Politics

United States International Human Rights Climate Change

A Historic Decrease in Poverty

The successful expansion of the safety net during the pandemic reminds us that high levels of poverty are a political choice, not a fate.

November 18, 2021 issue

Raja Shehadeh

What Does Israel Fear from This ‘Terrorist’?

The Israeli government smears human rights organizations—like Al Haq, the one I founded—rather than attempting to end the violations they bring to light.

December 2, 2021 issue

Yasmine El Rashidi

Egypt: Lost Possibilities

What the revolution opened up in our lives—beyond activism—and then eventually took away.

November 4, 2021 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Lie of Nation Building

From the very beginning, the problem with the US involvement in Afghanistan lay essentially in the deficits in American democracy.

October 7, 2021 issue

Stephen Kinzer

Ortega in His Labyrinth

Nicaragua’s president has created an insular dynastic tyranny that eerily resembles the one against which he fought decades ago.

September 23, 2021 issue

Jelani Cobb

A Warning Ignored

American society did exactly what the Kerner Commission on the urban riots of the mid-1960s advised against, and fifty years later reaped the consequences it predicted.

August 19, 2021 issue

Mark Danner

‘Reality Rebellion’

By doubling down on Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Republicans are making their base angrier, more radical, and more likely to turn to violence.

July 1, 2021 issue

Thomas Rogers

Welcome to Germany

Since Angela Merkel admitted 1.2 million refugees in 2015 and 2016, the dire predictions about their impact on the country have not materialized.

April 29, 2021 issue

The Latest

Coco Fusco

Whose Art Thrives in Cuba?

Art and dance were battlegrounds for the struggle to define the meaning of the revolution.

December 16, 2021 issue

Tariq Mir

Kashmir’s Cycle of Death

The more ruthlessly India uses military force to make its regional power plays, the more ineluctably young Kashmiris are drawn into armed resistance.

November 22, 2021

Matt Seaton

The Etymology of Terror

For more than 150 years after it was coined, “terrorism” meant violence inflicted by the state on its people. How did the word come to mean the reverse?

November 17, 2021

Jake Bernstein

Loopholes for Kleptocrats

The term “tax haven” may conjure images of Caribbean islands and palm trees, but two recent books make the case that the world’s leading tax haven is America.

December 2, 2021 issue

Tareq Baconi

What Apartheid Means for Israel

A growing consensus has formed around the term—not as a rhetorical comparison to South Africa, but describing a system of domination built on the partition of Palestine.

November 5, 2021

Leah Aronowsky

The Limits of Climate Change Litigation

For two decades, climate scientists have been developing tools to pin the blame for hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves on fossil fuel companies. But judges say climate change is too big for court.

November 3, 2021

Robert Kuttner

Bringing the Supply Chain Back Home

Is Biden ready to insist that national economic planning is not just ideologically permissible but urgently necessary?

November 18, 2021 issue

Alice Kaplan

War and Memory in France and Algeria

Sixty years after the end of the Algerian War of Independence, “painful passions” on both sides continue to impede the reconciliation of the French and Algerian people.

November 18, 2021 issue

Colin Grant

Sins of the Fathers

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.

November 18, 2021 issue

Alissa Quart

Anti-Rent Wars, Then and Now

Amid the 1840s economic crisis, landlords tried to drive out tenants in default. The remarkable movement that rose to challenge evictions can be a model for today’s housing activists.

October 25, 2021