Scientists warned of dangers to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the director of the bomb project, General Leslie R. Groves, ruled that residents should not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (even after they were sure to spot a blast brighter than any sun before dawn… Read More The atomic age was born 78 years ago — ‘cover-ups’ have held sway ever since
*Originally published on November 12, 2020. This is Part 4 of the six-part 2020 Massey Lecture series Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society. Find the rest of the series here. The internet was supposed to be our salvation. While historically power has remained in the tight grasp of a select few, the initial vision of the internet… Read More Digital authoritarianism: How technology was seized by autocrats
Jeff Sparrow the relationship between capital and technology has never been simple. The profit motive traditionally stifles as many mousetraps as it nurtures them, even when the economy offered something like a level playing field…. the dominance of ruthless monopolies in almost every industry means that innovations rarely get used to their full capability… not… Read More Enshittification, or social media today
Practically all of Argentina cried on this one… First posted June 08, 2015 NB: The generals who performed these barbarities were Catholics and received support from sections of the Church. But it must be said that their leftist opponents also received support from radical priests. A brief history of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’, in which 30,000 people… Read More Uki Goñi – A grandmother’s 36-year hunt for the child stolen by the Argentinian junta
Iranian authorities have announced a new campaign to force women to wear the Islamic headscarf, as “morality police” returned to the streets 10 months after the death of a woman in their custody sparked nationwide protests. The morality police had largely pulled back after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September, as authorities struggled to contain… Read More Iran’s ‘morality police’ resume patrols 10 months after nationwide protests
Hipólito Mora’s death in a hail of bullets is just the latest murder as the country’s brutal crime conflict shows no sign of abating More than 150,000 people have been murdered since Mexico’s current president took power and Hipólito Mora suspected he would join them. “I knew this day would come,” the lime farmer turned… Read More Mexico vigilante leader’s killing highlights failure to curb violence
I believe in the life of the grasses and spring without end — Steinunn Sigurdardóttir NB: Having just visited this surreal land, sitting atop the continental rift line separating the American and Eurasian tectonic plates, whose volcanoes are erupting as we speak, and whose northern coast sits aside the Arctic Circle, I can only wonder… Read More My Iceland
George Monbiot According to Google’s news search, the media has run more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague. Google also records a global total of five news stories about a scientific paper published last week, showing that the chances of simultaneous crop… Read More With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth
A recent collection, The Call of the Tribe, explains why the Peruvian writer rejected the left and embraced the thinking of Friedrich Hayek and his ilk. JACK HANSON In a 1949 paper published in the Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, the liberal philosopher Sidney Hook described a certain species of mid-century intellectual who, having… Read More The Miseducation of Mario Vargas Llosa
A World After Liberalism, a fascinating new book by Yale scholar Matthew Rose, considers the thought and influence of five thinkers beyond the political and academic mainstream who have played a significant role in establishing the intellectual framework for the movement, which Rose refers to as the ‘Radical Right’. Justin Reynolds Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… Read More A World After Liberalism: the Radical Right and the dream of tradition
