The end of the house of Assad. Much will go wrong. But for now, celebrate a tyrant’s fall
Our number-crunching suggests it was the best-performing rich economy in 2024
Financial innovation is just as much to blame as the technological sort
Even bail-outs are getting expensive
The rebels who seized control called for foreign help in prosecuting atrocities, while trying to restore order in a fractured country.
The president-elect became convinced that letting Pete Hegseth fail would set off a feeding frenzy among senators. What followed was a MAGA swarm that helped salvage his bid, at least for now.
Under President Biden, more than two million immigrants per year have entered, government data shows.
Famine and ethnic cleansing stalk Sudan. Yet the gold trade is booming, enriching generals and propelling the fight.
The Guardian Weekly (December 11, 2024): The new issue features The fall of Syria’s brutal dictatorship. Plus The best books of 2024.
Not even the most optimistic of rebels could have predicted the rapid collapse, last weekend, of the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than 50 years. Yet while there was relief and joy both inside Syria and among the nation’s vast displaced diaspora, it was also accompanied by apprehension over what might come next.
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Spotlight | Russia and Ukraine wait warily for Trump transition
The idea of the US president-election as a saviour for Ukraine, as unlikely as it may seem, holds an appeal for an exhausted nation without a clear path to victory. Shaun Walker and Pjotr Sauer report
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Environment | The jailed anti-whaler defiant in face of extradition threat
Capt Paul Watson talks to Daniel Boffey about his arrest on behalf of the Japanese government, his ‘interesting’ Greenland prison, and separation from his children
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Feature | The growing threat of firearms that can be made at home
One far-right cell wanted to use 3D-printed guns to cause ‘maximum confusion and fear’ on the streets of Finland. Could the police intercept them in time? By Samira Shackle
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Opinion | Farage is lying in wait. Britain can’t afford for Starmer to fail
It is not enough for the Labour leader’s ‘milestones’ to be achieved. Voters must feel the improvement in their daily lives, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
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Culture | The best books of 2024
From a radical retelling of Huckleberry Finn to Al Pacino’s autobiography, our critics round up their favourite reads of the year
The Brooklyn Rail (December 11, 2024): The latest issue features…
“When you invent the ship, you must also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you must also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution… Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”
–Paul Virilio
“The human spirit must prevail over technology.”
–Albert Einstein
Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975–84 – By Rebecca Allan
David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture – By Phong Bui
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 – By David Carrier
Jaeheon Lee: Ghosts in the Garden – By William Corwin
Edges of Ailey – By Ekin Erkan
Patterns in Abstraction – By Leia Genis
Jordan Nassar: THERE – By Robert Alan Grand
Jay DeFeo: Trees – By Suzanne Hudson
Nour Mobarak: Dafne Phono – By Eana Kim
Yuli Yamagata: Ghosts Don’t Wear Watches – By Alfred Mac Adam
Soledad Sevilla: Ritmos, tramas, variables – By Valerie Mindlin
Mark Bradford: Keep Walking – By Charles Moore
André Griffo: Exploded View – By Rômulo Moraes
Jesse Krimes: Corrections – By Joanna Seifter
Lynne Drexler: Color Notes – By David Whelan
Rosemarie Beck: Earthly Paradise – By Leah Triplett Harrington
Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall – By Selena Parnon
Sean Scully: Duane Street, 1981–1983 – By Raphy Sarkissian
Henni Alftan: Stop Making Sense – By Ann C. Collins
Hap Tivey: Perception is the Medium – By Benjamin Clifford
William Gropper: Artist of the People – By Margot Yale
by Rick Lewis
Lost Hegel lecture notes now being digitized • Professor Ted Honderich dead at 91 — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
Seán Radcliffe asks, has Plato’s Allegory of the Cave been warning us of social media for 2,400 years?
Rosemary Twomey questions our online epistemology.
Amrit Pathak gives us a run-down of the foundations of modern atheism.
Andrew Likoudis questions the basis of some popular atheist arguments.
Zdeněk Petráček looks at the biggest problem facing monotheism.
Philip Goff grasps hold of the problem of evil and comes up with a novel solution.
Mohsen Moghri gives a Godless but principled response to the problem of evil.
Musa Mumtaz meditates on two maverick medieval Muslim metaphysicians.
Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez has a flash of inspiration about the role metaphors play in creative thought.
Shashwat Mishra explores the limits of perception via the Molyneux problem.
Jimmy Alfonso Licon wonders whether pretending there’s a Santa is naughty or nice.
John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.
Each answer below receives a random book. Apologies to the entrants not included.
Robert Stern talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.
Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts • Get Smarter • Decoding A Decoding • A Swift Rebuttal • Basic Arithmetic • A Message on Meaning
by Terence Green
by Matt Qvortrup
Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.
Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate.
T.W.J Moxham reads Slavoj Žižek’s little book of Hegelian horrors.
Christopher John Searle recommends a study of which moves are allowed in logical arguments.
Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.
The suspect, Luigi Mangione, was an Ivy League tech graduate from a prominent Maryland family who in recent months had suffered physical and psychological pain.
The National Association of Realtors has created a nonprofit that gives more heavily to one side of the political aisle and to groups that have little to do with real estate and housing.
Amnesty International described it as a “human slaughterhouse,” where, other rights groups say, tens of thousands of people were detained, tortured and killed during the 13-year civil war.
Almost 100 women have been killed in the span of three months, the police say. Rights groups want President William Ruto to declare femicide a national crisis.
A day after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell, civilians poured into the streets of Damascus, weeping in disbelief. Many sought word of relatives held in a notorious prison on the outskirts of the city.
Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of an F train. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.
Luigi Mangione was arrested after a tip from a McDonald’s in Altoona. On Monday night, Manhattan prosecutors charged him with murder.
New technology alerts schools when students type words related to suicide. But do the timely interventions balance out the false alarms?
Lawmakers have toppled the government for the first time since 1962. How did we get here? By Lauren Collins
Two political newcomers have arrived to slash big government, but so far the project seems less revolutionary than advertised.
President Bashar al-Assad had kept opposition forces at bay for a decade with help from Russia and Iran. But rebels struck at a moment of weakness for those countries.
Thoughts of loved ones dead or missing complicate joyous relief at the prospect of Bashar al-Assad’s losing power.
With the fall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Vladimir V. Putin has suffered one of the biggest geopolitical setbacks of his quarter-century in power.
Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.
by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
In a revelatory book, Farrell and Newman describe how the United States has turned its control over information networks into a hidden tool of economic domination—and warn of the risks of Washington’s weaponization of data power for ordinary people, as well as for the global financial system.read the review
by Sergey Radchenko
In a major reconsideration of Cold War history, Radchenko examines the Soviet Union’s competing ambitions for revolution, security, and legitimacy—and how Soviet leadership, blinded by its own hubris and aggression, set the stage for the downfall of the USSR. read the review
by Alan S. Kahan
Kahan argues that what unifies liberals across the centuries, including those involved in building and defending liberal democracy today, are their efforts to build societies free from the fear of arbitrary power. He sculpts a masterful and beautifully written history of liberalism’s long intellectual journey. read the review
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
In this sobering study, Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate how the United States’ enduring constitutional order—one forged in a pre-democratic age—increasingly thwarts the will of an expanding multicultural majority in favor of a shrinking rural white minority.read the review
by Anne Applebaum
Focused on the sophisticated and networked world of autocracy, dictatorship, and tyranny, Applebaum argues that what separates hardcore autocratic states, such as China and Russia, from softer illiberal and authoritarian regimes, such as those in Hungary, India, and Turkey, is the ruthlessness and reach of their dictatorial power and their deep hostility to the Western-led democratic world.read the review
Boomers Daily 