Essay by Patrick Lawrence, re-published here in The Multiplural World, Oct 12, 2026
(With extensive, related readings further below. Patrick Lawrence is a former correspondent in Europe with the International Herald Tribune. The following essay first appeared in his Substack blog ‘The Floutist’ on October 11, 2026. His essays are regularly re-published in Consortium News.
On 30 October, dockworkers across the Mediterranean are going on strike to stop the imperialist war machine. We are launching a strike fund to support them.
In the Progressive International’s thirty-first briefing of 2026, we look at NATO’s breathtaking re-armament drive, the dockworker unions mobilizing to arrest the gears of war, and the campaign of solidarity.
Data centres and democratic decline could lead to more water conflict in the future
Transboundary waters — rivers, lakes and aquifers residing in more than one country — are facing challenges due to climate change, with conflicts over these waters increasing.
Bek MacIntosh helped rally her Alberta town to kill a megaproject. The wider fight, she vows, is ‘just getting started.’
The first thing that Bek MacIntosh, a 42-year-old business owner and mother of three, wants Albertans to know is this: it is possible for a community to stop a $10-billion hyperscale data centre dead in its tracks.
Even when the local and provincial governments have different plans.
The global assault on our freedoms is coming ever closer to home. Just look at the sinister prosecution of UK lawyer Rajiv Menon
No more resistance in the US. The era of human rights is over, and dissent is once more forbidden. This is what certain billionaires and their concierges want, and this is the model they’re also seeking to project across the world. If we fail to resist, if our new prime minister is as weak and suggestible as the last one, this is what we will get. In fact, we are halfway there already.
Hundreds of thousands of young protesters assembled in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar every day to demand the resignation of the education minister and accountability from the Modi government.
DELHI—Protesters occupying the central parts of Delhi, India were triumphant on Saturday evening after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government accepted all demands raised by the movement’s leaders, including the resignation of the country’s education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Can all the people be fooled all the time? Can a country with a population of a billion-and-a-half be dragged around like a corpse forever? It cannot. The Cockroaches are out and about.
For the first time in years, it feels wonderful to be Indian. Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.
