Latest articles

The heralded arrival of the Internet caused flutters of enthusiasm, streaks of heart-felt hope.  Unregulated, and supposedly all powerful, an information medium never before seen on such scale could be used to liberate mind and spirit.  With almost disconcerting reliability, humankind would coddle and fawn over a technology which would, as Langdon Winner writes, “bring universal wealth, enhanced freedom, revitalized politics, satisfying community, and personal fulfilment.”

Such high street techno-utopianism was bound to have its day.  The sceptics grumbled, the critiques bubbled and flowed. Evgeny Morozov, in his relentlessly biting study The Net Delusion, warned of the misguided nature …

Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.

In fact, ever since the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities.

There have been at least 205 proposed laws in 45 states aimed at curtailing the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated …

The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.

Liberal democracy is not what it seems.

It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.

But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – …

Meet Anwar, a 29-year-old English teacher, his wife, a 25-year veteran elementary school teacher, and their sweet 9-month-old son. Life in the Khanyounis refugee camp turned upside down when war struck.

Another family died yesterday. A dozen families die everyday. They usually manage to pull a few bodies out of the rubble. The rest remain. No one has the energy to dig them out. They’re too busy being tired and hungry. Besides, what would they …

2024 is a year full of elections. For what they are worth they also present a display of the wealth and poverty of language with which active and passive electorates are confined, at least to the extent there is any serious effort to relate the utterances incidental to the process with the lived reality such elections ostensibly reflect. As I have argued elsewhere and repeatedly the limits to rationality in social management have long ago been breached. Although the meaning of political language is no more immanent than any other language, elections may be understood as an exercise in at …

People’s choice of words can be revealing.  That’s certainly the case with respect to one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans, “America First.”

In April 2016, Trump initially used the term in a campaign speech, proclaiming that “America First” would be “the major and overriding theme of my administration.”  The following year, in his inaugural address, he promised that “a new vision will govern our land.  From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first―America first.”  Subsequently, he has employed the slogan frequently to describe his approach to foreign and domestic policy.

This approach is remarkable because, over the …

On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged acts of genocide taking place in Gaza, was taken.  It all stems from a lawsuit filed last November in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.

The lawsuit sought an order from the court “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary …

Here’s a film about the 1950s – The World As It Was – that will tell you a great deal about life in the U.S.A. today, while disabusing anyone of the notion that nostalgia for that mephitic decade is in order, for it was a time when “democracy” tended toward totalitarianism.  In doing so, it sowed the bitter fruit that is poisoning us today.  Without understanding the long-standing effects of those years, it is impossible to grasp the deepest dimensions of our current nightmare.  Chapter One of the documentary series, Four Died Trying, directed by John Kirby and produced …

Through a dangerous act.

Archivists can be a dull if industrious lot.  Christmas crackers are less important than the new year announcement in Canberra, when the National Archives of Australia releases documents like the newborn into the information world.  The event is not without irony, given that such documents are often aged and seasoned numbers, whiskered by storage and grey with cataloguing.

On January 1, the NAA diligently followed a long standing convention of releasing a stash of cabinet documents running into 240 from the Howard government, a period in Australian history when finance ruled with raffish vulgarity, and critical adventurers of conscience were …

Why is the United States so hostile, bellicose, and determined to engage Russia in a war? Searching for clues to answer the question necessarily leads to decode how U.S. ruling circles debate and adopt anti-Russian policies. Could clinical psychology—e.g., irrational, mortal fear of the Russian power—be a factor? No. Although it could be used in petty competitive settings, psychology is subjective and has no place in international politics. Further, one can play psychology but cannot avoid being trapped in it. Further, Politics, be domestic or international, is an open arena for rational processes and decision-making. Could it be then that …

In the early hours of the morning, a group of antiwar activists took on Travis Air Force Base, embarking on their fourth attempt to disrupt operations at the military installation that has directly attributed to the genocide in Gaza.

The group’s initial plan to block the main gate was quickly abandoned due to safety concerns as vehicles rushed past, many exceeding way beyond the speed limit. Instead, they positioned themselves at the side of the road, waving posters, flags, and a prominent banner bearing the message:

“STOP TRAVIS: NO US WEAPONS FOR GENOCIDE: STOP ILLEGAL WAR …

It will come as little surprise that colossal Apple has been favouring its own music streaming service in snuffing and stuffing competitors.  The company, it has been alleged, has prevented app developers from informing users of less expensive methods to purchase subscriptions outside the scope of Apple’s own services.  Its cosmos was all.

Central to these claims is the ongoing battle between Apple and the Swedish music streaming service, Spotify, a largely amoral gladiatorial encounter of drain, pinch and seizure that saw the latter draw customers away from Apple’s iTunes.  Territorial skirmishes have ensued over the years, with gains and …

Every Palestinian child in Gaza has a story of exposure to unimaginable Israeli military violence, including killings, traumatic injuries, mass displacement, hunger, destruction of whole neighborhoods, and separation from family members, which leaves lasting scars and trauma. No child should have to endure such burdens.

Free-floating ice floats jammed into the Ilulissat Icefjord during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 near Ilulissat, Greenland. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Facing Future.tv recently conducted an interview about spooky new developments in Greenland. The ice sheet is cascading/gushing at unheard of rates never dreamed possible at this stage of global warming, or at any stage for that matter.

The video opens with a statement by Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus Ocean Physics, Cambridge University, a leading authority on Arctic sea ice (…