‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support

Zhang Yadi was due to begin a degree in the UK but the activist vanished on holiday amid tensions over Dalai Lama Jessie Lau As Zhang Yadi toured remote villages in the Chinese province of Sichuan last year, she updated her friends with messages and photos of lush forest landscapes, colourful streets and locals wearing… Read More ‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support

I have now been a journalist for 40 years. The forces ranged against my profession have never been so powerful

Once, I believed that humanity’s problem was an information deficit. Now, I know you can’t speak truth to power if power controls your words.. But perhaps the ground is shifting. Citizen journalism is flowering, through the Bylines network, openDemocracy, Double Down News , Novara, Declassified and DeSmog, and in particular at the local level.  George Monbiot The BBC I joined on my first… Read More I have now been a journalist for 40 years. The forces ranged against my profession have never been so powerful

Trump’s mental decline is undeniable / Trump’s agram-Bagram on Afghanistan airbase

Opinion by Chris Truax Confabulation is sometimes called “honest lying,” because the person doing it genuinely believes what he’s saying, even if it is obviously and patently false. A person confabulates when they are telling completely invented stories that don’t provide them any particular tangible benefit. In other words, it’s not like lying to try and get out… Read More Trump’s mental decline is undeniable / Trump’s agram-Bagram on Afghanistan airbase

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement 

Dan Shortridge Benjamin Nathans logged on to the Pulitzer Prize live announcement feed in early May just in time to hear his name read as a finalist. A split-second later, he heard his name read again, as the general nonfiction winner of one of the United States’ most prestigious arts-and-letters prizes. “It came as a complete… Read More To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement 

Israel’s Assassination of Memory

The campaign of erasure banishes intellectual inquiry and the dispassionate examination of history. It celebrates magical thinking… The Israeli government bans public commemorations of the Nakba… a day of mourning for Palestinians who seek to remember the massacres and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians carried out by Jewish terrorist militias in 1948 for this reason. Palestinians… Read More Israel’s Assassination of Memory