As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
Latest editorial
The unremarkable death of migrants in the Sahara Desert
VIJAY PRASHAD reports on the latest figures on migrant deaths from the UN International Organisation of Migration and the under-reported deaths of migrants crossing the Sahara
Sahara Desert of Fezzan, Libya
[Luca Galuzzi / Creative Commons]
In the third of a series of articles, Storming the Heavens author JENNY CLEGG introduces the key themes of her book on the Chinese revolution
The US president’s career is defined by a consistent use of racist tropes and provocation. Why are world leaders so silent over his repeated vitriolic prejudice, asks ROGER McKENZIE
The Mandelson scandal reveals a political settlement in which democratic choice is curtailed and the power of markets eclipses the will of voters – only the left can challenge this, writes JON TRICKETT MP
NICK WRIGHT recalls one man’s journey from student revolutionary to Labour grandee – part of a wider world of working-class militants and communist activists whose lives shaped a generation and who should not be forgotten
Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, exposes a hidden war inside Labour, where claims of anti-semitism, amplified by media power and factional networks, were used to break Corbynism and recast the party. JOHN ELLISON revisits the scandals, investigations and suppressed evidence from that era
SABAH, Libya, is an oasis town at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. To stand at the edge of the town and look southward into the desert toward Niger is forbidding. The sand stretches past infinity, and if there is a wind, it lifts the sand to cover the sky.
Cars come down the road past the al-Baraka Mosque into the town. Some of these cars come from Algeria (although the border is often closed) or from Djebel al-Akakus, the mountains that run along the western edge of Libya. Occasionally, a white Toyota truck filled with men from the Sahel region of Africa and from western Africa makes its way into Sabah.
Miraculously, these men have made it across the desert, which is why many of them clamber out of their truck and fall to the ground in desperate prayer. Sabah means “morning” or “promise” in Arabic, which is a fitting word for this town that grips the edge of the massive, growing, and dangerous Sahara.
Similar stories
NICHOLAS MWANGI highlights a historic turning point in Sahelian sovereignty, as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger bolstered their regional security through a unified military force
The spectre of ethnic cleansing looms over hundreds of thousands trapped without food, water, or medicines in the North Darfur state’s besieged capital, El Fasher, writes PAVAN KULKARNI
