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The Ocean as Desert: the Styrofoaming of the Sea

Lewis Lapham June 4, 2013 Lewis Lapham

In heavy fog on the night of October 7, 1936, the SS Ohioan ran aground three miles south and west of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and by noon on October 8th, I was among a crowd of spectators come to pay its respects to the no small terror of the sea. I was two years old, hoisted on the shoulders of my father, for whom the view to windward was neither openly nor latently sublime. The stranded vessel, an 8,046-ton freighter laden with a cargo valued at $450,000, was owned by the family steamship company of which my father one day was to become the president, and he would have been counting costs instead of looking to the consolations of philosophy. No lives had been lost — Coast Guard boats had rescued the captain and the crew — but the first assessments of the damaged hull pegged the hopes of salvage in the vicinity of few and none. read more

Don’t Forget: A Review of George Orwell’s Diaries

Kristian Williams May 15, 2013 Kristian Williams

George Orwell's journals assess events from the perspective of the past looking forward, rather than from the perspective of our present looking back. They thus refreshingly remind us of the uncertainty of the time, the contingency of history, and the moral and political complexity so often lost to the editors of historical volumes.

The Looming Threats to Voting Rights: Online Voting and the US Intelligence Community

John Lasker May 9, 2013 John Lasker

It is becoming more likely that Americans will one day cast their votes in national elections with just the click of a mouse. What the American public doesn’t know is that sitting at the controls of Internet voting technology is a group of private corporations whose board members and CEOs once worked for the US intelligence community.

How the Pentagon Corrupted Afghanistan

Dilip Hiro April 2, 2013 Dilip Hiro

Source: TomDispatch.com

Washington has vociferously denounced Afghan corruption as a major obstacle to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This has been widely reported. Only one crucial element is missing from this routine censure: a credible explanation of why American nation-building failed there. No wonder. To do so, the U.S. would have to denounce itself.

Corruption in Afghanistan today is acute and permeates all sectors of society. In recent years, anecdotal evidence on the subject has been superseded by the studies of researchers, surveys by NGOs, and periodic reports by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). There is also the Corruption Perceptions Index of the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI). Last year, it bracketed Afghanistan with two other countries as the most corrupt on Earth. read more

Six Months of Striking for This? Quebec’s Students Fight Back – A Photo Essay

Zachary Bell March 22, 2013 Zachary Bell

Quebec’s historic 2011 student strike resulted in the ouster of premier Jean Charest and the repeal of his 75 percent tuition hike, and now Montreal’s student federations are gearing up again to oppose the newly elected Pauline Marois’ decision to indefinitely raise tuitions at a rate of 3 percent annually.

The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement: An Interview with Ruben Figueroa

Andalusia Knoll March 19, 2013 Andalusia Knoll

In the face of thousands of kidnappings and an inept government, Ruben Figueroa dedicates himself to finding disappeared Central American migrants in Mexico.