The Atacama desert in Chile sits long and lean, sandwiched between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The desert’s extreme aridity makes it one of the clearest places on Earth to view the night sky and is famous for being home to the largest radio telescope in the world. Anadolu via Getty Images/Lucas Aguayo… Read More Rare wildflowers blanket Atacama desert
There can be no healing until the world stares into and acknowledges the void torn open by this conflict Orly Noy About two weeks after 7 October, I received a WhatsApp message from an acquaintance in Gaza. He asked me to check on his mother, who at that time was hospitalised in East Jerusalem. He had… Read More Disappearing people, disappearing morals – how two years has changed Gaza and Israel
Total destruction cannot produce narrative. You can’t tell a story about the end of all stories. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists In the final frames of Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, nothing explodes. The intercontinental ballistic missile has not made impact, the countdown is almost over, and the screen simply fades to black.… Read More A radical act of cinematic restraint: How to understand the ending of ‘A House of Dynamite’
The enduring lesson of Zohran Mamdani’s victory is that the moderate Centre is invariably the respectable front for right-wing prejudice. The voices of the liberal Centre, the political ‘moderates’, the newspapers and the magazines responded to Mamdani’s candidacy in a way that was indistinguishable from Donald Trump’s denunciations Mukul Kesavan New York’s mayoral race was… Read More Zohran’s run
Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months‘ NB: The moronic American War Secretary recently said that Zionism & Americanism are the front lines of Western civilisation and freedom in our world today: It would be more accurate to say these ‘isms’ are a sadistic death… Read More Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight
Where the postcolonial Left meets the Hindu Right NB: This is an interesting overview, although I cannot agree with some of the author’s arguments. For instance, I think it is true that Hindutva marks an attempt to recast Sanatan Dharma as an Abrahamic-style faith; the main objective being homogeneity and subjugation of an entire population… Read More India’s Conservative Revolution
Since 2014, this has been the RSS–BJP’s consistent strategy: criminalize dissent, discredit activists, and rewrite constitutional morality. They know that a large-scale civil war is impossible in a subcontinent as vast and diverse as India. What they fear are small, localized movements, like Ladakh’s, that cannot be militarily conquered, but only silenced with force. The assault… Read More The Unmaking of Ladakh: RSS, Corporate Power, and the War on India’s Plural Soul
NB: This is the most horrifying example of what AI represents and what it can do to humanity. This is pure nihilism. I don’t need to say more. DS Zane Shamblin sat alone in his car with a loaded handgun, his face illuminated in the predawn dark by the dull glow of a phone. He… Read More ‘You’re not rushing. You’re just ready:’ Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself
In a new memoir, journalist Lara Marlowe recalls the life she shared with her former husband Lara Marlowe When the British journalist Robert Fisk died of a stroke at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on October 30th, 2020, we had been divorced for 11 years and separated much longer. In the year since Robert’s death,… Read More Life with Robert Fisk: I realised I would not be at peace until I wrote this book
NB: The phrase ‘the fundamental racism of their editorial line’, sums up what it feels to be the perennial object of dehumanisation by the Western establishments and a sizeable part of their populations. Lina Mounzer has said something very important here, and it has lessons not only for the West and Israel, but also for… Read More The Disaster Correspondent: Why I stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans
After the truth-shower 