Jeremy Gilbert Alex Williams The Musk-Twitter apocalypse is a symptom of a much bigger crisis. To avoid a bleak future we have to bring the big platforms under our control Within the tech world, the most significant development of the past two years has been the collapse of the profit-making model described by Shoshana Zuboff… Read More Big Tech is failing. The future of democracy depends on what happens next
Volodymyr Kadygrob Anton Tarasyuk Despite the bizarre and evidently distorted reality conjured by Putin’s media strategists, their propaganda has proved considerably effective even outside Russia. Not in the sense that many people in Europe believe in the Russian message. From a European perspective, Russian propaganda consists of nothing more than blatant lies and deliberate disinformation.… Read More When reality hits the propaganda machine
Opinion by John Avlon NB: As to why this political analyst fails to mention the glaring assaults on global democracy by the USA and UK, is something only he can answer. And as regards the fate of democracy in his own country, supposedly the leader of the ‘free world’, the less said the better. There’s a… Read More The tide is turning against autocracy
Fascism thrives on gruesome caricature — and it’s tough to beat a pro-Trump Black rapper praising Adolf Hitler By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA On Thursday afternoon my editor asked me what thoughts I might have about the vile quarter of American humanity that includes Kanye West, Donald Trump, Nick Fuentes and now apparently the conspiracy theorist and podcaster… Read More Kanye’s tragicomic, antisemitic Alex Jones meltdown: Absurdism in the service of fascism
First posted December 22, 2015 Patrick Kingsley On Tuesday, the number of asylum seekers to reach Europe this year passed 1 million. Nearly half of them did so via the beaches of this Greek island As an institution, the Greek Orthodox church is often considered a bastion of nationalism and conservatism. Some of its priests have… Read More Lesbos is swept by wave of compassion as refugees continue to arrive by sea / ‘Love has no religion’ – priests and pastors reach out to refugees
First posted August 03, 2019 NB: This story is moving because our time is filled with animosity. It reminds us that there are still amongst us those for whom compassion is a primary instinct. If there are people in danger at sea, sailors save them, without asking where they come from or the colour of their skin. The… Read More Sicilian fishermen risk prison to rescue migrants: ‘No human would turn away’
“We strongly condemn child abuse; it was never our intent to include it in our narrative.” Please just take a moment to note how – even in the face of a full-spectrum paedo panic – Balenciaga cannot bring itself to relinquish some pretentious wank about “our narrative”. “It was never our intent to include child… Read More At last, a Kardashian has spoken: those Balenciaga bears should never have worn bondage gear
Editorial When the US state department recently told a court that the Saudi Arabian crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, should have immunity in a lawsuit over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it portrayed its argument as a legal and not moral position. By way of evidence, it pointed to a rogues’ gallery of foreign leaders… Read More The Guardian view on Modi’s India: the danger of exporting Hindu chauvinism
In any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven days, nearly two every day of the current year, would not be called “senseless,” “insane” and “barbaric.” Why? Because in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven… Read More So much mass death: The insurgency we refuse to see
First posted February 19, 2019 NB: This is an important commentary. Carl Schmitt’s elevation of animosity to a metaphysical dimension is much admired by intellectuals across the political spectrum, and commands influence (sometimes unacknowledged) left to right. An example of Schmitt’s ‘the political‘ as applied to the historiography of communal politics in colonial India may be… Read More Julian de Medeiros: Trump’s wall isn’t a state of emergency but a state of exception (2019)
