Articles by The Guardian

We found 918 results.


This Is What Happens When the War on Terror Is Turned Inward, on the USA
Hamilton Nolan | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2020

24 Jul 2020 – A strange and necessary ingredient of America’s descent towards fascism is that it will have little impact on the majority of people. Trying to determine when we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. Once you perceive it, it’s already happened. The trick now is convincing that tranquil majority that their interests are more aligned with the antifa protesters than with the cops in fatigues.

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Sabotage, Sanctions and the Bullying of Iran Is Bound to Backfire on the West
Simon Tisdall | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2020

12 Jul 2020 – The onslaught visited on Tehran by Trump, Israel and other bully boys can only increase tensions in the Middle East. Iran is now moving closer to acquiring a weapons manufacturing capability as a direct consequence of US bad faith.

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Warning of Serious Brain Disorders in People with Mild Coronavirus Symptoms
Ian Sample | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2020

8 Jul 2020 – UK neurologists publish details of mildly affected or recovering Covid-19 patients with serious or potentially fatal brain conditions.

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By Recognising Palestine, Britain Can Help Right the Wrongs of the Balfour Declaration
Avi Shlaim | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2020

22 Jun 2020 – The theft of Palestinian land is a legacy of British colonialism. The UK must stand in the way of further Israeli annexations.

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Explainer: What Is the Deadly India-China Border Dispute About?
Helen Davidson and Ben Doherty | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jun 2020

17 Jun 2020 – At least 20 people have died in clashes between Indian and Chinese troops along the disputed Himalayan border running along the Ladakh area of Kashmir. It is the first fatal clash since 1975 and the most serious since 1967.

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A $1.1M Hospital Bill after Surviving the Coronavirus? That’s America for You
Ross Barkan | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2020

16 Jun 2020 – The bill included $9,736 per day for the intensive care room, nearly $409,000 for its transformation into a sterile room for 42 days, $82,000 for the use of a ventilator for 29 days, and nearly $100,000 for two days when he appeared to be on his deathbed.

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‘Rolling Emergency’ of Locust Swarms Decimating Africa, Asia and Middle East
Kaamil Ahmed | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2020

8 Jun 2020 -Unseasonal rains have allowed desert pests to breed rapidly and spread across vast distances leaving devastation in their wake.

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Surgisphere: Governments and WHO Changed COVID-19 Policy Based On Suspect Data from Tiny US Company
Melissa Davey, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Sarah Boseley | The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2020

3 Jun 2020 – Surgisphere, whose employees appear to include a sci-fi writer and adult content model, provided database behind Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine hydroxychloroquine studies. The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from the little-known US healthcare analytics company.

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‘Make Noise and Don’t Panic’: India Tries to Ward off Locust Invasion
Amrit Dhillon | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2020

28 May 2020 – Delhi braces for swarm while farmers in badly-hit north play loud music and honk car horns to try to prevent decimation of fields.

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The Hawaii Navy Base Fueling Trump’s Quest for ‘Super Duper’ Missiles
Jon Letman | The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2020

31 May 2020 – Hawaii’s “garden island”, Kauai, is known for its breathtaking scenery and laid-back vibe, a place of plunging waterfalls and cliffs cloaked in green tropical forests. But beyond its beauty it is one of the Pentagon’s most valued testing and training sites in the Pacific. But some residents view the islands’ highly militarized state as misguided or even illegal.

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First Iranian Fuel Tanker Reaches Venezuelan Waters without US Interference
Reuters | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2020

24 May 2020 – The first of five tankers loaded with gasoline sent from Iran has reached Venezuelan waters, expected to temporarily ease the South American nation’s fuel crunch while defying Trump administration sanctions targeting the two US foes. Iran’s president had earlier warned the US not to try to stop the flotilla sent to ease Venezuela’s fuel shortage.

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Europe Should Brace for Second Wave, Says EU Coronavirus Chief
Daniel Boffey | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2020

20 May 2020 – The prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infection across Europe is no longer a distant theory, according to Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. “The question is when and how big, that is the question in my view.”

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Naomi Klein: How Big Tech Plans to Profit from the Pandemic
Naomi Klein | The Intercept/The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2020

For a few moments during NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus briefing on Wed 6 May, the grimace was replaced by a smile. The inspiration: a video visit from the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who announced that he will be heading up a panel to reimagine New York state’s post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.

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Clean Air in Europe during Lockdown ‘Leads to 11,000 Fewer Deaths’
Jonathan Watts | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2020

30 Apr 2020 – The improvement in air quality over the past month of the coronavirus lockdown has led to 11,000 fewer deaths from pollution in Europe, a study has revealed. It also finds less asthma and preterm births.

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Malaysia Cites Covid-19 for Rounding Up Hundreds of Rohingya Migrants
Kaamil Ahmed | The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2020

2 May 2020 – In move condemned by UN, refugees including Rohingya detained amid rise in xenophobia.

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From Trump to Erdoğan, Men Who Behave Badly Make the Worst Leaders in a Pandemic
Simon Tisdall | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Apr 2020

26 Apr 2020 – Around the world, authoritarian leaders are exploiting, exacerbating or grossly mishandling the response to the pandemic, placing selfish interest ahead of public good. Their behaviour is frequently appalling. They are a modern incarnation of TS Eliot’s “hollow men”. Sex is relevant, in that female leaders are generally thought to be behaving better.

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Second Wave of Locusts in East Africa Said to Be 20 Times Worse
Samuel Okiror | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Apr 2020

13 Apr 2020 – UN Warns of ‘Alarming and Unprecedented Threat’ to Food Security and Livelihoods in the Region – A second wave of desert locusts is threatening east Africa with estimates that it will be 20 times worse then the plague that descended two months ago.

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‘Tip of the Iceberg’: Is Our Destruction of Animals and Nature Responsible for Covid-19?
John Vidal | The Guardian, Age of Extinction - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

18 Mar 2020 – As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics.

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US and Russia Blocking UN Plans for a Global Ceasefire amid Crisis
Simon Tisdall | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

19 Apr 2020 – The Trump administration and Russia are blocking efforts to win binding UN security council backing for a global ceasefire to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called for an immediate end to fighting involving governments and armed groups in all conflict areas almost one month ago.

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Here’s How Your Body Gains Immunity to Coronavirus
Zania Stamataki | The Guardian - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Apr 2020

10 Apr 2020 – Unprecedented efforts and diverted resources mean we are fast learning about human defences against this new threat. Importantly, Covid-19 cannot gain entry to our homes or bodies by itself – we have to let it in.

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Brazil Scales Back Environmental Enforcement amid Coronavirus Outbreak
The Guardian | Reuters - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2020

27 Mar 2020- Brazil will reduce efforts to fight environmental crimes during the coronavirus outbreak, despite concerns that reduced protection could lead to a surge in deforestation.

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China Shows Way to Ease Lockdowns before Vaccine, Says Report
Sarah Boseley - The Guardian, 30 Mar 2020

25 Mar 2020 – UK Experts Say Easing Physical Distancing Would Depend on Rigorous Testing and Isolation

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‘All We Can Offer Is the Chain’: The Scandal of Ghana’s Shackled Sick – Exposé
Tracy McVeigh – The Guardian, 17 Feb 2020

3 Feb 2020 – For the families of Ghanaians with mental health or substance abuse issues, shackling their loved ones can seem the only option, as faith healers compete to fill the mental health void.

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Deaths of 16 Rohingya at Sea Raises Fears Trafficking Ring Has Been Revived
Kaamil Ahmed – The Guardian, 17 Feb 2020

12 Feb 2020 – Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal yesterday morning. Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia.

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Drought and Hunger: Why Thousands of Guatemalans Are Fleeing North
José García Escobar and Melisa Rabanales – The Guardian, 17 Feb 2020

7 Feb 2020 – The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus.

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‘Try to Stop Me’ – The Mantra of Our Leaders Who Are Now Ruling with Impunity
George Monbiot – The Guardian, 10 Feb 2020

5 Feb 2020 – Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson. Across the world, flouting the law has become normalised. We have to stop it. It is not a sufficient condition for fascism to take root, but it is a necessary one: the willingness of political leaders not only to break the law but to revel in breaking it is a fatal step towards the replacement of democracy with authoritarian terror.

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How the ‘Venice of Africa’ Is Losing Its Battle against the Rising Ocean
Monika Pronczuk – The Guardian, 3 Feb 2020

28 Jan 2020 – Saint-Louis, the old colonial capital of Senegal, faces a flooding threat that has already seen entire villages lost to the Atlantic.

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World’s 22 Richest Men Wealthier Than All the Women in Africa, Study Finds
Kate Hodal – The Guardian, 3 Feb 2020

20 Jan 2020 – The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa. Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work.

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The Far-Right Bolsonaro Movement Wants Us Dead. But We Will Not Give Up
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda – The Guardian, 3 Feb 2020

29 Jan 2020 – Courage is contagious. Those are the people who inspire us and so many like us in Bolsonaro’s Brazil who are confronting state repression to defend the democracy that so many people suffered so much to bring about. Demagogues and despots like Bolsonaro are a dime a dozen. They centrally rely on intimidation, fear and the use of state repression to consolidate power. A refusal to give into that fear, but instead to join hands with those who intend to fight against it, is always the antidote to this toxin.

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Chilling Role of ‘the Preacher’ Confirmed at CIA Waterboarding Hearing in Guantánamo
Julian Borger – The Guardian, 27 Jan 2020

25 Jan 2020 – There were three men authorised by the CIA to carry out waterboarding on detainees in America’s “war on terror”. Two of them were contractors who are in Guantánamo Bay this week to give evidence. The third has still not been identified 17 years after the torture was committed.

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James Murdoch Criticises Father’s News Outlets for Climate Crisis Denial
Jim Waterson – The Guardian, 20 Jan 2020

14 Jan 2020 – Rupert Murdoch’s son has strongly criticised his family’s news outlets for downplaying the impact of the climate crisis, as bushfires continue to burn in Australia. James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, issued a rare joint statement directly criticising his father’s businesses for their “ongoing denial” on the issue, which has been reflected in the family’s newspapers repeatedly casting doubt on the link between the climate emergency and the bushfires.

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Greenpeace Included with Neo-Nazis on UK Counter-Terror List
Vikram Dodd and Jamie Grierson – The Guardian, 20 Jan 2020

17 Jan 2020 – Extinction Rebellion, Sea Shepherd, Stop the Cull and PETA also named in anti-extremism briefing alongside Combat 18 and National Action.

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Welcome to Hawaii’s ‘Plastic Beach’, One of the World’s Dirtiest Places
Liz Barney and Michelle Broder Van Dyke – The Guardian, 13 Jan 2020

10 Jan 2020 – Hawaii has long evoked images of a Pacific paradise but Kamilo Beach, located on the Big Island, presents a starkly different reality.

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Iran Ends Nuclear Deal Commitments as Fallout from Suleimani Killing Spreads
Martin Chulov and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – The Guardian, 13 Jan 2020

5 Jan 2020 – Iran has announced that it will no longer abide by any of the limits imposed by the unravelling 2015 nuclear deal, and Iraq’s parliament urged its leaders to expel troops from the US-led coalition, as the aftershocks of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani reverberated through the Middle East.

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DRC: I Saw the Unbearable Grief Inflicted on Families by Cobalt Mining–I Pray for Change
Siddharth Kara – The Guardian, 23 Dec 2019

16 Dec 2019 – When Raphael turned 15, he started digging tunnels at the cobalt mine where he worked – two years later he was dead. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that global tech companies have yet to devote adequate attention and resources to ensure safety, dignity, and decency for those who mine their cobalt in DRC.

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Nepal Makes First ‘Period Hut’ Arrest after Woman Dies during Banned Custom
Arun Budhathoki – The Guardian, 23 Dec 2019

9 Dec 2019 – A 21-year-old woman has died after spending three nights in an outdoor “period hut”, prompting police in Nepal to make their first ever arrest in connection with the illegal practice. The tradition of chhaupadi, where menstruating women in Nepal are banished from their homes, is still widespread in remote and poorer parts of the country.

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‘I Feel Constant Pain’: Drug Resistance Adds to Misery of Gaza Gun Victims
Karen McVeigh and Hazem Balousha – The Guardian, 23 Dec 2019

5 Dec 2019 – The suffering of people wounded in conflict zones is being compounded by what doctors say are ‘horrifying levels’ of antibiotic resistance. “I thought about suicide several times,” says Nasser, 28, a former blacksmith. “I was wishing the Israeli soldier [who shot me] had killed me with the bullet.”

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Turner Prize Awarded Four Ways after Artists’ Plea to Judges
Mark Brown – The Guardian, 9 Dec 2019

3 Dec 2019 – All four artists shortlisted for the 2019 Turner prize have been named winners after they came together and made a plea for judges to recognise the causes of “commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”.

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‘Our only Aim Is to Go Home’: Rohingya Refugees Face Stark Choice
Sarah Marsh and Redwan Ahmed – The Guardian, 11 Nov 2019

4 Nov 2019 – Life in the world’s largest refugee camp has grown harder in the past few months. With citizenship in Myanmar still denied, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must either live under severe restrictions or move to an isolated island.

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A Foie Gras Ban Was Overdue – but What About Other Foods Made from Animal Suffering?
Jacy Reese – The Guardian, 4 Nov 2019

On 30 Oct the New York City Council passed a ban on foie gras, which has transformed many animal lovers from conscious consumers to passionate protesters. Its production process is particularly disturbing: a bird is painfully force-fed three times a day with a long, metal pipe down their throat. But there are countless other foods made from animal suffering. Fish and octopus are chewed to death while still alive. Others are boiled alive, ripped or cut apart, or even salted to death.

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Amazon Rainforest ‘Close to Irreversible Tipping Point’
Dom Phillips – The Guardian, 28 Oct 2019

23 Oct 2019 – Soaring deforestation coupled with the destructive policies of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, could push the Amazon rainforest dangerously to an irreversible “tipping point” within two years, a prominent economist has said. Forecast suggests rainforest could stop producing enough rain to sustain itself by 2021.

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‘It Breaks Down Innocent People’: The Interrogation Method at Center of Ava Duvernay Lawsuit
Sam Levin – The Guardian, 21 Oct 2019

16 Oct 2019 – Police consulting firm behind widely criticized ‘Reid interrogation technique’ claims Netflix drama When They See US misrepresents method. The Central Park Five case is one of the most notorious examples of police coercing people into giving false confession. The five teens went to prison and were eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.

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Without Encryption, We Will Lose All Privacy. This Is Our New Battleground
Edward Snowden – The Guardian, 21 Oct 2019

15 Oct 2019 – The vulnerability of our computers and computer networks has been ranked the number one risk in the US Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment – that’s higher than terrorism, higher than war. Your bank balance, the local hospital’s equipment, among many, many other things, all depend on computer safety. The US, UK and Australia are taking on Facebook in a bid to undermine the only method that protects our personal information.

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Revealed: The 20 Firms behind a Third of All Carbon Emissions
Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 14 Oct 2019

9 Oct 2019 – New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.

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Those Fancy Tea Bags? Microplastics in Them Are Macro Offenders
Adrienne Matei – The Guardian, 7 Oct 2019

30 Sep 2019 – “The tea bag… is in the process of a large-scale reinvention.” So reads a 2006 New York Times article on the rise of nylon mesh tea bags, an innovation that diversified the tea market. New study finds nylon tea bags leech billions of microplastics into every single cup of tea.

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US Drone Strike Kills 30 Pine Nut Workers in Afghanistan
Reuters – The Guardian, 23 Sep 2019

19 Sep 2019 – A US drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State hideout in Afghanistan has killed at least 30 civilians who were resting after harvesting pine nuts. Forty were also injured in the Wednesday [18 Sep] attack which struck farmers and labourers who just finished work. The UN says nearly 4,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of the year. Afghan Government and NATO Killing More Civilians than the Taliban

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India: Almost 2 Million People Left Off Assam Register of Citizens
Rebecca Ratcliffe and Kakoli Bhattacharya – The Guardian, 16 Sep 2019

31 Aug 2019 – Almost 2 million people in north-east India face the threat of statelessness and detention after they were excluded from an official list designed to root out illegal immigrants. Rights groups warn of possible humanitarian crisis as those left off list face statelessness and detention.

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Inside Exarcheia: The Self-Governing Community Athens Police Want Rid of
Alex King and Ioanna Manoussaki-Adamopoulou – The Guardian, 9 Sep 2019

26 Aug 2019 – The central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia, which has helped house refugees, is in the crosshairs of a government crackdown. Ringed by university buildings, Exarcheia has long been the home of Greece’s intellectual left, antiauthoritarian and anarchist movements.

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Amazon’s Indigenous Warriors Take on Invading Loggers and Ranchers
Fabiano Maisonnave – The Guardian, 2 Sep 2019

29 Aug 2019 – Trincheira Bacajá indigenous land: Under threat from fire, deforestation and Bolsonaro, Xikrin people take matters into own hands.

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‘A New Hawaiian Renaissance’: How a Telescope Protest Became a Movement
Michelle Broder Van Dyke – The Guardian, 19 Aug 2019

17 Aug 2019 – On Hawaii’s Big Island, a protest against a $1.4bn observatory on Mauna Kea, a mountain considered sacred by many Native Hawaiians, is entering a second month. In that time, the protest site has swelled from a few hundred to several thousands, attracted celebrity visitors, and built a community of Native Hawaiians who see it as a pivotal moment.

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Toni Morrison
Lyn Innes – The Guardian, 12 Aug 2019

Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford), writer, born 18 Feb 1931; died 5 Aug 2019. Nobel prizewinner and author whose stories have a strong historical and cultural base and a style, structure and tone that is specifically African American.

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Amazon Deforestation: Bolsonaro Government Accused of Seeking to Sow Doubt over Data
Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 5 Aug 2019

1 Aug 2019 – The Amazon forest is being burned and chopped down at the most alarming rate in recent memory, but the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is focused on reinterpreting the data rather than dealing with the culprits, monitoring groups have said.

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Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Towards Unrecoverable ‘Tipping Point’
Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 29 Jul 2019

25 Jul 2019 – Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. Data confirms fears that Pres. Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages illegal logging.

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Satellite Images Reveal Scale of Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis
Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian, 29 Jul 2019

24 Jul 2019 – Analysis of satellite imagery has cast further doubt on promises that arrangements are being made by Myanmar for the safe and humane return of Rohingya Muslims, and revealed that the destruction of their villages has continued.

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Punjab: The Indian State Where Farmers Sow the Seeds of Death
Vivek Chaudhary – The Guardian, 8 Jul 2019

1 Jul 2019 – Cancer rates are the highest in the country, drug addiction is rife, and 900 farmers have killed themselves in two years. How did Punjab turn toxic?

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This Photo Is about Bodies – Migrant Bodies, and Our Body Politic. Don’t Look Away
Sabrina Vourvoulias – The Guardian, 1 Jul 2019

26 Jun 2019 – This is a story about bodies. Monday’s [24 Jun] image of a drowned two-year-old and her father will haunt us. I hope it changes us, too.

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Pictures of Dead Migrants Inspire Our Sympathy. But what Use Is That to Them?
Gary Younge – The Guardian, 1 Jul 2019

The photograph of a drowned Salvadoran migrant and his daughter provoked a global outcry. That’s not enough.

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The New Left Economics: How a Network of Thinkers Is Transforming Capitalism
Andy Beckett – The Guardian, 1 Jul 2019

After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism.

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Forest Twice Size of UK Destroyed in Decade for Big Consumer Brands – Report
Karen McVeigh – The Guardian, 24 Jun 2019

11 Jun 2019 – An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International. It estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’.

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‘Socialism for the Rich’: The Evils of Bad Economics
Jonathan Aldred – The Guardian, 10 Jun 2019

6 Jun 2019 – In most rich countries, inequality is rising, and has been rising for some time. The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome was not only inevitable, but good.

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The Climate Crisis Is Our Third World War. It Needs a Bold Response
Joseph Stiglitz | Nobel Economics Laureate – The Guardian, 10 Jun 2019

4 Jun 2019 – Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.

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Raw Ivory Sales: Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia Call for End to Ban
Nyasha Chingono – The Guardian, 27 May 2019

21 May 2019 – The watchdog, Cites, prohibits unregulated commercial trade in endangered species around the world. The three southern African countries, home to 61% of the continent’s elephants, will make their application for the change at the next Cites conference in Sri Lanka. Their last appeal for a lifting of the measures was rejected.

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Eco-Friendly Ending: Washington State Is First to Allow Human Composting
Associated Press – The Guardian, 27 May 2019

Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt. Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday [21 May 2019] making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains.

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Monsanto Must Pay Couple $2bn in Largest Verdict Yet Over Cancer Claims
Sam Levin – The Guardian, 20 May 2019

13 May 2019 – A California jury has ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, after using its weedkiller, marking the third and largest verdict against the company over Roundup.

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Plastic in Paradise: The Battle for the Galápagos Islands’ Future
The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 May 2019

3 Apr 2019 – The Galápagos Islands are one of the most pristine locations on the planet, but plastic pollution arriving by sea is threatening this unique habitat. How the archipelago is hoping to lead the worldwide fight against plastic.

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My TED Talk: How I Took on the Tech Titans in Their Lair
Carole Cadwalladr – The Guardian, 29 Apr 2019

21 Apr 2019 – For more than a year, the writer has been probing a darkness at the heart of Silicon Valley. Last week, at a TED talk that became a global viral sensation, she told the tech billionaires they had broken democracy. What happened next? [Watch the Video in the end]

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‘We Are Hostages’: Indigenous Mapuche Accuse Chile and Argentina of Genocide
Mat Youkee – The Guardian, 29 Apr 2019

12 Apr 2019 – Representatives of South America’s indigenous Mapuche people have petitioned the International Criminal Court to take action against the governments of Chile and Argentina for acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

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Why Can’t the World’s Greatest Minds Solve the Mystery of Consciousness?
Oliver Burkeman – The Guardian, 22 Apr 2019

Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots. The answer might lie with the spiritualists.

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Dismay as Trump Vetoes Bill to End US Support for War in Yemen
Ed Pilkington – The Guardian, 22 Apr 2019

17 Apr 2019 – Donald Trump has vetoed a bill passed by Congress to end US military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Politicians decry Trump’s decision as a cynical move and missed opportunity for humanitarian help.

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Zimbabwe’s £118,000 Outlay on Judges’ Wigs Met with Fury
Nyasha Chingono – The Guardian, 15 Apr 2019

5 Apr 2019 – Lawyers in Zimbabwe have hit out at a government decision to spend thousands of pounds on wigs made in England for local judges, saying the tradition evokes a colonial past that should not exist in modern Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans reacted with anger questioning the wisdom of the government’s expenditure at a time when courtrooms are cramped and ill-equipped, the national economy is crumbling and, according to the World Food Programme, 63% of the population live below the poverty line.

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I Fought South African Apartheid. I See the Same Brutal Policies in Israel
Ronnie Kasrils – The Guardian, 8 Apr 2019

3 Apr 2019 – As a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist I look with horror on the far-right shift in Israel ahead of this month’s elections, and the impact in the Palestinian territories and worldwide. I was shut down in South Africa for speaking out, and I’m disturbed that the same is happening to critics of Israel now.

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Brunei Introduces Death by Stoning as Punishment for Gay Sex
Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian, 1 Apr 2019

28 Mar 2019 – Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, rape and adultery from next week, as part of the country’s implementation of sharia law. Homosexuality has been illegal in Brunei since British colonial rule but under the new laws it is now punishable by whipping or death by stoning rather than a prison sentence. The announcement was met with horror by human rights groups.

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Total Recall: The People Who Never Forget
Linda Rodriguez McRobbie – The Guardian, 25 Mar 2019

An Extremely Rare Condition May Transform Our Understanding of Memory – If you ask Jill Price to remember any day of her life, she can come up with an answer in a heartbeat. What was she doing on 29 August 1980? “It was a Friday, I went to Palm Springs with my friends.

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Facebook’s New Move Isn’t about Privacy. It’s about Domination
Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Guardian, 18 Mar 2019

7 Mar 2019 – Mark Zuckerberg announced on 6 Mar that Facebook would be ‘pivoting to privacy’. That’s an empty pledge.

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Elizabeth Warren Is Right – We Must Break Up Facebook, Google and Amazon
Robert Reich – The Guardian, 18 Mar 2019

10 Mar 2019 – The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday [8 Mar] she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel.

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Debunking the Myth That Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitic
Peter Beinart – The Guardian, 11 Mar 2019

7 Mar 2019 – It is a bewildering and alarming time to be a Jew, both because antisemitism is rising and because so many politicians are responding to it not by protecting Jews but by victimising Palestinians. Conflating anti-Zionism with Jew-hatred is a tragic mistake.

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Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems
George Monbiot – The Guardian, 4 Mar 2019

15 Apr 2016 – Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

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Rohingya Crisis: UN Investigates Its ‘Dysfunctional’ Conduct in Myanmar
Emanuel Stoakes and Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian, 4 Mar 2019

27 Feb 2019 – The UN has launched an inquiry into its conduct in Myanmar over the past decade, where it has been accused of ignoring warning signs of escalating violence prior to an alleged genocide of the Rohingya minority.

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Trump Has Turned Foreign Aid into Shabby Political Theatre
Peter Beaumont - The Guardian, 4 Mar 2019

20 Feb 2019 – Stalled relief supplies for Venezuela at the Colombian border are a stark illustration of Trump’s crudely transactional approach to aid. The flights look something more shabby: a dangerous stunt utilising aid for other purposes, alluded to by UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric: “Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or any other objectives.”

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Deflagging of Refugee Rescue Ship a ‘Dark Moment’ for Europe
Karen McVeigh – The Guardian, 18 Feb 2019

12 Feb 2019 – The deflagging of the Aquarius, the last migrant rescue ship in the Mediterranean, represents a “dark moment” in European history, setting a dangerous precedent for states to flout international humanitarian laws.

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Young Woman Dies in Fourth ‘Period Hut’ Tragedy This Year in Nepal
Rebecca Ratcliffe – The Guardian, 18 Feb 2019

6 Feb 2019 – A 21-year-old woman has been become the fourth person known to have died this year as a result of the illegal practice of chhaupadi, whereby menstruating women in Nepal are banished from their homes and forced to sleep in huts.

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Revealed: FBI Investigated Civil Rights Group as ‘Terrorism’ Threat and Viewed KKK as Victims
Sam Levin – The Guardian, 11 Feb 2019

Bureau spied on California activists, citing potential ‘conspiracy’ against the ‘rights’ of neo-Nazis.

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US Nuclear Weapons: First Low-Yield Warheads Roll Off the Production Line
Julian Borger – The Guardian, 4 Feb 2019

28 Jan 2019 – The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear confrontation. New type of weapon, ordered by Trump’s nuclear posture review, could make violent response to conflict more likely, say experts.

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Destroy ‘Period Huts’ or Forget State Support: Nepal Moves to End Practice
Rojita Adhikari – The Guardian, 28 Jan 2019

After the custom of consigning menstruating women to outdoor sheds claimed three more lives, a new system of penalties offers hope of change.

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Good News at Last: The World Isn’t As Horrific As You Think
Hans Rosling – The Guardian, 28 Jan 2019

Training yourself how to put the news into perspective – practising ‘factfulness’ – will change your outlook for the better.

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1,500 Private Jets Fly into Davos for World Economic Forum Climate Talks–Oxymoron?
Rebecca Ratcliffe – The Guardian, 28 Jan 2019

22 Jan 2019 – David Attenborough might have urged world leaders at Davos to take urgent action on climate change, but it appears no one was listening. As he spoke, experts predicted up to 1,500 individual private jets will fly to and from airfields serving the Swiss ski resort this week.

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The Guardian View on Israel’s Democracy: Killing with Impunity, Lying without Consequence?
Editorial – The Guardian, 28 Jan 2019

22 Jan 2019 – In the last nine months of 2018, according to the UN, hundreds of Palestinians – many of them children – were killed and many thousands injured. They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military teargas, shoot and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat. Hospitals in Gaza, which already struggle under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, have been stretched to breaking point in dealing with the flood of patients ferried in from the protests.

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Academic Who Defined News Principles, Galtung Says Journalists Are Too Negative
Ulrik Haagerup – The Guardian, 21 Jan 2019

18 Jan 2019 – The academic paper concluded with a warning on the consequences for society if news organisations continued to promote confrontation, tension and sensation over collaboration, resolution and compassion. “The consequence of all this is an image of the world that gives little autonomy to the periphery but sees it as mainly existing for the sake of the centre,” the paper said. “Conflict will be emphasised, conciliation not.” “And this is exactly what has happened,” Galtung said. “News media give a total biased picture of reality. The perception of reality in the public becomes overly negative.”

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When the Ice Melts: The Catastrophe of Vanishing Glaciers
Dahr Jamail – The Guardian, 14 Jan 2019

8 Jan 2019 – As global temperatures rise, shrivelling glaciers and thawing permafrost threaten yet more climate disruption. How should we confront what is happening to our world? While western colonialist culture believes in “rights”, many indigenous cultures teach of “obligations” that we are born into: obligations to those who came before, to those who will come after, and to the Earth itself.

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Chickens Freezing to Death and Boiled Alive: Failings in US Slaughterhouses Exposed
Andrew Wasley and Natalie Jones – The Guardian, 24 Dec 2018

17 Dec 2018 – Chickens slowly freezing to death, being boiled alive, drowned or suffocating under piles of other birds are among hundreds of shocking welfare incidents recorded at US slaughterhouses, according to previously unpublished reports.

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Google’s Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy on Us
Yasha Levine – The Guardian, 24 Dec 2018

20 Dec 2018 – We knew that being connected had a price – our data. But we didn’t care. Then it turned out that Google’s main clients included the military and intelligence agencies.

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We Shouldn’t Rush to Save the Liberal Order – We Should Remake It
Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler – The Guardian, 3 Dec 2018

1 Dec 2018 – From Viktor Orbán in the north to Jair Bolsonaro in the south, Rodrigo Duterte in the east to Donald Trump in the west, a coalition of nationalist strongmen are cracking down on civil rights, scapegoating minorities and facilitating widespread corruption for their family and friends. The UN Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank and the ILO were conceived as agencies of change – they can be again.

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Why We Stopped Trusting Elites
William Davies – The Guardian, 3 Dec 2018

The credibility of establishment figures has been demolished by technological change and political upheavals. But it’s too late to turn back the clock.

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The Famine Facing Yemen Is a War Crime – It Must Be Investigated
Emily Thornberry – The Guardian, 26 Nov 2018

22 Nov 2018 – The Saudi-led coalition has deliberately targeted civilians. The UN must press for answers–not be complicit in a cover-up.

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System Error: Japan Cybersecurity Minister Admits He Has Never Used a Computer
Justin McCurry – The Guardian, 26 Nov 2018

15 Nov 2018 – A Japanese minister in charge of cybersecurity has provoked astonishment by admitting he has never used a computer in his professional life, and appearing confused by the concept of a USB drive. Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, is the deputy chief of the government’s cybersecurity strategy office and also the minister in charge of the Olympic and Paralympic Games that Tokyo will host in 2020.

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Khmer Rouge Leaders Found Guilty of Genocide in Cambodia’s ‘Nuremberg’ Moment
Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian, 19 Nov 2018

16 Nov 2018 – The two most senior Khmer Rouge leaders still alive today have been found guilty of genocide, almost 40 years since Pol Pot’s brutal regime fell. Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were leaders of a regime that presided over deaths of at least 1.7 million in Cambodia.

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Rohingyas to Be Repatriated Despite UN Genocide Warning
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shaikh Azizur Rahman – The Guardian, 5 Nov 2018

30 Oct 2018 – Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed to start the repatriation of Rohingya refugees next month, less than a week after UN investigators warned that a genocide against the Muslim minority was continuing.

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Humanity Has Wiped Out 60% of Animal Populations since 1970, Report Finds
Damian Carrington – The Guardian, 5 Nov 2018

30 Oct 2018 – Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.

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Trump Says US Will Withdraw from Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia
Julian Borger and Martin Pengelly – The Guardian, 22 Oct 2018

21 Oct 2018 – Experts warn of ‘most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s’ as Trump confirms US will leave INF agreement. “We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”

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Yemen on Brink of ‘World’s Worst Famine in 100 Years’ if War Continues
Hannah Summers – The Guardian, 22 Oct 2018

15 Oct 2018 – Yemen could be facing the worst famine in 100 years if airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition are not halted, the UN has warned. Famine could overwhelm country in next three months, with 13 million people at risk of starvation.

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