October 2016: fighters of the "Donetsk People's Republic" during a planned retreat. (c) Igor Maslov / VisualRIA. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Moscow Times.  November was unseasonably warm this year in Donetsk, an eastern Ukrainian city under pro-Russian separatists’ control. As you walk down Pushkin Boulevard, watching golden leaves gently drop…

Relatives of the 43 missing students from the rural teachers’ college march holding pictures of their missing loved ones during a protest in Mexico City. Dec. 26, 2015. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte. All rights reserved Professor Sergio Aguayo, from the Colegio de México and Harvard University, is one of the greatest Mexican thinkers alive and a referent…

The dated model of retirement is crumbling, yet there’s nothing concrete to replace it. Terrifying articles suggesting millennials save $2 million by retirement is laughable. But so is turning to a panel of financial advisors—whom don’t have an answer beyond, “I don’t know, dude, what do you want your retirement to look like?” Factor in…

Unidos Podemos: Errejon, Bustinduy, Iglesias, Montero, Garzon, Mayoral, Bescansa after the results of Spain's national elections in June, 2016.Jimenez Rodrigo/Press Association. All rights reserved.Following decades of social mobilization throughout the 1990s and 2000s premised on the idea of “changing the world without taking power”, through building progressive alliances in autonomous spaces, at a distance from…

The arrest of Aydin Engin, Turkish journalist, playwright, writer, politician, in the raid of 12 leading staff of Cumhuriyet. November 1, 2016.“Is Brussels asleep, or just ignorant?, asked the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt in an op-ed in Politico, lambasting European leaders’ “tepid response” to the failed July 15 coup…

Every season, critics slap the well-worn “No Fun League” moniker on the NFL for their suppression of on-field celebrations. In an effort to prove there’s still some fun left in football, the NFL loosened post-touchdown celebration rules for the upcoming season, allowing players to be a bit more emotive after a big play.  Nonetheless, declaring a…

This interview is part of a series done in Johannesburg at the World Summit of Community Philanthropy (1-2 December 2016). Francesc Badia: Thank you for having Open Democracy here in Johannesburg, on the occasion of the Global Summit on Community Philanthropy. ‘Shifting the power’ is the driving idea of the conference. The world is upside…

Red Crescent workers inspect a body washed ashore east of Tripoli,Libya, October,2015. IOM said more than 2,600 migrants had died on central Mediterranean route by then that year.Mohamed Ben Khalifa /Press Association. All rights reserved.Recent survey findings from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reinforce what numerous studies and media reports suggested over the past…

Masrour Barzani, son of Kurdish President Masoud Barzani,repeats call for referendum on seeking Kurdish indpendence from Iraq, February 2016. Alice Martins / Press Association. All rights reserved.KRG’s President Barzani has recently intensified his efforts for independence. There might be many reasons for this. First and foremost, the state of Iraq is often regarded uncontroversially as…

There has been no shortage of breaking news today as former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the U.S. Senate. On Wednesday, The Senate shared Comey’s seven pages of prepared remarks and the collective response was largely a giant shrug. Sure, Trump sounded like the bullying narcissist we’ve come to expect, but none of his…