‘Jail crushes you slowly’: Kashmiri journalist reflects on prison ordeal

Fahad Shah, whose case was a symbol of harassment of region’s media, says he has different outlook after months behind bars Aakash Hassan During his more than 600 days behind bars, Fahad Shah, a Kashmiri journalist, had begun to lose hope that he would ever see freedom again. It was in February last year that… Read More ‘Jail crushes you slowly’: Kashmiri journalist reflects on prison ordeal

The news has become intolerable and inhumane. Democracy’s vital feedback mechanism is broken

Julianne Schultz It is little wonder that people are turning off the news in record numbers. The images are often unwatchable, the descriptions beyond imagining, the scale incomprehensible. Everywhere you look the cruelty of the human spirit is on display. Newsreaders have adjusted their scripts. They used to say, “Some viewers might find the next… Read More The news has become intolerable and inhumane. Democracy’s vital feedback mechanism is broken

Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984

At the time I was reimagining this scene, I spent much of my day on Twitter. It was early 2021, and everyone there was chronically angry. People communicated by jeering, trading insults, hectoring, flinging accusations… It was like being in an abusive relationship with everyone in the world. Sandra Newman A few years ago, I… Read More Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984

‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech

We’re now in servitude to the fiefdoms of our new global masters, Lord Zuckerberg of Facelandia and Sir Musk of the rotten borough of X… Technofeudalism feels like an important new book. It’s a big-picture hypothesis rooted in a historical account of how capitalism came into being that describes what is happening in terms of an… Read More ‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech

‘It is not possible to organise in Iran’: jailed activist warns of totalitarianism after Mahsa Amini protests

Majid Tavakoli says protesters should have had more help from abroad but the west doesn’t understand what Iran has become The majority of Iranians wish for a “normal life and for a government similar to the governments based on the liberal democratic system”, one of Iran’s most prominent political activists has said, as he prepares… Read More ‘It is not possible to organise in Iran’: jailed activist warns of totalitarianism after Mahsa Amini protests

Chris Hedges: Our Collective Trauma is the Road to Tyranny

American society spawns trauma and this trauma expresses itself in a variety of self-destructive pathologies, including the erosion of democracy and rise of neo-fascism Corporate capitalism, defined by the cult of the self and the ruthless exploitation of the natural world and all forms of life for profit, thrives on the fostering of chronic psychological… Read More Chris Hedges: Our Collective Trauma is the Road to Tyranny

The Four Billionaires Who Want to Control the Universe

The gang-of-four powerful oligarchs: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreesen, are after increasing profits and world domination — and no one is trying to stop them. In Jonathan Taplin’s new book, The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto, the internet innovation… Read More The Four Billionaires Who Want to Control the Universe