>
<div class="dates_auteurs"><span class="insecable">Christophe Ventura</span>
<span class="pages"><span>• </span>March 2026</span>
</div>
</div>
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