As we near the end of another year marked by the revolutions that continue to roil the Middle East, punctuated at this year-end with the recent conflagration in Gaza, Magnum has published “Magnum Revolution: 65 Years of Fighting for Freedom,” a collection of some of the most powerful photographs of the convulsions of conflict by the agency’s renowned photographers.  Click-through for a selection.

Having studied U.S. foreign policy in Latin America as an undergraduate, the photographer Kevin Kunishi spent several months in Nicaragua during 2009 and 2010, crisscrossing the countryside and living with locals. The photographs he made there have as much to say about America as they do about Nicaragua. “The United States has been involved in or dictating the destiny of Nicaragua for over a hundred years,” Kunishi told me. “My hope is to move beyond the broader ideology and rhetoric I learned, and navigate the collective memory.”

Click-through for more from Whitney Johnson on Kunishi’s work, and for a slideshow of his photographs: http://nyr.kr/SRbI8Z

(Source: newyorker.com)

Ethiopia’s current rulers were once freedom fighters, not so different from South Africa’s A.N.C. They promised to do things differently and to be accountable to their people. Now, they risk turning into freedom’s enemies, criminalizing peaceful means for Ethiopians to exercise their constitutional rights, such as freedom of expression or freedom of association.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault on the dangerous case of Ethiopia’s imprisoned blogger, Eskinder Nega: http://nyr.kr/Q2TDZd

“It was the birthday party for Stonewall, not the birth the year before, that gave rise to the triumphant gay revolution”: http://nyr.kr/L8gITl

Despite their recent maneuvers, the generals presided over a free and fair election. As they said in the press conference, “Much has changed since the revolution.” After months of demonstrations against a regime that was still pretty much intact after Mubarak’s fall had failed to dislodge the status quo, I had begun to doubt that. But Morsi’s victory—even amid the confusion and dismay—shows that it is, maybe, finally true.

Egypt: The Army and The President: http://nyr.kr/M1X6pq

The graffiti story of the revolution in Cairo. See the slideshow.