For decades, Latin America’s authoritarian regimes were seen as a right-wing phenomenon, with Cuba as the lone exception — a dictatorship born not from a betrayal of democracy, but of revolution. As Washington’s embargo returns to the headlines, this piece asks what that framing has long obscured: that Cuba has never had just one embargo, but two.
Analyses
- Federica Zoja 11 November 2022Mohammed Bin Salman is deftly playing a chess game aimed at positioning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a foreign policy leader both regionally and internationally, exploiting each of the great powers’ primary weaknesses (and desires): energy prices in the US, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and China’s desperation to assert its regional dominance. His sudden rise to the head of the desert kingdom was consolidated recently with his appointment as Prime Minister and heir apparent to his aging father, securing his untouchability and immunity when it comes to human rights violations, putting partners like the United States in the particular quandry of not being able to use their traditional soft power levers and leaving evermore domestic dissidents at risk.
- Maria Tavernini 4 November 2022A profile of the first person of color to ever lead a UK government and the first practicing Hindu
- Arghawan Farsi 17 October 2022From songs composed of protesters’ tweets to melodies dating back to the Iranian resistance. In a country that banned pop, rock and funk, even singing becomes an act of freedom.
- Marina Forti 14 October 2022Of the countless images and videos that have come out of Iran in recent weeks, it is clear that what is emerging is more than a simple demand for women’s liberation or equal rights in an authoritarian regime. Discontent has been brewing for decades but will the Islamic Republic of Iran be able to stem the rising call for change or will they have to give in (even just a little) to protesters’ demands?
- Mohammed Hashas 13 October 2022The passing away of the ‘global sheikh’ closes an epoch of engaged Islam. A portrait of Muslim Brotherhood’s former ideologist by Mohammed Hashas.
- Maria Tavernini 4 October 2022Despite its size and demographic weight, India has never managed to become the geopolitical giant it hoped to be in recent decades. It’s fast-paced economic and demographic growth however will soon permit it to surpass it’s historical colonizer making it the subject of courtship in a newly repolarized world.
- Giovanni Panzeri 4 October 2022Following last August’s report published by the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet on the state of China’s persecution against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province, an interview with Dolkun Isa, the president of the World Uyghur Congress highlights that still more needs to be done by the international community.
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- Rebecca Batley 8 September 2022
- Sidita Trimi 29 August 2022The tale of a small minority of Albanian discent in southern Italy, now recounted in a Netflix movie, sheds light on universal questions on identity and integration.