Posts:
By Toby Green and Thomas Fazi The usual suspects have been out in force demanding greater health restrictions as the story of rising Covid cases is peddled through the media. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been urging governments to employ “tried...
By Aarthi Swaminathan and Michael B. Kelley The world is currently embroiled in "Cold War II" — and has been for a while — and the path ahead is lined with the geopolitics of nuclear weapons, says one historian. "And we've now forgotten so much of that history that we...
By Dave Barry We need to talk about the lizards. I think they’re up to something. Here in South Florida we’re accustomed to lizards, of course; they’re everywhere. When I moved here decades ago, the lizards were one of the things I had to adjust to, along with the...
By Jeff Van Pelt Critical thinking seems to be in short supply across the planet. One reason is that, too often, we teach children to memorize information (and disinformation) instead of teaching them to think critically. In other words, we teach them what to think,...
By Moisés Naím 2022 is turning into a lean cow year. The expression is familiar to educated Latin Americans, though only the most biblically astute Anglos seem to know it. It comes from Genesis, and it goes all the way back to the age of the Egyptian pyramids. In this...
Editor's note: Although the indigenous strike that ended last week caused massive disruption, it was only the latest in a long series of indigenous protests. In fact, the strike pales in comparison to several others, especially the 1990 "levantamiento." Historian Marc...
By Justin Smith Philosophers have seldom lived up to the ideal of radical doubt that they often claim as the prime directive of their tradition. They insist on questioning everything, while nonetheless holding onto many pieties. Foremost among these, perhaps, is the...
The momentum shift was dramatic. Within the span of 24 hours President Guillermo Lasso went from being a man on the ropes, battered and facing near-certain defeat, to being the man calling the shots. On Friday morning, his government was reeling as indigenous strikers...
By John Keeble I remember sitting in the ruins of Olympia, Greece, half a century ago and feeling part of it – as if the ancient Greek ghosts were still there, walking through their daily lives unaware of the wider world, let alone their sporting immortality. I...
By Belen Fernandez Back in 2012, in the southern Peruvian city of Ayacucho — birthplace of the Maoist guerrilla outfit Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) — I found myself carrying a small white coffin containing the remains of a man named Alejandro Aguilar. As I...
By Chris Hedges The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No...
By Jan Dynes It is time to start thinking like good builders. We are the architects of ourselves and the world around us, and the way we connect to it. Are we a good support system or are we contributing to erosion and mildew? If we are repeating our shortcomings or...
By Stephen Vargha As the people of Uvalde, Texas mourned, there was little agreement on the root cause of the tragedy or the solution to the staggering average of 321 gun deaths per day in the United States. Dr. Roxane Gay wrote in the New York Times, “Time and again...
By Matthew Crawford Throughout history, there have been crises that could be resolved only by suspending the normal rule of law and constitutional principles. A “state of exception” is declared until the emergency passes — it could be a foreign invasion, an earthquake...
By Gordon Chang “What we are going to see with China, for the first time that anyone can remember who’s alive, is an economy that’s twice the size of the U.S., possibly three times the size of the U.S., and it’s going to be very weird living in that world,” said Elon...
By Terry Nguyen One of the recent trends on TikTok is an aesthetic called “night luxe.” It embodies the kind of performative opulence one usually encounters at New Year’s Eve parties: champagne, disco balls, bedazzled accessories, and golden sparkles. “Night luxe”...
By Saleem H. Ali The allure of the Galapagos Islands as the cradle of Darwin's insights on natural selection remains a major draw for scientists to the volcanic archipelago. Located less than a thousand miles west of the South American mainland, this exotic...
By Craig Murray Texaco Oil operations in Ecuador from 1962 to 1994 dumped 70 billion litres of “wastewater”, heavily contaminated with oil and other chemicals, into the Amazon rainforest, plus over 650,000 barrels of crude oil, polluting more than 800,000 hectares. It...
By Mara van der Lugt In the 17th and 18th centuries, a group of Western philosophers came to clashes, on the page at least, over the age-old problem of evil: the question of how a good God could allow the existence of evil and suffering in the world. Philosophers such...
By Paul Paz y Miño On Tuesday, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger woke up free, marking the closure of the latest chapter in Chevron’s scheme to evade justice for contaminating the Amazon rainforest. Now all eyes turn back to the true crime – Chevron’s contamination...
