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New Lines Magazine

New Lines Magazine – a local magazine for the world. Essays run daily online and quarterly in print.

09/19/2025

“International media initially reported the protest as typical Gen Z anger over Oli’s social media crackdown, only to quickly realize the dissent went much deeper,” writes Vandana Menon for

Nepal has become the latest country to witness mass protests against political corruption and nepotism.

In just 36 hours, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s government toppled, following in the footsteps of Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024. In Kathmandu, young people took to the streets, amplified by digital platforms like Discord when the government attempted to stifle dissent.

Protesters set fire to Parliament, the Supreme Court, government offices and politicians’ homes .Their actions reflect a broader regional trend: generations of South Asian youth are challenging the legacies of long-entrenched leaders and demanding systemic change.

“This is a generation that was raised in a democratic system but has seen it fail them,” Menon writes. “They want more for themselves and their country: global respect, economic opportunity, and better living standards.”

For more, read the full story at the link in our bio.

📸 A man hangs a pirate flag from the japanese anime “One Piece” as protesters set fire to the seat of the country’s ministries in Kathmandu on Sept. 9, 2025. (Sunil Pradhan/Anadolu via Getty Images)
✍️ Vandana Menon

09/18/2025

As the Syrian uprising gave way to war, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces turned to one of the most ___ in modern conflict: barrel bombs. These ___ crude containers packed with explosives, shrapnel and even chemicals were dropped from helicopters into homes, schools, hospitals.

In this extraordinary account, a former Syrian air force colonel admits his role in those attacks and explains why he chose to walk away from the regime.

“I apologize to every Syrian I killed or wounded,” he tells New Lines. “Even if I was not the one pressing the trigger, I was part of this machine of death. Forgive me.”

His confessions offer a rare glimpse from inside Assad’s war machine, and raises difficult questions about complicity and guilt in the shadow of such atrocities.

For the full story, read at the link in our bio.

📸 Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines
✍️ Kamal Shahin

09/17/2025

After a hot microphone caught Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping chatting about the subject of: eternal life., Erin Clare Brown began to meditate on how ascetic’s mystical theology became the guide for the modern quest to outwit death.

In the late 19th century, Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov proposed “the common task” - to secure the immortality and eternal life of mankind. His vision shaped the Soviet space race and now Silicon Valley’s pursuit of transhumanism.

“The transhumanist movement — a philosophical school of thought that believes there will be a technological vector for achieving immortality — has become the gospel of the internet age among the techno-elite,“ Brown writes.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

📸 Illustration by Erin Clare Brown for New Lines
✍️ Erin Clare Brown

09/16/2025

Japanese animation and manga have become unexpected emblems of political dissent, argues Tim Brinkhof in Spotlight.

Protesters have turned One Piece, Naruto and other franchises as symbols of resistance. Today, its themes offer protestors a shared visual language of defiance.

“Moreover, in an age when authoritarianism is on the rise and civil liberties are retreating, global franchises like ‘One Piece’ represent spaces of resistance beyond government control.” Brinkhof writes.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

📸A “One Piece” flag at a “Block Everything” protest in Paris, France, on Sept. 10. (Vincent Koebel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
✍️ Tim Brinkhof

09/11/2025

U.S. recognition of Israeli and Moroccan annexations undermines its stance against Russia, argues Stephen Zunes in this essay.

Talk in Washington that Donald Trump might recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine has sparked outrage. But such a move wouldn’t be without precedent.

Both Democratic and Republican parties have set aside international law and supported allies in the past, from Israel to Morocco, in their illegal land grabs.

In 2019, President Trump became the first world leader to officially endorse Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, territory taken from Syria in 1967 whenIsraeli forces committed ethnic cleansing in the region. Despite the U.N. declaring it illegal, Biden left that decision untouched when he took office.

The double standard also applies to Palestine. Palestinian negotiators have long signaled a willingness to accept statehood on just 22% of historic Palestine, but the U.S. has pushed them to concede further.

Likewise, in 2020 Trump recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara, land Morocco invaded in 1975, deifying U.N. rulings and international law. Again, Biden refused to reverse the vastly condemned move.

While the U.S. insists that borders cannot be changed by force, its own record tells a different story.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

📸Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines Magazine
✍️ Stephen Zunes

09/09/2025

Join in Chicago this Saturday 9/13 at 3pm for a conversation about the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza.

Hosted by our Politics Editor Danny Postel, this event brings together writer and organizer Eman Abdelhadi () along with prominent activist Rabbi Brant Rosen to reflect on the crisis and what solidarity looks like.

The event is free and open to the public — just register at the link in our bio to secure a spot.

09/05/2025

New archaeological finds on the Greek island of Naxos are toppling the assumption that our species alone had the navigational nous and curiosity to colonize islands, Sophie Holloway writes.

Until a few years ago, it was widely accepted that modern humans did not reach Europe until around 50,000 years ago. Yet the tools and other worked stones found on Naxos hint at island habitation as far back as 200,000 years ago.

The new finds at Stelida, a remote hill on the Greek island, have exposed a weakness in the narrative that, “Only we could build boats and only we had the desire to navigate the oceans,” Holloway writes.

The finds have opened up huge possibilities for future work, though they’ve raised as many questions as they’ve answered and incontrovertibly upended previous theories, rewriting assumptions about human migration, navigation and life in the Cyclades.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

📸Paleolithic cores and flakes found on Stelida. (Sophie Holloway)
✍️Sophie Holloway

09/04/2025

New Lines Magazine is proud to announce that Peter Guest’s multimedia investigation “Dust Money” is a finalist at this year’s Online Journalism Awards in the Investigative Journalism category.

Created in collaboration with The Gecko Project, “Dust Money” uncovers how the rush for nickel in Indonesia, a key mineral for the green energy transition, is reshaping politics, the environment and the lives of local communities.

Read the full investigation at the link in our bio.

09/02/2025

In the rural town of Leongatha, Australia, the most ordinary of family lunches transformed into a scene straight out of a thriller. On July 29, 2023, Erin Patterson, a 50-year-old woman, served her in-laws and their family a beef Wellington packed with death cap mushrooms, a known lethal toxin. Tragedy followed afterwards where her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Don Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died, while Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived after weeks in intensive care.

At trial, prosecutors painted a chilling picture of premeditation: Patterson allegedly foraged, dried, measured, and deliberately included the mushrooms in the meal, while she and her own children were spared. She even fabricated a cancer diagnosis to justify the invitation and attempted to conceal evidence by disposing of her dehydrator.

Patterson insisted it was a tragic mistake. She claimed foraged mushrooms were accidentally mixed with safe ones in her pantry. She denied intent to harm and said she also fell ill after the meal.

On July 7, 2025, after a weeks-long trial, a jury found her guilty of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. In Australia and internationally, the case riveted media and public attention.

For more, please click the link in our bio.

✍️ Joanne Drayton
📸 Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines Magazine

08/28/2025

Just days after Israeli settlers drove out the Palestinian Bedouin community of Al Mu’arrajat East at gunpoint, one of the settlers arrived at Farahan Ghawanmeh’s doorstep.

“Wait a few days, this will be my house,” he told Ghawanmeh, a resident of Ras Ein al-Auja, another Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley.

Within the last two months, 40 Palestinian families have left Ras Ein al-Auja, Ghawanmeh said, due to attacks from surrounding settler outposts.

When these communities are displaced, they often move to nearby villages that can accommodate them. The community of Al Mu’arrajat East is now scattered approximately half a mile from where its members used to live. Some moved to an area in the Ramallah Governorate, while others went to villages in the Jericho Governorate. In both places, they are still surrounded by settlers and experience daily violence.

While Israel’s government has not explicitly called for Palestinians in the West Bank to be expelled en masse, their comments and actions imply this is indeed the goal.

Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has made the region nearly uninhabitable for Palestinians through movement restrictions, depletion of resources, home demolitions, land seizures and army raids. But Ghawanmeh says it was not these difficult conditions that have caused Palestinians to flee. Rather, it is the recent waves of settler violence sweeping across the West Bank that are the driving force.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

✍️Jessica Buxbaum
📸Palestinian residents of Mughayyir Al Deir, a West Bank village, pack their belongings as they leave following repeated attacks and harassment by Israeli settlers, on May 22, 2025. (Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

08/27/2025

Burkina Faso’s interim president, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, stands at a podium and gives a passionate speech about exploitation, corruption and neocolonialism. The speech is raw and defiant, its questions pertinent. But it’s not real. The entire video was generated by artificial intelligence. Traoré never gave that speech. Still, it struck a nerve.

The speech is just one of numerous AI-generated videos flooding social media. And they’re not just political: They’re musical, visual and deeply emotional.

This isn’t just about deepfakes or clever editing. What’s happening online speaks to something deeper: a real hunger for strong, authentic African leadership. AI-generated videos of African leaders are going viral not because people are being fooled, but because they tap into frustration, pride and hope. They transform these men into heroic and larger-than-life figures. In some cases, people know the videos aren’t real, but they still share them since they speak to what many want to be true. That emotional connection is shaping how people think, who they admire and what kind of leadership they’re willing to follow, even if it’s built on fiction.

Folahanmi Aina, a political scientist and security analyst at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, warns that young people, especially those lacking the critical skills to verify what they see online, risk seeing dictators like Traoré as heroes and role models.

The danger, he warns, is that this digital mythmaking can convince a generation to accept authoritarianism as normal, overlooking the real costs to democracy, peace and development.

For more, please go to the link in our bio.

✍️Kwangu Liwewe & Alec D’Angelo
📸Images of famous artists have been generated by AI and used to spread support for Capt. Ibrahim Traoré. (Illustration by Mindi Roscoe for New Lines Magazine)

08/20/2025

Once celebrated on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, the Pakistani singer and composer Ali Sethi now finds himself estranged from his homeland, unwelcome in India and disillusioned with the United States, where he has lived and worked in recent years. With his music banned in India after May’s attack in Pahalgam, backlash from the right wing in Pakistan and hostility in the US, he is caught between borders.

Surbhi Gupta, New Lines’ South Asia editor, interviews Ali Sethi about his music career. Sethi is among the most popular singers in the Pakistani — and broader South Asian — music scene. He is a rare artist reinterpreting classical traditions for the modern age, writes Gupta. He often reinterprets Hindustani classical music, which tends to have an older audience, for a contemporary age, blending it with futuristic, genre-blurring pop sounds. His music, melding traditional vocal techniques with pop lyrics and viral sensibility, has connected with a younger audience.

For Sethi, dissent takes shape through song and dance, continuing a tradition he grew up with in a society where direct speech often risks the anger and violence of the mob. Sethi is also among the very few openly q***r artists in South Asia at the moment. But he doesn’t need to be explicit about his q***r sensibilities for his art to be read as such; q***rness has long been woven into South Asian traditions, writes Gupta.

Through songs, poetry and fashion, Sethi has challenged the binaries associated with gender, nation and genre. His art continues a long lineage of subversion through performance, while expanding the global reach of Pakistani music and South Asian q***r expression.

For more, please click the link in our bio.

✍️Surbhi Gupta
📸Ali Sethi onstage in Chipping Norton in the U.K. in 2023, at an event organized by Business of Fashion. (Samir Hussein/Getty Images for BoF)

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Introducing Newlines

Newlines Magazine, published by the Center for Global Policy, is a forum for the best ideas and writing about the Middle East and beyond.

We specialize in long-form essays, including reportage, arguments, and memoirs, which bring together politics, culture, and history.

The Middle East is central to our focus, with an emphasis on voices that have an intimate relationship with the region. But we aim to include work from or about other parts of the world. Our only requirement is thoughtfulness and good prose.

With Newlines, we aspire to create a platform for original writing and thinking about a complex and often misunderstood and caricatured region. We consider the popular Arab uprisings of 2011 and their turbulent aftermath to be pivotal points of modern history.