Monocle on Saturday, September 9, 2023: A look at the week’s news and culture with Georgina Godwin. Plus: Yassmin Abdel-Magied joins us for a look through the morning’s papers, while Fernando Augusto Pacheco meets Angus Dowling of Australian psychedelic-rock band Babe Rainbow to discuss their new single “Juice of the Sun”.
Tag Archives: Politics
Culture & Opinion: Noema Magazine – Fall 2023 Issue
Climate Lessons From A Lost Land
The story of the “Atlantis of the North Sea” is one about our impermanence and ultimate futility against the elements. But within it also lies a warning of our potential future in an age of climate change.
Finding Hope In The Dark Power Of Fungus
Fungi can take on the mess and the junk, the waste and the abandoned, break it all down and transform toxin into life.
Taehyoung Jeon
Jesse Stone for Noema Magazine
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – September 8, 2023
The Guardian Weekly (September 8, 2023) – The issue features Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive vision for US politics, graduate jobs market pressured by artificial intelligence, migrants in North Africa Spanish enclave of Melilla, and more…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s explosive entrance on to the US political scene at the age of 29, as the youngest woman ever to be elected to the House of Representatives, was a beacon of hope for the progressive left during the dark days of the Trump presidency.
Five years on, AOC is established as an influential figure in the Democratic party, known for her advocacy of green policies and efforts to engage marginalised groups. In a wide-ranging interview, she talks to Washington bureau chief David Smith about the climate crisis, misogyny in US politics and the potential – one day – for a presidential run of her own.
For those with an eye farther afield, on the graduate jobs market, Hibaq Farah and Tom Ambrose consider the future careers most likely to withstand the coming onslaught of artificial intelligence.
In Features, Matthew Bremner’s investigation into the massacre of migrants in the north African Spanish enclave of Melilla is a sobering but important read. Jay Owens changes the pace somewhat with an exploration of dust, and what it reveals about the world around us.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 11, 2023
The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing
A rogue scientist showed that crispr gives humans the ability to transform ourselves. But should we?
Crispr, which may be the single most transformative biological technology of the twenty-first century, is a natural phenomenon, evolved over billions of years. It was first observed in the nineteen-eighties, when researchers noticed unexplained sequences of viral DNA in E. coli. Eventually, they realized that these sequences played a role in the bacteria’s immune system: they could find and destroy other pieces of viral DNA.
The Holy Heresies of George Eliot
Her greatest rebellion against Victorian moralism was to reclaim the sacred for herself.
By James Wood
Literature bores me, especially great literature,” the narrator of one of John Berryman’s “Dream Songs” says. George Eliot sometimes bores me, especially the George Eliot draped in greatness. Think of the extremities of nineteenth-century fiction: labile Lermontov; crazy, visionary Melville; nasty, world-hating Flaubert; mystic moor-bound Brontës; fanatical, trembling Dostoyevsky; explosive Hamsun. There’s enough wildness to destroy the myth of that stable Victorian portal “classic realism.” It was not classic—certainly not then—and not always particularly “real.”
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Monocle on Saturday, September 2, 2023: A look at the week’s news and culture with Georgina Godwin.
Also, we are joined by Charles Hecker for a look through the morning’s papers, Monocle’s Helsinki correspondent, Petri Burtsoff, investigates the growing popularity of e-bikes in Finland and we examine India’s space programme with Maya Sharma.
Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Fall 2023
The G-7 Becomes a Power Player
Russia’s war and China’s rise are turning a talking shop into a fledgling alliance of democracies.
By G. John Ikenberry, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.
Time and again over the last century, the United States and the other liberal democracies in Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere have found themselves on the same side in grand struggles over the terms of the world order. This political grouping has been given various names: the West, the free world, the trilateral world, the community of democracies. In one sense, it is a geopolitical formation, uniting North America, Europe, and Japan, among others. It is an artifact of the Cold War and U.S. hegemony, anchored in NATO and Washington’s East Asian alliances.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington
The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon.
By Jack Detsch
End American dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor factories. Declare economic independence from China. Give India an AUKUS-like submarine deal. And stage a dramatic visit to Moscow to broker a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – September 1, 2023
The Guardian Weekly (September 1, 2023) – The issue features Prigozhin’s downfall – What next for Putin, Russia and Wagner?; Zadie Smith returns to the streets of London; Protecting the Arctic Sea, and more…
Andrew Roth explores what the legacy of the Wagner warlord might be for Russia – which may well hinge on Putin himself and how the war in Ukraine turns out.
Pjotr Sauer looks at the array of methods used to dispose of Putin’s political enemies in the past, while Dino Mahtani asks what will happen to Wagner group’s clandestine operations in Africa now its enigmatic boss is no longer in the picture.
In Spotlight, a beautiful photo-essay by Ossie Michelin and Eldred Allen transports us to the Canadian Arctic where, amid alarming signs of warmer winters and receding ice, Inuit people are planning to turn 15,000 sq km of the Labrador Sea into a unique conservation zone.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 4, 2023
How a Man in Prison Stole Millions from Billionaires
With smuggled cell phones and a handful of accomplices, Arthur Lee Cofield, Jr., took money from large bank accounts and bought houses, cars, clothes, and gold.
Early in 2020, the architect Scott West got a call at his office, in Atlanta, from a prospective client who said that his name was Archie Lee. West designs luxurious houses in a spare, angular style one might call millionaire modern. Lee wanted one. That June, West found an appealing property in Buckhead—an upscale part of North Atlanta that attracts both old money and new—and told Lee it might be a good spot for them to build. Lee arranged for his wife to meet West there.
Coco Gauff’s Glorious Progress
Gauff has the charisma and talent to be not just a champion but a star, and this summer she has played better than ever before.
Last weekend, at a tournament in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Coco Gauff beat Iga Świątek for the first time. It was one of those moments in tennis when the ground seemed to shift: Gauff had never taken a set from Świątek, the current world No. 1, in the seven previous times they’d met. It was the biggest win of Gauff’s young career—but it was in keeping with a high-summer revving of her already formidable game. In the hard-court tournaments held across North America which are essentially warmups for the U.S. Open, Gauff has been the imposing presence that the tennis world has been waiting for her to become—waiting avidly, for sure, but a little anxiously, too. As recently as early July, when she lost in the first round at Wimbledon, there was fretting that she wasn’t making quick enough progress.
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Monocle on Saturday, August 26, 2023: The week’s news and culture with Vincent McAviney. Terry Stiastny looks through the morning’s papers and Monocle’s Madrid correspondent, Liam Aldous, asks why female artists in Spain are going topless on stage.
Analysis: The Importance Of India’s Moon Landing
Video timeline: 0:00 India lands on the south pole of the moon 0:53 Why the south pole? 2:37 Why Russia and India want to be first 4:32 New space race
Both countries launched rockets in recent weeks, hoping to be the first to successfully complete the mission. Why were they racing to reach the lunar south pole? WSJ explains the significance of both missions for Moscow and New Delhi.
Boomers Daily 