This online article was published on Facebook by afoa on 30/12/25.

The year 2025 in pictures: Connecting the local to the global

The deeper the global capitalist crisis sinks, the further war spreads, threatening a conflict more violent and catastrophic than ever, the more severe and irreversible the climate crisis becomes year on year, the harder societies struggle to organise and defend themselves against bigotry and hatred, places like Cyprus become a microcosm of this wider developments.

The media and an increasingly fascist political system try to convince us that the interests of the social majority are bound up with the interests of the powerful, with the trade routes they promise to carve out, with the blood of peoples, naturally, and toss us a few crumbs in return. They try to persuade us that our enemies are Shoaib and the poor of this world, and that our friends are the Netanyahus and wealthy investors of every stripe. Not a word about the people being driven into destitution: in 2025 we counted nine confirmed deaths of people living in housing insecurity and energy poverty. Not a word about the lack of policy on wildfires and water shortages, which year after year destroy lives.

Within this dystopian framework, the streets of Cyprus weave together the thread of resistance, dignity and truth that unspools from Gaza to London and back. The message of the global Sumud flotilla (sumud means resilience and steadfastness in Arabic) which tried to prevent the enforced starvation of two million people, spread from the Mediterranean to the Presidential Palace, defying the batons and tear gas of the state’s paid killers. The struggles for free expression, against censorship and repression, run from the artistic sphere right up to the arrogance of power that thinks it can ban demonstrations and silence, through arrests, those who expose its crimes against society. We’re preparing for another year of struggle and resistance against capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and towards social and environmental justice, hoping we can lay the foundations to reverse the course to destruction.

Happy New Year—and an insurgent 2026!